#411 Ed Cooke - Memory & The Future of Human Intelligence

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1:00Spring weekends are my favorite. The artistful blooms, the grill is fired up and the family gathers around the patio table. Before everyone arrives, I stop by my local total wine and more to pick up a few bottles of wine, usually a cabernet I already love and sometimes a new fine to share. Find what you love and love what you find only at TotalWine and More. Visit TotalWine.com to learn more. Spirits not sold in Virginia and North Carolina. Drink responsibly B-21. What's up, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome back to Real Talk with Zubi. We've got a brilliant episode for you here today. We are going to be talking to someone who knows a lot about the mind and memory. He is a world memory champion. He's an entrepreneur and the co-founder of Mind Max. And this is Ed Cook. Welcome to the show. Thanks so much for having me on Zubi. Awesome. Ed, I've done a brief intro there. But for my audience who don't know who you are, please introduce yourself. So I'm Ed and I

2:04became fascinated with the mind quite early in life. And through a kind of curious incident when I was 18, wound up in hospital and wound up getting really into memory techniques. And so I was stuck in hospital for three months. I had this random illness. And it introduced me through a book to the arts of memory, which became a kind of defining interest of mind. So I kind of trained up in memory. Simultaneously, I was studying cognitive science, psychology, philosophy. Still very interested in the mind. But wound up, as you mentioned, competing in the world, memory championships. And I'm really kind of exploring all the ways in which you can take your mind to the next level. After that, I founded a language learning app called Memorize, which grew to, you know, tremendous scale. I think we reached 80 million people, one of the big language learning apps of the 2010s. And yeah, now I'm on a new adventure with my max. And trying to kind of create a tool which can leverage AI

3:04to amplify human genius in the age of AI, when there were a lot of forces pushing us in a different direction. I hear that. So most people when they're stuck in hospital, they don't decide I'm going to learn to master memory techniques. What was it in you or what was the precursor to that that made you even want to do that? So, I mean, the funny thing about it was the illness I had, which by the way was transient, it's all the past now. It was called reactive arthritis. Arthritis literally means the swelling of joints, anyitis is a sweating. And so, you know, I was, I had juvenile arthritis, but I was in a ward with lots of 80-year-olds. And they would have the same conversation day in, day out. And it really got me thinking about how memory is much more than like a storehouse for the mind. It's really the basis of your thought, your imagination, your interests and so on. And it was kind of that was the provocation. And, you know, it was that time of life, you know, 18 years old, your friends are doing very exciting things, you know, motor biking around India or falling in love

4:05or getting their first interesting job or whatever it is. And so, I was quite motivated. I was like, I really want to do something useful in my time. And yeah, someone bought me a book, which was like by Seven Times World Memory Champion, Dominico Brian. And it was quite funny because I had a sticker on it, saying, now eight times world memory champion. And I was like, oh, right, eighth time. Well, you know, obviously he's serious. Somehow that made the difference. And so, that's what led me to practicing. There's also a little bit of an element of it, which is that it was fun to, it was fun to have something enthralling to practice. And it's quite spectacular when you first get into, I think any kind of mental training, but, you know, memory techniques as well. How it kind of, it's actually an incredible imaginative journey, not just because of the change it can make in you, but also because the actual techniques are techniques of imagination. This isn't for everyone. Veritas' wealth management doesn't promise overnight success, and they don't work with people chasing shortcuts.

5:05They work with the few, the discipline. Those who value wisdom over hype and who know real progress takes time. Veritas is a boutique wealth management firm, a small tight-knit team that's been around for nearly two decades. They manage over half a billion dollars in assets, helping families, business owners, and retirees build real financial freedom. They're approaches simple, biblically grounded, time-tested, and focused on the long game. If that's the wisdom you're after, then it might be time for a conversation. Visit VeritasAlaska.com. That's V-E-R-I-T-A-S-Alaska.com. To learn more and schedule a call, Veritas is based out of Alaska, but they serve clients across all 50 states. One more time that's VeritasAlaska.com. Visit them today and schedule a call. Prior to this time, were you someone who you would have described yourself as having a good memory, a bad memory, average? Yeah, I probably would have described myself as having a pretty good memory. I've always had a bit of a satisfaction in learning things. When I was much younger,

6:11I did sort of root-memorize 70 digits of pi or something as a kid. But in the classes I was in, there were people who would retain words better than me. I wasn't sort of like a spectacular. What I did have was always like a pleasure in thinking and an interest in how thinking works. So I was always very kind of conscious of how association works in my mind. And I always took great pleasure from kind of understanding things in different ways. And that I think is quite a good foundation for both philosophy and memory. Okay, tell me a little bit more about the journey from being in the hospital, being stuck there for a couple of months to becoming a world memory champion. So the hospital was the beginning. And I was partially motivated, by the way, by the way, impressing the nurses, because when I got to the point where I could memorize a pack of cards, they kind of would flock around the bed.

7:11How long did that take to get there? That took me maybe three weeks. Okay. So it's very fast. That's one of the fun things about these techniques, that they exploit natural abilities you have. And it remained a hobby for two or three years. While I was at university, I was studying philosophy and psychology. And then at some point, I guess it was kind of like the early days of the consumer. I was kind of researching. I've discovered about the world memory championships, which I was something I'd not heard about. And I discovered that I discovered the statistics, the people who competed at the top. And I remember boasting to a housemate. I was like, Abby, I think I could win the world memory. And she was like, go and try. So that's what I did. I ended up in Bahrain. I think I came 10th that year. And I discovered this is incredible community of people who kind of exchange techniques and so on and so forth. So I kind of carried that out. Out of curiosity, how many people compete? And is it totally open or are there different categories based on age or anything like that? It's totally open.

8:12You know, it's a wonderful mixture of geeks more on the world, Germans, Chinese people, English people, etc. And so, and you know, it is the world's worst spectator sport. I like to say, you know, like it's like, you know, there's like 200 people in a room, like memorizing packs of cards simultaneously. And then, you know, after they've done that for an hour, then they sit down for two hours, reordering packs of cards into those orders, etc. So it's a, it's a nutty thing. But what's so interesting about it is that it's a shared community of applied learning. So people are kind of exchanging techniques. And if you look at the world records from between 1990 and 2020, you know, the world record for pack of cards in 1990 was like five minutes. And today, it's sort of like 20 seconds or something like this. The memory is a whole, yeah. And so it's like this continuous optimization. You know, I think it can go too far. But yeah, I wound up winning a bunch of medals over the few years that I kind of was at these championships. But in a sense, like the interesting story is not a tool, my, you know,

9:13accomplishment, so ability, um, it's that this stuff is teachable. And when I, you know, I went to the United States memory championship with an Austrian memory friend of mine, um, in 2006 or 2007. And, um, and I won that championship by about a factor of two, um, compared to all the Americans then competing. And, um, obviously, like people are like, oh, you're really cool. You've got an amazing memory and this journalist can't kind of approach me. I could Joshua Fur and he was like, um, uh, you know, you, this is incredible. You must be a genius. I was like, no, no, not at all. I'm a sort of bumbling, forgetful person like anybody else. I can teach you. And so then over the next year, I then taught him and the following year, he then won the U.S. memory championships, uh, even broke a couple of records and uh, subsequently wrote this book, Moonwalking with Einstein, which is kind of a memoir, which by the way ended up on Bill Gates's books of the year. Oh, really? I'm interested. It's just quite funny. Yeah. Um, I know that we chose a museus maybe because it's kind of, it's full of kind of youthful, um, anecdotes from my life, you know, um, about how, you know, I used to apply

10:16memory techniques to organizing parties and this sort of thing. Anyway, long story short, you know, I taught him many years and that's how fast it can happen and he became a champion. Thanks for watching this video. If you haven't already, make sure you subscribe to the channel for more full real talk with Zubi podcasts and clips. Thank you. So he went from, um, complete, just normal Joe to within one year. Yeah, I mean, he's becoming like a, you know, a very smart, yet educated, interesting, but basically an ordinary Joe when it comes to memory. Yeah. Um, and, um, and, and the reason that that is possible, well, you know, you couldn't do that on the violin. So become a concert violinist in a year is that memory techniques exploit the natural abilities of the brain. And so we have an incredible mind for, um, imagining spaces and visualizing things and connecting things associatively. And we actually have a natively incredible ability with memory. Um, for example, like, um, you know, you're average like 12 year old in England. If you kind of, uh, if they're into football, the amount of individual facts they know about

11:19football is absolutely spectacular. Um, and so most people have domains in their life, which, which they're passionate about, which they're interested in, where they'll know incredible amounts, but not even notice that they know that much. Yeah. And a lot of memory techniques is like taking that native gift and pointing it at the things that you want to be able to learn. Yeah. And what do these competitions look like? Well, I mean, there's 10 events, um, there's like, um, names and faces, randomness of words, binary numbers, numbers, cards, cards in an hour, different lengths, different things you got to learn, um, abstract objects, where they just have these like blobs on a piece of paper and you got to like, remember them. Anyway, so they, they try to test a wide range of like aspects of memory, if you like. Okay. Um, the, um, the challenge is that, um, um, it tends to be passed toward sequences. Okay. Because there's sort of easy things to test at scale. So, um, and then, you know, you do these events and, you know, I never won the whole thing, but I won an individual event, et cetera. Um, and, um, yeah, you do these events and you, um, uh, and it's like a three day,

12:22it's a three day competition that every day you're looking at everyone else's results, you're fighting your way out the leaderboard. It's very, it's very entertaining, um, for the people participating, not those watching here. Is there a live audience? Um, you know, there's a kind of a few movies looking around, uh, a couple of family members. Um, and actually, I think, you know, in the recent years, in the last 10 years, there've been some innovations like, you know, they've tried to do these internet-based competitions with a TV angle, uh, where everything's digitized and, you know, you get the feedback much faster, et cetera. Um, and so I think that does exist, but, you know, it's a, okay. I'm just curious. I'm trying to, I'm trying to imagine the room. Yeah. Of a world. It looks like an example. Okay. It looks like an example. So, um, I mean, I was always trying to like, um, you know, um, spice it up by establishing absurd rivalries with my kind of, there was a guy called Dr. Gunter Kasten, who's kind of my rival. Uh, he was this ex-German athlete who was like unbelievably epic, um, at binary numbers. Okay. And he'd wear like glasses, which were like painted black on the inside, were just two pinholes, and he'd just be all about the numbers.

13:25Just he didn't want any information, entering his brain, etc. Anyway, I used to kind of have this like semi-comic rivalry where I'd be like, yeah, Gunter, I'm going to take you down this year. You don't have the, you know, you can't hold, you know, you can't handle the heat. I'm going to knock you off your peg, et cetera. And he'd be like, you're a cook. I feel like destroy you. You know, et cetera. Which he normally did. Um, I remember one year, I trained all summer to get really good at memorizing binary numbers. And I think I got to the point where, anyway, I think I memorized 2,300 ones and zeros and sequence in 30 minutes. Okay. And it came out, and then he was like, he had 2,700, he was like, yeah. It sounds like Rocky for nerds. Yeah, yeah. And that was what I thought was kind of fun about it. Is that there's a sort of, there's an element of like, um, you know, extreme training involved. What's the male female split? I can imagine, but I don't want to be a something. Um, funny enough. I mean, it's not as, um, you know, it's actually, I mean, probably a 70-30 or something. Okay. But back in my day, you know, one of the, you know, there was a girl who hard to even practice

14:25who came like second. And I think there's that right now, there's a Mongolian girl who's got some, um, who, some world records. So it's not, it's not entirely a sort of male geeky activity. Okay, interesting. So most people, I think, assume they don't have good memories. Yeah. Because we tend to forget names. Sure. Not, not so often forget faces. I think people remember faces pretty well, but tend to forget names, especially nowadays, forget phone numbers, forget directions when driving around. In fact, first question on, on this topic, I want to drill into this a little bit. But do you think that human memory is declining? In this age of GPS and, uh, smartphones and now AI and all these tools, which mean we don't need to remember as much as we used to, because historically, lots of stuff was just passed down. Well, there's own, I mean, in short, yes and no.

15:27I mean, there's been an incredible history of the outsourcing of human cognition to external devices. And there's a wonderful moment in, um, in, uh, Plato's, Fajas where he recounts, Socrates complaining about the invention of the book. And he's like, you know, you're not going to know anything. He's going to pretend to know stuff. You just read the symbols. You don't actually get it, etc. He's kind of right, by the way, you know, books kind of like give you the illusion of understanding. Um, um, and we should come back to that, actually, because I'm, um, um, you know, I consider books, by the way, to be like the ultimate mode of information transference, better than any adaptive learning system created. But still woefully poor in various ways. And I think it's going to be possible to kind of reinvent the book in a way that really allows us to absorb information better. But going back to the point, you know, humans have always outsourced their cognition a bit to the environment, the advocates, you know, the work, um, uh, note-taking devices now Google, etc. And there's something called the Google effect, which we just kind of shown by scientists in the early 2000s, which basically shows that people

16:29remember less the information, what the information is, are more aware to find it. Yes. So it becomes an extension of your body in a way. Like, oh, I know, you know, in the same way that you remember where to find a memory when you're looking inside your head. You can, you can reach for something. Um, I do think that there's a, there's a more general phenomenon going on. And it's very, very interesting in the age of AI, which is that, um, that the outsourcing of cognition now extends to our thinking, our imagination, our ability to write. Yes. And I think that this is like, I mean, I think it's going to split humanity a lot, but I think it's an absolute catastrophe. Yeah. Basically happening right now. But with the possibility of it being unbelievably epic, because in some sense, AI can be like this incredible extension of our capacity to think, imagine, you know, et cetera. But, um, you know, there's a wonderful MIT study recently, which basically had three conditions. People had to like write an essay about themselves, write an essay with Google, write an essay with church, GBT, they put like EEG devices on their brains, see what activity was going on,

17:30and then they mocked the essays and they asked how they felt about it. And basically it was kind of like a comic. It's like one of those memes, like tiny brain, midsize brain, and then beaming brain. Which is like on chat GBT, they like, the essays were lower quality. They felt much less ownership, brain activity was lower, went a bit better with Google, and then they did it themselves. The essays were high quality. They felt much more ownership and pleasure that they obviously learned more and there was much more brain activation. Now that's one particular kind of study thing. But it very, very clearly illustrates how like, if you outsource your cognition, you are in serious danger of not compounding and developing the underlying skills that can do it. I mean, the flip side, which is important to me as well, by the way, is like, if you get mad good at operating an army of AI agents, you develop different managerial imaginative skills, which can also be valuable. But my own sense is that the ability to write

18:34to hold lots of information in one's mind to think independently and go through the struggle of thinking are abilities, which we are going to desperately want our children to have. Well, everything atrophies. I mean, if you don't use it, you lose it with anything from, I mean, literally anything, it could be driving, it could be speaking, especially speaking a language that's not native to you. It could be memory, it could be writing, it could be speaking, like if I, for whatever reason, I go a long time without doing any interviews, I notice that when I do do one, I have more ums and uhs and likes and brainfarts, whereas when I'm consistently recording. Right, interesting. I have less of that. And so it just seems obvious, without the studies as one of those things, I don't need studies to know that, yeah, if you became extraordinarily reliant on these tools, just like if you became reliant on a device that walked for you or picked everything up for you,

19:37your muscles are going to atrophy, and the same will happen with your brain. Yeah, um, yeah, it's exactly that. And it's sort of what's interesting about, you know, memory and thinking, these things is that they are, they're like fundamental elements of cognition, which are kind of with you the whole time, who is in action in some way or other. And um, um, and so you're never in a situation when you're not remembering stuff or thinking, but how you behave and the habits you have and what you attempt can radically change, you know, in essence, how much you're, you know, practicing the fundamental ability, how much of that's improving in some. And so, you know, there were various things I kind of advise people, which are kind of to do with memory, but they're more to do with the overall management of cognition. One of them is, for example, like when you read a book, force yourself to write like a brief paragraph afterwards about what the book's right about. Normally, if you do the paragraph, you end up, you know, writing four or five paragraphs, etc.

20:38And it's astonishing the degree to which that active recall actually makes you realize what you've read and understand it in a, in a new way. And so, this is one of the fundamental characteristics of memory is repetition. You know, another one is paying attention. Just a quick, just a quick one on that. Because I want people to come away with some great tools as well. If someone is reading a book, how often do you recommend they do that? Do you mean read the entire book? And then write a couple paragraphs or read a chapter? Right, read a chapter, right? Would you? For reasons of not intimidating anyone, I'd say we read the whole book and do it. But I absolutely, I mean, I think that the correct loop here is you read a page and you just like, okay, what was that about? Did I understand that any question? Read a page and then you'll build the habit. And certainly after a chapter, I think it's a great idea. And you know, it's very interesting. Like the underlying reason is the active recall strengthens memory.

21:38It also, by the way, reveals to you when you haven't understood something. So it's a double whammy. It's like strengthens the memory, but it also reveals when the memory is not there. This is good when you're meeting people too. Someone's like, you know, often when you're meeting people, it's a very complicated situation, you know, drinks being handed around, you're trying to look, you know, look serious, you know, whatever, look impressive, etc. And just like, you know, someone's like, oh, my name's Eric. And just being like, hello. And then quite often you discover you didn't actually absorb the name, right? So paying attention in that way is powerful. And active association is another fundamental principle, because interestingly, like we tend to think of memories of storehouse, but it's really like the web of all the associations and connections in our mind. And therefore, it's like continuous with thinking and imagination and perception and all the all the other things. And so when you're like learning something new and you're storing a new memory, what you're really doing is taking your existing memories and like bending them to also link to a new shape, a new memory. It's always connecting things together. So when you're learning stuff, you should always be just saying, oh, what does this remind me of?

22:39How can I connect to that? Because that's almost like the transport system of recall. It's via the memories you already have. And so a lot of memory techniques are based on active association. So you're like, OK, you know, Zubi, we were actually, we met at a conference, and we did this exercise where there were about 50 people there. And in about 10 minutes, we learned everybody's names. And for your name, we kind of, in a jocular fashion, we said, OK, well, imagine a B, which is part of the world's smallest zoo. It's the Zubi, and then you're the owner of this Zubi. It seems completely pointless. Anyone who listens to your podcast has already kind of learned the name. But actually, that kind of active association forces you to pay attention to thing, makes a connection to something vivid and interesting, and gives your mind something to do to actually build a memory, which, you know, when you're learning 50 names in 20 minutes is absolutely necessary. So yeah, yeah. So that's a good one to jump off.

23:41For people listening, you've touched on it. But what would you say is the best way to remember people's names? Because that's one that I think almost everyone struggles with. You meet someone, and within a few minutes, you're like, oh, gosh. Oh, that person's name again. And I think this is because we're not fully paying attention at the moment of the introduction, and we're thinking about other things, their stature, their face. We're remembering lots of other things about them. And integrating that, but the name, I think, we sort of tend to deprioritize at least if we're on autopilot. So what's the best way to remember people's names? So a couple of things here. One of which is don't be embarrassed if you've not got that name. Okay. Because so much of the time, it's so embarrassing to have forgotten a name. Do you end up in a situation where you don't know a person's name, and then you're too intimidated to ask. So that's my first thing. Let's begin from the outside. And so first of all, make sure that you get the information. And if you missed the information, you get it again.

24:43Second, really pay attention to that name. Repeat it in your head, and repeat it back to them. Use it actively in speaking with them. And third of all, find whatever that name reminds you of, and actively connect it to it. Now, some of this can be like another person who shares that name. Some of it can be the kind of association I just mentioned where Zubi, not a name I've heard before, it's actually worth spending a bit of time. Because the reason that it's difficult to learn a name you haven't number four is that you don't have the memory to link to. And so it's a little bit confused in your mind. Exactly what the name is. The spelling might be unclear. What the name is actually unclear. You haven't yet been able to like really nail into it. So that kind of active connection. And I personally just love to just make silly verbal connections. I'm meeting someone called Chris. I just imagine eating crisps. And by the way, I'm making someone called Julian. I imagine covering in jewels.

25:44I'm meeting someone called Steven. I imagine their friend was Steven Seagull. Whatever. Anyway, so you're doing these things. And you might say, oh, this is pointless. I remember names perfectly the whole time anyway. Well, it turns out that all of these little incremental things, really paying attention, repeating it, making active associations, using imagination, incrementally increase the chance of remembering a name, and then finally, repeating. Yes. And so I love, and this is a general purpose thing. I love before going to sleep every night, just to go through my day. A, you just notice what happened. Just consciously in your head. Just consciously in the morning. By the way, often it's blank in my mind. I'm like, what did I do today? And I kind of call into my memory. And it's just like an echo. I'm like, what did I do today? And then you're like, okay, well, of course, I did, you know, so often you only need a tiny little sliver of a beginning, and then it all floods back sort of thing. But I go through that because it means I'm consolidating the things I did, what happened, where I went. And then the people I've met will pop into my mind.

26:46I'll repeat their names, and I'll have a much better chance for remembering them in the future. Awesome. What about phone numbers? Phone numbers, I used to be good at that. Yeah, I used to be good at it when I was a kid. I mean, I don't even bother learning phone numbers. I mean, for many years, by the way, I was a bit of a Luddite. Okay. And even when I was in 2003, 2004 as a university, I just, I didn't have a mobile phone. Thought mobile phones were a bit dumb. And I just had all of my numbers memorized. And so I just go into a phone box and it felt quite cool. I felt like I liberated from like objects. But I don't bother to do that for anyone other than basically my wife's number these days. But if you are going to do it, there were advanced systems where you translate the numbers into images. And you have like a vocabulary of images. Every two digit number is an image, and you kind of make stories of the images. Are those images that you yourself decide? Exactly. Yeah, they're like a private vocabulary. Okay. You know, the way to do it, you spend the Sunday afternoon or whatever, write the number 0, 0 to 99,

27:46and then just choose a connection with each and just go with your native associations. Okay. You know, 0, 0, I went with James Bond, because 007, you know, 007, the thing, 99 and when we're Don Bradman, the Australian Cricketer, because the average 99 in Test Cricket, and everything in between, you know, you can assess it with the years, or the age of someone you know, or you know, just how it sounds. Anyway, you build that vocabulary, you master the connections, and then you can memorize very, very effectively, because numbers are kind of boring, and they just sit from the mind, whereas if you're looking at two digit numbers and sequence, you can just be like, oh, it's the Pope talking to Anacornic over, or whatever, James Bond. And then you say, okay, Suzy's number, and then you just imagine like, whatever that little scene on her doorstep, or whatever it is. And for whatever reason, that becomes a much more sustainable way of learning. Also, by the way, just simply repeating the numbers over and over, works pretty well. Does it depend on the type of brain a person has, like, are some people,

28:47so when you said that, to me, at least for something as short as a phone number, it seems, I haven't tried this, but it seems like it would be harder for me to, to think of the conjure up the images than to just remember the numbers. Well, I mean, that's why I said it's a bit of an advanced technique. Okay. I mean, suddenly, like, I would just, I would just remember the rhythm of the numbers. But if you're learning a thousand phone numbers, which I once did, by the way, for a, I was, did a wired conference, and part of my stack was that I memorized the audience's phone numbers. Say, what's your name? The whole audience. And so, yeah. How many people? I did, I think it was like 600 or something. 600 people's phone numbers. And that was a nice party trick. But yeah, I think they're like, how? I mean, but that's it. A big memory pad is a long story. But yeah, I think that the,

29:49you know, the memory is interesting, I think, because of what it shows about the mind more generally, about how, how we live by association and imagination, and the attention and repetition, and active recall are necessary to sculpt our minds in different ways. And so, you know, the, you know, when I, when I started memorize, the idea was to kind of put these techniques into action in a way where you're not really thinking about the techniques. You're just learning something you want to learn. And so, that was kind of a language learning app, where we kind of introduced, you know, visual imagery and repetition and, you know, mnemonics and lots of active testing into an app, kind of for the first time. And that proved a really powerful way of kind of learning, learning languages. And I'm kind of quite excited to see what is now possible in education, because, you know, I think, as mentioned,

30:54our outsourcing of cognition has now moved for memory to like, thinking, to writing, to all of these things. Exactly the same time as we have the most incredible technology for teaching people stuff. It can answer any question on any topic in real time, find examples and so on and so forth. And so, yeah, I'm kind of, I'm super inspired at this moment in time, by the opportunity to see if we can reverse a little bit the tide of the outsourcing of human cognition and create some experiences, which can really nourish human genius in the age of AI. Of all the different types of memory challenges that you've done. Is there something what's considered easy versus hard? So, for example, to a layperson memorizing a deck of cards sounds like virtually impossible.

31:56I might be wrong, but I would assume that's actually perhaps on the easier end of the edge. They're right, because that's actually the easy end, because you've only actually got 52 things to learn. And those things are from a constrained group. It's actually much harder to learn, like, epic poetry. Because then you've got to remember thousands of things in sequence. I mean, if you learn a thousand line per arm, that's like 7,000 words or something. And the words are from a watch wider set, you know, from a vocabulary of 40,000 words, or have you? Some of them are obvious in the, like, in the, in the, whatever, but that's actually a much more thing. So, that's right. So, like, actually memorizing sequences of numbers and cards is actually easier than remembering long strings of poetry, or even perhaps conceptual, complicated, conceptual arrangements. But again, I guess this is very individualized. This podcast is sponsored by Talkspace. Last year, I went through many different life changes. I needed to take a pause and examine how I was feeling in the inside to better show up for the ones who need me

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34:01and sometimes a new fine to share. Find what you love and love what you find, only at TotalWine and more. Visit TotalWine.com to learn more. Spirit's not sold in Virginia and North Carolina. Drink responsibly B-21. Because as you were saying it, I'm thinking at the same time, though, with something like poetry or songs. I mean, I'm a musician myself. I have, Lord knows how many lyrics I have, stored up in this brain, but with those, it's not like it's randomized words. There's context, there's a story, there's a narrative, which makes it easier to remember. If someone just gave me a deck of cards, then sure it's, there's only 52. Even though it's the narrative. Yeah, it's kind of random, but if it's a poem, I might be more likely to remember it because it means something and I can follow a narrative. And it's just like, oh yeah, I just remember this, I remember this passage of scripture. I remember this song verse, I remember these movie lines.

35:02I mean, you're certainly right in that respect. So like, in a way what we're doing with a pack of cards is we're imposing meaning on it with our imagination, making these true stories and imaging them to space. And with, especially with like musical lyrics and stuff, that's definitely already present, and you just got to enter into the imaginative world of the song. And then kind of almost the memory comes to free, especially with lots of repetition. And the rhythm helps too. I mean, but the most difficult thing I've ever learned was like, large parts of Paradise Lost, which is very kind of, very kind of, you know, begins like of man's first disobedience and the fruit of that forbidden tree whose mortal tastes brought death under the world with, you know, and it's very kind of complicated, structured, poetry, and that, we're also quite repetitive. And so that took her, that was a serious heavy lift. In the competitions, what's considered the hardest thing? You said there's 10 events. What's, is there something that's generally just like,

36:03oh boy, this is the big one? Maybe the random shapes. Okay. Yeah, random shapes. Because they're just like abstract blotches. It's very difficult to find associations to them. I mean, one of the most difficult events was the spoken numbers as well, where they just speak numbers that you one, two, three, seven, nine, two, which is actually kind of the numbers of them themselves aren't difficult, but because they're spoken, you can't go back. So if there's any blotch in your memory, if there's any like moment of insecurity, or you're not quite clear, you can't go back. So it's a bit like walking a tightrope or something, every step has to be perfect. And that was actually one of my favorite events for some reason. I kind of quite liked the sense of zen, you know, focus you got while I was just like, knowing that you had to exactly control your attention through this journey. What's something that people should know about memory that they don't? That it is practically the same thing as imagination.

37:05So, you know, to remember something is to imagine the past. And normally when we think of imagination, we think of imagination as feeling the future. But you're kind of, and that's how we use the word, but that they're intimately connected. You know, when I'm recording something, I'm actively reimagining the experience I had when I did the thing. And when I'm imagining something, I'm actively reimagining from my memories a, maybe a counterfactual situation, but it's the same mechanism, it's the same brain tissues as the rest of it. And this is interesting because it kind of shows that the most of the art of memory is the art of imagination. That's very interesting. And in terms of your day-to-day practical life, beyond the coolness and the kudos of being a world-memory champion, how would you say that these techniques and all of this practice and repetition has helped you? Is there something in the sort of practical day-to-day where it's like, oh yeah, this is just easier for me than it is for most others because of our dreams?

38:06Yeah, I mean, I suppose that like, I mean, one thing is, I mean, we get to organizing and designing parties because parties are kind of memory palaces of experience. You go through a C series, you know, the ideal party is one you remember. There's the kind of flip side between memory and experience, the kind of, as I say, the intimate connection between imagination and the rest of it. So, and if you study memory techniques, you understand how great parties follow different, have tried chapter structures. They don't all happen in all the same place, but you have something that happens and it's narrative connected to the next thing, which is now connected to the next thing. But you need contours to make it like differentiated and more memorable. So, that's one thing, which memory techniques have helped me do quite a bit. You know, I think, you know, I will say that I think memory is the least interesting aspect of memory in it, in it, in it, it sounds like a paradox, but everything in the human mind requires memory. So, perception requires memory, language requires memory, thinking requires memory,

39:10and when we say memory, we tend to think of like, recalling facts or being more efficient at assimilating information, but we could equate talk about being able to think, having an imagination, being able to make decisions and so on, because all of these are really the art of memory. And in fact, if you look at like medieval memory techniques or how the Greeks thought about memory, memory wasn't thought about as a storehouse at all, it was more, more stored about the engine room of the soul, how you think and imagine and the rest of it. Kind of like ramen computers, how it's not just like, you don't, computers, you have the storage memory, but you've actually been more like in your network. Okay, okay. So, if you think about like, chat GPT, you think of that as artificial intelligence, it's really artificial memory, it's like, memorize the internet. Yes. And then it can creatively access that memory, just as humans can, you know, where you don't have to, you know, because imagination and memory are the same thing. And so, when you kind of query chat GPT, you say,

40:11you know, help me, you know, help me write a wedding speech. And it kind of remembers all the wedding speeches and constrains the memory through the filter of being helpful to you in your context. It brings that context in and then it like, imagines a good answer, which is quite like recalling a good answer, which is like thinking a good answer, to all kind of the same thing. And so, what's the most useful thing in life? I think it's, I think it's finding things interesting and being able to think. How does it translate to language learning? So, I mean, you know, to learn a language, you need to learn thousands of words, that's one very obviously memory thing. And language learning is all the habit of being able to, you know, to produce sentences, you know. And those sentences all contain words you've seen hundreds of times before, so there's a kind of combinatorial part to it. But, you know, fundamentally language and ability in a language is an ability in memory. In the sense of, it's a ability to have thousands of words in your head.

41:14And with Memorize, you know, we developed a system where you could learn like a thousand words in like a month very effectively, with all the repetition and testing and so on. And, you know, then various kind of exercises over the top, which just have you actively recalling the words in context. Yeah. Are people who are polyglots? Or just people who speak multiple languages? Do they have an advantage in... So, if you were to take a monolingual person, and you were to take someone who already speaks five languages, and you were to teach them these memory techniques, does the latter person have an inbuilt advantage, or does it not really correlate? I mean, I think that one counterintuitive thing about knowledge overall is that, the more you know the easier it is, kind of to learn new things. Yes. Because it creates a greater web of association. And I think that, like speaking lots of languages,

42:15does give you like a richer repertoire of association. So, if you're trying to think, okay, what does this remind me of? But I don't think it's enough to be like a decisive difference. Okay. Interesting. Because I don't, I almost don't know the emotion of envy. Right. But. Cool. But the one time I do sometimes feel envy is when I meet people who speak like four, five, six, seven languages, and I'm just like that is so cool. But I'm also just like, how does your brain, like that's... It's just a lot stored up in there. Like if you think of the size of just the English language, it's enormous. So much vocabulary, so much grammar, and then you just think, wait, so this person has like, this is an eight different... Right. Well, they don't do that. I don't know what you mean. There's something kind of magical about the ability to open up another world. Yeah. Because it's almost like a cheat code, you know, you kind of... But, you know, nobody knows,

43:17second, third, fourth languages, like they know the language they grew up in. True. Not to quite the same degree. Not to the quite same depth. But yeah, no, it's an amazing ability. Yeah. Tell me about my mix, because I know you're working on something new. Yeah, so, you know, we've talked a bit about how there's a real challenge for kind of human intelligence in the age of AI. And it's quite funny. You need to look at the AI CEOs, and they're always like, yes, there's a 10% chance that humanity will be destroyed. But we will have a cure for cancer and AI tutors. Meanwhile, and so, you know, in its simplest form, my mix is an attempt to build, you know, a platform for AI tutors to create, you know, a space where you can learn anything from a divine intelligence in an interactive fashion that takes into account exactly how you learn

44:19that adapts to your needs and interests. And it comes in the context of, isn't it? I wanted to do it. Um, was that, um, you know, another thing AI CEOs say is like, we're going to solve AI, and then AI will solve all the other problems. That's kind of a, that's what deafness has to this is. Yeah, I don't believe that, but okay. Yeah, yeah, believe that would happen. And, um, this is general thing, you know, where, you know, human IQ, which developed, according to something called the plan effect, over like, from the 50s to the 2000s, it seems to be going up and up and up, you know, maybe more stimulating environments, better nutrition, better education, whatever. I know it's been going down recently. And then I was finding personally that my friends were actually becoming noticeably more boring, because it would be like, I'd be like, uh, you know, read anything interesting recently and they'd be like, oh, yeah, yeah. I wrote, uh, you know, read, um, sapiens. And I'd be like, oh, right, cool. Um, and they'd like, have you read it? And I was like, no, I was like, what's it about? And they'd be like, oh, well, basically, um, you know, there was a, uh,

45:19there was a, we were tribal and then there was language and now AI, and then, you know, the quality, you know, the quality of exercise, it's just like, what's happening to our minds? You know, it's a combination of brain, well, outsourcing, cognition, chat, GPT, etc. And I was like, no, no, no, no. Clearly, it's got to be possible to use this epic AI tools to create something which basically turns you into a genius. And so we kind of began it with the intention. Like, can we create a tool which nurtures a million geniuses, who otherwise have been lost? Um, by the way, I'm a big believer in Gerta, the German poet's adage, that like, uh, if children fulfilled their youthful potential, we'd have nothing but geniuses on our hands. Um, you know, I think that there's like a native genius to the human mind that, you know, is like extremely widespread. I don't think it's a one and a million thing. I think it's much more common than that. Anyhow, so basically, my mind makes the way it works now, and we're just kind of launching at this very moment in time, is that you kind of type anything in, it will create like a course for you, depending on your interests and your needs and how well you want to learn it.

46:21It will appoint like an AI tutor to teach you, and you also have like an AI sidekick, who's like the person who kind of travels around with you, learns the stuff you know, mocks the tutors, um, reminds you of stuff. It's quite kind of a anarchic. Um, and, uh, by the way, we should come back to this, but, um, anyway, and, and so, so it creates like an interactive podcast. And so then instead of like reading something on chat with you, where your, your, your eyes will go, boom, boom, boom, you won't really take it in, you'll grab the information you need. This is the kind of reference, Google mentality, and you won't really absorb it. It kind of strings that out into a conversation. And, uh, you ask questions, it asks questions to you. Um, it repeats stuff that you've been through. It helps build and weave together the concepts. And by the way, it's very early stage in a sense, but I think the kind of the long-term possibility here is basically that you can learn, um, not just learn, but like, discuss, debate, examine, um, and integrate into your mind.

47:24Uh, any topic in the, in the presence of incredible, um, incredible intelligences? In terms of the different forms of media communication, of course we have text, audio, video, just, you know, still images. How it, is there a form that is generally more memorable? It's a great question. And, um, you know, basically long-form reading seems to be the most memorable for media, because it makes you think it gives you something to do, um, because there's that extra step. Yeah, because that extra step, you actually got to make some effort and, um, and, and you're not distracted the whole time. Um, and I think one of the challenges of like, um, of, you know, and I'm as, you know, as vulnerable to the, the madness of social media is anyone else, but you have like, an incredibly interesting thing for four seconds, you go, oh, wow.

48:24And often it's like semi-intellectual, it's just like, oh, in quantum superposition, you go, oh, and you kind of begin with like, half or quarter of a thought, you know, on to the next thing, on to the next thing. And so it's like, it's sort of building a house by throwing bricks into a swimming pool, you know, it's, you know, it's like complete nonsense. Um, and so reading's really good, but I kind of have an ambition with my max to sort of reinvent reading a bit because the problem with reading is the, um, you don't notice when you don't understand things, so you'll be like, um, you know, and the, you know, the king of Bhutan's eldest son, and then he's his name, you know, traveled to this town, a town you haven't heard of, in the company of this person, this person you haven't heard of, and you literally didn't, and did this, and you kind of think you understood it, but you actually didn't actually have a picture in your mind of any of these three nouns that just went through it, and so, and, and, and then when it comes to the long sequences of, you know, explaining how complicated things work, it's very, very easy to have the illusion of understanding, and then not actually have understood it. And you can test it very quickly, you know, after like reading three paragraphs,

49:26if you just ask yourself two or three different questions, or have a system of ask yourself two or three questions, you can very quickly detect, oh, actually, I did understand that, or no, it's vague. And so, that's kind of what I'm trying to do as part of my mind of experience, is sort of have a thing in like, import book, give me one paragraph at a time, make everything sort of which you might not understand, a highlighter book, track all the things I've learned in the past, remind me and test me on them, and then just build the, the constructions of understanding. And, yeah, I do, it's like, that's a bit of a long short maybe, but, you know, I, I have noticed that I have never, I'm always astonished when I reread a book, because you think, I've read this book, I love this book, I'm actually going to reread it, because I love it so much. And the second time you read it, it is if you're reading a new book, that all these things didn't even notice, all these new ideas which come by, all the, you know, all these thoughts that you have, which you didn't realise you would have, and it's like, what happened between the first and the second reading of the book? Well, it turns out that we, we absorbed actually quite a small percentage of what we experience,

50:29and on the second reading, you have the, the structure provided by the first reading, and then new levels emerge. By the way, I have to mention this, because it's so funny, but there's this, I've talked about AI tutors, have mind-max, you know, it's going to be this utopian platform of AI tutors. I don't actually think tutors are the right metaphor for a great, a great teaching experience, but it is the most widely held view in tech than AI tutors, the ultimate way to learn. And basically, the reason for this is that everyone has the anecdote that Aristotle taught Alexander the Great, Aristotle, great philosopher, Alexander the Great, conquered half the world, he was tutored to him, therefore tutoring must be really great. That's the one example people have, and you know, repeated by Mark Andreessen, and a recent podcast, you know, and then the other thing is this kind of thing called Bloom's Two Sigma, which is this 1980s educational psychologist who looked at a bunch of studies. Is that someone's name? No, Bloom, so yeah, Bloom was an educational psychologist.

51:31Okay. And he basically published a study in me in 1982, or something which indicated that you get two standard deviations of improvement with a tutoring versus classroom. Okay, okay. But in the Aristotle case, Aristotle wasn't, and in some of the greats tutors, he was headmaster at his school. And if you look at the kind of stories at the time, everyone in that class went on to greatness. And the kind of decisive fact, it doesn't seem to be an Aristotle at all. It was that they were the elite aristocracy of the world, you know, and I thought it was the son of the world's most powerful man. And if you look at Alexander's life, he just obviously doesn't put into practice any of what Aristotle would have taught him. And so it's like this very like misleading anecdote, which is like based on people not actually reading original sources, understanding stuff, and just like going with the thing. So it's quite funny. And then Bloom's Two Sigma thing is it's not actually just tutoring. It's tutoring and like a test-driven methodology where you get people to

52:34test on what they learn and only teach them new stuff when they've understood the stuff in the past. So I mean, of course, in general, having like an attentive, personalized adaptive learning experience has got to be good for you, of course. But on my mouse, we do want to add a lot of anarchy to and have lots of rebellious side-cakes, people to debate with, be able to fire your tutor, all this sort of stuff, just to make sure that like human agency, it's at the heart of it. There's a term you've used a couple times during our conversation, which I don't think will be familiar to most listeners, and that is memory palace. Yes. So can you explain what a memory palace is? So I've said a couple of times how what's so special about memory techniques is they exploit the abilities that you have as a normal human being and leverage those for memorizing difficult information. And one of our deepest kind of evolution and already cognitively, one of our deepest abilities is ability to navigate space. You know, you probably don't know

53:36to sit, but you have an insane memory for space. You know, you can go to a building once or twice, and you kind of got like a map of the building. And if you actually analyze how much information is in that map, it's actually thousands of individual facts of like, this is next to this and you turn left and it goes down and there's a big, you know, marble staircase and there's a huge plant over here. You know, it's amazing how much information we can absorb in space just effortlessly. And the reason for that is we've been doing navigation in space for like the 20 million years of, you know, memory and history or whatever. Now, memory palaces use our native ability for space for the memorization sequences. And so rather than just trying to be like 17, 23, 46, 55, and just as relying on like the association between one to the next, you put these images or you put these things you're trying to remember into a memory palace. And so in this room, for example, I might say, okay, let's say we're learning, you know, the first 20 digits of pie, you know, 3.141592653589793. I might be like, okay, we're going to begin over there with three. And then

54:42the next thing we have to learn is 14. So it's 3.14. Okay, we imagine a 14-year-olds girl sitting on this bike thing. And then next to her is going to be a 15-year-old 3.1415. And let's imagine I'm 92 years old. And I'm moving around the space and putting images in different areas. So I'm 92 years old. And let's imagine you're 65 years old. And so it's 3.14159265. And the next number is 35. And so then I move over there. And then I'd say, okay, who's a famous 35-year-old? Whatever, just a question. No, he's not. But let's say, no back jock of it to 35. We're going to imagine him over there. So no back jock of it to his over there. And it turns out that imagining these images in space and imagining meaningful stuff like, you know, that I'm 92 years old. You can imagine it with like, you know, wrinkles and walking stick, etc. And placing them around space gives us a structure to those memories that allows you to go back in your imagination through that space and recall things perfectly in sequence. And it sounds ridiculous. It sounds like

55:44it shouldn't work. But it turns out that it works very well. And not only does it work very well, but it keeps on working almost indefinitely, no matter how far, how long you go in a memory palace. And so most forms of memory, you know, learning five things is easy. But learning 50 things is more than 10 times as far, hard to hard. And learning 500 things is like a hundred, a thousand times as hard. With this is just linear. You can like go through a memory palace for an hour, putting images and thing. And you can go back through it. And when you do it, do you do you write anything or is this all in the brain? This is all in the imagination. So by the way, this is what's happening in the memory jams. Everyone is like, you know, that's what I love about it so much is that you look on the outside, you know, this is the most boring thing I've ever seen. And inside it was heads, these crazy scenes of like, you know, and all the awful lots of violence and sexuality and braininess and this sort of thing, because that's what makes things memorable, you know. And so that's part of the comedy of a memory championship. And when you're creating the memory palace, how often do you, as you're constructing it, how often do you re-walk through it?

56:51Is it each time you add something? Yeah, great question. I'm basically, I go, I walk through it, I go back after a minute. Okay. Did the next one go back after a minute? Did the next one go after a minute? Yeah, once they've got five of them, I go over all of it and then I've got a unit and then I'll do another, that operation, you know, on another, you know, one repeat, one minute, repeat, one minute, you know, that's it. And then stack it, and then once I've done four of those, I go back over the whole thing. Okay. And so you're, it's like spinning plates in a way you go. Yeah. And then you can probably stop spinning, you know, and then coming back to it. Yeah, because I haven't used the memory palace concept before, but I know that when I'm memorizing things or recalling the earlier, I remember the earlier stuff better than the later stuff, because I've repeated it more. Yes, exactly. So if I'm walking through, it's like, okay, cool, I remember it, and then it might get sort of halfway or beyond, and I'm like, oh gosh, sometimes I can remember the things, but not in the order, or it's just, it's just more hazy, so I'm going to work with it. Yeah, so it's amazing for sort of improving that level of confusion.

57:55Yeah. Yeah. And it's, I mean, the underlying reason, by the way, why it works is that, you know, and I've talked about how memories all connections to other memories, but memories obviously grouped sometimes into kind of concepts, like the concept of a leaf. You don't remember every leaf you look at, because you just like leave, just like you kind of categorize it. And the brain is always trying to compress and categorize stuff. And so, for example, every time I meet you, Zuby, I'm talking to Zuby, right? I don't experience you as like different people at different locations. There's a, and that makes sense, because you are, in fact, as a singular individual appearing in lots of different places. But, but that, but what that means is that the brain is trying to kind of compress and forget, in a sense. And that's kind of what happens with, you know, with, when you have vast amounts of information coming in, your brain is like,

58:57well, actually, I'm not quite sure whether this is actually different from the previous information, I'm going to kind of compress it together. And what spatial techniques that I do is like, everything's got its individual place and doesn't get merged with other things. And that's why it works so well. So, it doesn't, it stops the merging of memories, which is quite fun. You know, and the thing, same thing, by the way, goes for like, this is one of the reasons why having a new concept is so powerful, because if you have a new concept, or a new name for something, you, that thing doesn't get merged into the mess of other experience, but instead becomes something that, you know, has a name that you can pay attention to, that you can talk about, and that can kind of just get sived off from everything else and become an individuated concept. So, you know, you may have had the experience that you'd learn something new, like a new word or something, and then you hear that word several times in the following days, and you're like, that's so weird.

59:58I, you know, I, I, I learned the world diaphanus, and now I hear it everywhere. What a coincidence. But, you know, of course, in reality, it's like that word has been said probably quite consistently throughout your entire life, but as soon as you know it, you can see it. It's like when you're searching to buy a car, and then you start to see that car, like everywhere. Yes, exactly. Indeed, yeah. Before we wrap up, this is just a question. I know, you know, we both have very, very young kids. Yeah. When you think, okay, 20 years ago, we didn't even have smartphones. And now we don't just have smartphones, but we have all the social media. Now we're moving into AI, LLMs, and so on. Just as a guest's hypothesis, however, forecast, 20 years from now, 20, 46. Yeah. What do you think the world and technology and the human cognition or lack thereof

1:01:00that comes with it? What do you think that's going to look like? Well, first of all, I think people are still going to love, like, looking at the sea, and like, singing songs around a fire, and like having a nice meal with friends, and reading a book. So I don't think things are going to get unimaginably crazy. My hope is that that we have gone up the kind of managerial train of thinking in a way that has preserved our, you know, our critical thinking and our imagination and our kind of emotional connection with things. And, you know, if you think about like someone who runs a big business, like to take a random example, like Zuckerberg, you know, he doesn't, you know, write the code, etc., but he's probably got a kind of quite a good high level commander what's going on, you know, can sort of move resources

1:02:05to different places, can be sensitive to the overall, you know. And I guess like in some sense, we may end up as like the chief dunes of empires of capability. So if I'm like, I would, you know, maybe we end up, you know, assuming super intelligence keeps on in a great path, you know, maybe I'm like, I would like to design a new form of water sprinkler because I want it to exactly, you know, do this in my garden. And then it may be that we, you know, your imagination will be like, free, and you'll be like, I like having a thousand engineers in your head, and you'll be, and then, you know, later that day, you've kind of conceived of an imagined, a totally different object, which is now being made for you. And so that, that may be the case, that we have this sort of extension of our abilities, where we can kind of transform our world in really awesome ways. Or you might have a question like, what's the best place to put a bench in this, you know, in this plaza down here? And then you can kind of like conduct an imagined in simulations of people flows and different seasonalities and the rest of it happen, and you can model and it says,

1:03:08well, actually, there are three or four different kinds of, you know, top places to put a bench, and then you kind of, you kind of look into them, and you're like, oh, this is the one which gives rise to the most spontaneous conversation with strangers. All right, therefore I'll put the bench here, and you might be just some junior town planner, you know, working with it. And so that's kind of what I hope for. The downside, by the way, is that the jobs have been outsourced, and we're really depressed, but there's also an upside version of that, which is like the job jobs have been outsourced, and we are just like building our minds and imaginations, and making music and poetry. You know what, Zeevi, I realised that Yostra prediction, and I gave a full spread of possible, that's only, world switch could happen. But overall, I'm not too concerned for my little baby. Hopefully it's going to be pretty epic. Awesome. Ed, where can people find and follow you online? So I am on Twitter, as Ted Cook, so you can come follow me there. You can find mine max in the

1:04:13app stores. So that's mine max. You can just download that sort of a freemium app. Ted Cook with an ear at the end. Ted Cook with an ear at the end, so yes. Awesome. Thanks so much for the down man. Ed, appreciate it.