Memory Techniques from Vedic Learning [pdf] • Hacker News Board

Re: Memory Techniques from Vedic Learning [pdf]

#21

Post by Tenoke » Sun, Feb 21, 2021, 2:04 AM UTC

bulek wrote: post #12

keiferski wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From my understanding, this is essentially Lamarckism, which was not taken as fact for a long time but has (recently?) been investigated again. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lamarckism

Counterpoint: Epigenetics is a thing, which is influenced by the parents life style. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epigenetics_of_Human_Developme... https://sciencing.com/epigenetics-definition-how-it-works-ex... >Other studies have looked at the effect of famine. When mothers were exposed to famine during pregnancy, as was the case in Holland in 1944 and 1945, their children had a higher incidence of obesity and cor…

Most of those high-level epigenetics findings are on shaky ground.

Even if true that their children had higher rates of obesity this could easily be due to nurture - e.g. those Mothers could've been more likely to stock up on food at home and feed their children more due to the trauma, with the methylation explanation being post-hoc.

Re: Memory Techniques from Vedic Learning [pdf]

#22

Post by moneywoes » Sun, Feb 21, 2021, 2:26 AM UTC

keiferski wrote: post #10

naruvimama wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The idea that memorization was used due to a lack of writing material is just a modern and shallow interpretation. The ancients considered written text as less authentic, and rightly so. Oral knowledge is spread among the populance and can not be destroyed or distorted by few actors.

It seems increasingly obvious to me that memorization and learning play a really important role in maintaining basic intellectual standards. Everything can’t be googled and even if it could be, retrieval isn’t equivalent to knowledge. Having personally memorized a lot of things via Anki, there is a noticeable difference when you can “chew on” something mentally at a subconscious level.

Any tips for using anki?

Re: Memory Techniques from Vedic Learning [pdf]

#23

Post by buggythebug » Sun, Feb 21, 2021, 2:30 AM UTC

Make us prout

Re: Memory Techniques from Vedic Learning [pdf]

#24

Post by schoen » Sun, Feb 21, 2021, 2:47 AM UTC

naruvimama wrote: post #8

ajju wrote: post #3

Fascinating. As a child, I semi-reluctantly learned vedic chanting when staying with relatives over the summer. It was very interesting to understand the “algorithms” behind the techniques they used to have us memorize each “shlok”. As the author says, these served an important purpose to transmit knowledge to future generations when writing materials and books were scarce and delicate.

The idea that memorization was used due to a lack of writing material is just a modern and shallow interpretation. The ancients considered written text as less authentic, and rightly so. Oral knowledge is spread among the populance and can not be destroyed or distorted by few actors.

> The ancients considered written text as less authentic, and rightly so.

I know some of the ancients were skeptical of the impact of writing on knowledge and culture, but others seem to have held rather the opposite view:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Verba_volant,_scripta_manent

Re: Memory Techniques from Vedic Learning [pdf]

#25

Post by duskwuff » Sun, Feb 21, 2021, 2:54 AM UTC

nelsonmandela wrote: post #20

duskwuff wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This in an enormous accomplishment given the vast corpus of text preserved without any errors creeping in. This bit is particularly questionable. It's unproveable -- if a text was only transmitted orally, there's no way to compare its modern form to an older version -- and it's probably wrong. The short-range memorization techniques described in the article don't guard against larger-scale errors in memorization, l…

There is error correction built in to the chants. Really advanced stuff, but I expect nothing less from those who authored the vedas. https://hinduism.stackexchange.com/questions/9517/procedures...

I'm dubious of the claims made on that page.

"Divisional protection" appears to simply be stating that the Vedas are divided into sections. This doesn't provide any form of error correction; it's simply a means of organization.

"Meter protection" states that the Vedas consist of metrical verse. This provides a limited level of protection against certain types of errors (like inserted or deleted words), but not against larger changes.

"Swara protection" and "Mudra protection" state that the chants are tonal, and that those tones are associated with particular gestures. I'm not sure what protection this is meant to provide.

"Patha protection" is a restatement of the same memorization technique described in the OP.

Re: Memory Techniques from Vedic Learning [pdf]

#26

Post by bloodorange » Sun, Feb 21, 2021, 4:34 AM UTC

moneywoes wrote: post #22

keiferski wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems increasingly obvious to me that memorization and learning play a really important role in maintaining basic intellectual standards. Everything can’t be googled and even if it could be, retrieval isn’t equivalent to knowledge. Having personally memorized a lot of things via Anki, there is a noticeable difference when you can “chew on” something mentally at a subconscious level.

Any tips for using anki?

I'd suggest spending the time needed to read through the documentation they have. It's not a lot of reading and it helps you understand how it works, what choices it makes and subsequently, it is easier to figure out for yourself how you want to use it.

https://apps.ankiweb.net/docs/manual20.html

Re: Memory Techniques from Vedic Learning [pdf]

#27

Post by earthboundkid » Sun, Feb 21, 2021, 5:10 AM UTC

naruvimama wrote: post #8

ajju wrote: post #3

Fascinating. As a child, I semi-reluctantly learned vedic chanting when staying with relatives over the summer. It was very interesting to understand the “algorithms” behind the techniques they used to have us memorize each “shlok”. As the author says, these served an important purpose to transmit knowledge to future generations when writing materials and books were scarce and delicate.

The idea that memorization was used due to a lack of writing material is just a modern and shallow interpretation. The ancients considered written text as less authentic, and rightly so. Oral knowledge is spread among the populance and can not be destroyed or distorted by few actors.

If you have a long text and it is corrupted, it’s really hard to tell, particularly before the invention of checksums. Is this a hapax legomenon or did someone just misspell a word? Even things that should be clear like “is this part of the text or part of the commentary on the text” get murky: there are several parts of the Bible where scholars will say things like, we think this was meant to be an explanatory comment but it got put in the main text by mistake.

Oral tradition can make these problems better because if one person has a distorted view of the text, they won’t be able to be certified as a reciter by their master. The Indians in particular had various checksum methods, plus a tradition of teaching how to pronounce things, which all would have made the text drift much slower than “a scribe messed this up and the only way to tell is to go to another region and see if their copy has the same words or not.”

Re: Memory Techniques from Vedic Learning [pdf]

#28

Post by earthboundkid » Sun, Feb 21, 2021, 5:11 AM UTC

abledon wrote: post #9

do you think if, for say, 20 generations, your family practiced these mental exercises... would your DNA/RNA (more % turned 'on'[1]) be primed for increased memorization ? [1] https://science.howstuffworks.com/life/genetic/genes-turned-...

No.

Re: Memory Techniques from Vedic Learning [pdf]

#29

Post by earthboundkid » Sun, Feb 21, 2021, 5:16 AM UTC

duskwuff wrote: post #7

RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote: post #6

> The oral tradition of vedic learning has preserved the entire vedic texts by purely human memory for several generations. This in an enormous accomplishment given the vast corpus of text preserved without any errors creeping in.This has been made possible by a diligently devised systematic scheme of chanting the vedic corpus. A system of chanting for memory has been used since pre-history across many cultures. See…

> This in an enormous accomplishment given the vast corpus of text preserved without any errors creeping in. This bit is particularly questionable. It's unproveable -- if a text was only transmitted orally, there's no way to compare its modern form to an older version -- and it's probably wrong. The short-range memorization techniques described in the article don't guard against larger-scale errors in memorization, l…

You compare different lineages and use standard linguistic techniques for detecting language change. It’s not perfect, but with long texts you end up doing the same thing because it’s rare for written things to last more than a couple of hundred years without extremely good luck and often it takes just that long for a text to become popular enough for there to be enough copies for you to find and compare.

Re: Memory Techniques from Vedic Learning [pdf]

#30

Post by mindentropy » Sun, Feb 21, 2021, 5:40 AM UTC

ajju wrote: post #5

boxed wrote: post #2

More pseudo scientific bs from Hindu nationalists.

The article focuses on texts of Hinduism but I don’t understand the criticism. The article seems to accurately describe how vedic verses were memorized using simple techniques like chunking and chaining. The author starts by pointing out that pretty much everyone uses these techniques to memorize phone numbers, so I don’t see any surreptitious glorification of religion here.

Maybe I am missing something but where is the criticism?