I’d been struggling to come up with a memory structure for historical timelines which suited my needs. But then, I saw some of Lynne Kelly’s posts on historical memory. I started riffing on those. Now, I think I have something.
US-99 through Seattle is my memory palace
US-99 runs north-south
US-99’s 0th cross-street origin is in downtown Seattle
US-99 goes up to cross-street 240th when travelling north
US-99 goes up to cross-street 348th when travelling south
Each cross-street is a decade. E.g., 84th St. N. corresponds to 840AD, 330th St. S. corresponds to 3300BC, the beginning of recorded human history.
I use a 3-digit major system to identify the decade of a historical event and a 1-digit rhymer system to disambiguate items within a decade, providing the final digit of the year. E.g., I break up 2022 as the 202nd decade (I treat years 10BC-0 and 0-10AD each as the 0th decade) and the 2nd year, which correspond to “incense” and “shoe”.
I will expand to 4-digit major system ASAP
I correspond points along the width of the road with longitude. E.g., the middle of the road corresponds to 0deg longitude. E.g., London
The road has ~3 lanes each way plus sidewalks. Each of those 4x2 channels is 30deg. That takes me to 120deg West and 120deg East
There isn’t much land 180-120deg West. E.g., Alaska
There is some land 120-180deg East. E.g., Japan, Korea, Australia.
I will treat history in these reigions as interacting with the buildings on the other side of the sidewalks.
I can use Google Maps in street view whenever I need to refresh my memory of a section of US-99
I use a different road for the Holocene Era, spanning ~11,600-4,500 years ago. I treat each cross-street as a century. E.g., 116th St. S corresponds to 116cya (cya=“hundred years ago”) and 45th St. S. corresponds to 45cya
I use a different road for the Paleolithic Era, spanning ~320kya-12kya (kya=“thousand years ago”). I treat each cross-street as a millenium. E.g., 320th St. S. corresponds to 320kya.
I’ve since had some feedback, which I’ll share here:
Structure and flexibility are usually inversely proportional. My proposal has a lot of structure. That will work well until it doesn’t. Maybe better to go with a loose network of MPs
Even though US-99 has a lot of stuff happening on it, there are stretches of ~20blocks (~200years) which are just trees. What will I do then? Jump into one of the adjacent buildings as a hack MP? Add my major system pegs to the trees?
I’ll propose an alternative structure which addresses some of these concerns:
All my recorded human history (since 3300BC) goes into a memory hotel
Each floor denotes a century, indicated by a 2-digit system (e.g., 19th floor would be the 1900’s. Basement 3 would be -300’s BC)
Each floor has a common area which will store info which has lower than decade-level precision, including general info about the century.
Each floor has ten rooms, each denotes a decade, indicated by a 1-digit system
Each room has a foyer which will store info which has decade level precision but not year-level precision, including general info about the decade
Each room opens up to 10 continuous city blocks somewhere in the world, indicated by a 1-digit system. As before, each block is a year, and the width of the road indicates longitude in the world.
Pros:
By choosing any 10 city blocks for each room, I can guarantee memorable stretches of road with many locii
If something breaks in a room, I only have to fix that room, not the entire MP hotel meta structure
Works well, ideally even, with a 2-digit system. Saves effort from a 4-digit system.
Cons:
Breaks continuity across decades (e.g., to go from 1979 → 1980, I must leave room 7 on floor 19 and go to room 8)
Breaks continuity across centuries even worse (e.g., to go from 1899 → 1900, I must leave room 9 on floor 18 and go to room 0 on floor 19)
I’ll begin by maintaining both and see which works better for me.
A memory hotel meta-structure goes against all principles of memory. A hotel is uniform, not memorable. Probably for that reason people get lost in hotels. Choose a more memorable place, like a park.
So, I’ll propose an alternative stucture which incorporates this feedback:
Each century is a memory palace.
Each decade is a room
Each room has 10 loci, one for each year in the decade
Ideal memory palace: a large park with playgrounds and unique items
Ideally, choose your decade “rooms” in the park so that you can still see the previous and following decades. This will make it easier to build connections across decades
Ideally, place year’s events around a locus so that there is correspondence to the globe. E.g., treat the locus itself as 0deg latitude, 0deg longitude.
(I know this topic isn’t grabbing anyone’s interest right now. But if you do find it at later date, please still share your thoughts. This is an open curiosity of mine and I’d love to chat about it)
I’m starting to question my last proposal for lack of richness in locus objects. I previously proposed a single locus object for an entire year (within a single MP for the century and a single room for the decade). So, all events related to politics, culture, science, sports, etc., would interact with that single locus object. Do you think this would lead to too much collision among my items?
I’ll propose several tweaks to mitigate the issues I raised:
Multi-faceted locus objects: categorize by height E.g., a jungle gym. I can assign different categories to different heights of interaction with the jungle gym (e.g., culture: eye-level and above; politics: eye-level to waist; science: waist to ankles; sports: ankles to ground).
Multi-faced locus objects: categorize idiosyncratically: Same as the last but to make things more memorable and less systematic, I could assign categories to parts of each jungle gym idiosyncratically (e.g., in 1990, culture, politics, science, sports would be assigned the slide, the swing, the bridge, the monkey bars; in 1676 they would be assigned totally different parts of a totally different jungle gym)
Bridging object: consistent: I still might have a simple object for a year (e.g., a single slide) but I add a bridging object to that slide (e.g., a pail of sand toys) and have items from each category interact with one and only of the subitems of the bridging object (e.g., culture interacts with the shovel, politics interacts with the toy car, etc.)
Bridging object: idiosyncratic: Same as the last, but to increase memorability, use a different bridging object each time. (E.g., the pail of sand toys would be used as a bridging object only for the single slide locus object, denoting 1990)
Adding color: to the items: Using What colours represent the different school subjects? as inspiration, I could still have the single locus object denoting a year (e.g., a single slide for 1990) but the items which interact with the slide get colored based on their category (e.g., politics=yellow, science=green, etc.)
Adding color: to the locus object: Same idea as the last point, except now the item, based on its category, adds color to the locus object itself (e.g., imaging a 1990 desert storm solider sliding down a yellow slide)
Based on more feedback, I’ll propose several more tweaks:
Enrich the locus object: If the locus object doesn’t have many facets (e.g., a simple square cube), one may be able to enrich the locus object, making it multi-faceted (e.g., zoom in on the cube and see the wood grain, zoom out and see a tiny globe, etc.)
Build a linked list off of the locus object: Treat the locus object (e.g., a slide, denoting 1990) as the head of a linked list of events (e.g., slide → Desert Storm soldier → Hubble space telescope launch → Nelson Mandela released from prison → …) where one constructs a visual relationship between each element in the list (e.g., Desert storm solider sliding down the slide → Desert Storm solider looking up at the Hubble space telescope → a free Mandela looking at images from the Hubble space telescope → …). This list is not sequential (e.g., Desert Storm appearing earlier in the list than Nelson Mandela does not mean that Desert Storm happened earlier in the year). The point is to build a minimal set of visual associations so that one can retrieve all information tied to a given year (e.g., 1990 by traversing the linked list, starting at the head of the list (e.g., the slide).
Build a kludge off the locus object: Make all kinds of associations between the locus object denoting the year and the events in that year. Make sure each event has at least one association to another event or the locus object. Be warned, you could have a situation with your events where A → B → C → A, circularly linking to each other, not linking back to the locus object. So if you review your memory palace and come to your locus object, you won’t find these items A, B, C. You would have lost them. But in practice, they’ll probably be there anyway. That’s just how your brain works. So don’t worry.
I like this idea best and think you should have a large amount of universal bridging objects when memorizing history for use cases exactly like you mentioned.
One bridging object for defining centuries, others for cardinal directions and any type of repetitive historical fact that just changes its context slightly.
Also even universal bridging objects or people for actions. Every coup has the same object with context of the coup layered onto that object.
The color ideas are what I like least. I think making your universal bridging figures specific colors every time would be nice but if you try to use the same object and shade it different colors for different information I think the color will get lost often in recall.
I like the idea of using color in general like Desert related stuff is always yellow and Desert Storm may be a yellow slide and Desert Oasis is a yellow above ground pool.
Where I think you would run into trouble is trying to use a yellow slide and a red slide and green slide.
I too really like the consistent bridging object idea. Although often some events are part of multiple categories, and which object will you use then?
I’m a huge fan of enriching loci. I’m always concerned that there is no reality backing up the details I’m adding (so I just have to remember them unless I write them down, which I never will), but I always end up remembering them
A little story that connects each item would be stickier than a linked list
Based on some feedback outside of the forum, I’d go with idiosyncratic bridging objects, even if every item in my memory palace had the same consistent structure. E.g., suppose my memory palace is only filled with US presidential elections items, where I characterize each election by year, winner, runner-up, parties. I would have my bridging object at one location be a bucket of sand toys, shovel tied to winner, castle mold tied to runner-up, etc. I would have my bridging object at another location be a tennis bag, racket tied to winner, tennis ball cannister tied to winner, etc. The rationale here is that consistency in bridging objects reduces memorability and makes recall more difficult. So, get weird and idiosyncratic.
A downside is that the idiosyncratic approach increases the cost of bridging object construction, having to create a new one each time. Things would certainly be easier, from a construction stand point, if every bridging object were the same sand pail.
I will end up experimenting with this soon. I’m now building my MP for history