None of these are incorporated in molecular biology books and publications that I can find. But the answer was still there: visualize what I read. But not just visualize like the little diagrams of cellular interactions books usually give you – like stupid, over-the-top, Hollywood-status visualization. I had to make it dramatic. I had to mentally reconstruct the biology of a cell in massive, fast, and explosive terms.
I’m having the same problem with molecular biology right now, and I agree with the track you’re taking. The issue seems to be the large amount of structure totally devoid of any semantic cues. For example, a typical textbook paragraph might read:
JS-154 is one of five metabolic products of netamine; however, the enzyme that produces it is unknown. It is manufactured in cells in the far rostral region of of the cerebrum, but after binding with a leukocynoid it takes a role in maintaining the blood-brain barrier—in particular guiding the movements of lipid molecules.
I find I can read paragraphs like this five or six times, write them on flashcards, enter them into Anki, and my brain still refuses to understand or remember them after weeks of trying.
On the other hand, my brain easily remembers vastly more complicated structures when they’re loaded with human-accessible meaning. For example, just by casually reading the Game of Thrones series, I know an extremely intricate web of genealogies, alliances, locations, journeys, battlesites, et cetera. Byte for byte, an average Game of Thrones reader/viewer probably has as much Game of Thrones information as a neuroscience Ph.D has molecular biology information, but getting the neuroscience info is still a thousand times harder.
Which is interesting, because it seems like it should be possible exploit isomorphisms between the two areas. For example, the hideous unmemorizable paragraph above is structurally identical to (very minor spoilers) :
Jon Snow is one of five children of Ned Stark; however, his mother is unknown. He was born in a castle in the far northern regions of Westeros, but after binding with a white wolf companion he took a role in maintaining the Wall—in particular serving as mentor to his obese friend Samwell.
This makes me wonder if it would be possible to produce a story as enjoyable as Game of Thrones which was actually isomorphic to the most important pathways in molecular biology. So that you could pick up a moderately engaging fantasy book—it wouldn’t have to be perfect—read through it in a day or two, and then it ends with “By the way, guess what, you now know everything ever discovered about carbohydrate metabolism”. And then there’s a little glossary in the back with translations about as complicated as “Jon Snow = JS-154″ or “the Wall = the blood-brain barrier”. I don’t think this could replace a traditional textbook, but it could sure as heck supplement it.
This would be very hard to do correctly, but I’d love to see someone try, so much so that it’s on my list of things to attempt myself if I ever get an unexpectedly large amount of free time.
Seems like an extension to memory palace idea, probably never attempted due to the complexity of maintaining the isomorphism at that scale.
One interesting thing to try is to find a professor of molecular biology who really knows the stuff and see what kind of mental structures they have built up to maintain it. “What does JS-154 remind you of”? Etc.
if I ever get an unexpectedly large amount of free time
Don’t tempt your fans into getting you some jail time :)
There is an animated series for children aimed at explaining the human body which personifies bacteria, viruses, etc. Anyone interested in pursuing your idea may want to pick up techniques from the show:
Awesome. I’m going to try this on something (short).
Random thoughts:
if you are describing a static system, how to represent character arcs? Can a leukocynoid become king?
there’ll be hundreds and hundreds of characters. But I suppose that’s still better than hundreds and hundreds of random meaningless pieces of jargon.
this is very like other kinds of constrained writing http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constrained_writing That some of those things are even possible makes me think this is more likely than you might imagine at first glance.
I like the idea but fear that almost any subject worth learning would, when put in this format, have two major flaws:
1) Could deeply mislead people and corrupt their understandings of the actual material in difficult to understand (meaning difficult to detect and correct later) ways because of unintentional cultural relations. For example in your fantasy novel idea, whatever thoughts someone might attach to the relations between kings and knights might be deeply ingrained from childhood and quite a bit different than what is intended by the author of the new fantasy novel, meaning the reader could add in all sorts of incorrect ideas of their own.
2) Even though the intention is to learn the same amount of material (in this case molecular biology) by attaching it to a story, I think there is a good chance that you’re actually just effectively doubling the load of material. Not only do you have to memorize the story, but then memorize the connections. Imagine learning this way and revisiting in two years, do you study the story or the material? Both? You’ve just doubled the amount of information you need to complete the subject in your head.
Take the ravenous grey wolf that on account of his name is subjected to bellicose Mars, but by birth is a child of old Saturn, and that lives in the valleys and mountains of the world and is possessed of great hunger. Throw the king’s body before him that he may have his nourishment from it. And when he was devoured the king, then make a great fire and throw the wolf into it so that he burns up entirely; thus will the king be redeemed.
That’s some instructions by Basil Valentine, from 1602. Principe explains that this is a real experiment: the king is gold; the wolf is melted stibnite, or antimony ore. A 14-karat gold ring is 58% gold, 42% copper. Throw it in melted stibnite and it dissolves. The copper turns into a sulfide, while the gold and antimony meld together and sink to the bottom, where they can be easily retrieved. Roast this mixture and the antimony evaporates, leaving you with pure gold. So this is an obfuscated but correct recipe for purifying gold.
You’ve come to an example of perhaps one of the main aspects of the future of communication. Metaphors of useful for a lot of reasons, but one of these reasons is to decrease burden on cognitive resources by drawing an isomorphism with something already understood (to cut out the time and energy necessary to explain the structure from scratch), or by introducing an isomorphism with something that’s easier to remember because of how the human mind works (such as your example, where you point out that things involving human meaning and intention are easier to remember).
People have been using metaphors for these and other reasons for a very long time, but in most cases people have been stuck with picking out of the already-existing landscape of things to draw isomorphisms from. This is difficult because these other things were not introduced into the thought landscape among the population for the purpose of being made into metaphors—they just happen to be there. But what you’re talking about is removing this limitation, and essentially creating a new structure, for the purpose of then drawing a metaphor with it. This means creating a metaphor by design, rather than having to pick one from the wild.
Take it a step further, and move outside the paradigm of being constrained to just words for explaining things—make a bit more technological—and you realize one of the most promising avenues in the future will be to create enjoyable video games with worlds of their own, and rules of their own, for the purpose of later drawing metaphors from this man-made landscape. The problem of having to draw only from already-existing things for metaphors is gone. You can design worlds for the purpose of making metaphors out of pieces of them later on.
Few things I’ve stumbled onto seem to have the same potential as this. I wouldn’t be surprised if this is literally at the center of the future of communication. Once video games are easier to make, and the average ambitious individual can work on their own video game, just as any ambitious person can write a novel, this may end up one of the most effective forms of communication—building an enjoyable virtual world for people to play through, with the ending being a re-labeling of all the components, revealing their theory on something in an extremely clear, effective, efficient manner.
I’m having the same problem with molecular biology right now, and I agree with the track you’re taking. The issue seems to be the large amount of structure totally devoid of any semantic cues. For example, a typical textbook paragraph might read:
JS-154 is one of five metabolic products of netamine; however, the enzyme that produces it is unknown. It is manufactured in cells in the far rostral region of of the cerebrum, but after binding with a leukocynoid it takes a role in maintaining the blood-brain barrier—in particular guiding the movements of lipid molecules.
I find I can read paragraphs like this five or six times, write them on flashcards, enter them into Anki, and my brain still refuses to understand or remember them after weeks of trying.
On the other hand, my brain easily remembers vastly more complicated structures when they’re loaded with human-accessible meaning. For example, just by casually reading the Game of Thrones series, I know an extremely intricate web of genealogies, alliances, locations, journeys, battlesites, et cetera. Byte for byte, an average Game of Thrones reader/viewer probably has as much Game of Thrones information as a neuroscience Ph.D has molecular biology information, but getting the neuroscience info is still a thousand times harder.
Which is interesting, because it seems like it should be possible exploit isomorphisms between the two areas. For example, the hideous unmemorizable paragraph above is structurally identical to (very minor spoilers) :
Jon Snow is one of five children of Ned Stark; however, his mother is unknown. He was born in a castle in the far northern regions of Westeros, but after binding with a white wolf companion he took a role in maintaining the Wall—in particular serving as mentor to his obese friend Samwell.
This makes me wonder if it would be possible to produce a story as enjoyable as Game of Thrones which was actually isomorphic to the most important pathways in molecular biology. So that you could pick up a moderately engaging fantasy book—it wouldn’t have to be perfect—read through it in a day or two, and then it ends with “By the way, guess what, you now know everything ever discovered about carbohydrate metabolism”. And then there’s a little glossary in the back with translations about as complicated as “Jon Snow = JS-154″ or “the Wall = the blood-brain barrier”. I don’t think this could replace a traditional textbook, but it could sure as heck supplement it.
This would be very hard to do correctly, but I’d love to see someone try, so much so that it’s on my list of things to attempt myself if I ever get an unexpectedly large amount of free time.
Seems like an extension to memory palace idea, probably never attempted due to the complexity of maintaining the isomorphism at that scale.
One interesting thing to try is to find a professor of molecular biology who really knows the stuff and see what kind of mental structures they have built up to maintain it. “What does JS-154 remind you of”? Etc.
Don’t tempt your fans into getting you some jail time :)
There is an animated series for children aimed at explaining the human body which personifies bacteria, viruses, etc. Anyone interested in pursuing your idea may want to pick up techniques from the show:
Wikipedia article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Once_Upon_a_Time..._Life
Example: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LIyvrcHnriE&t=1m11s
Yvain posted a follow-up post, “Extreme Mnemonics”, on his own blog. Readers have posted many comments.
Awesome. I’m going to try this on something (short).
Random thoughts:
if you are describing a static system, how to represent character arcs? Can a leukocynoid become king?
there’ll be hundreds and hundreds of characters. But I suppose that’s still better than hundreds and hundreds of random meaningless pieces of jargon.
this is very like other kinds of constrained writing http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constrained_writing That some of those things are even possible makes me think this is more likely than you might imagine at first glance.
I like the idea but fear that almost any subject worth learning would, when put in this format, have two major flaws:
1) Could deeply mislead people and corrupt their understandings of the actual material in difficult to understand (meaning difficult to detect and correct later) ways because of unintentional cultural relations. For example in your fantasy novel idea, whatever thoughts someone might attach to the relations between kings and knights might be deeply ingrained from childhood and quite a bit different than what is intended by the author of the new fantasy novel, meaning the reader could add in all sorts of incorrect ideas of their own.
2) Even though the intention is to learn the same amount of material (in this case molecular biology) by attaching it to a story, I think there is a good chance that you’re actually just effectively doubling the load of material. Not only do you have to memorize the story, but then memorize the connections. Imagine learning this way and revisiting in two years, do you study the story or the material? Both? You’ve just doubled the amount of information you need to complete the subject in your head.
Medieval alchemists might have had something like this:
You’ve come to an example of perhaps one of the main aspects of the future of communication. Metaphors of useful for a lot of reasons, but one of these reasons is to decrease burden on cognitive resources by drawing an isomorphism with something already understood (to cut out the time and energy necessary to explain the structure from scratch), or by introducing an isomorphism with something that’s easier to remember because of how the human mind works (such as your example, where you point out that things involving human meaning and intention are easier to remember).
People have been using metaphors for these and other reasons for a very long time, but in most cases people have been stuck with picking out of the already-existing landscape of things to draw isomorphisms from. This is difficult because these other things were not introduced into the thought landscape among the population for the purpose of being made into metaphors—they just happen to be there. But what you’re talking about is removing this limitation, and essentially creating a new structure, for the purpose of then drawing a metaphor with it. This means creating a metaphor by design, rather than having to pick one from the wild.
Take it a step further, and move outside the paradigm of being constrained to just words for explaining things—make a bit more technological—and you realize one of the most promising avenues in the future will be to create enjoyable video games with worlds of their own, and rules of their own, for the purpose of later drawing metaphors from this man-made landscape. The problem of having to draw only from already-existing things for metaphors is gone. You can design worlds for the purpose of making metaphors out of pieces of them later on.
Few things I’ve stumbled onto seem to have the same potential as this. I wouldn’t be surprised if this is literally at the center of the future of communication. Once video games are easier to make, and the average ambitious individual can work on their own video game, just as any ambitious person can write a novel, this may end up one of the most effective forms of communication—building an enjoyable virtual world for people to play through, with the ending being a re-labeling of all the components, revealing their theory on something in an extremely clear, effective, efficient manner.