MIND HACKING 101Hacking Into Your Brain’s Permanent Storage

Tiago Silva

2010@tiagosilva

tsilva@hive.pt

Mind Hacking 101An (Un)Healthy Obsession

. Had to learn a lot of boring stuff

. Refused to, it was just too boring

. Exam was 50% theory, 50% practical

. Solution: hammer theory and pray

. Problem: how to memorize 200 pages

. Hint: Guinness World of Records

Mind Hacking 101Guiness World of Records

. Ben Pridmore can memorize:

- 930 binary digits in 5 minutes

- 4140 binary digits in 30 minutes

- 364 playing cards in 10 minutes

- 1404 playing cards in 60 minutes

. There had to be a trick

. There was a trick

. I learned the trick, and passed... barely...

Mind Hacking 101Self-Assessment

1. Chicken2. Mountain3. Barbara Streisand4. Book5. Cigar

6. Computer7. Baseball Bat8. Snake9.Car10. Apple

Mind Hacking 101Keep in Mind

. We’re good at storing information

. We suck at retrieving information

. This limitation can be hacked

. Repetition sucks, is boring, and unreliable

. Use all your senses

. Make a hollywood mental movie

. Embed emotions

. Use stupidity

Encoding

Storage amd retrieval

. Sequential access

. Create a storyline

. Make each item an actor

. Make each actor interact with the next

. Keep it stupid!

Mind Hacking 101The Link System

. Direct access

. Link System is like a Tape

. Peg System is like RAM

Mind Hacking 101The Peg System

1 - Tree (one trunk)2 - Light Switch (on/off)3 - Stool (three legs)4 - Car (four doors)5 - Hand (five fingers)

6 - Revolver (six bullets)7 - Dice (lucky number seven)8 - Skate (it rhymes)9 - Cat (nine lives)10 - Bowling (10 pins)

. Use phonems to turn numbers into words

. Extend the Peg System

. Memorize any number

Mind Hacking 101The Major System

0 - S, Z1 - T, D2 - N3 - M4 - R

15 = T - L = TaiL25 = N - L = NaiL30 = M - S = MouSe38 = M - V = MoVie

5 - L6 - SH, J7 - K, G8 - F, V9 - P, B

Mind Hacking 101Übergeekness

=314 = MTR = MoToR159 = TLP = TuLiP26 = NJ = NuDGe53 = LM = LaMa58 = LV = LaVa...

3.141592653589793238462643383279502

. Memorize playing cards

. Drive Casinos bankrupt (I wish...)

. Encode cards with Major System

. Apply Link System

. Apply Peg System

. Layout Pegs spatially

Mind Hacking 101Breaking the Bank

2 of Clubs = C2 = CaN5 of Diamonds = D5 = DoLL8 of Hearts = H8 = HiVe3 of Spades = S3 = SaM

. Software that knows what you forgot

. Make a database with all you knowledge

. Make mini-daily reviews

. Result: you know everything

Mind Hacking 101Remembering Everything

. Supermemo (horrible interface)

. Mnemosyne (open source but basic)

. Fullrecall (uses neural network for nice predictions)

. Nihonaid (mine, discontinued, but still in sourceforge)

Mind Hacking 101Memory Tracking Systems

. Software-as-a-Service Memory Tracker

. As easy as it can be

. Generic: works for everything

. Uses crowdsourcing to weed out bad content

. Manages motivation

Mind Hacking 101Unforgetter

Q&A“there is no such thing

as dumb questions, only weird presentations”

Tiago Silvatsilva@hive.pt