Have never heard of this book but adding to my list now!
Although I'd say traditional mnemonic devices like memory palaces are basically linear information storage and recall devices. This can create issues in building a flexible web of information, because loci or the order of the path can become dependencies and you can run out of unique spots in a given space, leading to memory interference.
Even spaced repetition methods (e.g. Anki) tend towards fragmentation of micro-ideas. Its perfect for terms, languages, and simple one question -> one answer ideas.
I've found a hybrid method of images, nested loci and spaced repetition to be most useful, because its flexible over time, and preserves relationships of ideas.
(Context: I co-founded a SaaS in this space: www.sticky.study)
Thanks for sharing your alternative. I like that you’ve included your references for each component of your method. That might help as many people as your product. I’ll look into it sometime.
I don't disagree with Einstein, but I wonder what he would say with the modern internet at his disposal. Maybe the same?
I would recommend reading the book Moonwalking with Einstein. There is a lot of discussion there on how memory is linked directly to creativity, and to understanding concepts deeply.
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A choice passage:
"...If the essence of creativity is linking disparate facts and ideas, then the more facility you have making associations, and the more facts and ideas you have at your disposal, the better you'll be at coming up with new ideas. As Buzan likes to point out, Mnemosyne, the goddess of memory, was the mother of the Muses.
The notion that memory and creativity are two sides of the same coin sounds counterintuitive. Remembering and creativity seem like opposite, not complementary, processes. But the idea that they are one and the same is actually quite old, and was once even taken for granted. The Latin root 'inventio' is the basis of two words in our modern English vocabulary: inventory and invention. And to a mind trained in the art of memory, those two ideas were closely linked. Invention was a product of inventorying. Where do new ideas come from if not some alchemical blending of old ideas? In order to invent, one first needed a proper inventory, a bank of existing ideas to draw on. Not just an inventory, but an indexed inventory. One needed a way of finding just the right piece of information at just the right moment.
This is what the art of memory was ultimately most useful for. It was not merely a tool for recording but also a tool of invention and composition. "The realization that composing depended on a wellfurnished and securely available memory formed the basis of rhetorical education in antiquity," writes Mary Carruthers. Brains were as organized as modern filing cabinets, with important facts, quotations, and ideas stuffed into neat mnemonic cubbyholes, where they would never go missing, and where they could be recombined and strung together on the fly. The goal of training one's memory was to develop the capacity to leap from topic to topic and make new connections between old ideas. "As an art, memory was most importantly associated in the Middles Ages with composition, not simply with retention," argues Carruthers. "Those who practiced the crafts of memory used them---as all crafts are used---to make new things: prayers, meditations, sermons, pictures, hymns, stories, and poems." ..."