alt Hacker NewsSomething that I think was probably once obvious to me but I rediscovered recently is just how intensely wired for song the brain is. If you want to memorize anything, doing it as a song makes it far easier.
I’d really love to see things like this generate little jingles along with the sentence. :)
Replies
Terr_ • today at 1:08 AM
It's huge when you consider all the data humans have stored and transferred orally over the millennia.
Music, meter, and rhyme are all (among other things) algorithms for indexing and error-correction, tools very suitable to the squishy hardware.
There actually was an attempt on HN a little while back to use GenAI to convert facts, flashcards, lists, etc. into automated melodic mnemonics. The biggest issue in that particular case was that it was also generating the motif from scratch.
At least for me, part of the reason I can still sing the countries of the world is because the original Animaniacs song was set to a tune that was already familiar: “Jarabe Tapatío” (aka the Mexican Hat Dance).