I'd like to invite you to close your eyes.
Prosil bi vas, da zaprete oči.
Imagine yourself standing outside the front door of your home. I'd like you to notice the color of the door, the material that it's made out of. Now visualize a pack of overweight nudists on bicycles.
Predstavljajte si, da stojite pred pragom svoje hiše. Rad bi, da ste pozorni na bravo vrat, na material, iz katerega so narejena. Sedaj si predstavljajte gručo debelih nudistov na kolesih.
(Laughter)
Tekmujejo v nudistični kolesarski tekmi
They are competing in a naked bicycle race, and they are headed straight for your front door. I need you to actually see this. They are pedaling really hard, they're sweaty, they're bouncing around a lot. And they crash straight into the front door of your home. Bicycles fly everywhere, wheels roll past you, spokes end up in awkward places. Step over the threshold of your door into your foyer, your hallway, whatever's on the other side, and appreciate the quality of the light. The light is shining down on Cookie Monster. Cookie Monster is waving at you from his perch on top of a tan horse. It's a talking horse. You can practically feel his blue fur tickling your nose. You can smell the oatmeal raisin cookie that he's about to shovel into his mouth. Walk past him. Walk past him into your living room. In your living room, in full imaginative broadband, picture Britney Spears. She is scantily clad, she's dancing on your coffee table, and she's singing "Hit Me Baby One More Time." And then, follow me into your kitchen. In your kitchen, the floor has been paved over with a yellow brick road, and out of your oven are coming towards you Dorothy, the Tin Man, the Scarecrow and the Lion from "The Wizard of Oz," hand-in-hand, skipping straight towards you.
in kolesarijo naravnost proti vašim vratom. Hočem, da to zares vidite. Gonijo na vso moč. Močno se potijo. Poskakoujejo gor in dol in se zaletijo naravnost v vaša vrata. Kolesa letijo na vse strani, gume se kotalijo mimo vas. Špice pristanejo na nenavadnih mestih. Prestopite prag hiše. Vstopite v vežo ali hodnik, kar pač je na drugi strani. Zavedajte se kakšna je svetloba. Svetloba sveti na Muppetka Cookieja. Cookie vam maha s police in sedi na svetlo rjavem konju. Gre za govorečega konja. Čutite, kako vas njegov moder kožuh žgečka po nosu. Vohate lahko piškot, ki ga drži in ga bo vsak čas pohrustal. Pojdite mimo njega v dnevno sobo. V dnevni sobi si z vso svojo širokopasovno domišlijo predstavljajte Britney Sprears. V obleki, ki komaj kaj prekriva, pleše na klubski mizici in poje eno svojih pesmi. Potem pojdite z mano v vašo kuhinjo. Tla v kuhinji so tlakovana z rumenimi tlakovci, iz pečice pa proti vam prihajajo Doroteja, Kositrni drvar, Strašilo in Lev iz Čarovnika iz Oza. Z roko v roki poskakujejo naravnost proti vam.
Okay. Open your eyes.
Dobro, odprite oči.
I want to tell you about a very bizarre contest that is held every spring in New York City. It's called the United States Memory Championship. And I had gone to cover this contest a few years back as a science journalist, expecting, I guess, that this was going to be like the Superbowl of savants. This was a bunch of guys and a few ladies, widely varying in both age and hygienic upkeep.
Rad bi vam opisal zelo bizarno tekmovanje, ki se vsako leto odvija v New Yorku. Imenuje se vseameriško tekmovanje v urjenju spomina. Nekaj let nazaj sem se tekmovanja udeležil v vlogi znanstvenega novinarja. Najbrž sem pričakoval, da bo tekmovanje podobno super tekmovanju za nadpovprečno razvite. Na tekmovanju je bilo kup moških in nekaj dam različnih let in z različno razvitim čutom za higieno.
(Laughter)
(Smeh)
They were memorizing hundreds of random numbers, looking at them just once. They were memorizing the names of dozens and dozens and dozens of strangers. They were memorizing entire poems in just a few minutes. They were competing to see who could memorize the order of a shuffled pack of playing cards the fastest. I was like, this is unbelievable. These people must be freaks of nature.
Na pamet so se učili na stotine naključnih številk, ki so jih pogledali le enkrat. Na pamet so se učili na ducate in ducate imen tujcev. V nekaj minutah so se naučili besedila celotne pesmi. Tekmovali so v tem, kdo si zapomni vrstni red premešanih igralnih kart najhitreje. Mislil sem si, da je to neverjetno, da so ti ljudje čudo narave.
And I started talking to a few of the competitors. This is a guy called Ed Cook, who had come over from England, where he had one of the best-trained memories. And I said to him, "Ed, when did you realize that you were a savant?" And Ed was like, "I'm not a savant. In fact, I have just an average memory. Everybody who competes in this contest will tell you that they have just an average memory. We've all trained ourselves to perform these utterly miraculous feats of memory using a set of ancient techniques, techniques invented 2,500 years ago in Greece, the same techniques that Cicero had used to memorize his speeches, that medieval scholars had used to memorize entire books." And I said, "Whoa. How come I never heard of this before?"
Začel sem se pogovarjati s tekmovalci. To je Ed Cook, ki prihaja iz Anglije, kjer velja za človeka z najbolj izurjenim spominom. Vprašal sem ga: "Ed, kdaj si spoznal, da si nadpovprečno razvit?" In Ed mi odgovori: "Saj nisem. Pravzaprav imam čisto povprečen spomin." Vsi, ki se udeležijo tega tekmovanja, vam bodo rekli, da imajo le povprečen spomin. Le izurili smo se, da si zapomnimo nepredstavljive količine podatkov, s pomočjo starodavnih metod. Metod, ki so jih pred 2500 leti iznašli Grki. Metode, ki je uporabljal sam Cicero, da si je zapomnil svoje govore, ki so jih srednjeveški učenjaki uporabljali, da so si zapomnili celotno vsebino knjig. Vprašal sem se: "Hej, kako da nisem še nikoli slišal o tem?"
And we were standing outside the competition hall, and Ed, who is a wonderful, brilliant, but somewhat eccentric English guy, says to me, "Josh, you're an American journalist. Do you know Britney Spears?" I'm like, "What? No. Why?" "Because I really want to teach Britney Spears how to memorize the order of a shuffled pack of playing cards on U.S. national television. It will prove to the world that anybody can do this."
Stali smo pred tekmovalno dvorano in Ed, ki je čudovit, pameten, a nekoliko ekscentričen anglež, mi reče: "Josh, ti si ameriški novinar. Ali poznaš Britney Spears?" In jaz: "Kaj? Ne. Zakaj?" "Ker bi Britney Spears res rad naučil, kako si zapomniti vrstni red zmešanih igralnih kart na ameriški državni televiziji. Tako bi svetu dokazal, da to lahko naredi vsak."
(Laughter)
(Smeh)
I was like, "Well, I'm not Britney Spears, but maybe you could teach me. I mean, you've got to start somewhere, right?" And that was the beginning of a very strange journey for me.
Rekel sem: "No, jaz nisem Britney Spears, ampak, lahko naučiš mene. Nekje moreš začeti, kajne." Tako se je zame začelo zelo nenavadno potovanje.
I ended up spending the better part of the next year not only training my memory, but also investigating it, trying to understand how it works, why it sometimes doesn't work, and what its potential might be.
Doberšen del naslednjega leta sem preživel tako, da sem treniral svoj spomin, obenem pa sem ga tudi raziskoval. Poskušal sem razumeti, kako deluje, zakaj včasih ne deluje in kakšen bi lahko bil njegov potencial. Spoznal sem vrsto zanimivih ljudi.
And I met a host of really interesting people. This is a guy called E.P. He's an amnesic who had, very possibly, the worst memory in the world. His memory was so bad, that he didn't even remember he had a memory problem, which is amazing. And he was this incredibly tragic figure, but he was a window into the extent to which our memories make us who we are.
To je E.P. Trpi za amnezijo in je po vsej verjetnosti imel najslabši spomin na svetu. Njegov spomin je bil tako slab, da si ni zapomnil niti tega, da ima težave s spominom. Bil je izredno tragičen primer, a dal mi je vpogled, v kolikšni meri nas naš spomin naredi to, kar smo.
At the other end of the spectrum, I met this guy. This is Kim Peek, he was the basis for Dustin Hoffman's character in the movie "Rain Man." We spent an afternoon together in the Salt Lake City Public Library memorizing phone books, which was scintillating.
Spoznal pa sem tudi tega človeka. To je Kim Peek, na podlagi katerega je zasnovan lik Dustina Hoffmana v filmu Rain man. Skupaj sva preživela en popoldan. V knjižnici v Salt Lake Cityju sva se na pamet učila telefonske imenike. Kar je bilo vznemerjivo.
(Laughter)
(Smeh)
And I went back and I read a whole host of memory treatises, treatises written 2,000-plus years ago in Latin, in antiquity, and then later, in the Middle Ages. And I learned a whole bunch of really interesting stuff. One of the really interesting things that I learned is that once upon a time, this idea of having a trained, disciplined, cultivated memory was not nearly so alien as it would seem to us to be today. Once upon a time, people invested in their memories, in laboriously furnishing their minds.
Vrnil sem se in prebral kup razprav o spominu. Razprav, ki so bile napisane pred 2000 in več leti. V latinščini, v antiki in potem pozneje v srednjem veku. Spoznal sem celo vrsto zelo zanimivih stvari. Ena izmed zelo zanimivih stvari je bila ta, da v tistih časih ideja o izurjenem, discipliniranem spominu, še zdaleč ni bila tako tuja, kot se nam danes zdi. Nekoč so ljudje invesitrali v svoj spomin, v neutrudno nadgrajevanje svojega spomina.
Over the last few millenia, we've invented a series of technologies -- from the alphabet, to the scroll, to the codex, the printing press, photography, the computer, the smartphone -- that have made it progressively easier and easier for us to externalize our memories, for us to essentially outsource this fundamental human capacity. These technologies have made our modern world possible, but they've also changed us. They've changed us culturally, and I would argue that they've changed us cognitively. Having little need to remember anymore, it sometimes seems like we've forgotten how.
Tekom zadnjih tisočletij smo iznašli vrsto tehnologij: od abecede do zvitka, do kodeksa, tiska, fotografije, računalnika, pametnega telefona, s katerimi smo vse lažje in lažje svoj spomin shranjevali zunaj naših glav, da smo v osnovi začeli oddajati to temeljno človeško sposobnost. Te tehnologije so omogočile naš moderen svet, obenem pa so nas spremenile. Spremenile so našo kulturo in trdil bi, da so spremenile tudi naše kognitivne navade. Ker si nam ni več treba zapomniti toliko podatkov, se včasih zdi, da smo tudi pozabili, kako.
One of the last places on Earth where you still find people passionate about this idea of a trained, disciplined, cultivated memory, is at this totally singular memory contest. It's actually not that singular, there are contests held all over the world. And I was fascinated, I wanted to know how do these guys do it.
Eden izmed zadnjih krajev na Zemlji, kjer še najdemo ljudi, ki so še navdušeni nad idejo o izurjenem, discipliniranem, kultiviranen spominu, je na tem edinem tekmovanju iz spomina. Pravzaprav zdaj ni več edino, saj se tekmovanja sedaj prirejajo po vsem svetu. Bil sem fasciniran. Želel sem vedeti, kako jim uspe. Nekaj let nazaj je skupina raziskovalcev na univerzi v Londonu
A few years back a group of researchers at University College London brought a bunch of memory champions into the lab. They wanted to know: Do these guys have brains that are somehow structurally, anatomically different from the rest of ours? The answer was no. Are they smarter than the rest of us? They gave them a bunch of cognitive tests, and the answer was: not really.
v laboratorj pripeljala skupino prvakov v urjenju spomina. Želeli so ugotoviti, ali se njihovi možgani po zgradbi in obliki razlikujejo od drugih. Ugotovili so, da se ne. Ali so pametnejši od drugih? Rešiti so morali kup kognitivnih testov in prišli so do sklepa, da niti niso.
There was, however, one really interesting and telling difference between the brains of the memory champions and the control subjects that they were comparing them to. When they put these guys in an fMRI machine, scanned their brains while they were memorizing numbers and people's faces and pictures of snowflakes, they found that the memory champions were lighting up different parts of the brain than everyone else. Of note, they were using, or they seemed to be using, a part of the brain that's involved in spatial memory and navigation. Why? And is there something that the rest of us can learn from this?
Ugotovili pa so eno zelo zanimivo razliko med možgani prvakov v urjejenju spomina in možgani oseb, s katerimi so jih primerjali. Ko so na teh osebah opravili magnetno resonanco in jim skenirali možgane, medtem ko so se na pamet učili številke, obraze in slike snežink, so odkrili, da so prvaki v urejnju spomina aktivirali druge predele možganov kot ostali. Uporabljali so, oziroma, zdelo se je, da uporabljajo predel možganov, s katerim zaznavamo prostor in ga uporabljamo pri navigaciji. Zakaj? Ali se iz tega ostali kaj naučimo?
The sport of competitive memorizing is driven by a kind of arms race where, every year, somebody comes up with a new way to remember more stuff more quickly, and then the rest of the field has to play catch-up.
Tekmovalno urjenje spomina je nekakšna tekma ena na ena. Kjer vsako leto nekdo najde nov način, kako si še hitreje zapomniš še več stvari, drugi pa ga morajo potem dohiteti.
This is my friend Ben Pridmore, three-time world memory champion. On his desk in front of him are 36 shuffled packs of playing cards that he is about to try to memorize in one hour, using a technique that he invented and he alone has mastered. He used a similar technique to memorize the precise order of 4,140 random binary digits in half an hour.
To je moj prijatelj Ben Pridmore. Trikratni prvak v urjenju spomina. Na mizi pred njim je 36 premešanih kupov kart, ki si jih skuša zapomniti v eni uri, z uporabo metode, ki jo je sam iznašel in v kateri se je sam izuril. Podobno metodo je uporabil, da si je zapomnil zaporedje 4,140 naključnih binarnih vrednosti v pol ure.
(Laughter)
Ja.
Yeah.
And while there are a whole host of ways of remembering stuff in these competitions, everything, all of the techniques that are being used, ultimately come down to a concept that psychologists refer to as "elaborative encoding."
In čeprav obstaja množica načinov, kako si zapomniti stvari na teh tekmovanjih, lahko vse tehnike, ki se uporabljajo, razložimo z enim samim konceptom, ki ga psihologi imenujejo elaborativno kodiranje.
And it's well-illustrated by a nifty paradox known as the Baker/baker paradox, which goes like this: If I tell two people to remember the same word, if I say to you, "Remember that there is a guy named Baker." That's his name. And I say to you, "Remember that there is a guy who is a baker." Okay? And I come back to you at some point later on, and I say, "Do you remember that word that I told you a while back? Do you remember what it was?" The person who was told his name is Baker is less likely to remember the same word than the person was told his job is a baker. Same word, different amount of remembering; that's weird. What's going on here?
Ta proces dobro prikazuje eleganten paradoks, poznan kot Pek/pek paradoks, ki gre takole: Če dvema osebama rečem, naj si zapomnita isto besedo, če vam rečem: "Zapomnite si, da obstaja človek, ki mu je ime Pek." Tako mu je ime. Vam pa rečem: "Zapomnite, da obstaja človek, ki je pek." Čez nekaj časa se vrnem k vam in vas vprašam: "Se spomnite tiste besede, ki sem vam jo povedal pred nekaj časa? Se spomnite, katera je bila?" Verjetnost, da si bo oseba, ki sem ji rekel, da je bilo človeku ime Pek, zapomnila enako besedo, kot oseba, ki sem ji rekel, da je oseba po poklicu pek, je manjša. Enaka beseda, drugačna količina podatkov, ki se jih je treba zapomniti. To je čudno. Kaj se dogaja?
Well, the name Baker doesn't actually mean anything to you. It is entirely untethered from all of the other memories floating around in your skull. But the common noun "baker" -- we know bakers. Bakers wear funny white hats. Bakers have flour on their hands. Bakers smell good when they come home from work. Maybe we even know a baker. And when we first hear that word, we start putting these associational hooks into it, that make it easier to fish it back out at some later date. The entire art of what is going on in these memory contests, and the entire art of remembering stuff better in everyday life, is figuring out ways to transform capital B Bakers into lower-case B bakers -- to take information that is lacking in context, in significance, in meaning, and transform it in some way, so that it becomes meaningful in the light of all the other things that you have in your mind.
Ime Pek vam pravzaprav ne pomeni nič. Pomolnoma je ločena od ostalih spominov, ki plavajo v vaših glavah. Samostalnik pek pa ... Vsi poznamo peke. Peki nosijo smešne bele kape. Peki imajo roke vse od moke. Peki dobro dišijo, ko pridejo iz službe. Mogoče celo poznamo nekoga, ki je pek. In ko prvič slišimo to besedo, začnemo "obešati" te asociacije na to besedo in tako si jo čez nekaj časa lažje prikličemo nazaj v spomin. Vsa umetnost tega, kar se dogaja na teh tekmovanijh v spominu, in vsa umetnost tega, da si stvari bolje zapomnimo v vsakdanjem življenju je, da najdemo načine, kako veliko črko v "Peku" spremenimo v malo črko. Da vzamemo informacije, ki jim primanjkuje konteksta, pomembnosti, pomena in jih spremenimo na način, da dobijo pomen, v primerjavi z vsemi ostalimi stvarmi v naših glavah.
One of the more elaborate techniques for doing this dates back 2,500 years to Ancient Greece. It came to be known as the memory palace. The story behind its creation goes like this:
Ena izmed bolj izpopolnjenjih tehnik, da to dosežemo, sega 2500 let nazaj, v obdobje antične Grčije. Imenovali so jo palača spomina. Zgodba o njenem nastanku gre takole:
There was a poet called Simonides, who was attending a banquet. He was actually the hired entertainment, because back then, if you wanted to throw a really slamming party, you didn't hire a D.J., you hired a poet. And he stands up, delivers his poem from memory, walks out the door, and at the moment he does, the banquet hall collapses. Kills everybody inside. It doesn't just kill everybody, it mangles the bodies beyond all recognition. Nobody can say who was inside, nobody can say where they were sitting. The bodies can't be properly buried. It's one tragedy compounding another. Simonides, standing outside, the sole survivor amid the wreckage, closes his eyes and has this realization, which is that in his mind's eye, he can see where each of the guests at the banquet had been sitting. And he takes the relatives by the hand, and guides them each to their loved ones amid the wreckage.
Živel je pesnik po imenu Simonides, ki se je udeležil banketa. Pravzaprav je bil najet, da je skrbel za vzdušje. V tistih časih je namreč nekdo, ki je želel prirediti res hudo zabavo, namesto DJ-ja najel pesnika. On vstane, zrecitira na pamet svojo pesem, in odide ven. V tistem trenutku se dvorana poruši in pokoplje vse pod sabo. Ne samo, da vse pobije, temveč trupla tako iznakazi, da jih ni moč več prepoznati. NIhče ne more reči, kdo je bil notri. Nihče ne more reči, kje so sedeli. Trupla ni moč pokopati, kot se spodobi. Nesrečam ni konca. Simonides, ki stoji zunaj, edini preživeli med ruševinami, zapre oči in doživi spoznanje, to, da lahko v svojih mislih vidi, kje je sedel vsak posamezni gost na zabavi. Sorodnike prime za roko in jih odvede do njihovih ljubljenih med ruševinami.
What Simonides figured out at that moment, is something that I think we all kind of intuitively know, which is that, as bad as we are at remembering names and phone numbers, and word-for-word instructions from our colleagues, we have really exceptional visual and spatial memories. If I asked you to recount the first 10 words of the story that I just told you about Simonides, chances are you would have a tough time with it. But, I would wager that if I asked you to recall who is sitting on top of a talking tan horse in your foyer right now, you would be able to see that.
Simonides je v tistem trenutko spoznal nekaj, kar vsi na nek intuitivni način vemo, da čeprav si še tako slabo zapomnimo imena in telefonske številke, in navodila naših sodelavcev, imamo zares izjemen vizualen in prostorski spomin. Če bi vas prosil, da ponovite prvih 10 besed zgodbe o Simonidesu, ki sem vam jo ravnokar povedal, bi imeli gotovo s tem težave. Ampak stavil bi, da če bi vas prosil, da se spomnite, kdo sedi na govorečem svetlo rjavem konju v vaši veži ravno v tem trenutku, bi vam to uspelo.
The idea behind the memory palace is to create this imagined edifice in your mind's eye, and populate it with images of the things that you want to remember -- the crazier, weirder, more bizarre, funnier, raunchier, stinkier the image is, the more unforgettable it's likely to be. This is advice that goes back 2,000-plus years to the earliest Latin memory treatises.
Pri palači spomina gre za to, da si v svojih mislih ustvarimo domišljisko stavbo in vanjo naselimo podobe, stvari, ki si jih želimo zapomniti. Bolj kot je podoba nora, čudaška, bizarna, smešna, spotakljiva, neokusna, večja je vrjetnost, da je ne boste pozabili. To je nasvet, ki sega več kot 2000 let nazaj, k prvim latinskim razpravam o spominu.
So how does this work? Let's say that you've been invited to TED center stage to give a speech, and you want to do it from memory, and you want to do it the way that Cicero would have done it, if he had been invited to TEDxRome 2,000 years ago.
Kako torej to deluje? Recimo, da ste bili povabljeni, da predavate na TED-ovi konferenci in govor želite podati na pamet. Želite ga podati tako, kot bi ga Cicero, če ga bi povabili na TEDxRim 2000 let nazaj.
(Laughter)
Mogoče bi si predstavljali,
What you might do is picture yourself at the front door of your house. And you'd come up with some sort of crazy, ridiculous, unforgettable image, to remind you that the first thing you want to talk about is this totally bizarre contest.
da stojite pred pragom vaše hiše in bi si izmislili neko popolnoma noro, trapasto, nepozabno podobo, da bi si zapomnili, da je prva stvar, ki jo želite omeniti, to popolnoma bizarno tekmovanje.
(Laughter)
And then you'd go inside your house, and you would see an image of Cookie Monster on top of Mister Ed. And that would remind you that you would want to then introduce your friend Ed Cook. And then you'd see an image of Britney Spears to remind you of this funny anecdote you want to tell. And you'd go into your kitchen, and the fourth topic you were going to talk about was this strange journey that you went on for a year, and you'd have some friends to help you remember that.
Potem bi vstopili v hišo in bi zagledali podobo Muppetka Cookija na vrhu gospoda Eda. To bi vas spomnilo, da želite predstaviti vašega prijatelja Eda Cooka. Potem bi zagledali podobo Britney Spears, kar bi vas spomnilo na anekdoto, ki jo želite povedati. Potem bi šli v kuhinjo in četrta tema, o kateri ste želeli govoriti, je bilo to nenavadno enoletno potovanje in imeli bi nekaj prijateljev, ki bi vam pomagali pri obujanju spomina.
This is how Roman orators memorized their speeches -- not word-for-word, which is just going to screw you up, but topic-for-topic. In fact, the phrase "topic sentence" -- that comes from the Greek word "topos," which means "place." That's a vestige of when people used to think about oratory and rhetoric in these sorts of spatial terms. The phrase "in the first place," that's like "in the first place of your memory palace."
Tako so se rimski govorci učili svojih govorov. Ne besedo za besedo, kar vas bo samo zmedlo, ampak temo za temo. Pravzaprav izraz "topic sentence" (tema) izhaja iz grške besede "topos", kar pomeni "kraj". To je zapuščina iz dni, ko so ljudje o govorništvu in retoriki razmišljali z vidika prostorskih pojmov. Fraza "na prvem mestu" je kot da bi rekel "na prvem mestu naše palače spomina". To se mi je zdelo naravnost fascinantno in sem popolnoma padel notri.
I thought this was just fascinating, and I got really into it. And I went to a few more of these memory contests, and I had this notion that I might write something longer about this subculture of competitive memorizers. But there was a problem. The problem was that a memory contest is a pathologically boring event.
Udeležil sem se še nekaj tovrstnih tekmovanj in prišel sem na idejo, da bi napisal kaj daljšega o tej subkulturi tekmovanj v urjenju spomina. Obstajal pa je problem. Težava je bila v tem, da je tekmovanje v urjenju spomina patološko dolgočasen dogodek.
(Laughter)
(Smeh)
Truly, it is like a bunch of people sitting around taking the SATs -- I mean, the most dramatic it gets is when somebody starts massaging their temples. And I'm a journalist, I need something to write about. I know that there's incredible stuff happening in these people's minds, but I don't have access to it.
V bistvu je kot da bi gledal kup ljudi med pisanjem mature. Najbolj napeto postane takrat, ko si nekdo začne masirati senca. Jaz pa sem novinar, rabim nekaj, o čemer lahko pišem. Vem, da se v glavah tekmovalcev dogajajo neverjetna stvari, a do tega nimam dostopa. Spoznal sem, da moram, če želim povedati to zgodbo,
And I realized, if I was going to tell this story, I needed to walk in their shoes a little bit. And so I started trying to spend 15 or 20 minutes every morning, before I sat down with my New York Times, just trying to remember something. Maybe it was a poem, maybe it was names from an old yearbook that I bought at a flea market. And I found that this was shockingly fun. I never would have expected that. It was fun because this is actually not about training your memory. What you're doing, is you're trying to get better and better at creating, at dreaming up, these utterly ludicrous, raunchy, hilarious, and hopefully unforgettable images in your mind's eye. And I got pretty into it.
nekaj časa preživeti v njihovi koži. Tako sem vsako jutro poskusil nameniti 15 do 20 minut, preden sem v roke prijel časopis, temu, da sem si nekaj zapomnil. Mogoče je bila to pesem. Mogoče so bila to imena iz starega šolskega almanaha, ki sem ga kupil na boljšaku. Spoznal sem, da je začuda zabavno. Tega ne bi nikoli pričakoval. Bilo je zabavno, ker v bistvu ni šlo za urjenje spomina. Postati poskušaš vedno boljši in boljši pri ustvarjanju, izmišljanju teh naravnost nesmiselnih, spotakljivih, smešnih in upam da nepozabnih podob v svojih mislih. Stvar me je res pritegnila.
This is me wearing my standard competitive memorizer's training kit.
To sem jaz, na glavi pa imam standardno napravo za tekmovalno urjenje spomina.
(Laughter)
It's a pair of earmuffs and a set of safety goggles that have been masked over except for two small pinholes, because distraction is the competitive memorizer's greatest enemy.
Glušnike in varnostna očala, ki sem jih popolnoma zatemnil, pustil sem le dve majhni odprtini, saj je dekoncentracija najhujši sovražnik tekmovalca v urjenju spomina.
I ended up coming back to that same contest that I had covered a year earlier, and I had this notion that I might enter it, sort of as an experiment in participatory journalism. It'd make, I thought, maybe a nice epilogue to all my research. Problem was, the experiment went haywire. I won the contest --
Vrnil sem se na isto tekmovanje, s katerega sem leto prej poročal. Zamislil sem si, da bi se ga udeležil. Bil bi nekakšen poskus participativnega novinarstva. Mislil sem si, da bi bil to posrečen epilog mojim raziskavam. Težava je bila v tem, da je šel poskus čez vse meje. Na tekmovanju sem zmagal,
(Laughter)
česar nisem načrtoval.
which really wasn't supposed to happen.
(Aplavz)
(Applause)
Lepo je,
Now, it is nice to be able to memorize speeches and phone numbers and shopping lists, but it's actually kind of beside the point. These are just tricks. They work because they're based on some pretty basic principles about how our brains work. And you don't have to be building memory palaces or memorizing packs of playing cards to benefit from a little bit of insight about how your mind works.
da si lahko zapomniš govore in telefonske številke in nakupovalne sezname, a smisel ni v tem. To so le triki. Triki, ki delujejo, ker temeljijo na bolj ali manj osnovnih principih delovanja naših možganov. Ni vam potrebno graditi palač spomina, ali si zapomniti kupov kart, da potegnemo nekaj zase iz vpogleda v
We often talk about people with great memories as though it were some sort of an innate gift, but that is not the case. Great memories are learned. At the most basic level, we remember when we pay attention. We remember when we are deeply engaged. We remember when we are able to take a piece of information and experience, and figure out why it is meaningful to us, why it is significant, why it's colorful, when we're able to transform it in some way that makes sense in the light of all of the other things floating around in our minds, when we're able to transform Bakers into bakers.
delovanje naših možganov. O ljudeh z odličnim spominom pogosto govorimo, kot da jim je bil položen v zibelko, a to ne drži. Odličen spomin se pridobi. Na najbolj osnovni stopnji, zapomnimo si takrat, ko smo pozorni. Zapomnimo si, ko se z nečim intenzivno ukvarjamo. Zapomnimo si takrat, ko smo zmožni vzeti informacijo ali izkušnjo in ugotoviti, zakaj je za nas pomembna. Zakaj je bistvena, zakaj je barvna. Ko smo jo sposobni preoblikovati na način, da ima smisel v primerjavi z vsemi ostalimi stvarmi v naši glavi, ko smo zmožni preoblikovati Peke v peke.
The memory palace, these memory techniques -- they're just shortcuts. In fact, they're not even really shortcuts. They work because they make you work. They force a kind of depth of processing, a kind of mindfulness, that most of us don't normally walk around exercising. But there actually are no shortcuts. This is how stuff is made memorable.
Palača spomina, te miselne tehnike, so le bližnjice. Pravzaprav v resnici niso bližnjice. Delujejo zato, ker vas pripravijo, da delujete. Spodbujajo nenkakšno poglobljeno procesiranje, nekakšen tok misli, ki ga večina ponavadi ne prakticira. V resnici to niso bližnjice. Na ta način stvari postanejo nepozabne.
And I think if there's one thing that I want to leave you with, it's what E.P., the amnesic who couldn't even remember he had a memory problem, left me with, which is the notion that our lives are the sum of our memories. How much are we willing to lose from our already short lives, by losing ourselves in our Blackberries, our iPhones, by not paying attention to the human being across from us who is talking with us, by being so lazy that we're not willing to process deeply?
Če izpostavim eno stvar, ki jo danes želim deliti z vami, je to tisto, kar je E.P., ki trpi za amnezijo in se ne spominja niti tega, da ima težave s spominom, zapustil meni. Zavedanje, da je naše življenje skupek naših spominov. Koliko smo pripravljeni izgubiti v naših, že tako kratkih, življenjih, s tem, da se izgubljamo v naših blackberryjih, i-phonih, s tem, da ne posvečamo pozornosti ljudem okoli nas, ki se z nami pogovarjajo, s tem, da smo tako leni, da se nam ne da poglobljeno procesirati?
I learned firsthand that there are incredible memory capacities latent in all of us. But if you want to live a memorable life, you have to be the kind of person who remembers to remember.
Iz prve roke sem se naučil, da so neverjetne miselne sposobnosti skrite prav v vsakem izmed nas. A če želimo živeti nepozabno življenje, moramo biti oseba, ki si zapomni, da si zapomni.
Thank you.
Hvala.
(Applause)