A CS perspective on memory palaces

General Memory Chat
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I came up with a way of viewing memory palaces that I find quite interesting. I’ve got into CS recently and learning about data structures has my head in this space. An image can be viewed as an encoding of some information, together with a pointer to another image.

So in the journey method, we have a sequence of locations location_1,location_2,location_3,…,location_m. And these locations are ordered by the journey through them. Then if we want to memorize value_1,…,value_m, we first encode these values into an image. Then we make the location_1 image point to the value_1 image by associating the two, and make the location_2 image point to the value_2 image, etc…

Then we can use the order of locations that we have memorized before hand to trace through each of the location images, recalling the value image they point to, and thus recalling the sequence of values we wished to memorize.

The linking method can be viewed as the construction of a linked list data structure, by remembering the first image, you can find the second image by seeing what the first image points to, then find the third image by seeing what the second image points to, etcetera, reproducing the list of values.

I wonder if along these lines other data structures could be constructed, for instance, a tree by associating two images with each image, though this might be difficult.

It’s interesting to make a comparison between human memory and computer memory I think. Computers generally have access to a linear memory, for instance they effectively have a list of numbers, and they can instantly recall for instance the 1000th number in the list. Whereas humans are awful at memorizing even small sequences of numbers without the use of other structures, especially at instantly recalling say the 90th item in a list of 1000. What humans are good at in memory is associating one concept with another. Effectively we can remember dictionaries quite easily by associating images in our heads, for instance {‘key1’:‘value1’,‘key2’:‘value2’,…}. A computer finds this task difficult, and has to hash each key to form an integer value where it can then store the value in its linear memory. So humans and computers both have their strentghs and weaknesses I suppose.

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@happy3690, you have good intuition in trying to relate the memory systems to data structures because they are a good match. My background is in teaching computer languages and analysis. I see any narrative as a variable-length unordered doubly-linked list of visual memory records I call visual sentences. The common field tells you what kind of system it is. It’s variable length because fields are shared and added as necessary.

And I see the peg system as a fixed-length ordered key-value (map, dictionary) collection of visual sentences tied to an index of an ordered set of memory images. The fixed length is because I leave room for eight fields in a memory image, the subject, any enhancement to the other four, the action, the item, and the terrain (SEA-IT).

Check out my systems analysis topic if you’d like more information.

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Hi,

You might want to check out Raymond/Ramon Lull/LLull’s works.

He made a memory system based off nested circles.

Giordano Bruno based his memory system off of Lull’s

Yanis Dambergs has a website dedicated to Lull and his works…VERY recommended.

Stefos

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@Stefos, I looked at Lull’s system and would classify it as a paired peg system but without an index is hard to use for storing any images. The letters don’t mean anything to me.

It has six thematic sequences of nine items each. None relate to each other unless it was in the Latin. The information I got from Seth Long’s book, Excavating the Memory Palace, made me think of a slot machine of six reels when spun, the resulting random choices allowed him to use it as a philosophical analysis tool. This was what I understood to be what he called ars combinatoria.

Here’s the values:

quality durations, concordance, or magnitude questions ladder of creation virtues vices
B goodness difference whether? God justice avarice
C greatness concordance what? angel prudence gluttony
D eternity contrariety of what? heaven fortitude lust
E power beginning why? man temperance pride
F wisdom middle how much? imaginative faith accidie
G will end of what kind? sensitive hope envy
H virtue majority [minority?] when? vegetative charity ire
I truth equality where? elementative patience lying
K glory majority how? with what? instrumentative pity inconsistency

But I have yet to figure out any use for mnemonic systems or what the first column was used for. Do you have any insight?

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Hi,

Check out Yanis Dambergs site on Lull on the Internet.

There was also a book published which goes into various fields of use for the Ars Combinatoria.

Its out if print but PM me :wink:

Stefos

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Thanks, @Stefos, this topic has covered it fairly well also: