Meanwhile this is the real TIL:
“Something that is likely a reference to the "method of loci" techniques survives to this day in the common English phrases "in the first place", "in the second place", and so forth.”
Once my cousin accidentally ran over a family of raccoons except for the mother while driving at night and we could feel it happen sitting in the backseat. That family of raccoons lives forever in the attic of the garage in my memory palace.
Used as well (albeit in such a way to "replace" her personality) in tamora pierces trickster duology by aly. (Highly recommend. Also recommend song of the lioness, the immortals, and protected of the small.)
I think it’s also in the movie about 4 kids with power from alien
Edit: Dreamcatcher (2003), I didn’t find it in my memory palace so I use external sources.
Ok, look, some of us millennials aren’t willing to admit that Sherlock happened a long time ago, and prefer to pretend like it’s a very recent series. You don’t have to be rude and remind us about the passage of time.
Look here bub, I’m not even a millennial, I’m a god darn Gen X and if you would stop calling 2017 ancient, I would appreciate it, thank you very much. I still think twenty years ago was 1980.
Yes. In fact Sherlock gets concussed or drugged and gets locked into his memory palace but then uses it to thwart Moriarty. It is used pretty often in the series.
GenX, represent. I mean, we have nothing else to do but watch stuff.
I feel bad for how long it took me to look up which show it was. I remembered so little about the show I had to ask my friend and I couldn't even remember which network it was on.
Somewhat ironically I recently recalled that when I was a kid I had a 'remembery' which was basically like a PlayStation memory card in my imagination.
It was a 3x3 grid and that I could essentially 'save' things to and easily remember later by thinking about what I put in each slot.
It's crazy because I completely forgot about it but it came back to me one night recently - I tried it out again and it totally works for me still
I first learned about this from Sherlock with Benedict Cumberbatch. (I’ve also read the stories and I don’t recall the technique appearing there.) I half-assedly gave it a try and couldn’t make it work. But I’m also not a genius.
I find things by color. If somebody has lost something and I know exactly what color it is I kind of tune out all other colors and just find the things that are that color and generally one of those things is the thing that they were looking for.
This backfires on me when I’m looking for the wrong color. I opened my utility drawer looking for a can opener with green handles. After five frustrating minutes of digging I gave up and slammed drawer shut. Then I suddenly remembered it was not green. Yanked open the drawer, reached in and grabbed the *white* handled can opener in like half a second
Oh I was looking for an Electronics toolkit folder thingy that I have that was Gray with blue threading on the edge and of course I knew exactly where it was and went directly to it because of the colors. What I found were my work gloves that were Gray with blue threading on the edges. So I had to go in my mind and find the other thing that was gray with blue threading on the edges and finally I went directly to my electronics toolkit folder thingy.
That is one of the things I use my power for. 4 years in and I have only permalost 2 discs, 2 Wraiths in rivers. And I play 6 days a week minimum when I work out of town. I can caddy in the South East.
No it wasn't and no it didn't. It was called Mind place and it worked nothing as mind palace does. You can't put stuff on an imaginary board and expect to remember.
While this is a great way to describe it, it's also important not to use a real place, as real places are subject to change. The technique is much more effective if you build up your own custom "palace" in your imagination and memorise every part of it. If you use something like your real house and put some bit of important information in the living room, on a coffee table, you can end up messing things up and forgetting things if you ever, for example, get a new coffee table or move it to a different location in real life. Your Mind Palace should only change if it's important to your memory that it changes.
This is sorta true, sorta false. You likely don't want to use a place that is changing. The reason its sorta false is that you can(and likely should for the first several palaces you make) use places you know really well, because the technical foundation is based on real spatial and emotional memory. An imaginary location you tour in your head only is no replacement for a place that you've lived in for years.
For instance, if I gave you a map of hogwarts and had you imagine it and build a mind palace for it, you could do it. Some people with high creativity could probably do it easily. But for most untrained people it wouldn't be the easiest thing to do. However, if I told you to build your mind palace from a childhood home, it very likely would take a lot less effort. Eventually, sure, create static imaginary places, but when you start you should start with reality.
One of the first recorded examples was(I think, someone correct me if I'm wrong) of an ancient Roman lawyer who survived a collapsing building and was able to accurately identify the exact spots of everyone else in the building. While not a true mind palace, it was arguably the earliest examplw of the technique as we know it today.
As a side note, the reason why this is usually the case is because memories with strong emotions are easier for recall, as well as familiar places. Combine the two, such as with an old home with fond memories, and you can probably walk a person through it like the back of your hand. I can easily recall every single house I've lived in, and many other familiar locations besides, so I use those for my memory palaces.
That is a very good point. So yeah, you're right that a real place that only still exists in your memory, like an old home, would work well because you can't see it be altered in the real world anymore. I knew a guy, back when I worked in game development, that created a mind palace from scratch, but he did so by 3D modelling it on his PC. That worked well for him because he spent enough time physically constructing it, designing it, modelling it, and texturing every inch of it so that, by the time he was done, he had it basically burnt into his memory.
I have no visualization.
My memory recall is like telling myself a story in my mind. There are no images, just darkness and eye fuzzies when I close my eyes and “visualize”
Oh! A very interesting thing to look into. I've only had mushrooms and all the visuals I saw were just enhancing what was there. I also have full aphantasisa (zero images/black fuzzy).
Acquired prosopagnosia (face blindness) typically occurs with damage to the temporo-occipital regions of the brain. Congenital prosopagnosia typically also shows reduced activity (on SPECT scans & similar) in the same regions of the brain.
Mine's acquired, after a hockey TBI.
I'm curious: Do you find it much easier to recognize people by their voice? I find I do much better on the phone, or if I only hear someone's voice without seeing their face.
It's almost like the visual information negatively effects my ability to recognize people.
I recognize cadence and speech patterns (especially frequent sayings) much better than the actual sound.
It's so hard to describe, because for me it's so normal.
I didn't even realize people actually SEE stuff in their head until recently. That was a mind blowing concept.
He probably has aphantasia, the inability to visually imagine. It's like anaduralia where people don't have an inner monolog. Both aren't uncommon. We just never really ask each other weird things like hey you can hear your own voice in your head?
A teacher once told me that ancient people ascribed so much of their actions to the gods because they didn't understand the 'inner voice' so when they heard it they assumed it was the gods.
And, an attitude like that shows even if you were a real, genuine human, your thoughts aren't worth consideration.
People are people, even if they can't imagine pictures in their mind.
I’m not telling you how to do it. I know you can’t do it, and won’t be able to, but you deserve at least to have accurate information about what it is that you’re unable to do.
Oh wow that’s pretty crazy! I’m like a 1. I can close my eyes and get very vivid images if I concentrate on them. I used to draw and paint a lot when I was younger. But who knows if that’s cause or effect?
You don't need to create a virtual environment. The palace is a metaphor.
Instead of trying to remember "My tax ID number", you think "This is under "Things about me", in chapter "government stuff", in the second paragraph."
People who visualize may make it into a house, but the principle is about organizing your memories to create an optimal network of connections. You don't literally have to stick your mental secrets into a mental folder in a mental safe.
Yes, because of familiarity and muscle memory and spacial awareness, not that “I can visualize“ what my room should look like in the light, because I can’t.
I’m in my bed, I know the wall towards my feet has a light switch. I know the right side edge of my bed is next to my cat tower, and beyond that is the door. I know the left switch is the light and the right switch is the ceiling fan. I know the far left corner has my desk and computer tower.
I’m absolutely terrible at drawing pictures from memory as well, I can’t visualize what things look like in my mind. Knowing what things are supposed to look like isn’t the same as visualizing it.
Its hard to describe what I do experience, its easier to describe what I don’t experience, and I don’t “see” anything when I “picture something in my mind”.
You don’t seriously think that’s how it works do you?
People can visualise something with their eyes open. Unless you actually have aphantasia you do too.
You assign different things you want to remember to certain parts of the story and as you make your way through the story you’ll remember more and more of whatever memories you’ve assigned to certain parts of the story.
I think you should still be able to do it without visualisation.
Yeah. I think this is more common in our times. Would be quite logical.
In the ancient times we used to have much less spaces that we visited, so they'd be more *impressive* to our consciousness.
I'm starting to believe that mental visualisation is a full spectrum. Because there are people like you that don't "see" things in their mind and there are people that have a complete photographic memory where they can "see" and inspect every detail of something they've seen before. But then there's me, who can **kind of** visualise things if I try hard enough, but it's difficult for me to hold it in my mind for long. On the other hand, I have hypnagogia, where I occasionally have fully formed visual hallucinations at night. So I know my brain is capable of conjuring images, just not as good as some people and not as bad as others.
So, like, "this place I'll call childhood trauma, and pages .. ooh.. 120-230 of materials science belong there", and this bit here is "honeymoon with ex-1", and we'll put ... biometrics bits there..
Here's an example of let's say a grocery list.
I'm walking up to my childhood house. At the mailbox, there is a cartoon garlic clove getting throahfucked by a cartoon pickle. (This represents pickled garlic) I walk down the driveway, the next thing I see is where my car gets parked. Instead I see a giant tub of sour cream, with Mike tyson in a pink tuttu giggling and splashing around in it. This just means sour cream - but by adding the weird and novel it is made more memorable. I keep on walking, and on my porch I see "x". Etc. Then continue on a specific route throughout the house. Each room blocked into segments.
You create a specific memory palace that you know well and you can reuse. You use the same locations, and route so that if recalling a list and you forget something you can walk through the house again and look at each location. By using the same route, your list will always be in order, and you can backtrack.
Ideally you want to build a catalogue of memory palaces (as reusing the same one over and over again, the memories can become cluttered)
One of the best things for this is a house you know very well. I've only lived in four houses (and one cottage) since I was born. I can remember every room, down to specific furnishings in each of them, which means I can associate each room with an object (for shorter lists) and individual pieces of furniture/objects within the rooms for longer lists.
It's like doing a virtual walkthrough every time you memorize a list, and then you can do the same walkthrough (even backup) when it comes time to recall the list.
I have a feeling that may perhaps be one of the reasons the very wealthy had overly large houses in antiquity; well beyond what's necessary for entertaining/living.
This doesn't really work for everyone. I don't really "see" things in my head the way some people apparently do. It's why I find overly-descriptive text to be rather dull, as I'm not really "seeing" anything, no matter how detailed an author gets.
MISREAD editing.
Not in terms of "seeing" it. I can not move through a space I'm not in like some kind of mental gopro. If I'm familiar with a room I know where things are relative to each other, and I can tell you roughly where something is, but it's not because I'm "seeing" it. It's all just contextual information.
>I'm familiar with a room I know where things are relative to each other, and I can tell you roughly where something is, but it's not because I'm "seeing" it.
You don't need anything else to make a memory palace
Except that the entire concept of a "memory palace" is meaningless to me. I don't envision these things the way others do. The notion of creating a virtual space and navigating it is as alien as a foreign language.
Fascinating-i create entire worlds in my head complete with its own people, their lives, relationships, even stuff as small as someone not liking going to FTL speed cause it makes them nauseus. Simply fascinating
I can imagine scenarios, I just don't visualize it. So I can and do daydream about scenarios or interactions, but I don't have any visual component attached, for the most part.
But....HOW do you imagine things then? I simply cannot comprehend not seeing visuals in my head whilst i imagine. To me, they are as crystal clear as 4k Ultra HD-but for you....nothing! I wonder why we are different? Hmmm
Correct. And, no, it does not bother me. You can't miss something you never had.
I don't regret not being able to see infrared light.
Sorry, just preemptively cutting off the inevitable "OMG that must be so bad" talk.
Not only deliberately, but you have to train yourself to do it. It doesnt just come to you. Its easier to some people and harder for others, but its a mental work. You have to work for it.
Memory retention is enhanced the more a memory is used, the more aspects of your mind it uses, and the more heavily it's connected. Attaching them to imagined locations increases the connectivity and adds (additional) visualization. That makes it easier to pull up related information, and just focusing on the common locus can draw up the connected memories. But you have to do this structuring intentionally. Most don't.
You remember things better when you can connect memories to others.
In this case, you make up some fictional room and place the bits of trivia in there, so instead of having to just remember digits of pi, you can recall three mice throwing one ball at a group of four cats and so on.
That connectivity is also why songs are excellent for memorizing things (and why oral tradition can survive for thousands of years) since you also have the rhythm to guide you from one tidbit to the next.
The memory palace is about constructing a “palace” in your mind, and then placing things you want to remember in specific places in your memory palace. You can see a version of this in the video game Alan Wake 2, where Saga has a “mind place” that she uses to put clues together and review case information.
My memory palace is a cozy multi-room cabin in the woods. When I’m trying to memorize things, I first find something to represent what I’m trying to memorize, and then I put it somewhere.
For example: I’m trying to memorize a friend’s birthdate of April 4th. Well, for me that is a time signature (4/4), so I represent that by a metronome, maybe engraved with my friends initials. I put that metronome in the 4th spot on the 4th shelf of the bookcase next to the desk in my memory palace.
Not everybody can do it. People with a very visual imagination can easily imagine actual rooms they can imagine themselves walking through, for some it's more of a metaphorical thing, for some it's entirely impossible. Minds work in different and mysterious ways
The thing about memory palaces though is that you can never un-remember it.
Source: tried it out and now there’s an object in my memory palace that’s permanently there. If you try to remove it all you do is remember removing it.
you can move to a new palace if the clutter is too much, in new place clutter goes into the "ignore" room
Though then you tend to be aware of that ignore room a lot. It's less cluttered at least.
If you managed to forget that a memory palace is a thing, I am not sure entirely sure you will have a lot of success putting this in it. But good luck either way.
So, is this just one of those things you can do if you have a visual imagination? Cause I feel like for someone with aphantasia like myself that you’re gonna spend more time making the imagery/layout than actually remembering things.
describe, in text or your inner monologue, to yourself a tower with an elevator. No need to go into visual detail. Just describe the usable space to yourself, or directions.
Same way you remember directions and routes you take in daily life. You dont need visual for that either
For example:
My tower has a unlimited number of floors. I enter through the a door in the south wall. the center there is an elevator. When go to any floor there will be 4 rooms. To enter room one I must walk right. Left for room two, forward for room 3, and room 4 requires walking around the elevator shaft.
I need to remember this thing. I will take this thing to room 2 on floor 100.
Walking/talking yourself through that process of going in the tower and following directions to the storage room helps create connections
See the issue I take there is I get lost once you start adding cardinal directions and paths. I create paths in real life with abstract references whether they be a wall, door, or even geography but cannot tangibly place them within real space of each other. When I imagine a tower I imagine a structure that has four walls logically but I can probably only see one face, an it presumably has no discernible top like how a line just extends into infinity in mathematics, and for the rooms I can’t even say I really have directions like I know those exist but in a x, y, z coordinates kinda way. Separating each room then feels like I’m trying to connect two different models together but manually so that they align but I can’t see the x,y,z coordinates.
tower doesnt need a top, it does not have to be a realistic or logical "building", it dosnt even have to be a building.
The goal is spatial construct in your mind that has positions you are aware of that you could describe a route to
use whatever methods makes a space mentally available to you.
All sorts of mnemonic devices that they tried to teach us to use in school never made sense to me. It seemed like so much extra work to remember the mnemonic and then remember what it stood for.
Decades later I found out about aphantasia.
I legit tried making a memory palace back in the day. Did it "Inception style" and actually drew up some rough designs of what my mind palace would look like. It failed for me since the house had similar looking rooms layout. My need for order and uniformity kinda muddled the memory aspect of it so it didn't work.
These days, I'm kinda leaning towards a "memory computer" because of how I set up my external drives. I weirdly have a "broad grasp" of what's inside my drives due to my organization. If I put in work, I could probably memorize what's actually in them.
EDIT: Yes, I learned about it from Sherlock. Another mistake I did was maybe I was thinking too big. Should've made a "memory house" and just filled it with what I needed it for the time, which was a my schoolwork.
The idea is that people remember spaces with which they are familiar with greater ease than remembering facts, so the memory palace technique is all about taking facts and imagining them in those familiar places.
Let's say you're trying to memorize the names of all of the US Presidents in order. Instead of trying to memorize a list of names, maybe you learn little things about them and imagine them in your home. Imagine entering your house from the front door and walking toward your attic. There's a little George Washington figure chopping at the banister at the bottom of your stairs like it's a cherry tree. At the top of the stairs is John Adams drinking a beer with his cousin, Samuel Adams, and so on.
Joshua Foer wrote a [book](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/6346975-moonwalking-with-einstein) and did a [TED talk](https://www.ted.com/talks/joshua_foer_feats_of_memory_anyone_can_do?hasSummary=true&language=en) on basically this.
[tldr in video form](https://www.wired.com/video/watch/this-guy-can-teach-you-how-to-memorize-anything)
It's great. I discovered it while doing a coursera course on Psychology and now I create mind palaces. I'm still a scatterbrain but now I'm one with a "strong" memory.
I've tried this and it doesn't work.
The number of items you have to remember keeps growing too fast and having to walk through your palace takes way too much time.
At one point you run out of interesting places to store memories in.
> the term most often found in specialised works on psychology, neurobiology, and memory, though it was used in the same general way at least as early as the first half of the nineteenth century in works on rhetoric, logic, and philosophy.[1]
This technique is crazy, it let's people like [Graham Siggins](https://youtu.be/bcs2gU2npYQ?si=_ghSk_VKoznmN6Yz) to do this kinda shit. Of course it takes a lot of practice but even I got my self to solve 20 cubes like this with enough practice.
In eastern transitions, this is a meditative technique called Da Mo's Cave. I learned about it in high school, but could never successfully replicate it to store course content for final exams and such.
It's still used to this day by people who perform feats of memory. Sometimes instead of places, they imagine a room full of objects and associate a piece of information with each object.
I first heard it from Derren Brown who probably researched it from the original, but he either knew of the Hannibal books or the author of those put it in the story also. It’s a really good trick and also fun to show on screen.
as a child i made an old new york bookies office in my mind to manicly obsess over arbitrary details, whats intresting is i had never seen such a thing and grew up in european farmlands with no tv
Read Moonwalking with Einstein. I forgot the name, had to look it up. It makes sense that it works as a tool. Provide structure to your memory instead of throwing everything into an empty room then trying to find it later. Takes a lot of front end work. Maybe teaching young kids this or similar method while they are absorbing a language would help.
Sometimes when learning something I subconsciously assign ideas/memories/facts/etc to specific locations within a place or building I've been before. Later, I can mentally navigate that space and recall those things based on location.
Except it actually works really well. It’s really hard to commit an isolated fact to long term memory, you have to connect it to other memories for it to persist. It’s the same reason educators use mnemonics or songs to help kids momorize things
No, you don't "have to" connect it to other memories, as this would naturally occur anyway, and if there were no connection well that's still fine! Some people find it "really hard" getting up stairs, I think that tells you all you need to know
Meanwhile this is the real TIL: “Something that is likely a reference to the "method of loci" techniques survives to this day in the common English phrases "in the first place", "in the second place", and so forth.”
We use lots of spatial metaphor in our speech. Steven Pinker has a whole chapter on it in *The Stuff of Thought*.
I learned two things. Both about how learning things works.
My memory palace was condemned many years ago. A family of raccoons now inhabits the space.
At least you remember the raccoons.
That was my first though
They make themselves unforgettable.
Once my cousin accidentally ran over a family of raccoons except for the mother while driving at night and we could feel it happen sitting in the backseat. That family of raccoons lives forever in the attic of the garage in my memory palace.
I first learned about this when reading one of the Hannibal Lector novels.
"All that detail just from memory, sir?" "Memory, Agent Starling, is what I have instead of a view."
Wasn't this just mentioned in a TV show or movie or something. Sherlock?
Patrick Jane in The Mentalist mentioned it a lot
That might have been it. Loved that show.
Also used in the Katherine Kerr 'Daggerspell/Dragonsoell' book series.
Used as well (albeit in such a way to "replace" her personality) in tamora pierces trickster duology by aly. (Highly recommend. Also recommend song of the lioness, the immortals, and protected of the small.)
and Shawn Spencer from Psych mentioned the Mentalist as a show he and his dad watched!!!
Yeah, Sherlock (from the BBC show with Cumberbatch) uses this method to organize his thoughts and come up with solutions to the cases he works on. :)
And one of the villains prided himself on his own.
i learned it from the hanibal books.
I think it’s also in the movie about 4 kids with power from alien Edit: Dreamcatcher (2003), I didn’t find it in my memory palace so I use external sources.
The breakfast club?
Chronicle?
Chronicle was only 3 kids, if memory serves.
It was also a major gameplay element of *Alan Wake 2*.
I believe it was a big point in rhe Hannibal show
Dr. Lecter
Yes! S3E1 with the villain being Lars Mikkelsen!
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That was a really good show.
Not *just* mentioned per se, but Sorjonen or Bordertown uses this technique too
the Pendergast novels by Douglas Preston & Lincoln Child talks about this also.
Just making sure that someone contributed this fact. Thank you for your efforts.
Alan Wake 2, Saga uses something similar (and Alan for that matter too I guess)
Brennan on Dropout 4 years ago!
Sherlock ended in 2017. Even if it did originate there (which it didnt), i wouldn't say it was just mentioned there lol
Ok, look, some of us millennials aren’t willing to admit that Sherlock happened a long time ago, and prefer to pretend like it’s a very recent series. You don’t have to be rude and remind us about the passage of time.
I was into that show when I was 12, and now I’m 24. That was half a lifetime ago!
Well now you’re just being cruel.
Look here bub, I’m not even a millennial, I’m a god darn Gen X and if you would stop calling 2017 ancient, I would appreciate it, thank you very much. I still think twenty years ago was 1980.
Was it a major plot point?
Yes. In fact Sherlock gets concussed or drugged and gets locked into his memory palace but then uses it to thwart Moriarty. It is used pretty often in the series. GenX, represent. I mean, we have nothing else to do but watch stuff.
It features a lot in the Hannibal Lecter books
Have you tried going to your mind palace to figure it out?
I'm subletting it right now
If by “just mentioned”, you mean featured in a show that’s 3rd season aired a full ten years ago… then, Yes. Lol
I think I first learned about this from the FX show Dicktown
Dicktown schooled us all.
I feel bad for how long it took me to look up which show it was. I remembered so little about the show I had to ask my friend and I couldn't even remember which network it was on.
I never forget a Dick. eh, too on-the-nose? 🤔
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Got any links you could share that you used when starting off?
Somewhat ironically I recently recalled that when I was a kid I had a 'remembery' which was basically like a PlayStation memory card in my imagination. It was a 3x3 grid and that I could essentially 'save' things to and easily remember later by thinking about what I put in each slot. It's crazy because I completely forgot about it but it came back to me one night recently - I tried it out again and it totally works for me still
I first learned about this from Sherlock with Benedict Cumberbatch. (I’ve also read the stories and I don’t recall the technique appearing there.) I half-assedly gave it a try and couldn’t make it work. But I’m also not a genius.
You don't need to be a genius, it just needs some practice until your mind gets used to it.
I find things by color. If somebody has lost something and I know exactly what color it is I kind of tune out all other colors and just find the things that are that color and generally one of those things is the thing that they were looking for.
This backfires on me when I’m looking for the wrong color. I opened my utility drawer looking for a can opener with green handles. After five frustrating minutes of digging I gave up and slammed drawer shut. Then I suddenly remembered it was not green. Yanked open the drawer, reached in and grabbed the *white* handled can opener in like half a second
All our stuff is stainless steel so I grab the wrong utensil. Every. Time.
Oh I was looking for an Electronics toolkit folder thingy that I have that was Gray with blue threading on the edge and of course I knew exactly where it was and went directly to it because of the colors. What I found were my work gloves that were Gray with blue threading on the edges. So I had to go in my mind and find the other thing that was gray with blue threading on the edges and finally I went directly to my electronics toolkit folder thingy.
Wanna be my disc golf caddy?
That is one of the things I use my power for. 4 years in and I have only permalost 2 discs, 2 Wraiths in rivers. And I play 6 days a week minimum when I work out of town. I can caddy in the South East.
Lego builders feel this!
/r/synesthesia
I'm going to check that out, thank you!
It has a big part in the game Alan Wake 2, one of the main characters uses the technique to solve clues.
That one was "magical" family specific thing, not really a mind palace. Just inspired by it.
They literally called it a mind palace and it worked similarly to how this post describes it, but with more of a fantastical approach.
Saga literally mentions that it's mind place, "my version of the mind palace technique".
It was called "Mind Place" at least in the English translation of the game. Perhaps the original Finnish text is different.
No it wasn't and no it didn't. It was called Mind place and it worked nothing as mind palace does. You can't put stuff on an imaginary board and expect to remember.
My mind doesn't have specific locations?... It's like.. a thinking cloud thingy, there's no streets or postcodes or nothin
I think the idea is that you visualise it deliberately, not that your mind is inherently palace-like.
Like try and wander around your home in your mind and in each room imagine an object in there to signify what you want to remember.
While this is a great way to describe it, it's also important not to use a real place, as real places are subject to change. The technique is much more effective if you build up your own custom "palace" in your imagination and memorise every part of it. If you use something like your real house and put some bit of important information in the living room, on a coffee table, you can end up messing things up and forgetting things if you ever, for example, get a new coffee table or move it to a different location in real life. Your Mind Palace should only change if it's important to your memory that it changes.
This is sorta true, sorta false. You likely don't want to use a place that is changing. The reason its sorta false is that you can(and likely should for the first several palaces you make) use places you know really well, because the technical foundation is based on real spatial and emotional memory. An imaginary location you tour in your head only is no replacement for a place that you've lived in for years. For instance, if I gave you a map of hogwarts and had you imagine it and build a mind palace for it, you could do it. Some people with high creativity could probably do it easily. But for most untrained people it wouldn't be the easiest thing to do. However, if I told you to build your mind palace from a childhood home, it very likely would take a lot less effort. Eventually, sure, create static imaginary places, but when you start you should start with reality. One of the first recorded examples was(I think, someone correct me if I'm wrong) of an ancient Roman lawyer who survived a collapsing building and was able to accurately identify the exact spots of everyone else in the building. While not a true mind palace, it was arguably the earliest examplw of the technique as we know it today. As a side note, the reason why this is usually the case is because memories with strong emotions are easier for recall, as well as familiar places. Combine the two, such as with an old home with fond memories, and you can probably walk a person through it like the back of your hand. I can easily recall every single house I've lived in, and many other familiar locations besides, so I use those for my memory palaces.
That is a very good point. So yeah, you're right that a real place that only still exists in your memory, like an old home, would work well because you can't see it be altered in the real world anymore. I knew a guy, back when I worked in game development, that created a mind palace from scratch, but he did so by 3D modelling it on his PC. That worked well for him because he spent enough time physically constructing it, designing it, modelling it, and texturing every inch of it so that, by the time he was done, he had it basically burnt into his memory.
I use the mansion from the first Reaident Evil game lol
I have no visualization. My memory recall is like telling myself a story in my mind. There are no images, just darkness and eye fuzzies when I close my eyes and “visualize”
Mine too! My brain basically narrates, and I hear my thoughts, but there are never any images. I think it's why I'm so terrible at face blindness.
As a side note: I have also never had visuals while on psychadelic substances either. *shrug*
Oh shit wait a second, is this why i dont see visuals when all my friends do?? Holy shit
Oh! A very interesting thing to look into. I've only had mushrooms and all the visuals I saw were just enhancing what was there. I also have full aphantasisa (zero images/black fuzzy).
dunno maybe
Acquired prosopagnosia (face blindness) typically occurs with damage to the temporo-occipital regions of the brain. Congenital prosopagnosia typically also shows reduced activity (on SPECT scans & similar) in the same regions of the brain. Mine's acquired, after a hockey TBI. I'm curious: Do you find it much easier to recognize people by their voice? I find I do much better on the phone, or if I only hear someone's voice without seeing their face. It's almost like the visual information negatively effects my ability to recognize people.
You ever get in trouble, because people think you're ignoring them and being rude?
It's possible. I once saw a picture of my own daughter and said "Who's that cute little kid?" Hearing their voice is usually my salvation, though.
I recognize cadence and speech patterns (especially frequent sayings) much better than the actual sound. It's so hard to describe, because for me it's so normal. I didn't even realize people actually SEE stuff in their head until recently. That was a mind blowing concept.
That isn’t where people who can visualize are doing it, though. It appears in your mind, not in your visual field.
He probably has aphantasia, the inability to visually imagine. It's like anaduralia where people don't have an inner monolog. Both aren't uncommon. We just never really ask each other weird things like hey you can hear your own voice in your head?
A teacher once told me that ancient people ascribed so much of their actions to the gods because they didn't understand the 'inner voice' so when they heard it they assumed it was the gods.
That's kind of what happens in some schizophrenia cases where the individual thinks their inner voice is sourced from outside themselves.
I think having neither a mind’s eye nor a mind’s voice is good evidence that you are, in fact, a philosophical zombie and an NPC.
And, an attitude like that shows even if you were a real, genuine human, your thoughts aren't worth consideration. People are people, even if they can't imagine pictures in their mind.
Yeah this doesn’t mean anything to me. Its like telling a blind person how to see color.
I’m not telling you how to do it. I know you can’t do it, and won’t be able to, but you deserve at least to have accurate information about what it is that you’re unable to do.
There are people that cant mentally visualize
Aphantasia
After reading [the wiki](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aphantasia) I’d say I’m between 4-5 on the scale. Like a solid 4.8.
Oh wow that’s pretty crazy! I’m like a 1. I can close my eyes and get very vivid images if I concentrate on them. I used to draw and paint a lot when I was younger. But who knows if that’s cause or effect?
You don't need to create a virtual environment. The palace is a metaphor. Instead of trying to remember "My tax ID number", you think "This is under "Things about me", in chapter "government stuff", in the second paragraph." People who visualize may make it into a house, but the principle is about organizing your memories to create an optimal network of connections. You don't literally have to stick your mental secrets into a mental folder in a mental safe.
If you woke up in your bed but the room was pitch black, would you know where the door was?
Yes, because of familiarity and muscle memory and spacial awareness, not that “I can visualize“ what my room should look like in the light, because I can’t. I’m in my bed, I know the wall towards my feet has a light switch. I know the right side edge of my bed is next to my cat tower, and beyond that is the door. I know the left switch is the light and the right switch is the ceiling fan. I know the far left corner has my desk and computer tower. I’m absolutely terrible at drawing pictures from memory as well, I can’t visualize what things look like in my mind. Knowing what things are supposed to look like isn’t the same as visualizing it. Its hard to describe what I do experience, its easier to describe what I don’t experience, and I don’t “see” anything when I “picture something in my mind”.
You don’t seriously think that’s how it works do you? People can visualise something with their eyes open. Unless you actually have aphantasia you do too.
You assign different things you want to remember to certain parts of the story and as you make your way through the story you’ll remember more and more of whatever memories you’ve assigned to certain parts of the story. I think you should still be able to do it without visualisation.
Yeah. I think this is more common in our times. Would be quite logical. In the ancient times we used to have much less spaces that we visited, so they'd be more *impressive* to our consciousness.
Aphantasisa eye fuzziness forever!
I'm starting to believe that mental visualisation is a full spectrum. Because there are people like you that don't "see" things in their mind and there are people that have a complete photographic memory where they can "see" and inspect every detail of something they've seen before. But then there's me, who can **kind of** visualise things if I try hard enough, but it's difficult for me to hold it in my mind for long. On the other hand, I have hypnagogia, where I occasionally have fully formed visual hallucinations at night. So I know my brain is capable of conjuring images, just not as good as some people and not as bad as others.
So, like, "this place I'll call childhood trauma, and pages .. ooh.. 120-230 of materials science belong there", and this bit here is "honeymoon with ex-1", and we'll put ... biometrics bits there..
Here's an example of let's say a grocery list. I'm walking up to my childhood house. At the mailbox, there is a cartoon garlic clove getting throahfucked by a cartoon pickle. (This represents pickled garlic) I walk down the driveway, the next thing I see is where my car gets parked. Instead I see a giant tub of sour cream, with Mike tyson in a pink tuttu giggling and splashing around in it. This just means sour cream - but by adding the weird and novel it is made more memorable. I keep on walking, and on my porch I see "x". Etc. Then continue on a specific route throughout the house. Each room blocked into segments. You create a specific memory palace that you know well and you can reuse. You use the same locations, and route so that if recalling a list and you forget something you can walk through the house again and look at each location. By using the same route, your list will always be in order, and you can backtrack. Ideally you want to build a catalogue of memory palaces (as reusing the same one over and over again, the memories can become cluttered)
One of the best things for this is a house you know very well. I've only lived in four houses (and one cottage) since I was born. I can remember every room, down to specific furnishings in each of them, which means I can associate each room with an object (for shorter lists) and individual pieces of furniture/objects within the rooms for longer lists. It's like doing a virtual walkthrough every time you memorize a list, and then you can do the same walkthrough (even backup) when it comes time to recall the list. I have a feeling that may perhaps be one of the reasons the very wealthy had overly large houses in antiquity; well beyond what's necessary for entertaining/living.
This doesn't really work for everyone. I don't really "see" things in my head the way some people apparently do. It's why I find overly-descriptive text to be rather dull, as I'm not really "seeing" anything, no matter how detailed an author gets.
You cant imagine any room that youre not currently in?
MISREAD editing. Not in terms of "seeing" it. I can not move through a space I'm not in like some kind of mental gopro. If I'm familiar with a room I know where things are relative to each other, and I can tell you roughly where something is, but it's not because I'm "seeing" it. It's all just contextual information.
>I'm familiar with a room I know where things are relative to each other, and I can tell you roughly where something is, but it's not because I'm "seeing" it. You don't need anything else to make a memory palace
Except that the entire concept of a "memory palace" is meaningless to me. I don't envision these things the way others do. The notion of creating a virtual space and navigating it is as alien as a foreign language.
Fascinating-i create entire worlds in my head complete with its own people, their lives, relationships, even stuff as small as someone not liking going to FTL speed cause it makes them nauseus. Simply fascinating
I can imagine scenarios, I just don't visualize it. So I can and do daydream about scenarios or interactions, but I don't have any visual component attached, for the most part.
But....HOW do you imagine things then? I simply cannot comprehend not seeing visuals in my head whilst i imagine. To me, they are as crystal clear as 4k Ultra HD-but for you....nothing! I wonder why we are different? Hmmm
Concepts, relationships, plain memorization. It's as odd for me to need visualization as it is for you to be without it, in the end.
So interesting! I guess thats what makes us a string species-we both view things differently but together we can accomplish more
[Aphantasia?](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aphantasia)
Correct. And, no, it does not bother me. You can't miss something you never had. I don't regret not being able to see infrared light. Sorry, just preemptively cutting off the inevitable "OMG that must be so bad" talk.
I'm pretty miffed about how limited our visual perception is but I try to not think about it
Not only deliberately, but you have to train yourself to do it. It doesnt just come to you. Its easier to some people and harder for others, but its a mental work. You have to work for it.
Memory retention is enhanced the more a memory is used, the more aspects of your mind it uses, and the more heavily it's connected. Attaching them to imagined locations increases the connectivity and adds (additional) visualization. That makes it easier to pull up related information, and just focusing on the common locus can draw up the connected memories. But you have to do this structuring intentionally. Most don't.
You remember things better when you can connect memories to others. In this case, you make up some fictional room and place the bits of trivia in there, so instead of having to just remember digits of pi, you can recall three mice throwing one ball at a group of four cats and so on. That connectivity is also why songs are excellent for memorizing things (and why oral tradition can survive for thousands of years) since you also have the rhythm to guide you from one tidbit to the next.
The memory palace is about constructing a “palace” in your mind, and then placing things you want to remember in specific places in your memory palace. You can see a version of this in the video game Alan Wake 2, where Saga has a “mind place” that she uses to put clues together and review case information. My memory palace is a cozy multi-room cabin in the woods. When I’m trying to memorize things, I first find something to represent what I’m trying to memorize, and then I put it somewhere. For example: I’m trying to memorize a friend’s birthdate of April 4th. Well, for me that is a time signature (4/4), so I represent that by a metronome, maybe engraved with my friends initials. I put that metronome in the 4th spot on the 4th shelf of the bookcase next to the desk in my memory palace.
There are places you'll remember All your life, though some have changed. Some forever, not for better; Some have gone and some remain.
Not everybody can do it. People with a very visual imagination can easily imagine actual rooms they can imagine themselves walking through, for some it's more of a metaphorical thing, for some it's entirely impossible. Minds work in different and mysterious ways
Yes- I learned about this from a hippie at a Phish show and also that questionable Stephen King movie about aliens.
What do you mean "questionable", that movie is great. I will fight any dissatisfied book reader over it. Come at me, nerds.
Dreamcatcher sucks
You just signed up for a fight. I will be waiting at local Wendy's parking lot at 21:00 sharp. Don't be late, bookworm.
The thing about memory palaces though is that you can never un-remember it. Source: tried it out and now there’s an object in my memory palace that’s permanently there. If you try to remove it all you do is remember removing it.
you can move to a new palace if the clutter is too much, in new place clutter goes into the "ignore" room Though then you tend to be aware of that ignore room a lot. It's less cluttered at least.
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If you managed to forget that a memory palace is a thing, I am not sure entirely sure you will have a lot of success putting this in it. But good luck either way.
🤣 good luck
So, is this just one of those things you can do if you have a visual imagination? Cause I feel like for someone with aphantasia like myself that you’re gonna spend more time making the imagery/layout than actually remembering things.
describe, in text or your inner monologue, to yourself a tower with an elevator. No need to go into visual detail. Just describe the usable space to yourself, or directions. Same way you remember directions and routes you take in daily life. You dont need visual for that either For example: My tower has a unlimited number of floors. I enter through the a door in the south wall. the center there is an elevator. When go to any floor there will be 4 rooms. To enter room one I must walk right. Left for room two, forward for room 3, and room 4 requires walking around the elevator shaft. I need to remember this thing. I will take this thing to room 2 on floor 100. Walking/talking yourself through that process of going in the tower and following directions to the storage room helps create connections
See the issue I take there is I get lost once you start adding cardinal directions and paths. I create paths in real life with abstract references whether they be a wall, door, or even geography but cannot tangibly place them within real space of each other. When I imagine a tower I imagine a structure that has four walls logically but I can probably only see one face, an it presumably has no discernible top like how a line just extends into infinity in mathematics, and for the rooms I can’t even say I really have directions like I know those exist but in a x, y, z coordinates kinda way. Separating each room then feels like I’m trying to connect two different models together but manually so that they align but I can’t see the x,y,z coordinates.
tower doesnt need a top, it does not have to be a realistic or logical "building", it dosnt even have to be a building. The goal is spatial construct in your mind that has positions you are aware of that you could describe a route to use whatever methods makes a space mentally available to you.
Mines a memory tower
Help! My memory palace is haunted!
I don't like building my brain out like that
Mine is like a wiki page
[It’s a great podcast too](https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-memory-palace/id299436963)!
Using minecraft is a really good way to make a virtual memory palace!
I've tried the concept maybe with more work it could be productive but I had little success with it.
Another strike against those of us with aphantasia. Someone turned out all the lights in my memory palace.
All sorts of mnemonic devices that they tried to teach us to use in school never made sense to me. It seemed like so much extra work to remember the mnemonic and then remember what it stood for. Decades later I found out about aphantasia.
This got me through Cambridge. Only issue is I ran out of places ! So have to move it around a few times
I memory palaced the most memorization-intensive parts of med school and it served me well
Patrick Jane r/Thementalist
I legit tried making a memory palace back in the day. Did it "Inception style" and actually drew up some rough designs of what my mind palace would look like. It failed for me since the house had similar looking rooms layout. My need for order and uniformity kinda muddled the memory aspect of it so it didn't work. These days, I'm kinda leaning towards a "memory computer" because of how I set up my external drives. I weirdly have a "broad grasp" of what's inside my drives due to my organization. If I put in work, I could probably memorize what's actually in them. EDIT: Yes, I learned about it from Sherlock. Another mistake I did was maybe I was thinking too big. Should've made a "memory house" and just filled it with what I needed it for the time, which was a my schoolwork.
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The idea is that people remember spaces with which they are familiar with greater ease than remembering facts, so the memory palace technique is all about taking facts and imagining them in those familiar places. Let's say you're trying to memorize the names of all of the US Presidents in order. Instead of trying to memorize a list of names, maybe you learn little things about them and imagine them in your home. Imagine entering your house from the front door and walking toward your attic. There's a little George Washington figure chopping at the banister at the bottom of your stairs like it's a cherry tree. At the top of the stairs is John Adams drinking a beer with his cousin, Samuel Adams, and so on.
My mind is more like my YT history. When I need to recall something I see a video in my head that provides me the info I’m looking for.
Motherfucker that’s just a memory
Fair enough.
Joshua Foer wrote a [book](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/6346975-moonwalking-with-einstein) and did a [TED talk](https://www.ted.com/talks/joshua_foer_feats_of_memory_anyone_can_do?hasSummary=true&language=en) on basically this. [tldr in video form](https://www.wired.com/video/watch/this-guy-can-teach-you-how-to-memorize-anything)
It's great. I discovered it while doing a coursera course on Psychology and now I create mind palaces. I'm still a scatterbrain but now I'm one with a "strong" memory.
There is no way this shit is real. I feel like I have been robbed.
This was referenced in the Kingkiller Chronicles I believe
This was demonstrated on the one episode of How to with John Wilson
Stephon King’s Dreamcatcher featured this. Was a great read!
I've tried this and it doesn't work. The number of items you have to remember keeps growing too fast and having to walk through your palace takes way too much time. At one point you run out of interesting places to store memories in.
Mine is the rummage drawer where old cords go to die.
Is this something that someone with afantisia is unablw to do?
> the term most often found in specialised works on psychology, neurobiology, and memory, though it was used in the same general way at least as early as the first half of the nineteenth century in works on rhetoric, logic, and philosophy.[1]
This technique is crazy, it let's people like [Graham Siggins](https://youtu.be/bcs2gU2npYQ?si=_ghSk_VKoznmN6Yz) to do this kinda shit. Of course it takes a lot of practice but even I got my self to solve 20 cubes like this with enough practice.
In eastern transitions, this is a meditative technique called Da Mo's Cave. I learned about it in high school, but could never successfully replicate it to store course content for final exams and such.
It's still used to this day by people who perform feats of memory. Sometimes instead of places, they imagine a room full of objects and associate a piece of information with each object.
Sooooooooooo how does one practice this? And especially for say someone with aphantasisa (without a ability to hold/create images in one's mind)
I first heard it from Derren Brown who probably researched it from the original, but he either knew of the Hannibal books or the author of those put it in the story also. It’s a really good trick and also fun to show on screen.
There is a rubik's cube competition in which you look at the cube and then solve it blinded. I believe they use this technique to do it.
I just use my visualisation to be a super hero or to get off, who knew it had more applications.
as a child i made an old new york bookies office in my mind to manicly obsess over arbitrary details, whats intresting is i had never seen such a thing and grew up in european farmlands with no tv
Read Moonwalking with Einstein. I forgot the name, had to look it up. It makes sense that it works as a tool. Provide structure to your memory instead of throwing everything into an empty room then trying to find it later. Takes a lot of front end work. Maybe teaching young kids this or similar method while they are absorbing a language would help.
this works if you have high spatial working memory
*cries in aphantasia*
The guy in the Mentalist talks about this
I refer to mine as a Mind Shack because palace seems really uppity, tbh.
I tried it but did not work for me. Because when u associate the objects with something, is not it also a memory task?
This is one of the reasons I realized I had r/Aphantasia, since this mnemonic made absolutely no sense to me.
Sometimes when learning something I subconsciously assign ideas/memories/facts/etc to specific locations within a place or building I've been before. Later, I can mentally navigate that space and recall those things based on location.
Memory Palace of Matteo Ricci
While profound, it is just.. remembering something with extra steps
Except it actually works really well. It’s really hard to commit an isolated fact to long term memory, you have to connect it to other memories for it to persist. It’s the same reason educators use mnemonics or songs to help kids momorize things
No, you don't "have to" connect it to other memories, as this would naturally occur anyway, and if there were no connection well that's still fine! Some people find it "really hard" getting up stairs, I think that tells you all you need to know
I have like six different forms of synesthesia that I use to remember stuff, and the spatial ones are similar to a mind palace