[HN Gopher] "Memory athletes" and the techniques they use [audio] ___________________________________________________________________ "Memory athletes" and the techniques they use [audio] Author : open-source-ux Score : 47 points Date : 2021-05-13 14:47 UTC (8 hours ago) (HTM) web link (www.bbc.co.uk) (TXT) w3m dump (www.bbc.co.uk) | romanhn wrote: | "Moonwalking with Einstein" by Joshua Foer is an interesting book | on the subject of memory athletes. The author is a journalist who | sets out to write the book and in parallel practices alongside | his research subjects. In the end, he winds up winning the USA | Memory Championship and setting a US record. Really drives home | the point that it's all about the techniques and the time one is | willing to put into them. | paulpauper wrote: | it is a great story and probably even a better book, but the | sciences is really lacking | https://greyenlightenment.com/2018/08/14/bullshitting-with-e... | | There are no peer-reviewed studies that corroborate the claims | of the book, and research shows memory champions all have | Mensa-level IQs. This is not surprising. Short-term memory is | g-loaded and is a component of IQ test (it is called digit span | or digit recall), so it is logical to assume that the best at | memory would also have high IQs. | dennis_moore wrote: | And so what if success in memory competitions is correlated | with IQ? Grades among students are highly correlated to IQ, | but that doesn't mean that good study habits and hard work | won't improve your grade. Though I don't have a peer-reviewed | source to back that up, sorry. | romanhn wrote: | That is a rather unconvincing post. It makes the link to IQ | without any actual evidence, claims Foer has an IQ of at | least 130 again without anything backing it up, and trots out | a memory athlete's opinions as if they were unbiased facts. | Never mind that the said expert specifically pointed out that | correlation is not equivalent to causation. Or that IQs as | measure of intelligence is still pretty contested. | | It's been a while, but I have a recollection of Foer going | into the question of why more people don't do this in his | book. It mostly has to do with the amount of time one needs | to commit to practice, coupled with limited transferability | of this skill. | | To give another anecdote, I've worked with a very high- | performing engineer who spent a bunch of his free time | building memory palaces for new codebases to ensure | retention. I'm sure he was above average IQ-wise, but his | productivity likely benefited from his approach as much as | from his innate abilities. | JoshCole wrote: | It is more than unconvincing. It is outright misleading. | The idea that scientific investigations are refuting the | idea that these skills are learnable is false. It doesn't | make much effort to find studies to the contrary. | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4056179/ | | It also goes against common sense. Math, reading, and so | many things are all learned, but frequently used by people | who have a high IQ. Are we to assume that these things are | not learned, because the author thinks IQ is the cause of | reading skill, math, and similar things? | | I've bothered going through the labor to learn the skill. | I've seen my baseline measurement of recall ability | improved by the training time I invested in learning the | skill. I haven't bothered to get to a competitive level, | but I don't need to do so to be certain that humans can | learn skills by practicing them with the intention to | improve. | | The skeptic is just wrong. People can learn to improve | their memory. | paulpauper wrote: | Consider that people with higher IQs have greater | proficiency at math and reading (such as SAT scores) | despite everyone regardless of IQ having some ability. | JoshCole wrote: | Yes, but that doesn't reflect the inability to learn. | You're confusing cumulative advantage leading to a | competitive edge with an inability of lower IQ humans to | learn advanced skills. You will also find things like | richness and beauty positively associated with winning | competitions too. That you will find this doesn't mean | memory can't be improved. It reflect cumulative advantage | more generally. It is one of the reasons for the | cognitive bias of the halo effect, a statistical side | effect of the principles underlying the Matthew Effect. | Edges are edges. | | Critically, that doesn't mean that the skills aren't | learnable. It means that people with the most advantages | can exploit those advantages to gain a greater deal of | advantage than someone who has less advantage. | augustk wrote: | On the other hand we have the Savant syndrome which is | typically not associated with high IQ. | Syzygies wrote: | That, and I'm glad I didn't read "Mensa-level IQs" while | drinking coffee, I would have spit all over my keyboard. | | Mensa? A low threshold, yet smart enough to be in the game | if you can find something that really interests you. But | you choose a club? Huh... | | It's actually heartening that various people famous for | their IQs have accomplished zilch in their lives other than | being famous for their IQs. This tells you that the test is | flawed, and that other factors determine revolutionary | levels of success. | | The magician/mathematician Persi Diaconis long ago | explained to me about "memory palaces" and their | effectiveness in competition. This can be generalized: The | mountaineer Conrad Anker relays how European skiers can | spot an American skier from far off: They waste effort. | Many people had Michael Jordan's physique, but Michael | Jordan spent a decade developing his physique into a world | class athlete. | | One is the architect of one's intelligence. The most | poisonous aspect of IQ tests is that people believe them, | and conclude that intelligence is innate, not malleable. | paulpauper wrote: | If you think Mensa people accomplish little, wait until | you see the general population | aomml wrote: | The article is wrong in many places. For example, it says: | | > -One study showed that that training is non-transferable. | This means if one learns a sequence of numbers, the skill | fails when one tries to recite them backwards or a new set of | numbers. | | but just about every person who has ever memorized numbers | with those memory techniques can recite the numbers backwards | too. If you gain the skills to memorize one page of random | numbers you can memorize a different one too, no problem. | bilal4hmed wrote: | Highly recommend the book, its a great read. | ftio wrote: | I read it in 2011 when it came out, and I still have a vague | memory of the memory palace he teaches you to build. I used my | childhood home to remember: | | - Garlic in the driveway | | - Six bottles of wine playing catch with three pairs of socks | | - A scuba diver in the kitchen sink | | - A smoke machine in the living room | | I have no idea what it was that I was supposed to be | remembering or whether those are even the right things, but | memory palaces are apparently a powerful tool. | romanhn wrote: | It's funny, the memory palace idea always seemed like such an | odd concept to me, until I realized I have aphantasia and | lack the "normal" visualization capabilities. | hinkley wrote: | Eidetic memory is one of those things only pre-pubescent kids are | supposed to have, and mine survived into high school. I can still | recall a couple history tests where I could not remember the | answer but I knew for sure I wrote it in the margin on a page of | my notes. When I finished the rest of the test I ran the clock | down racking my brain trying to tease out the exact text. | | Because of this I always thought of myself as a visual thinker. | Until the last time we were discussing Aphantasia here and I | realized to my horror that I hardly ever picture anything in my | head anymore. Which is super confusing considering that while I'm | awful with names, I will remember your face pretty much forever. | We've met before, I'm sure of it. I am so assured of this, that | on the rare occasion someone recognizes me but I don't know them, | it's so unsettling that it borders on traumatic. Like the guy in | the movie who discovers he's been spied upon. | | What I've worked out is that I'm a spatial thinker, which goes to | explain why I get very particular about the 'shapes' of code the | way some craftsman get snippy about someone moving their tools. | Once I teased that out I then discovered that a lot of my ways of | processing complex data are functionally indistinguishable from a | Mind Palace, but the decor doesn't matter, just the shapes. Like | navigating your house at night without turning all the lights on. | Careful, there's a chair there, and the dog bowl is over here. | And at the store, this couch is great but it won't quite fit in | our living room. Yes, I'm sure honey. | hervature wrote: | If you had eidetic memory, you would know exactly what you had | wrote in said margin. | R0b0t1 wrote: | Eidetic memory comes in grades. It _usually_ seems to make | use of or abuse spatial memory to remember facts in great | detail that you then synthesize. See "memory palace." | | Eidetic memory used to be considered a negative mutation in | that the bearer was not "properly using" their semantic | memory, i.e. just remembering the fact without having to | synthesize it from a raw sense memory. | driftlogic wrote: | I think you just described my brain. Are there resources around | spatial thinking you find insightful? | paulpauper wrote: | john von neumann had it his whole life | open-source-ux wrote: | This is an excellent 30 minute radio programme/podcast. Since | most people I suspect won't have 30 minutes to listen to it all, | the programme finishes on an interesting note. | | There is a cultural stereotype that Chinese schooling places a | higher value on memorisation of facts, compared to liberal | Western education systems which prioritise understanding over | rote learning. So these memorisation techniques and competitions | are painted as a difference in education values. | | But as one of the "memory athletes" says, the techniques of | memory training are _not_ rote learning, but inherently creative. | He goes on to explain why. | | There's much more in the programme including how to create a | "memory palace". | aomml wrote: | If you want to watch top memory athletes compete in real time, | check out https://memoryleague.com/ | | You can also watch the ongoing championships on Twitch: | https://www.twitch.tv/memorysportstv | whymauri wrote: | I once met Jim Karol who uses _recursive_ associative mnemonics | to form a n-dimensional associative memory matrix. Most people | have a 1-D or 2-D associative matrix, but Jim Karol can basically | store associative memory with log(n) associative lookups. | Graziano_M wrote: | The most important thing I learned about this sort of memorizing | is that it is not useful to me, and that let me stop worrying | about it. Sure, there might be some cases where it could be, but | for the most part this technique overfits to the competition and | doesn't transfer to my day-to-day. | | For things I want to memorize day to day I don't have to memorize | a long list of things and recall it directly, I might have to | build up a list of things I can recall, but I have time to build | up that list, and I can use spaced repetition (Anki) for that. | RobertRoberts wrote: | I took a "memory course" in college and it was like a muscle | based exercise. If I used it and practiced it, it worked. But | after I stopped practicing/using it for a while, eventually it | became atrophied and I could remember things as well as I could | when I was working hard it. | | Is this how it works for everyone that "develops" a good memory? | sigg3 wrote: | Can't remember. | foooobaba wrote: | For those interested https://artofmemory.com/ is a forum where | lots of memory athletes share strategies and tactics. | Additionally it also has some software you can practice to | improve your skills. ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2021-05-13 23:00 UTC)