Baker/baker effect and reverse memory palace

General Memory Chat
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In a couple of the memory talk Joshua Foer has given, he talks about the Baker/baker effect. If you tell someone a story about man who is a baker, this will be more memorable than when you tell the same story about a man who’s name is Baker. The man who’s name is baker is much more abstract than his baker counterpart.

A simular effect arises when you ask someone who’s dog’s name is Snoopy to imagine “Snoopy” as opposed to asking that same person to imagine the word “dog”. This person’s (unconcious) brain may take a fraction of a second to decide what dog will be imagined and the tug a war between multiple possible dog images may cause the final image to be less than HD-quality.

Computers (or better put: the users of computers) suffer from a simular problem. If you search for information in a database it really makes a time difference how precise you define the to be searched information and how precise you define where the information needs to be searched.

The problem with translating numbers into images (object/animals/persons), I imagine, is very much related to the above described effects. Let’s say you try to translate the number 65 (6=b, 5=s) into the image of a “bus”. Well your (unconsious) brain will asks itself “what bus (London doubledecker, bus or US school bus or …)” and “where am I (the brain) supposed to look for such an image?”

If there is any truth to my number translation theory, than having all the images permanently stored in a memory palace might have great benefit. Well that’s precisely what I did yesterday; I transformed my 50 locations memory palace (my goal was to be good at memorising 100 numbers, hence 50 locations) into a 100 locations memory palace and I put my 100 2-digit images in the memory palace.

Some observations that I made:
-teleporting to an object in it’s location in the memory palace determined by a random 2-digit number list seems to be faster and easier in comparison to how fast and easy I was able to (only) translate the numbers a day before (when the images were not in a memory palace).
-some images are much more HD-quality, like the image of a dog: it used to be a blurry dog hybrid and now it’s a smiling golden retriever behind the front door of my house.

reverse memory palace

A natural progression of having all images in a memory palace is the reverse memory palace (a method that has been suggested on this forum a couple of years ago). The variation of this method I’m going to try is as follows: 5 persons act out a predetermined sequence of 10 actions (each) in the locations and with the images determinded by the random number list. This will allow me to memorise 100 digits.

One of the most memorable moments in the serie “Game of thrones” was a scene in which Haftor Bjornson alias the mountain sliced a horse in half with his sword. Well imagine if he sliced the concert piano in half that I have placed in the middle of the shopping mall, it would make also a rather memorable scene.

I now only have to find 9 other actions for the mountain and 4 other persons with 10 actions each and I’m ready for some record breaking stuff.

I would appreciate any input and of course well thought out criticism of this method.

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I give two example in the above post… the first one uses 7 memory palaces to store the numbers 00 - 99. The second one attaches 3-digit numbers to these 2-digit numbers for a list of double digit squares.

Has the advantage that you train your squares when training for calendar calculation and vice versa. Obviously, it trains your number system itself at the same too. Personally, I find the seven small palaces more manageable than the one big palace, plus the setup also encodes year codes and squares… and neurons that fire together, wire together.

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I have to admit when I first read your “reverse lookup” post I didn’t understand it at all. But now that that I have read it a second time, I have to say it’s really clever.

There is story about a dutch inventor who came up with the idea of storing an incredible amount of information on a CD by having the information devided in many different frequencies (sort of). This is very similar to your idea of storing different types of information in the memory palace in the same location without problematic interference. According to the story, the inventer was about te sell his idea for something like 100 million euro, but he died and took his idea to the grave.

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yep, by changing the weather of memory palace, I can reuse them in a pinch(on fire,flood, ice lockedup…etc)

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Would you be so kind as to change the weather in the Netherlands, it’s raining non-stop.

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sending nuke…process pending please be patient.

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Luckily, the 2-digit images and the 3-digit images are mutually exclusive. The first part is the same as what you did, only my 00-99 images are located across seven smaller palaces; still mutually exclusive and collectively exhaustive.

I would really think twice about using a PAO for the squares as in 73 (Kylie) + 53 [action] + 29 [object], because then it’s reusing two other numbers whose Ps are already stored elsewhere in the palace. No overlap when using 3-digits though.

Neither would I add cubes nor other information to this. It’s kinda the sweet spot as far as training across different disciplines.

chmod 777 would be similar to that Understanding File Permissions: What Does "Chmod 777" Mean? - Make Tech Easier

Every file and folder contain a 8-bit data that control the permissions. At its basic binaryform, it will be “000”, which means no permissions of any form is granted. When you set a “Read” permission, it will add 4-bit to the data, making it “100” (in binary format) or a “4” in the usual decimal format. Setting a “Write” permission will add 2-bit to the data, making it “010” and “2” in decimal form. Lastly, setting an “Execute” permission adds 1-bit to the data, which will result in “001”, or “1” in decimal form. In short:

  • Read is equivalent to ‘4’.
  • Write is equivalent to ‘2’.
  • Execute is equivalent to ‘1’

When we want to set permissions, we just add up the number. For example, to set the permissions to read and write, we will use ‘6’ (4 + 2) for the permission. For read, write and execute, we will use ‘7’ (4 + 2 + 1) for the permission. Here’s the different permutation:

0 – no permission
1 – execute
2 – write
3 – write and execute
4 – read
5 – read and execute
6 – read and write
7 – read, write, and execute

Depending on the permissions you want to grant to the file, you just set the number accordingly.

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I love rain, I hate going out in sun. Mayby cos my dad forces me to go beach every weekend when sunny. plus i rest better when raining :wink:

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Isnt this forum make so much energy about being memorize man lol, i really discover much about your idea, i am the one who confuse as you said before, bus, what bus? Double?
To be spesific make it more searchable.
65 is J and L for me or Ch and L, having 65 with jail is not memoreable, to know where jail im talking about is much more solve problem for brain,
To explore it more and more i discover this
If you have pen for you memorize, you will asking many thing, pen brand, or pen as office tools which is friend of paper, eraser etc, pen as drawing pen, what kind of pen you talking about.
Dont hesitate to asking your brain to solve many problem, and then don underestimate his capabilities. For 65 example, converting to letter and word and image is need time, sometimes brain tell me, here is jail at your city for you, you dont need letter,
Having mindmap, how brain connected, and memory palace together is distract me,
Memory palace say to me about to be too much constrain, also mindmap tell me so much anything is connected together, next time i need much flow from memory palace to other technique like mnemonic that really absurd make memorable, or anything to me need spesific to make my brain say aha moment

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That’s some great exploration you’re doing! I went through very similar route and I am always on the lookout for new things to try like this.

Great way I found for action finding brainstorming :

go on giphy ( do search on giphy to narrow down gifs if necessary)

scroll down till you have a few hundred, without looking at them

take a screenshot of all of them, so you have them without the movements

Then twice, from top to bottom, go through all the GIFs as fast as you can

Then go back to your screenshots and go through all of them once, when you remember instantly what movement happens, that’s a good one !

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There is a gif of the golden retriever that is behind my door. But on a more serious note: I searched for “fight” gifs since the mountain likes to fight, and holy smoke, some of these gifs are very powerful for the imagination.

So thanks very much

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I’m happy :smile_cat:A lot of them, with time, actually replaced a lot of my numbers without asking me :pouting_cat:

P.S warning warning warning to anyone reading this use this brainstorming trick only as a last resort