Voices
car keys, just like everyone else. We
don’t actually have great memories. Rather, we know how to use
the memories we’ve got more effectively in certain contexts, thanks
to a set of mnemonic techniques
invented in antiquity.
One of those techniques,
known as the memory palace, was
supposedly invented by a Greek
poet 2,500 years ago. It involves
converting information into wild,
wacky and strange (and therefore
memorable) images, and then visualizing those images in your
mind’s eye, inside of a building
you know well. Cicero used the
memory palace to memorize the
speeches he delivered on the floor
of the Roman senate. Medieval
scholars used the technique to
memorize entire books.
Two weekends ago, Dellis, the
championship runner-up, employed memory palaces to memorize 302 random numbers in just
five minutes, and the order of a
shuffled pack of playing in one
minute and seven seconds. He
used a related technique to memorize 162 first and last names of
total strangers.
It’s nice (and occasionally
handy) to be able to memorize lists
of information, and numbers, and
JOSHUA
FOER
HUFFINGTON
03.31.13
people’s names, but it’s important
to remember that memory athletes
are just using tricks to perform
these feats. They’re tricks that take
How much of our
lives … are we comfortable
losing because we’re
buried in our smartphones,
or not paying attention
to the human being
across from us?”
advantage of some very basic principles of how our minds work.
The most important of those
principles is that we remember
when we pay attention. We remember when we engage deeply,
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