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from the I-forgot-what-I-was-going-to-write dept.
If you wanted to pinpoint the most absurdly geeky event in the world calendar, it would be difficult to beat the binary numbers challenge at the World Memory Championships. In it, a bevy of trained memory masters fight it out over 30 minutes to memorise as many 1s and 0s in order as they possibly can.
Back when this was my idea of a good time, I was able to "do" more than 2,000 1s and 0s in the half-hour. My then arch-rival, Dr Gunther Karsten of Germany, was not afraid to tell me this level of performance was "really quite lame". He could do 3,200. The current world record is over 4,000: more than two 1s and 0s every second.
Dig past the mystery of such feats, and you discover a set of techniques and an approach to learning that is full of strikingly simple wisdom and fun. Even if, quite sensibly, you've no interest in learning to recite computer code, the memory techniques that enable such performance are a treasure trove of insight into how to motivate and direct the learning brain.
(Score: 2) by captain normal on Wednesday November 11 2015, @08:35PM
Isn't that what we invented computers for?
Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not to his own facts"- --Daniel Patrick Moynihan--
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 11 2015, @09:24PM
Running?
Isn't that what we invented the wheel for?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 12 2015, @08:35AM
Running is for exercise. You could say that memorizing random garbage is exercising your brain, but then you would have a fundamental misunderstanding of what it means to truly understand something. Rote memorization is not a virtue and should be avoided when possible; having a deep understanding of the universe around you is much more important.
Our culture has been poisoned by the idea that having a good memory means you're intelligent, and education suffers for it.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 12 2015, @09:17AM
They're not trying to exercise or understand something, they're competing.
Competitive running is not for exercise.
Neither is competitive memorizing.
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Thursday November 12 2015, @02:17PM
Quite the contrary. Rote memorization frees up the brain to do stuff other than the routine. Routine shit is what rote memorization is for. Times tables and other basic math formulas, spelling, grammar, and other stuff that doesn't change from one day to the next -- learn it once by rote memorization and you'll never need to spend another brain cell on it. Don't memorize it, and it's a chore every time you encounter the need to process that information.
As a realworld example, I tutor folks in creative writing, and I've found the Great Divide between writers for whom words come easily, and writers who struggle with every sentence, is whether or not they have that rote memorization of the rules of grammar.
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.