What About Mnemonics? • Zettelkasten Method
What About Mnemonics? • Zettelkasten Method
Dear Zettlers, I am currently wrestling with the question of what to make of mnemonics. I barely dipped my toe in this world. But I never seriously engaged with mnemonics.
Howdy, Stranger!
Comments
Winners of memory championships use those techniques, so they obviously work. (I enjoyed reading Joshua Foer's Moonwalking with Einstein. He entered the world of Memory Championships as a self-experiment, learned some techniques and competed in championships.)
The bigger question here is what we think about the relevance of internal memory, memorization and rote learning.
Some users of external memories, like a Zettelkasten, trust their tools so much, that they don't bother memorizing anything.
Memorization has been a hot topic in pedagogy for decades. Some school reformers vehemently reject rote learning.
On the other hand I find it difficult to imagine how one could become a medical doctor, engineer, lawyer, philosopher or historian without memorizing at least some core knowledge. Mnemonics make that easier.
Do you want us to discuss particular mnemonic techniques or the benefits/harms of memorizing stuff in general? I think these are related, but different debates.
It would be interesting to know your take on the very famous blog post by Michael Nielsen:
https://augmentingcognition.com/ltm.html
Andy Matuschak also created this website with Michael Nielsen in 2019 to learn quantum computing using spaced repetition:
https://quantum.country/
It has many interesting ideas that are worth exploring. For the context of our forum and OP's initial question, I pick three.
First, the essay is about personal memory systems, that is, "systems designed to improve the long-term memory of a single person". They are designed to internalize knowledge, whereas a Zettelkasten is sometimes described as external memory, extended memory or second memory that externalizes knowledge.
Second, the essay describes a different kind of note-taking than Zettelkasten. When Nielsen talks about the app Anki he talks about flashcards. They are a well-researched learning tool. The essay gives an excellent overview on how to write and use flashcards. It explains some benefits of using an app instead of paper. And it contains references to the learning psychology of self-testing with spaced repetition.
One difference between Nielsen's flashcards and Zettelkasten is atomicity. In Sascha Fast's flavor of the Zettelkasten method, atomicity is a normative ideal derived from a philosophical belief about the nature of knowledge.
Nielsen takes a more practical approach: "Breaking this question into more atomic pieces turned a question I routinely got wrong into two questions I routinely got right." This kind of atomicity …
Third, in the essay we can learn a lot about the art of asking good questions. I find Nielsen's reading of the AlphaGo paper so interesting not because of Anki, but because of the kind of questions he asks at various stages of the reading process.
In my experience, asking good questions is the most effective way to learn, understand and remember something.
I share Nielsen's experience, that mnemonic techniques like memory palace are fun, but that "they may even distract from understanding". I prefer to learn by understanding and making meaningful connections.
But sometimes mnemonic tricks are the only way to get stuff in my memory at all. Once the stuff is in the head, the brain can do its magic and connect this stuff to other stuff even while I'm not concsiously thinking about any of that stuff. So they are definitely useful for memorizing definitions, lists, numbers, names, vocabulary, etc.
I like Nielsen's article, because it's a case study that covers many aspects of classic reading techniques and evidence-based learning techniques.