There are more and less labor-intensive ways to handle rote memorization.
When I started doing a lot of amateur theatre, I developed the practice of recording my lines on my phone and listening to them over and over as a background task, which allowed me to learn them with relatively little effort. It’s a very inefficient way to learn lines if I’m measuring time-spent, but I would much rather spend three times as long memorizing lines if I can play video games or go on long walks or do push-ups while I’m doing it.
Given how many people easily memorize the lyrics of popular music and commercial jingles without even meaning to, I suspect I could make it even less effortful by setting them to music, though of course that would create some difficulties when it came time to deliver the lines… that would work better for something I wanted to memorize but not necessarily declaim.
It and the Method of Loci were the main memorization methods, from what I know of i.e. Ancient Greece. And measured by total duration of recital of content memorized, I doubt we have that much larger stores of information considered important worth memorizing.
And measured by total duration of recital of content memorized, I doubt we have that much larger stores of information considered important worth memorizing.
How would you estimate something like that? Who’s we? What kinds of people are you comparing?
I’m comparing a modern generalist to Ancient Greek professional thing-knowers, which is to say their court bards, who memorized weeks length of poetry and song.
Now that I think more carefully, I agree that any estimation is probably far off the mark.
There are more and less labor-intensive ways to handle rote memorization.
When I started doing a lot of amateur theatre, I developed the practice of recording my lines on my phone and listening to them over and over as a background task, which allowed me to learn them with relatively little effort. It’s a very inefficient way to learn lines if I’m measuring time-spent, but I would much rather spend three times as long memorizing lines if I can play video games or go on long walks or do push-ups while I’m doing it.
Given how many people easily memorize the lyrics of popular music and commercial jingles without even meaning to, I suspect I could make it even less effortful by setting them to music, though of course that would create some difficulties when it came time to deliver the lines… that would work better for something I wanted to memorize but not necessarily declaim.
I never quite made this connection, not sure why. Thanks.
Might stop working if you set enough memories to music. Perhaps music works for memorization because it’s rare?
Well, in the days before writing, setting things to music was the standard way of memorizing things.
True, but perhaps it wasn’t the only one, and there were fewer things to memorize.
It and the Method of Loci were the main memorization methods, from what I know of i.e. Ancient Greece. And measured by total duration of recital of content memorized, I doubt we have that much larger stores of information considered important worth memorizing.
How would you estimate something like that? Who’s we? What kinds of people are you comparing?
I’m comparing a modern generalist to Ancient Greek professional thing-knowers, which is to say their court bards, who memorized weeks length of poetry and song.
Now that I think more carefully, I agree that any estimation is probably far off the mark.