Notes

• This book is not about Einstein (or even moonwalking) in the slightest.
• The Memory Palace:
  • Essentially, prescribing meaning to mental images and then placing them strategically throughout a mental reconstruction of physical space you are familiar with.
  • Allows you to use your spatial memory to break past the 7 ± 2 barrier and remember more things.
    • This is because our spatial memory is incredibly nuanced and excels at picking up and storing large swathes of information. For example, you can probably draw out a floorplan of your childhood home, and likely can remember minute details of each room. However, you would probably find it very difficult to remember a phone number in full once someone has read it to you, despite encoding far less information.
• As an organ, the brain is very energy-intensive, hence why it is so keen to prune excess memories - the less to store, the less energy it has to expend accessing and maintaining those neural connections.

Thoughts & Questions

• How would an effective exobrain / neural implant affect humanity?
  • Foer discusses the benefits of memory (creativity, wisdom etc.), if we could engineer memory could we also “engineer” these characteristics?
  • What influence would / will improved (and eventually perfect) individual memory capacities have on our society?
    • It seems as though forgetting can work to the advantage of a group, as any ill will individuals harbour gradually dulls or is erased, which allows members to continue working together effectively - almost like a biologically-motivated forgiving tit-for-tat approach to working in teams.
    • Could drastic improvements to our memory capacities end up being extremely harmful to humanity as a co-operative species, or would our social fabric shift to accommodate this?
• Foer’s sentiment towards top memory champions, in that their abilities are beyond human, echoes similar sentiments towards the top performers in any domain - namely that those top performers are somehow naturally (or rather, unnaturally) talented and “freaky”, rather than just ordinary people who have done an unnatural (and even freakish) amount of practice.
  • Are the two scenarios that different?
  • Is this a natural human response to high achievement, or is it more reflective of Western social stigma?
• This text stands out as a great example of the power of deliberate and methodical practice. Josh went from memory novice to US memory record holder and champion with relatively little preparation - however, through focused practice and continued guidance he was able to rapidly improve.
  • In particular, the guidance he received seemed to prove invaluable. When confronted with a problem, or when his performance plateaued, his mentor was able to help him get back on track and continue improving.
    • To me, this speaks volumes on the power of an excellent mentor. Drawing on the past experiences of an expert enabled Foer to break through the struggles he faced in record time and catapulted him from beginner to pro.
      • Is mentorship usually this effective?
      • How much does the experience of the mentor matter vs. simply having a mentor, or just someone to discuss problems with, at all?
    • Where is Josh’s true point of plateau?
      • Josh’s seemingly inescapable plateaus were old news to his mentor - how many other aspects of our lives, aspects which we deem impossible to improve, are just waiting for a similar breakthrough?
      • Perhaps mentors can accelerate our acquisition of knowledge, but once we reach the “frontier” of knowledge (the global frontier being the best currently known, or the local frontier being the best we can find) our pace slows down as we are not acquiring knowledge anymore but producing new insight.
• I find it interesting that Foer’s memory practice didn’t have even a slight flow-on to other aspects of his memory.
  • Perhaps there is some flow on, and Josh has just become accustomed to his new baseline and doesn’t notice?
  • Foer discusses in the epilogue how, unless he deliberately ingests and processes information into images, he doesn’t retain it any better than before his memory training.
    • Is there some kind of training to increase unconscious retention?
      • Perhaps practising mindfulness can allow you to be more “present” and perceive + retain more?
• Josh dedicates 30-60 minutes daily to deliberate, targeted, focused memory training for a period of ~6 months and grows to produce world-class performances.
  • How many other fields are there, where producing world-class performance in only a matter of months, is possible?
    • What are they?
  • What would we be able to accomplish if we all had a singular focus on something?