A fascinating article I found after digging through Conor Friedersdorf’s best of journalism.
What distinguishes a great mnemonist, I learned, is the ability to create lavish images on the fly, to paint in the mind a scene so unlike any other it cannot be forgotten. And to do it quickly. Many competitive mnemonists argue that their skills are less a feat of memory than of creativity. For example, one of the most popular techniques used to memorize playing cards involves associating every card with an image of a celebrity performing some sort of a ludicrous — and therefore memorable — action on a mundane object. When it comes time to remember the order of a series of cards, those memorized images are shuffled and recombined to form new and unforgettable scenes in the mind’s eye. Using this technique, Ed Cooke showed me how an entire deck can be quickly transformed into a comically surreal, and unforgettable, memory palace.
The author documents his training as a mental athlete and his US record breaking performance memorizing a deck of cards in 1 minute 40 seconds. I personally have a terrible memory, especially for names, but I don’t think this kind of active memorization is especially productive. The kind of memory enhancement we could all benefit from is the ability to call up more and more ideas/thoughts/experiences related to whatever is currently going on. We need more fluid relational memory, RAM not so much.
Cheap Talk 
6 comments
Comments feed for this article
February 20, 2013 at 6:23 pm
Angry Dude
Fascinating perspective on the technique. Ed Debono’s Thinking book describes the method but not so colorfully.
But, I do think the method is generally useful. Recall of collections is hard for many but seems important to both abstract thinking, and effective social/professional climbing, er, achievement. Mnemonics are a variant form.
February 20, 2013 at 9:46 pm
Navin Kumar
I call false alternatives: yes, we need more fluid memory (not clear about what that is, though) but that doesn’t come at the cost of a better memory for lists of things, which is handy in it’s own right. Granted it is far less important in this day and age of extensive external memory aids (notepads, phones etc.)
For example, I memorized my class timetable by using attractive women who’s clothing represented my classes. The head represents 10:25 classes, the torso 11:40 classes etc. If the woman representing Monday (Eva Longoria) has a rainbow-coloured hat on her head, it means I have Economics of discrimination at 10:25; if she is wearing a t-shirt with Pikachu on it, it’s game theory at 11:40 and so on. This way I no longer need to refer to my phone to remember when my classes are.
Besides, it’s fun which is what counts.
February 20, 2013 at 9:58 pm
Navin Kumar
*whose
February 20, 2013 at 9:47 pm
Navin Kumar
By the way, I highly recommend Joshua Foer’s Moonwalking with Einstein – fantastic book on memory.
February 20, 2013 at 10:56 pm
Alex F
None of these techniques make any sense to me because I have no ability to visualize images in my mind. I couldn’t mentally walk through my own actual apartment, let alone some imaginary memory palace. 😦
February 21, 2013 at 12:48 pm
Memory Athletes | Fifth Estate
[…] See full story on cheaptalk.org […]