[hp49]

TL;DR "If you repeat information, you'll remember it better."

I think it's worth noting that Ebbinghaus' original experiment had people learn nonsensical isolated syllables and measuring the rate of forgetting.

See on page 30: https://archive.org/details/berdasgedchtnis00ebbigoog/page/n... (It's German, though)

But real world information always comes within a context and it has inherent value. For example language learning:

If you learn the English word 'table' (as a foreigner), you don't just try to remember the writing and pronunciation. You already have a full semantic concept of what a table is, which helps you tremendously to remember the word 'table' in turn.

[yesenadam]

Although most, if not all, masters of memory use methods involving vivid nonsense images, the more nonsensical and crazy the better! Like if was learning "mesa" ("table" in spanish) I might picture a giant mesa in the desert, with lots of tables on the top of it, with members of Mensa sitting at it talking about tables.. You would think that meant having to remember a lot of extra irrelevant stuff. It's rather surprising that it works at all.

[bobosha]

Actually, memory masters ascribe a sequence (a la a song) to store multiple things. I think time/sequence i.e. auto-association is arguably the most important element in human memory. Some have described it as a memory house with various rooms and objects and navigating it.

The more "nonsensical" as you put it, the more distinctive & discriminant the memory is.

Edit: formatting & more details.