gwern comments on An anecdote about names - Less Wrong

25 Post author: Manfred 30 October 2012 03:40AM

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Comment author: gwern 30 October 2012 05:08:29AM 11 points [-]

I've started remembering peoples' names after just one introduction, sometimes two. And the reasonable culprit just seems to be practice. You practice learning names, you get better at doing so. Before, I made occasional conversational detours if I couldn't remember someone's name. Now, I ask them again, and try intentionally to use their name in conversation. If I'm really having trouble, sometimes I've written down a name with a short description, and that usually cements it.

Sure, you could do that. But that's totally lame and practical.

Or you could use spaced repetition!

Comment author: Manfred 30 October 2012 06:22:19AM *  10 points [-]

Spaced repetition for names is basically where you use someone's name every chance you get when you first hear it, and then just drop it into conversation occasionally, and then stop worrying about it. It's quite effective.

Or you could do spaced repetition of an exercise, like matching descriptions and names, but I'm not confident of the usefulness of exercises. The best might be to take and tag pictures of everyone whose name you want to remember. Which, now that I think about it, some people do a lot...

Comment author: [deleted] 30 October 2012 11:05:34AM 6 points [-]

Spaced repetition for names is basically where you use someone's name every chance you get when you first hear it, and then just drop it into conversation occasionally, and then stop worrying about it. It's quite effective.

Even without saying them aloud, I've found that rehearsing the names of people I've just met in my mind every five or ten minutes kind-of works.

Comment author: handoflixue 30 October 2012 09:21:11PM 0 points [-]

Rehearsing names-with-faces works better for me. It works even better if I can get a list of names (to match to faces) and also easily glance out and see all their faces (to test if I can match them to their name). The last improvement is having a non-embarassing way to refresh myself if, in rehearsing, I find out I've forgotten someone (assigned seats are beautiful - look at seat, see if I can name occupant. If not, check who seat is assigned to)

Comment author: evand 30 October 2012 05:33:32AM 1 point [-]

There was some discussion at our last meetup of building a faces / names anki deck. It has not happened yet.

Comment author: Alicorn 30 October 2012 06:41:31AM 4 points [-]

I think they distribute these before rationality camps.

Comment author: palladias 30 October 2012 05:51:31PM 3 points [-]

Didn't help me, but I'm pretty face blind. I had trouble differentiating between the faces in the deck, not just associating them with names.

Comment author: Vaniver 30 October 2012 08:38:20PM 2 points [-]

They did, I found them super effective. TAs and professors also get facebooks (yes, that's where the name came from) of their students, which I would turn into Anki decks. (It works rather well.)

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