Ted演講：每個(gè)人都能掌握的記憶技巧「雙語」
導(dǎo)讀：為什么有些人似乎天賦異能，能夠過目不忘在短時(shí)間內(nèi)記下一本書的內(nèi)容或是繁多的數(shù)字?是否他們的腦袋和我們的不一樣，或他們更聰明?科技欄作家Joshua Foer給您詳細(xì)講解這種記憶方法 —— 他稱其為"記憶宮殿" —— 并向您證明他的重點(diǎn)是: 任何人都可以擁有絕佳的記憶里，包括他自己。這個(gè)答案就是“精細(xì)編碼"——他們把沒有前因后果 沒有重要性 沒有涵義的信息 用某種方法轉(zhuǎn)化為 有意義的內(nèi)容 跟腦海里的其他記憶串聯(lián)起來。
Feats of memory anyone can do
I'd like to invite you to close your eyes.
請大家跟我一起閉上眼睛，象一下。
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. 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.
你站在，自己家門口的外面，請留心一下門的顏色，以及門的材質(zhì)，現(xiàn)在請想象一群超重的裸騎者，正在進(jìn)行一場裸體自行車賽，向你的前門直沖而來，盡量讓畫面想象得栩栩如生近在眼前，他們都在奮力地踩腳踏板 汗流浹背，路面非常顛簸，然后徑直撞進(jìn)了你家前門，自行車四下飛散 車輪從你身旁滾過，輻條扎進(jìn)了各種尷尬角落，跨過門檻，進(jìn)到門廳、走廊 和門里的其他地方，室內(nèi)光線柔和舒適，光線灑在甜餅怪物身上，他坐在一匹棕色駿馬的馬背上，正向你招手，這匹馬會說話，你可以感覺到他的藍(lán)色鬃毛讓你鼻子發(fā)癢，你可以聞到他正要扔進(jìn)嘴里的葡萄燕麥曲奇的香氣，繞過他 繞過他走進(jìn)客廳，站在客廳里 把你的想象力調(diào)到最大檔，想象小甜甜布蘭妮，她衣著暴露 在你咖啡桌上跳舞，并唱著"Hit Me Baby One More Time"，接下來 跟著我走進(jìn)你的廚房，廚房的地面被一道黃磚路覆蓋，依次鉆出你的烤箱向你走來的是，《綠野仙蹤》里的多蘿西 鐵皮人，稻草人 和獅子，他們手挽著手蹦蹦跳跳地向你走來，
Okay. Open your eyes.
好了 睜開眼睛吧，
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.
我要給你們講一個(gè)每年春天在紐約，都會舉辦的奇異競賽，叫做全美記憶冠軍賽，幾年前我作為一名科技類記者，去報(bào)道這項(xiàng)競賽，心里想著 大概那兒得像，怪才的"超級碗冠軍賽"一樣熱鬧吧，一大堆男人和屈指可數(shù)的女性，從小孩兒到老人 有些還不怎么注意個(gè)人衛(wèi)生，
(Laughter)
(大笑)，
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.
有的奮力在只看一次的情況下，記下上百個(gè)任意列出的數(shù)字，有的在努力記住成群的陌生人的名字，有的想在幾分鐘內(nèi)努力背下整篇詩歌，還有的在比賽誰能以最快速度，記下一整副打亂的牌的順序，我當(dāng)時(shí)覺得 這太不可思議了，這些人肯定天賦異稟。
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 was like, "Whoa. How come I never heard of this before?"
所以我開始采訪參賽者，這位叫Ed Cook，是從英格蘭來的，他在那兒接受了最好的記憶訓(xùn)練，我問他 "Ed 你是什么時(shí)候開始意識到，自己是記憶天才的?"，Ed答道 “我并不是什么專家，其實(shí) 我的記憶力很一般，來參賽的每一個(gè)人，都會告訴你他們的記憶力只是一般水平，我們都在訓(xùn)練自己后才能，完成這些奇跡般的記憶游戲，我們運(yùn)用了一系列古老的技巧，這些技巧是希臘人在兩千五百年前發(fā)明的，西塞羅正是用了這些技巧，來記憶他的演講稿的，中世紀(jì)學(xué)者用這種技巧來背誦正本書籍的內(nèi)容"，我驚訝不已 "哇噻 怎么我從來沒聽說過呢?"，
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."
我們站在競技大廳外，聰明過人 令人驚嘆，而又稍有些古怪的英國人Ed，對我說 "Josh 你是個(gè)美國記者，你知道小甜甜布蘭妮吧?”，我茫然不解 "什么? 當(dāng)然 為什么要問這個(gè)?"，“因?yàn)槲艺娴暮芟朐�，美國國家電臺上教會布蘭妮，怎樣記住一整副打亂的牌的順序，就能證明這是人人都可以做到的了"，
(Laughter)
(哄笑)，
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.
我說 "雖然我不是布蘭妮，但你也可以教教我呀，總得找個(gè)人開教嘛 不是嗎?"，接著 一段非常奇特的歷程在我面前展開了序幕，
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.
結(jié)果 第二年的大部分時(shí)間，我都花在了訓(xùn)練自己的記憶力，同時(shí)調(diào)查研究記憶上，我想嘗試?yán)斫猱a(chǎn)生記憶的原理，為何有時(shí)會記了又忘，及其它到底隱藏著什么樣的潛力，
I met a host of really interesting people. This is a guy called E.P. He's an amnesic who had, very possibly, the very 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.
途中我遇到了很多有趣的人，其中一個(gè)叫E.P.，他患有健忘癥 他的記憶力，恐怕是世界上最差的了，他的記憶能力差到，甚至記不得自己有健忘癥，真的很神奇，雖然他是個(gè)悲劇角色，但通過他 我們能了解到，記憶在何種程度上塑造了我們的人格，
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.
情況的另一個(gè)極端是 我遇到了這樣一個(gè)人，他叫Kim Peek，他是Dustin Hoffman在電影《雨人》里的角色的原型，我和他花了一下午，在鹽湖城公共圖書館里背電話簿，讓我大開眼界，
(Laughter)
(大笑)，
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.
回家后 我讀了許多關(guān)于記憶的論文，寫于兩千多年前的論文，用拉丁文寫的 從古代，一直到后來中世紀(jì)期間，我學(xué)到很多很有意思的事兒，其中一個(gè)就是，曾經(jīng)，訓(xùn)練 規(guī)束 培養(yǎng)記憶力的這種概念，完全不像如今那樣陌生，曾幾何時(shí) 人們寄希望于自己的記憶，能不遺余力地裝飾自己的心靈，
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.
近幾千年來，人類發(fā)明了一系列技術(shù)，從字母表到卷軸，到法典 印刷機(jī) 攝影技術(shù)，電腦 智能手機(jī)，讓我們能越來越輕松地，外化記憶能力，讓我們從根本上，把這種基礎(chǔ)的人類能力拱手讓出，這些技術(shù)讓現(xiàn)代生活變?yōu)榭赡�，但同時(shí)也改變了我們，不僅在文化上，我覺得也在認(rèn)知上，不再需要費(fèi)勁去記憶，有時(shí)會覺得我們已經(jīng)忘了如何去記憶，
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.
在這片地球上已經(jīng)很少有地方，能讓你覺得人們?nèi)詿嶂杂冢?xùn)練 規(guī)束 培養(yǎng)記憶力了，那非同尋常的記憶大賽算是一個(gè)，其實(shí)它也沒有那么非同尋常，世界各地都開始舉辦這樣的競賽，我對此深深著迷 想要知道這些人是怎么做到的，
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.
幾年前 倫敦大學(xué)學(xué)院的一組研究人員，請來一批記憶大賽的冠軍接受研究，他們想要弄明白，這些人的大腦，是否跟我們其他人在解剖學(xué)上的結(jié)構(gòu)不一樣?，答案是否定的，那他們比我們都聰明嗎?，他們給研究對象實(shí)施了一系列認(rèn)知測試，依舊得出了否定結(jié)論，
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 the rest of us can learn from this?
但對比受控制的比對目標(biāo)的大腦，記憶大賽冠軍們的大腦，確實(shí)有一處很有趣的不同 很說明問題，這些人被送去做功能磁共振，掃描大腦時(shí)，當(dāng)他們在記憶數(shù)字或人臉或雪花圖案時(shí)，研究人員發(fā)現(xiàn)記憶大賽冠軍們，的大腦激活的區(qū)域，跟普通人不太一樣，值得注意的是 他們看來是在用，腦中在空間記憶和導(dǎo)航時(shí)會用到的部分，為什么? 我們可以從中得出什么樣的結(jié)論呢?，
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 catchup.
競爭性記憶的較量，被一種類似軍事比賽的方式推向了白熱化，每年都會有人，帶著更有效的記憶方法現(xiàn)身賽場，而其他人就必須迎頭趕上，
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. Yeah.
這是我的朋友Ben Pridmore，贏得過三次國際記憶大賽冠軍，在他的臺前，有三十六副打亂順序的牌，他要在一個(gè)小時(shí)內(nèi)記下全部，用的是一種他自己發(fā)明的 也只有他會的技巧，用與此類似的方法，他曾一字不差地背下了，4140個(gè)任意排列的二進(jìn)制數(shù)，只用了半個(gè)小時(shí)，很牛吧，
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.
參賽者在這些競賽中，運(yùn)用過很多不同的記憶方法，各式各樣 被運(yùn)用到的所有技巧，最終都能歸化為一個(gè)概念，心理學(xué)家稱之為"精細(xì)編碼"，
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." 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 that he is a baker. Same word, different amount of remembering; that's weird. What's going on here?
這個(gè)概念能用一則幽默的悖論完美詮釋，叫做Baker/baker悖論，簡單說來就是，假設(shè)我讓兩個(gè)人去記同一個(gè)詞，我跟你說，"記住有個(gè)人叫Baker"，Baker是人名，我又來告訴你 "記住有個(gè)人是面包師(baker)"，過了一段時(shí)間我又回來找到你們，問 "還記得我之前，叫你們記住的那個(gè)詞嗎?"，”還記得是什么詞嗎?“，被告知人名是Baker的人，記住這個(gè)詞的可能性遠(yuǎn)不如，被告知職業(yè)是面包師的那個(gè)人，同樣的詞 導(dǎo)致不同的記憶程度，到底是為什么呢，
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.
是因?yàn)?人名Baker沒有任何特殊含義，沒法跟你腦海里，零碎繁雜的記憶產(chǎn)生任何聯(lián)系，但是面包師(baker)作為一個(gè)常用名詞，我們都知道面包師是什么，面包師帶著搞笑的白帽子，他們手上沾滿了面粉，他們下班回到家?guī)е鴵浔堑目久姘�，甚至可能有些人有朋友就是面包師，我們初次聽到這個(gè)詞時(shí)，馬上就會產(chǎn)生各種各樣的聯(lián)想，這使我們能在一段時(shí)間后還能回憶起來，其實(shí) 要理解記憶競賽中的，一切奧妙，或在日常生活中改善記憶力的秘訣，僅僅在于想辦法把Baker中的大寫B(tài)，變?yōu)槊姘鼛?baker)中的小寫b，把沒有前因后果，沒有重要性 沒有涵義的信息，用某種方法轉(zhuǎn)化為，有意義的內(nèi)容，跟腦海里的其他記憶串聯(lián)起來，
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: 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.
這種精確記憶的技巧，在兩千五百年前的古希臘就已出現(xiàn)，后來將其稱為記憶宮殿，發(fā)明這種技巧的過程如下，有個(gè)叫做Simonides的詩人，他要去參加一個(gè)晚宴，其實(shí)他算是被請去做表演嘉賓的，因?yàn)樵谀莻�(gè)年代 炫酷派對的標(biāo)準(zhǔn)，不是請D.J.來打碟 而是要請?jiān)娙藖眄炘�，他站起�?背出了他的全篇詩作 然后瀟灑離去，他剛走出門口 晚宴大廳就塌了，砸死了里面所有的人，不僅全體死亡，所有的死者都被砸得面目全非，沒人說得清死者都有些誰，沒人說得清誰坐在哪兒，導(dǎo)致死者的尸體沒法得到合適的殉葬安置，這又加重了整件事的悲劇色彩，Simonides站在外面，作為廢墟中的唯一幸存者，閉上眼睛 猛然意識到，在他的`腦海中，他眼前出現(xiàn)了所有賓客所坐的位置，他就牽著親屬們的手，穿過廢墟 把他們帶到了親人身邊，
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當(dāng)時(shí)猛然醒悟的事，大概我們大家也都猜到了，其實(shí)是 不管我們，有多不善于記住姓名 電話號碼，或是同事的每句指令，我們都擁有異常敏銳的視覺或空間記憶能力，要是我讓你們逐字逐句地重述，我剛才講的Simonides故事的前十個(gè)字，應(yīng)該沒幾個(gè)人會記得，但我敢打賭，如果我讓你們現(xiàn)在回想下，在你的門廳里 坐在會講話的棕色駿馬上的，是誰，你們就明白我剛才說的意思了，
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.
記憶宮殿的原理，就是在你的腦海里建立一棟想象大廈，并讓你想記住的東西，的影像充滿其中，越是瘋狂 古怪 奇詭，荒誕搞笑 亂七八糟 招人厭惡的影像，就越容易記住，這個(gè)建議來自于兩千多年前，拉丁最早的記憶學(xué)者，
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. What you might do is picture yourself at the front door of your house. And you'd come up with some sort of an absolutely crazy, ridiculous, unforgettable image to remind you that the first thing you want to talk about is this totally bizarre contest. 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 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 have some friends to help you remember that.
那么 這種說法的原理到底是什么呢，假設(shè)你被邀請，站上TED的中心講臺演講，而你想脫稿完成，如西塞羅在兩千年前在TEDx羅馬上的演講一般，他就會這么霸氣走一回 而你也想這樣，你要做的就是，想象自己站在自家門前，然后憑空想象出，一段完全荒誕瘋狂難忘的景象，用來提示你上臺要提的第一件事，就是這場詭異的裸騎大賽，然后你走進(jìn)房子里，想到甜餅怪物，坐在Ed先生背上的樣子，這個(gè)景象會提醒你，要介紹你的朋友Ed Cook，然后你腦海里出現(xiàn)了小甜甜布蘭妮的樣子，你就會想起要講那個(gè)關(guān)于布蘭妮的小故事，然后你走進(jìn)廚房，你要說到的第四個(gè)話題是，你花了一整年走過的奇妙歷程，通過綠野仙蹤就可以聯(lián)想得到，
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.
這就是羅馬演說家背誦演講稿的秘訣，并非一字不差 逐字背誦只會平添麻煩，而是記住一個(gè)個(gè)主題，其實(shí) 短語"主題句"，就來源于希臘詞"topos"，意思是"地點(diǎn)"，這是古時(shí)候，人們談到演講或是修辭時(shí)，會用到的空間術(shù)語，短語 "第一"，就意味著你的記憶宮殿的第一層，
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. (Laughter) 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 this incredible stuff happening in these people's minds, but I don't have access to it.
這簡直太有意思了，我對這起了很大的興趣，后來我又去了更多記憶大賽，我開始萌發(fā)了要更詳細(xì)描寫，這種競技記憶文化的念頭，但有一個(gè)問題，問題是記憶大賽，其實(shí)過程很無聊的，(大笑)，真的 就像一群人坐那兒高考一樣，最最激動人心的時(shí)刻，也不過就是有人揉了揉太陽穴，我是個(gè)記者 總得有東西可寫呀，我知道這些人腦子里肯定是驚濤駭浪，但我作為外人無法得見，
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 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.
我意識到 若我真的想報(bào)道這事兒，一定得親身體驗(yàn)才行，所以我開始嘗試著每天早上坐下來看紐約時(shí)報(bào)前，花上十五到二十分鐘，嘗試記憶一些事，背背小詩，背背我在跳蚤市場買來的，舊年鑒里的人名，我驚奇地發(fā)現(xiàn)這其實(shí)非常帶勁，要不去嘗試根本想不到，有趣在于 其實(shí)目標(biāo)并不是要通過訓(xùn)練提高記憶力，而是你在努力培養(yǎng)改善，創(chuàng)造力 想象力，在你的腦海里憑空造出，那些完全滑稽荒誕胡亂 最好是難忘的影像，而它成為了我的樂趣，
This is me wearing my standard competitive memorizer's training kit. 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.
這是我戴著標(biāo)準(zhǔn)競賽記憶者訓(xùn)練套裝的樣子，它有一對耳塞，一副護(hù)目鏡 鏡面全部遮黑，就留了兩個(gè)小孔，因?yàn)楦偧加洃浾咦畲蟮臄橙司褪亲⒁饬Ψ稚ⅲ?/p>
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, which really wasn't supposed to happen.
最后 我再次回到了一年前報(bào)道的那場競賽場上，我一時(shí)沖動 也想報(bào)名參加，就當(dāng)做參與性新聞報(bào)道的實(shí)驗(yàn)了，我當(dāng)時(shí)想 到時(shí)能在前言里調(diào)侃一下自己也好，問題是 實(shí)驗(yàn)最后得到了意想不到的結(jié)果，那場競賽我贏了，真是完全出乎我預(yù)料之外，
(Applause)
(鼓掌)，
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 are tricks that 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.
對我來說現(xiàn)在，背演講稿 電話號碼 或是購物單，都是小菜一碟 倒是很不錯(cuò)，但其實(shí)這些都不重要了，這些都是小伎倆，這些記憶伎倆之所以有效，是因?yàn)樗鼈円勒倘祟惔竽X運(yùn)轉(zhuǎn)的，一些基本原理，并不用真的去建立記憶宮殿，或記下幾副牌的順序，你也完全可以從了解大腦運(yùn)轉(zhuǎn)原理中，獲得一些益處，
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 it 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.
我們總會議論記憶力很好的人，總覺得那些人是天賦異稟，事實(shí)并不是這樣，強(qiáng)大的記憶力是可以習(xí)得的，從最根本的說起 專心致志就能記住，全心投入時(shí)就能記住，只要能想辦法把信息和經(jīng)歷，轉(zhuǎn)化為有意義的事，就能記住，想它為何重要 為何多彩，當(dāng)我們能把它轉(zhuǎn)化成為，有前因后果的事，并跟我們腦海中繁雜瑣碎的其他事產(chǎn)生聯(lián)想時(shí)，當(dāng)我們能把人名Baker轉(zhuǎn)化為面包師baker時(shí)，
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.
記憶宮殿 或是那些記憶技巧，都只是捷徑而已，其實(shí) 說到底它們都不能算捷徑，這方法有效是因?yàn)樗仁鼓闼伎�，它迫使你往更深層次去想，讓你更加專注，大部分人平時(shí)并不會費(fèi)力去訓(xùn)練這個(gè)，其實(shí)捷徑并不存在，這一直就是我們能記住事物的原因，
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 that 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?
有一件事我希望你們能記住，就是E.P.，那個(gè)連自己患了健忘癥都想不起來的人，讓我深思，得出了一個(gè)感想，人生就是我們個(gè)人記憶的合集，在短暫的人生里，你還愿意因?yàn)楹谳?iPhone，喪失多少瞬間，忽略對面坐著的人，在跟我們交談的人，變得越發(fā)懶惰 不愿意，深究任何事?，
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.
通過親身經(jīng)歷 我發(fā)現(xiàn)，我們的身體里潛藏著，不可思議的記憶能力，但若你想活得難忘，就得做那種，記得時(shí)常記憶的人，
Thank you.
謝謝，
(Applause)
(鼓掌)
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