Moonwalking with Einstein: The Art and Science of Remembering Everything

• book
• toproofread
• psychology
• memory

Book by Joshua Foer

#book #psychology #memory #toproofread

1. This book has nothing to do with Albert Einstein
2. No part of this book is set on the moon
3. No one is walking on the moon in this book

1. By evolution, human brains are more capable of remembering space and images than words and numbers because the former is needed for survival in the hunting-gathering period.
2. Spacial and visual image can be employed to remember words and numbers with higher accuracy and efficiency given the correct methods, most of which were already developed in Ancient Greek
3. The author, who is initially a journalist with an average memory, proves that anyone can learn and use these techniques by training himself and winning the US Memory Championship.

1. Stumbled across an excerpt on an SAT practice exam
2. The title mentioned a favourite scientist
3. As part of my research for a presentation in SCLS VI
4. Trying to memorise French words

1. If something is wanted to be remembered well, convert them into images, space, animations, and make connections.
2. Learning, creating, and memorising are fundamentally the same thing (in some sense, perhaps).
3. Do not stop at an okay plateau. An okay plateau, a situation where no improvement is being made because people feel okay about their level, can be overcome by deliberate practice and limit pushing. This can be a solution to reading and typing speed (also reminds me to practise colomak)
4. A major system, which is the current system being used, turns out to not be the effective one, though it’s an intuitive one to get started
5. A Person-Action-Object reduces the number of images that you have to create to remember a set of thing. Apply this to random numbers and cards.

• It’s a shame that those beautiful memory techniques developed a long time ago are no where to be found in the modern world.
• With the right method, seemingly impossible tricks can be learnt; with hard work, seemingly unattainable goals can be conquered.
• Memory, and many other things are like limited hardware, but we can optimise them to get the most out of them.
• For some occasions good memory is good, for others maybe not. Forget what’s on the to-do list and focus on current task.
• Everything take time and commitment to be good, so make time and commitment.

• Interesting and useful (maybe) methods for memorising bizarre things in bizarre ways
• Philosophical approach to the usefulness of memory and its connection with learning and creativity.

• Now the working of the brain pertinent to memory is better understood and can be applied when trying to remember things.
• The author’s and many others’ training process to become serves as the inspiration to try new things and perfect oneself.
• Remembering random things is a fun thing to try and why not.

“‘You make monkeys memorize, whereas education is the ability to retrieve information that will and analyze it. But you can’t have higher-level learning—you can’t analyze—without retrieving information.’ […] You can’t learn without memorizing, and if done right, you can’t memorize without learning […] even if facts don’t by themselves lead to understanding, you can’t have understanding without facts. And curially, the more you know, the easier it is to know more. Memory is like a spiderweb that catches new information. The more it catches, the bigger it grows. And the bigger it grows, the more it catches. […] The more we remember, the better we are at processing the world. And the better we are at processing the world, the more we can remember about it.”

“‘In fact, learning, memory, and creativity are the same undamental process directed with a different focus […] the art and science of memory is about developing the capacity to quickly create images that link disparate ideas. Creativity is the ability to form similar connections between disparate imates and to create something new and hurl it into the future so it becomes a poem, or a building, or a dance, or a novel. Creativity is, in a sense, future memory.’”

“The goal of training one’s memory was to develop the capacity to leap from topic to topic and make new connections between old ideas.”

1. Talks about how the author got interested in memory after watching other people performing impressive memory tricks while reporting about the US World Championship.
2. The author’s research into the topic.
3. Brief introduction to memory palace.

1. Studies shows that human brains are extremely good at remembering images.
2. Normal people will have what German psychologist Herman Ebbingham calls the curve of forgetting.
3. Baker/baker paradox illustrates how connections help build memory.
4. Brain studies shows that London taxi drivers’ brain area for spacial navigation is very developed.
5. Memory athlete have about the same brain as normal people, they are just using the visual and spacial part of their brain as the taxi drivers.

1. Average human can only remember 7±2 things in their working memory; people call this the magic 7.

1. Explores the connection between time and memory. More memory = slower time, so go do interesting things.
2. Sleep helps to consolidate memory by revisiting past experience, so get good sleep.
3. There are also different types of memory, like semantic, episodic, declarative, nondeclarative, etc.
4. Memories change over time. New memory tend to be first person while old ones tend to be in third person.

1. Memory palace technique; this is so effective because that’s what human do to survive a long time ago
2. People can subconsciously remember space. Greek poet Simonides of Ceso remembered where each guest were sitting after the building collapsed. He was able to reconstruct the scene without purposefully remembering it beforehand.
3. Memory techniques were treated as important subjects in ancient Greek as people have to remember things more than in modern age.

1. Brains are better at remembering meaning than words verbatim
2. Ancient people write poem and commit them into memory first, the world “topic” comes from the Greek word “topos”, which means place. “In the first place” comes directly from something like “the first place in the palace”.
3. Cicero also uses memory palace to remember speeches. We can do the same.

1. People now rely more on external memory, especially digital memory.
2. Mark Twain uses memory palace to memorise speeches
3. Sometimes knowing everything in memory can be a good thing, and people have tried to do that. Socrates claims that writing things down are useless as they are just repeating what you already know

1. People can become better by overcoming the okay plateau
2. Improvements can be made by perfecting system
3. Memory technique is an arms race
4. Get over okay plateau by conscious practice
5. People with trained memory on one thing has average memory on other things.

1. There are, interestingly, people who score very high by remembering quotes and writing them on essays from memory. Good to have a quotes arsenal.
2. Rote memorisation doesn’t teach student anything, that’s why the US switched to experience-based learning, but such learning cannot be possible either without creating connections, which is another way to create memory, so after all learning can be creating and memorising and memorising can be learning and creating and creating can be learning and memorising.

Does this break something?

Never memorize something that you can look up.
― Albert Einstein

1. Savants are often trained, even if they keep their hard work secrete, so don’t expect to become a savant without hard work.

1. The author ended up winning the US Memory Championship
2. Everyone can win memory competitions. Memory tricks are simply techniques of using the full power of human brain that we all can try.