I discovered the technic 3 years ago, after having mastered it I use it every time I want to remember something important.
But I’m surprised that it’s not more popular. And when I talk about it in outer circles, to people wanting to learn but not familiarized with mnemonic technics, it gets little to no interest.
Do you know why ?
The memory palace? Many find it takes a lot if work to come up with associations for everything. An aphantasic I know says it doesn’t make sense to her to remember both the image and what it stands for. In short, not everyone finds it worth the effort.
I only speculate but I actually do not know. Many people seem to not be interested in it and me trying to change their mind actually worsens the situation.
I myself got frustrated due to mismatch from my expectation(agressive marketing like it is a party trick mastered in days) to reality(Serious work to hone the skill).
Knowing ‘why’ also does not seem to resolve the mental conflict we are in. The simple truth is mainstream people do not care so do I for fencing, karate, horse riding, painting, circus, gymnastics and a dozen more. I just laugh it off and so is my expectation from you.
I have taught memory techniques including memory palaces for more than 3 years to many people for free, what I did notice most of the times are I am the only one who is more interested in explaining it, the other person doesn’t value it much.
many aom’s community also asked many doubts and they are genuinely interested but outside aom many not.
When my financial situation went down, I was trying everything, so I wasn’t in position to teach for free. I just thought I should charge money for it as well even though I was determined to never take money in it.
And people actually are more interested, you know when they pay even little, they give more focus, they also remain determined to learn it, like something valuable is coming, when I used to do it for free, nobody was interested.
And If you do wanted to teach for free, you can also put paid tag on it, but write there 100% discount, you know people will still be little interest since it was paid initially.
Making these elaborate memory palace requires a lot of skill which takes time to master.People are looking for a shortcut but they don’t wanna work hard
The “if I paid for it, it must have value” thing is real. (Like the IKEA effect “because I built it myself it’s a great piece of furniture”)
But also people are more interested in advantages right here and now. Like for everything there is a learning curve, so for people to be motivated they need to see that it would be much more effective that the methods they are already using now, that it’s worth the upfront investment.
And sometimes we tackle the problem by the wrong end, starting with the tool and trying to find uses for it: we tell people “look at how great the memory palace is” and they like “yeah it’s cool but what’s the point for me?” It’s more motivating to start from their needs and show them the tools to answer to it. You need to bring people to the place where they say “how did you do that, I want to do this too!”
Hi. Ive read that People do not valorate things cheap or free. They think its not worth. But if it cost something they respect more. Besides when you asked money you filtered. And only interesed People came. The others only wanted that for fashion. Or because was free.
Regarding mnemonics not being as popular today, it’s necessary to understand what happened to them.
There’s a very good book that explains the history of memory and mnemonics. It’s called “The Art of Memory” by Frances Yates.
I discovered while reading the book that in the past, mnemonic techniques were the basis of learning in various cultures, especially in academia. Particularly the memory palace and the techniques from the book Ad-Herennium. For a long time, the Catholic Church used mnemonic images, which originated the images of saints in churches. It was a way of explaining who that saint was and what they did through a visual image. It was almost considered a sacred way of learning. Many said that by creating memory palaces, you were accessing a supernatural world, and they even created religions based on this, where memory was the foundation.
However, as far as I remember, a member of the Catholic Church who knew the technique wrote about the techniques WITHOUT INCLUDING the religious aspect. It was one of the first books on the subject that didn’t mention anything religious. This book was successful, along with others, and the Catholic Church began to prohibit the use of mnemonics, saying it was something profane.
Much later, Protestants in England also prohibited the use of mnemonics because, by creating images considered impure in the mind (sexual, for example) to remember things, we would be creating “idols.” And the goal was to eliminate idols both inside and outside the mind.
Along with this, a Protestant named Petrus Ramus developed Ramism, which is a way of learning WITHOUT USING MNEMONICS. This method was considered pure and was based on finding logic in things, creating a structure similar to a mind map, and then memorizing through repetition.
Ramism was the most widely used study method in England at the time, and later, when England colonized other countries, it passed the Ramism method on, until it reached the present day.
Here in Brazil, where I currently live, the Ramist method is used in the classroom (obviously it doesn’t have that name, but the structure is practically the same).
I’ve summarized it very simply, but this is the essence of how mnemonic devices went from being quite common to being demonized and almost extinct.
I recommend reading the book so you can better understand how this happened. In addition, the book covers many other things, such as Giordano Bruno and how mnemonic devices survived throughout the centuries.
Hi. There are a lot of things. Mnemonics after Rome was seen by religion as suspect. Because was used to teach things outside the system. Besides it helped imagination. That religion don’t like. Then the educative system didn’t like it because it means imagination and the same. Then when education evolved mnemonics was attacked by considering it like pure memorization without thinking. A stupid thing. And finally now that psychologic research says that is not bad and helps. Anyway is not taught because… Something.