Lady Churchill's Rosebud Wristlet No. 26 by Kelly Link Gavin J. Grant
Authors: Kelly Link Gavin J. Grant
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you, and vice versa. So let me give you an example of a property of the brain that something I find strange.
There is a memorization technique known as the “memory palace.” This is a method for remembering things that’s been used in various forms for thousands of years; you may have read about it in John Crowley’s novels Little, Big and Ægypt . The idea is to think of a building that you know so well you can walk through it in your mind and picture the decorations in each and every room. To memorize facts like names or numbers, you construct scenes that represent those facts; the more outrageous the scene is, the better. One example I recently read is that, if you want to remember the number 124, you could picture a spear cutting a swan into four pieces, because the spear looks like the number one, the swan looks like the number two, and the four pieces represents the number four. You’d picture this gruesome scene within one room of your memory palace. Then, when you need to recall that number, you mentally walk to that room, see a swan being cut into four pieces, and remember the number 124.
I once asked John Crowley if he used the memory-palace technique himself, and he said, no, he couldn’t see how it could possibly work in practice. This was a relief to me, because I had the exact same reaction when I read about it. But the fact is that people have used it with enormous success. People used it in ancient times, when parchment was so expensive that you couldn’t readily write things down. Memory artists today use a version of this technique. So even though I find it a completely bizarre concept, I have to assume that it actually works.
There are a number of things about this that are worth noting. One is that this is absolutely nothing like the way a computer’s memory works. Thinking about the brain as a computer does not help us understand why the memory-palace technique is effective; neither does thinking about the brain as a telephone switchboard, or a steam engine, or a clock. If we ever come up with a metaphor for the brain that helps us understand why the memory-palace technique works, then I think we’ll really be getting somewhere.
Another thing worth noting is that the memory-palace technique was developed before we had mechanical aids to memory. Many people have observed that the widespread use of writing reduced our reliance on our memories, but I think it had another, subtler effect. It started changing the way we think about our minds. Once people had seen a library of books, they could imagine their own memory as being like a library of books. And once people started doing that, they had taken the first step toward thinking about the brain as a technological device. And that makes me wonder, if we were all using the memory-palace technique, would we have come up with different metaphors for understanding the brain?
Earlier I mentioned that early attempts at blood transfusion failed because we didn’t know about blood types. Has there been a similar mistake made because we used folk biology when thinking about the brain? Yes, I think there has been: the belief that repressed memories can be recovered via hypnosis. I don’t mean to deny that it’s possible for a person to repress memories, but I believe many people have been unjustly accused of crimes on the basis of so-called recovered memories. I think the implicit assumption underlying the idea of recovered memory is that our brain is some kind of mechanical recording device, like a camera or a tape recorder. Because if you think that brains act like cameras or tape recorders, you’re likely to believe that an objective account of events is recorded somewhere in your brain. Even if you can’t immediately access it, you imagine that an accurate memory is there.
However, it turns out that it’s easy to implant false memories. You don’t need hypnosis to do it; you can just ask some leading questions and make someone think they saw
There is a memorization technique known as the “memory palace.” This is a method for remembering things that’s been used in various forms for thousands of years; you may have read about it in John Crowley’s novels Little, Big and Ægypt . The idea is to think of a building that you know so well you can walk through it in your mind and picture the decorations in each and every room. To memorize facts like names or numbers, you construct scenes that represent those facts; the more outrageous the scene is, the better. One example I recently read is that, if you want to remember the number 124, you could picture a spear cutting a swan into four pieces, because the spear looks like the number one, the swan looks like the number two, and the four pieces represents the number four. You’d picture this gruesome scene within one room of your memory palace. Then, when you need to recall that number, you mentally walk to that room, see a swan being cut into four pieces, and remember the number 124.
I once asked John Crowley if he used the memory-palace technique himself, and he said, no, he couldn’t see how it could possibly work in practice. This was a relief to me, because I had the exact same reaction when I read about it. But the fact is that people have used it with enormous success. People used it in ancient times, when parchment was so expensive that you couldn’t readily write things down. Memory artists today use a version of this technique. So even though I find it a completely bizarre concept, I have to assume that it actually works.
There are a number of things about this that are worth noting. One is that this is absolutely nothing like the way a computer’s memory works. Thinking about the brain as a computer does not help us understand why the memory-palace technique is effective; neither does thinking about the brain as a telephone switchboard, or a steam engine, or a clock. If we ever come up with a metaphor for the brain that helps us understand why the memory-palace technique works, then I think we’ll really be getting somewhere.
Another thing worth noting is that the memory-palace technique was developed before we had mechanical aids to memory. Many people have observed that the widespread use of writing reduced our reliance on our memories, but I think it had another, subtler effect. It started changing the way we think about our minds. Once people had seen a library of books, they could imagine their own memory as being like a library of books. And once people started doing that, they had taken the first step toward thinking about the brain as a technological device. And that makes me wonder, if we were all using the memory-palace technique, would we have come up with different metaphors for understanding the brain?
Earlier I mentioned that early attempts at blood transfusion failed because we didn’t know about blood types. Has there been a similar mistake made because we used folk biology when thinking about the brain? Yes, I think there has been: the belief that repressed memories can be recovered via hypnosis. I don’t mean to deny that it’s possible for a person to repress memories, but I believe many people have been unjustly accused of crimes on the basis of so-called recovered memories. I think the implicit assumption underlying the idea of recovered memory is that our brain is some kind of mechanical recording device, like a camera or a tape recorder. Because if you think that brains act like cameras or tape recorders, you’re likely to believe that an objective account of events is recorded somewhere in your brain. Even if you can’t immediately access it, you imagine that an accurate memory is there.
However, it turns out that it’s easy to implant false memories. You don’t need hypnosis to do it; you can just ask some leading questions and make someone think they saw
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