New System Idea

[Grimba]

There is this new system that I thought of based on some other users posts and I’m curious about your thoughts.

Basically you take an idea, convert that idea into a character then whenever you want to think about that idea you imagine yourself as that character and then explain that idea to yourself through that character.

For example:

1. We first take an idea (lets use automation)
2. Then we turn it into a character (lets see automation as a mass of cogwheels and pistons moving around randomly)
3. Then you imagine yourself as that character and see the world through that characters eyes (in this case we would be disgusted by humanity because of how slow and inefficient it is)
4. Now when we are asked a question about automation or when we want to think about automation we can imagine ourselves becoming that character and we can speak through them to answer that question

I have been trying this out for the past two or so weeks and I have that say that it’s very effective. The major advantage I have found is that it lets you see more connections between ideas. Before all of my palaces were separated and so it was hard to see how an idea in one palace connects to another idea in a separate palace but now all I need to do is see myself become that idea and all of the connections become obvious.

Some improvements that I have made is that I have started making a family tree for my characters so my character for happiness is the brother of sadness and my characters for the cabinet members of the government are children of the president.

I have also started making a massive artificial memory palace with different sections laid out for different characters.

For example there’s a section that I made yesterday for construction and buildings that is centered around Hephaestus (aka the black smith Greek god) as well as the elements of the periodic table who are children of Hephaestus.

Anyway I’m curious about your thoughts and if you have any suggestions for improving this system.

[thinkaboutthebible (Doug)]

@Grimba, that’s a great idea to help form better images. It’s called anthropomorphizing and when you need to animate a scene where a bunch of items are sitting around and nobody to initiate action, it’s a big help. The best images have a sentence structure with a subject, an action, and an item along with a place and some enhancements.

I’ve been working on better image creation and analyzing the data types helps. Sometimes you just need to do a conversion of an item to a subject.

When you have a concrete item that can grow legs or speak with a mouth, or an abstract item that is under the control of a being that directs the action associated with the concept, it makes the visualization much easier. If the character you create continues through several scenes, I’d call that a protagonist story, otherwise you just have a great image to store.

If you wanted to continue the logic of the anthropomorphized item into another data type like that of a terrain where scenes could be acted out or other characters could travel in and out of, you could use a form of a temple devoted to that “god.” Automation would have walls on pulleys moving around, tables rising up from under the floors, skylights opening and closing, escalators going upstairs and down, etc.

When you don’t have any subjects imagined from keywords at all, rapscallion characters can direct the action. @LynneKelly does this for multiplication tables.

I like several additional ideas you have. Having the characters form a family tree like the Roman and Greeks gods did, and even reusing the Greek gods to represent their own specialty are excellent especially if you have the background for it. I think you should stick with the Greeks. Using Vulcan instead would get you into trouble with Star Trek images, right?

[LynneKelly]

Love the anthropomorphizing idea. Wonderful!

[carljalal (Carl)]

I see that it’s not just related to anthropomorphizing, it’s like empath-ification. I imagine an entity and then imagine being that entity in first person.

and YES I can totally agree. I have made many palaces with disparate ideas, and while I can remember the individual ideas upon accessing the loci (somewhat – I noticed a reduced cognitive effect if I only pass over the loci quickly without any meditation on the loci), I also don’t see the connections to other things as well. It feels less dynamic and hope to have more creativity by feeling more interactions and realizations between concepts and ideas.

So this empathy point is like, it’s almost like the “character” itself becomes a loci and you go inside of it. Then inside of the “character”-loci, you have some other loci. Hmm. I actually noticed that when I separate things as spatially-distinct loci, I remember the things individually, but I feel it’s not as connective and simultaneous.

Like alright, if I remember my mom, it’s like, she’s one person. She’s all connected together and I feel like I know she is in a split instant, without knowing all the details and memories. I feel like could be due to repeated association rather than having spatially distinct labelled moments of “mom1” “mom2” “mom3”. Instead I have a non-spatial “mom” who I can imagine anywhere. Now this is extremely awkward because I feel like all the things in my mind are (potentially inaccurate) representations of people rather than accurate to the actual people I interact with, and feel a sense of unknowingness and sadness that I don’t truly know anyone completely. Maybe you feel me here. This is something I contemplate in life and am perplexed by. Another thing is my own self, there’s a sense of unknowingness. But I cheer myself up about this all, because there is love and love is awesome. So back to the character-empathy-discussion: I think that it connects ideas together because you repeatedly associate rather than making spatial distinctions.

Now I have something to add about repeatedly associating a loci with the present moment of my life – I feel it has really helped me connect ideas together. If every few seconds you take something you notice in life, imagine it happen in your bedroom, then eventually your bedroom gets loaded with all kinds of disparate ideas from life and I feel at least somewhat enlightened. Sure when we re-use memory palaces, the past images often get faded and are hard to remember, but in some sense, I still feel those past ideas connect to the new ones that I add. Especially when it’s always repeatedly new ideas from the present moment, I really feel more connected, like I’m journeying through time in a connected way.

[thinkaboutthebible (Doug)]

@carljalal, I like your term of empathification. It is, I think, what anthropomorphizing is truly about, becoming more human (anthro-) by understanding the whole being. And I do agree with you, that the way to connect with someone is to love them. You even have to love yourself to know who you are, but this gets into a different discussion doesn’t it?

Having many loci provides a way to have many backdrops that can influence unique subject-actions in our memories. And layering meaning into your bedroom reminds me of @LynneKelly who layers all types of information in her home. The subjects influence the place and vice versa so that they don’t mind sharing I think.

Your slight comment about a “character”-locus is one of the things I’m exploring right now. Most people use location pegs or item pegs to store numbers or other items at. The method of loci was initially about spatially separate areas so you could place a subject-action-item combo there. But then, people started using items and then you had to merge the item with the item that was already there somehow.

I’ve started using a subject peg list of ten subjects that I give my items to and let them improvise a scene with it. I was encouraged by reading about @boris Konrad’s experimental evidence that supported knowing how to tell a story is more important that being able to visualize things.

Computers and television do disconnect us from real life. Spatially, the information exists in an unreachable place. Putting the information back into the environment, whether it be a Stonehenge, a living room, or a walk around the block will connect you with life. I don’t know if you’ve read any of Lynne’s books but they are all about that and utterly fascinating.

[Celtic]

I’m a bit confused perhaps because some details are missing.
I understand the anthropomorphising, but I’m confused about the part that says:

Now when we are asked a question about automation or when we want to think about automation we can imagine ourselves becoming that character and we can speak through them to answer that question

This implies already having detailed knowledge.
It seems to me that you cannot encode information simply from the creation and empathizing with that fictional character.

Perhaps your idea is an improvement over having a memory palace represented by a particular image such as a building shaped like a couch for Freud (Mayarra’s memory city) where one then puts all things Freud perhaps, within that peculiarly shaped building in the usual ways.

But, I don’t see how the development of a fictional character and the subsequent identification with that character allows for the encoding of information.

[carljalal (Carl)]

@thinkaboutthebible So there are a couple of things I noticed about “natural” memory – that is, easily remembering things without deliberately using a memory palace and linking. And there are two things that make remembering things harder.

Non-naturally-spatially-linked moments of life, such as watching movies (although movies are still memorable because they have “spatial scenes” and also linked together emotionally in an easy to understand story), and especially WEBPAGES are hard to remember because of the lack of “3D” space. I think 2D space can be memorable, for example I can remember the world map with relative ease – the problem is that for Webpages, they change over and over and over. I flip though from app-to-app-to-app within a matter of seconds without surrounding spatial changes. The world map or globe, on the other hand, I have seen over and over and over over years and continually add to it. Webpages are distinct, we spend very little time on them, not 3D surround linked, and they’re not really 2D linked like a world map either. They’re like random pieces of paper that you spend a few minutes looking at, and the spatial “link” to the other webpages is not really there except going inside a text-hyperlink. And that’s the loose connection – we don’t spatially associate a new webpage with a text hyperlink, especially when I go from link-to-link-to-link quickly and busily, I don’t make those text hyperlink associations with new pages. Often, you’ll click an arrow or “next” button, which doesn’t have a distinct name or color. You could click 10 “next” buttons on a form, and now you won’t really remember what happened. It reminds me of living a life where you do things, watch things, fill out forms, and yet forget what you did. What did I do? “I filled out forms”. So now I’m on a kind of rant. I just wanted to note that when I go on a hike in nature or a house I haven’t been to before, it’s all naturally spatially linked up and there. Once I start repeatedly going to the same house or waking up in the same room, you get something different – the room will evolve in meaning similar to the way a person evolves in meaning after meeting them many times, but unfortunately unless I deliberately pay attention to how different it is each time I wake up in the same room, I end up just seeing “oh, just my room, not much new” and don’t form new memories. Same with meeting people. “Oh. That person.” as if nothing changed. No new memory. I start passing through life on autopilot when in fact, the details are always growing but start to pass over those details because I have to deliberately and mentally compare them to the last time I saw them… which, unfortunately, I might feel tired and just want to “get to work” with responsibilities or stresses without paying attention to the change or the good stuff. I could just end up with a world that appears stale and unchanging, filled with stresses and responsibilities. Well I think you can relate to what I’m talking about. Taking a walk or going somewhere spatially new and also looking very different somehow gets all those natural spatial connections rolling again.

Last thing to mention is driving or riding in a car – a big memory buster. Once I get into a car, I doze. Cars just move way too fast to spatially link and remember the surrounding environment. Here’s what I clearly do remember when riding in a car, and usually because I have to because I’m the one driving it: the turning points. “Ah, at this place, I take a right, at this place I take a left.” That’s the majority of what I remember, which is what I have to remember. Otherwise, a lot of the surrounding environment along the journey gets tossed. It’s unfortunately but it also highlights the memorability of taking time, walking, remembering “oh, I thought this thought while walking across this one tree.” Or, “yeah, me and this family member talked at this table, and I can remember the table and the conversation.” That’s partly because of the stability and time. The person stayed the same, and the table didn’t move, and I didn’t move. So I remember it all. I think you can relate to what I’m saying. And I could be wrong about whatever I said.