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The Death of a Mnemonist

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54 pointslermontov17 comments

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solomon_Shereshevsky

The wiki page is more interesting:

> Shereshevsky also participated in experiments in which he showed that he had control over his body's involuntary (autonomic) functions. From a resting pulse of 70–72, he was able to increase it up to 100 by and decrease it to a steady 64–66.[5] When asked how he could do this, he replied that he would either "see" himself running after a train that has just begun to pull out or by "seeing" himself lying in bed perfectly still while trying to fall asleep. Shereshevsky was also able to simultaneously raise the temperature of his right hand by 2 degrees while lowering the temperature of his left hand by 1.5 degrees.[6] Once again, he stated that to do this, he simply "saw" a situation in which his right hand was touching a hot stove while his left hand was grasping a cube of ice. Shereshevsky also claimed to have been able to avoid pain by imagining that someone else was experiencing it and watching the other man experience it.[7] As he described, "It doesn't hurt me, you understand, but 'him.' I just don't feel any pain." This, however, was never tested by Luria. Additionally, Shereshevsky claimed to be able to cure himself and others of sickness by imagining that the problem went away. This was dismissed by Luria as "naive magical thinking."[8]

> After he discovered his own abilities, he performed as a mnemonist; but this created confusion in his mind. He went as far as writing things down on paper and burning it, so that he could see the words in cinders, in a desperate attempt to forget them. … Reportedly, in his late years, he realized that he could forget facts with just a conscious desire to remove them from his memory, although Luria did not test this directly.

Interestingly, I have the ability to increase my resting pulse rate and then decrease it back to normal, without using any specific imagination techniques. I believe this is closely linked to the release of epinephrine into the bloodstream. To achieve this, I simply recall the sensation that arises when my body has the actual epinephrine response. This either tricks my body into responding as if there were an actual epinephrine response, or perhaps a small amount of epinephrine is actually released - I'm not entirely sure. Apart from increased pulse, my pupils also dilate significantly for a short time, which is also can be linked to adrenaline response.

I've had the opportunity to test this in a clinical setting under an ECG. Not only did it increase my pulse, but it also caused the QRS complex to invert. Upon seeing this, the doctors advised me not to continue with this practice. However, I didn't experience any negative effects from this experiment. On the flip side, I haven't found any practical use for this ability either.

I would be intrigued to connect with someone else who has a similar capability. It seems that those internal "feelings" is as close to direct control as we can get.

As of pain, I have similar experience as well, except instead of detaching myself from the pain, I "look" as closely as I can. At a certain point pain decomposes to what it really is — electrical impulses, and from this point it literally starting to feel as electricity going through your body, quite the same feeling as if you accidentally grab both pins of the electrical plug, albeit not as intense.

>On the flip side, I haven't found any practical use for this ability either.

well, you can reliably trick a polygraph

If we're discussing controlled changes in physical condition using various equipment that allows measurement, it's called biofeedback. If done without equipment, it includes various types of autogenic training.

Its as if feelings are the driver, and the physical reality follows.

I like to think of reality is a wide highway, and we have a lot of flexibility in the lane we pick in most cases, and other times we're funneled down to a single lane.

When systems are built on top of systems built on top of systems, cause and effect get lost in multiple levels of hysteresis.

What he describes is perfectly in line with the way self-hypnosis was conceived before it was captured by the ''feel-good'' crowd. I recommend reading the exceptional book written by Dave Elman and the way he describes hypnosis and self-hypnosis: the bypassing of the critical faculty of the conscious mind. This means that what is imagined becomes/is real and allows one to control (certain) autonomic functions in this way.

It is unfortunate that a very promising and largely effective and earthy field with a ton of very practical applications has been kidnapped by the snake-oil salesmen and the aforementioned spiritual/ feel-good crowd.

Yes, exactly. I am in no way an expert but the way I approach it when meditating is that my brain is going to throw up random thoughts, and that this is ok. But, they are just that, thoughts, and can be gently examined and put away just like that. You dont have to engage with them. And, you should not worry about them popping up. They're just neurons firing.

People sometimes tell me, "I can't meditate, my brain gets too busy to clear my mind" and I respond that emptying your mind is not the aim (nor possible) but that learning to acknowledge a thought without it consuming you is really key.

I can’t remember the exact phrase but McLuhan talks about the “literate man” (or something) in a way that makes it sound like we have modern brain software, not better or worse, merely adapted for a certain environment.

I like the idea that we’ve lost touch with certain faculties, and they’re still there, waiting to be rediscovered, if only we can cut through the all the software that we’ve installed for writing book reports.

I can confirm from experience that all of the things described above can be done by a normal person with visualization (it is technically auto-hypnosis but the term makes it sound more complicated than it is).

It is easier to get started with some instruments to give you feedback but it is not particularly hard.

I had memory like this up to about the age of 16 - but I did not use mnemonics. I can't really explain it, but I was often accused of cheating in school because I could visualize a textbook page I had read and "read" it in my mind word for word and find the answers for tests. Because of this I never really felt the need to study. I was raised in a religious setting and they used this ability to have me memorize large chunks of text from the Bible - at one point I had about 50% of the new testament completely memorized.

Then one day it just suddenly left me. I'm kind of glad. My short term memory is still extremely good, and I can typically hold about 20-25 "tokens" in my head in order without issues, but converting that to a long term memory like I used to be able to do is just gone. Memory is a strange thing.

This is how it usually goes--it's vanishingly rare to retain a photographic memory into adulthood, but it's not that rare in kids. I had it too, but then I started sprouting hair in places that never ever got cold and the rest is history (that I can barely remember).

I have a friend who’s a chess player who described something similar

Interestingly - I also have synesthesia like the parent article's subject did, although likely not as pronounced. Not much is known about how that works, I think, I've tried to learn more over the years about it and always run into pseudoscience pretty quickly.

I remember having a similar skill when I was younger, until about the same age. When writing papers based on books, I could think about something I remember reading and know which part of the page it was on (left or right facing page and which part of the page). Then I would flip through pages quickly to find the quote.

I've come across a version suggesting that the genius of Shereshevsky is exaggerated because he studied mnemonics at school and if you compare his actual test results, he showed good but still not phenomenal performance.

https://mnemotexnika.narod.ru/izv_mn_02.htm (russian)

Regarding modern requirements for mnemonists, it's seen that one needs, for example, to be able to:

1) Memorize one hundred two-digit numbers in 10 minutes.

2) After a month and a half of the course, retain a database consisting of https://web.archive.org/web/20220331232601/https://www.mnemo... with the ability to recall the information both sequentially and by number, and in context.

I believe there are tens of thousands of people worldwide who have been trained in this manner, and various individual techniques are widely adopted by people.

I've tried learning it myself and I'm convinced that it works, but somehow I keep postponing it. For dissemination, it might be worth paying attention to individual techniques for memorizing formulas or other material to write an article or something similar. Without more detailed personal experience (when I would have such a database in my head), I'm afraid it might come across as mere advertising.

It's astonishing how much can be accomplished with just a bit of "rotating a cow in the mind."

On a related note, I can recall a quick visual counting system where the author attempted to utilize the dialing matrix in a cell phone. The author argues that no genius is needed; there are patterns. One can search for "Творогов В.Б. Наглядная арифметика и технология быстрого счета" for more information.

There's more, but it might already be a bit off-topic...

This title is super weird. Yeah this person was a mnemonist, and yeah he died. But the article is not about the "the death of a mnemonist". As far as I can say he lived a long life and died at old age. There was nothing special about his death. It was not related to him being a mnemonist. (or if it did, the article does not try to make that connection.)

It is almost as if they had a simple article describing his abilities (perhaps titled "The Mind of a Mnemonist"? As the original case study describing him was titled.) And then just decided to spruce it up with a catchy title and some minimal attempt at mentioning his death.

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