Steps onto a soapbox and clears throat
“No! A thousand times, No! Mnemonics and Memory training are useful in real-world situations!”
And this is not an expression of my opinion, but an assertion that this is an undeniable fact. Will happily deconstruct contrary arguments, starting with the one above :).
We do not actually know your position regarding this claim, Ginel. You may be on my side. What we do know is that you do not believe that mnemonics and memory techniques are useful for learning within your narrow definition of that term. That’s a line I’m not interested in pursuing, but if I were to do so, I would start by saying that your definition of “learning” is arbitrary and needlessly exclusive. You are in good company though - Einstein does share your opinion that “One should not waste time memorizing that which can easily be looked up in a book,” which I think is what you’re getting at. That may be a paraphrase of his exact quote, but the meaning is the same, and the statement is doubly powerful today, since we have the interwebz.
Let’s suppose that “knowing” a subject means “actually being able to answer all of the questions that can come up regarding that subject.” You say that with mere mnemonic memorization, you will not be able to do that. This is true only in cases where you must answer questions that have not been answered before. Otherwise, the memorized answer will suffice. Actually, most questions you will be asked regarding any subject, such as, over 95% of the questions that have appeared on jeopardy over the last 20 years, can be answered by recalling memorized material. Also, even if you knew a subject, say “Chemistry,” so well that you could solve all of the problems and questions that might arise, you would necessarily be able to recall any of the information about the elements that must be known initially in order to answer those questions or solve those problems, which mnemonics could very well aid in memorizing, so the memorized information is at a minimum necessary and fundamental. Understanding could not occur without it.
But the thread is not about “knowing.” It is about the usefulness of mnemonics in real-world situations.
- The ability to memorize is helpful in some real-world situations.
- There is no threshold beyond which too great of an ability to memorize is a hindrance in real-world situations.
- There is a threshold below which too feeble an ability to memorize is a hindrance in real-world situations.
- Mnemonic techniques aid in speed of memorization and/or capacity.
- In real-world situations that do not require memorization, the ability to memorize is irrelevant.
Therefore,
- There are real-world advantages to being a trained mnemonist.
And that’s that. It is strange and interesting that there could ever be a need to formulate this argument. I chalk this up to the confusion between the capabilities afforded by skill in the art of mnemonics and the typical applications of that skill.
The memory championships are a bastardization of the art.
That quote of Foer’s: “Look at me. I spent a year of my life being trained on silly memory techniques, won an irrelevant memory championship and realize that these are nothing more than a set of parlor tricks,” is woefully misleading, and a tragedy for its wide circulation. He has equated “memory techniques” with “parlor tricks” with the same apparent inability to discriminate as a little boy who says, “you are only capable of parlor tricks” to a man who he knows can conjure matter from thin air, but who chooses to use this power only to produce quarters from behind peoples’ ears.
Everyone here is capable of making an outdoor loci path and adding, on average, one loci per day. Everyone here is capable of numbering those loci, and using each loci to memorize multiple pieces of information that they can visualize. Everyone here is capable of retaining that memorized information indefinitely, as long as they are able to review as much as they need to. That means that everyone here is capable of retaining the memory of every important or meaningful event that ever happens to them in their entire life, knowing the exact day each meaningful event occurred on, and understanding each event’s chronological relationship to every other event that they deem important in their entire life. Everyone here is capable of walking through their entire life, noting each important event’s chronological relationship with any other event of their choosing, and analyzing every event in between in order to come up with new realizations about themselves and their lives. No one else ever has to know.
Is anyone here willing to declare that this is a “parlor trick?”
p.s.,
Newton-Tesla,
Your name suggests that you have an appreciation for both Newton and due credit for advances in physics. Do you know about Galileo’s specific relationship to Newton’s Laws?
