Aug. - Sept. 2023

Each memory palace is half serious and half play. I'm intentional about which ideas are worth the effort of memorizing, and then I'm playful with the encoding and recitation process.​​​​​​​​​​​​​ If the encoding is not surprising, I will not be able to recall the encoded idea. "Wanting" to encode the ideas can inhibit the encoding process! ​​​The thrills come from chewing on the ideas and following the fresh curiosities that arise. Where does intrinsic curiosity come from and what are the conditions for it?​​​

​​​​​​​​​​​​

Instead of only maintaining a mental representation of the mnemonics that I used for this recitation, I externalized them onto my desktop. The scene took place in my living room, so I first did a 3D capture using NeRFStudio. Next, I used Midjourney to illustrate in 2D what I then used Common Sense Machine's Cube to expand into 3D. I rendered the combined scene in Blender after importing all of the generated 3D objects. How are humans able to create memory palaces and how can we create machines that are also able to do so?

​

- "How do we distinguish ill-posed problems that insufficiently constrain search from those that are rich in structure and therefore potentially tractable?"

- "If we explored only to try to maximize expected information gain, we would miss the chance to gain unexpected information.

- "How do we represent our own progress in thinking such that it can be a source of intrinsic reward?"

- "How do people, and how can machines, expand their hypothesis spaces to generate wholly new ideas, plans, and solutions?"