When I heard the Dean of UCLA Anderson mention Moonwalking with Einstein, I was caught off guard. The title was definitely unusual, and I had no idea what it was about. I knew it was about memory and psychology, and I figured it was worth a shot.
I was definitely in for a treat. The book follows the story of the author, who was a journalist in his twenties and got randomly into the "memory training circuit" and decided to give the techniques a shot by trying to see how well he could improve his memory. He ended up doing quite well: winning the US Memory Championship and making a lot of deep friendships with Mental Athletes (MAs) around the world.
Below are my main notes on the text. I definitely recommend this book to anyone interested in psychology, memory, and general displays of awesomeness and freakish nature.
Simonides developed "method of loci"
Normal people: the "curve of forgetting"
Cabbies' brains changed and reorganized to adapt to job; "neural plasticity"
K. Erickson developed "skilled memory theory"
Erickson studied experts. Found it takes 10,000 hours of training to become expert that can process enormous information in sophisticated ways and get past "magic 7" number (short-term memory limit).
"Topic" comes from Greek word for "place"
That's the root of the phrase "in the first place"
Now, we remember very little because of calendar, GPS, photo albums, speed dial, etc.
Run on autopilot at some point: "okay plateau"
Is all this a form of mental peacocking or useful?
Thanks for the synopsis of the book with notes. I, too, am enjoying the book thoroughly and making notes for myself. Just wanted to say thanks is all.
Nice work! thanks for the notes!