Does anyone here have a mind palace?
The recent thread about Tulpas and their "Wonderlands" made me wonder if there are many people on Tildes that employ the Loci Method (since, as I understand it, they are functionally very similar).
For those that don't know it, the Loci Method is a mnemonic technique in which critical information is stored in a mental construct that is most commonly being visualized as a large building (hence the "Palace"). The process of finding the information within the building functions as a way to recall it, i.e. if you left your shopping list in your mental kitchen, then "going" to the kitchen and picking up the list makes you remember it.
Many people might know of this through the BBC series Sherlock, in which the titular character uses this method.
Personally, I have been using a mind palace for over five years now, when including the time I completely broke my old palace (more a bunker at that time) down to replace it with a new one, after I had become incapable of reliably using the old construct. My current mind palace is set up as a hybrid of the classic mind palace and a "Wonderland", in that it not only stores information within an extensive library, but also contains a number of amenities I can make use of when meditating. It is stylized as a temple carved into a snowy mountainside, think a combination of Paro Taktsang and The Tombs of the Kings.
To those of you who employ their own mind palaces, what are yours like?
Does it really work? Like, do really better remember things?
Yes, though it took some time to set up properly. And of course, "storing" information is unusual in the beginning, as you don't usually memorize something by visualizing yourself writing it into a book and the placing that book in a specific shelf in a library.
Wouldn't you just forget where you put the book?
Do you forget your way to your workplace?
It works in a similar way. With the book specifically, I have my library sorted by topic and recency. So long as I generally remember when I last used that information, I will find it. Even if I don't, I'll just search for a bit. When you fill your own bookshelf, you tend to remember where you placed a book.
If you're looking for a piece of information, would you see other things you've 'stored' if you take down the wrong book?
If I pick one at random the information would be consistent with the wrong book, yes. However, I have never mistakenly opened the wrong book, as that would mean misreading the title, which would destroy the whole path and render any information unretrievable. I, essentially, cannot open a wrong book.
I did once, in the old palace, open a book to find the information destroyed/unavailable because I couldn't remember the exact page it'd been written on. That had been a book I had partially "scanned" from the real world, so the page numbers were part of the path. That failure, among other factors, lead me to destroying this original palace and all its storage structures, and to be far more careful with actual books in the new one. Like i said, i mostly use ringbinders now, each with no more than seven pages.
That's really intriguing. I think the thing that I find difficult about mind-palaces is the fact that I don't believe I'd be able to memorize the location of every memory that I store in the palace. Is this something that turns out to be easier than one would expect?
If you go about it the right way, yes. The thing you have to understand is that setting up a proper mind palace takes months before you can use it reliably. Think of it as navigating your apartment or house, but blindfolded. Once you manage to do it, it becomes as easy as doing it with your eyes open. But if you rush through the process, you're gonna end up with a lot of stubbed toes.
This is interesting. So you’re retaining information by associating it with a physical location in your mind palace? Would you say that your data retention is possibly better? Do you have to “enter” and traverse it, or is visuallizing the storage location enough to recall? Are different areas visually distinct to improve recall, or is that not as relevant?
My data retention is definitely better, if only for those bits of info i go through the hussle of properly archiving.
I do enter and traverse whenever something is needed that I don't immediantly know where it is, which is usually everything on the first library floor (because that is the "miscellaneous" section that has a high turnaround of information and thus usually the most recent too). When traversing, I enter the main courtyard, move forward into the library, check which floor i need to go via a registry hanging on the first shelf left to me, go to that floor and then work my way through the shelves, from left to right, until I reach the shelf corresponding to the time I first stored the Information. In that shelf, there will be a book (or more precisely a ring binder; I phased out books for any Information that isn't a book in the real world) with a corresponding title, and in that book I will find my information.
If I'm just getting information from the Misc. section, i skip all traversal until the point where I'm in front of the right shelf.
It can help, but I mostly abandoned it in favor of a centralized registry. The first floor of my library has a balcony, but the remaining floors have nothing but shelves and the stairs (and plaques with floor numbers).
The non-informationbearing areas of my mind palace have a different layout, of course. The courtyard has a floor of stone with a circle in the middle. That circle is filled with sandy earth and has a bodhi tree standing in it.
How is your long term retention like, does it help to go over the shelves when looking for something just to remind you what's there?
Do you find you have to look over stuff as a refresher or is it just stored permanently.
FInally do you have any of this written down, i.e. a description of your library a brief layout etc.
I find it's super easy to get lost in trying to figure out if what I have rememebered is really what it was or some morfed version that I half constructed now.
This ties in very well with your next question...
It is stored permanently, but retrieving info that was untouched for a long time requires more concentration. Roaming the library can help with that, as it keeps all information relatively fresh.
Back when I was designing my palace, i made a floor plan and a few drawings of the interior. It helped me create a stable building (as details tend to shift around if you aren't careful, which messes up the pathfinding a dangerous lot).
Yeah, i know that all too well. That's why i started using the palace. For generalized knowledge, it's not much of an advantage, but when precision is needed (i.e. when you have to recall an exact quote), it is a major upgrade.
How would you store a quote?
Say here is my Kenedy quotes binder how would you lookup a quote on the speach to go to the moon?
I'd go to the history section of the library, then american history, space shelf, look for the folder titled "Kennedy Speech Moon 1962". In there, one one of the seven pages (each folder has no more and no less than seven pages, even if some of them are blank), I would read "We choose to go to the Moon! We choose to go to the Moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard"
This is a hypothetical though, I don't actually have this quote stored there. For now.
hun that's very cool. So it looks like the process of looking up the correct folder and page that helps unlock? the memory?
Pretty much yes. It's kinda like navigating a maze to find the right exit. Human brains store information by connecting it with other data. By connecting this piece of text with a complex (read "unique") enough pathway to walk, you are essentially gaming that system.
Many aspects of the brain's physical methods for storing information is inherently flawed. One example: the more times you recall a certain memory, the more likely it is to change. In terms of your system, the more you take a book from a shelf, the more often you're going to involuntarily "rewrite" crucial elements of that memory. 60% of people have an incorrect recollection of where they were/what they were doing on 9/11, despite being entirely confident that their memory is accurate. Brian Williams' news career collapsed after his memory of a certain even in Afghanistan slowly changed over a decade into something that would be considered a "lie", despite Williams being fully convinced his altered memory was true.
This is one of many inescapable traits of the human brain. You'd have to do some serious futuristic brain surgery to avoid it.
How does this Palace system handle our subconscious' problems with corrupting memories?
It can't fully be avoided, but it can be mitigated. That is, essentially, a question of patient training. When first building the palace, rooms and corridors tend to shift, dimensions change, tiles on the floor appear and disappear etc. In my case, the new palace also mixed with elements of the old one, creating an additional level of chaos. Making sure the palace stabelises takes months. Something similar applies to the information stored there. The more stable the palace, and the more active the process of storing the information (i.e. instead of just imagining a ring binder with the info appearing in the book shelf, actually taking an empty binder and writing the label and contents with a pencil), the more reliable it becomes. Of course, there are losses, especially when dealing with such abstract methods of storage as writing (as opposed to more physical storage in the form of objects reminding you of the actual information), but it's not like you're fighting a lost fight.
I've tried this, to unsatisfying results. When I think back on it, it makes a lot of sense...I have a hard time with understanding things practically and spatially and I benefit from adding abstraction wherever I can. A mind palace is essentially doing the opposite and making things much more difficult to access.
Have you tried using a real-world place as template and abstracting the information into symbols rather than using information carriers (i.e. using a football to remind you of the time to leave for training rather than writing the time into a mental calendar)? These kinds of creative abstractions helped a friend of mine who was struggling with retaining information.
Or do you have a problem with visualizing the empty place by itself?
So the mind palace can work very well but has a lot of overhead in terms of setting it up. If anyone is interested in this type of thing, a simpler place to start and something I've found very useful is using a peg and word system. To set it up you simply associate the numbers 1-9 with a word of your choosing although they typically rhyme such as "one -> gun". Then to use it just imagine a scene relating the information you want to remember with the word associated with the number. For example, If I want to remember to get potato at the store I could put that on peg 1 by imagining shooting a potato and seeing it explode. Then while I'm at the store, if I want to check my list I just have to remember to go through the pegs.
My main approach has been to come up with an ontology, or set of ontologies, for areas I'm interested in, and slot information into that. The key here is having a suitably conforming structure. It's also useful as relationships between information and ideas become apparent. This is tremendously valuable to me, more so than simple factual recollection.
I've played a bit with memory palaces -- some examples, one a radio segment decicated to them some 15 or more years ago, for which I can still recall a few items. I also associate certain information with specific places or times, so can attest to the general usefulness of the notion. They're definitely interesting, but also a fair bit of work.
More generally, I've explored numerous methods for learning and retaining information; reading, discussing (verbally) or explaining (written) ideas, index cards, spaced repetition, and more. In general, the more ways I can cross-link something, the better.
I've also been revisiting Greek and Roman mythology, which I'm increasingly seeing as a very highly interconnected set of memorisation strategies likely developed by a preliterate nomadic society; people, places, events, things, landmarks, heavenly bodies and constellations (if you can't write your message using patterns, or carry them with you, utilise widely visible patterns to inscribe your messges), weather, animals, emotions, etc., etc.
Given the vast age and common characteristics of such myths across time and space (see the Grimms and Idres Shah), this strikes me as plausible.
The aboriginals in Australia have creation stories, that describe giant beasts from the beginning of time walking the earth creating the various landmarks as they move about and fight each other. They use them as a means of remembering where to find water, shelter or food, as well as a form of map to help them traverse the vast space they live in.
It's honestly super cool but these stories are secret and reproduction without permission is illegal - so they are not publicly known or really talked about; unlike the Greek or Roman gods.
Thanks. I've heard a bit of various aboriginal myths, though not in any detail.
I herd Cicero recommends memorising a long speech by imagining walking though your house saying the various parts in the different rooms. I generally like to walk around/do stuff while I think so I recon that aspect of motion might help but like others have said I think it might just confuse things to try do it just visually.
Also how do you keep things in order, what stops you from just remembering the various rooms and not what order they come in.
That is, basically, the original Loci method. Following a path through your house, ideally with small hints placed corresponding with where you should be in your speech at that time.
It doesn't have to be. Information can be stored in a variety of ways. And retrieving it can be aided by talking aloud (describing your way through the archive etc.), for instance.
Discipline and a pre-done floor plan. My library has seven floors. Each has a sign above the stairs telling which floor number it has and which topic that floor is concerned with. That keeps them from "interfering" with each other.
The first is unlabeled, as the balcony and fact that it is the entrance to the library makes it easy to distinguish from the rest. It holds mostly miscellaneous information and trivia, like a birthday calendar for friends and family.
The second is labeled "Informatik" (all labels in german), it contains everything technical relating to computer science, i.e. Cheat Sheets and the like.
The third is called "Geschichte" (history) for, essentially, world history. Historic events, timelines, pictures of historic people with their names. Several shelves for german history, one for european in general, one for american, the rest miscellaneous.
Number four is "Wissenschaft" (science), everything science and tech that isn't computer science or economics (i.e. engineering, biology, chemistry, physics).
Number five is "Wirtschaft" (economics), for info about economics as well as certrain important international and national companies. Half a shelf is dedicated to everything Elon Musk has ever done, for instance.
Six and Seven are, as of yet, still empty and thus don't have a label aside from their floor number. I'm thinking about making 6 a politics section, to keep track of local, federal and european politicians, but that's just an idea for now. I'm worried it might destabelise the entire system given how often I'd have to change information stored there.
I would be interested in giving this a shot -- was there a particular resource you used to learn the fundamentals of the Method, @sam4ritan?
On short notice, these two wikihow articles should point you in a right direction. I used a book when I first started, but to my knowledge that has never been translated to english.
Cool, thanks for passing those along.
If you don't mind my asking, what was the name of the book? On the off-chance I ever learn German (it's probably #3 on my list of "languages to learn"), it would be nice to know.
If i did, I'd have never started this thread to begin with. :-)
It was an older edition of "Stroh im Kopf" (straw in your head; it's an expression: having straw in your head means that you are, for lack of a better word, an idiot) by Vera F. Birkenbihl.
Yep ditto, although maybe start with like a studio flat.
While this works for some people, I don't think it will work for me, unfortunately. Something I've discovered in the past is that to "visualize" something, to see it "with your mind's eye," is not very much a euphemism, and more that most are able to do something almost like actually seeing something you remember or imagine, such as "seeing" this mind palace. However, not everyone can visualize things like this. Some people, like myself, don't really see anything at all when using their "mind's eye" to try to imagine or recall something. All I see is the darkness you get when your eyelid is blocking all the light.
The fourth paragraph here briefly says something about what I mean.
I have read of this before, and find it very interesting. I have to meditate for a while before I can stop having mental images pop up all the time. I'm wondering, when you read text, do you have a voice in your head reading it aloud? Or do you "just" understand it immediately?
It's like my own voice reading it aloud, sort of. Not really aloud, but y'know how when you're thinking, it's like you're talking in your mind? It's like that. Reading doesn't really "conjure up images" or anything, though. The closest thing I know to imagining in that visual way is how I can kind of plot out my house in my mind, but pretty much just from directions. I can be like "this room is over here, over here is this one" stuff like that, but no visuals.
Interesting. I'd like to learn how and why these different kinds of awareness occur. But smarter people than I will have to crack that case.