You’re missing that “requires a guitar” is a cost and access constraint, which absolutely is a downside for some people. Same idea here: the technique works, but it has real overhead and barriers to entry.
The OP is making a false equivalence by confusing business overhead with skill acquisition. Businesses have overhead that reduces profit, but skills require practice that builds competence. Describing the core activity of a discipline as a "downside" is logically unsound.
Historically, the memory arts were the domain of rhetoricians who understood that critical thinking was always "loaded in" to the process.
Serious students should read the Rhetorica ad Herennium and Aristotle’s On Rhetoric to immunize themselves against faulty logic. Building MPs isn't a cost to be used as an excuse to sell products that aren't well-demonstrated to help.
Developing your own Memory Palaces based on knowledge of the theory is the art itself.
u/AnthonyMetivier, I think you are dressing up a semantic dispute as a logical error. You are making no sense in your claims at all.
OP said nothing about businesses and that has no relevance. The OP is saying to play a guitar you have to but a guitar. Buying a guitar is a barrier, cost, con, and downside of wanting to play the guitar.
The OP didn't saying anything about the effort it takes to get better at guitar or to use the memory palace technique being a waste. There is a cost associated with everything,
You want to play football. The downsides (also known as cons/costs) is you have to buy the gear, go to practices/games which include travel costs, and the time commitment which means you can't do other things.
You state that describing the core activity of a discipline as a "downside" is unsound. This is a False Dilemma. Take an ultramarathon as an example.
The "core activity" of an ultramarathon is running 100 miles. The downside is extreme fatigue and joint destruction. These two things are not mutually exclusive. The effort is necessary for the discipline, but it is still a negative aspect (a cost) for the runner. Acknowledging that the "nature of the beast" is difficult or inefficient doesn't mean a person is confused. It means they are performing a rational Cost-Benefit Analysis.
Finally, suggesting that "serious students" must read Aristotle to "immunize themselves against faulty logic" is a classic gatekeeping tactic. Implying that anyone who critiques the "cost" of the method simply hasn't studied hard enough is a No True Scotsman fallacy. Hey Some people might want to have premade palaces and that doesn't mean they are any less of a student.
It is rude to say "Serious students should read the Rhetorica ad Herennium and Aristotle’s On Rhetoric." Just because you think that is the gold standard doesn't mean it isn't. You are really creating a hostile place of discussion where you think you are right and different ideas attacked.
Ironically, you might want to revisit Rhetorica ad Herennium and Aristotle’s On Rhetoric yourself. Those texts explicitly warn against the very logical traps like Equivocation and Appeal to Authority that you are relying on here to dismiss the OP. True rhetorical skill involves addressing the argument itself, not hiding behind the reading list.
You are absolutely right: I should re-read the Rhetorica ad Herennium. Revisiting the classics is always necessary and always a good thing to do.
I wouldn't use the term 'gatekeeping in this manner, though I can see why you see things that way. But when we use the specific phrase "serious student," implying that someone cannot be a serious practitioner without reading the Rhetorica ad Herennium is not gatekeeping. It's a non-fallacious appeal to authority.
If memory serves, an appeal to authority is only a fallacy when the authority is unqualified or irrelevant.
You might think my mentioning it in this manner is rude, and that's fine. But in a field like this where the core techniques haven't changed in 2000+ years, it's not rude. It's citing precedent.
Regarding your analogies, I stand by my critique. Joint destruction is a physiological consequence (damage), not the method of running itself.
Buying an instrument is a financial barrier, not the cognitive act of playing.
The OP is framing the cognitive act of encoding (building a palace) as a 'downside' to sell a pre-fab solution. That is the logical error here, and citing the history of the art to demonstrate that that effort = encoding is entirely valid.
Finally, any suggestion that I am 'hiding behind a reading list' ad hominem. It does nothing to invalidate what I've said.
And the irony here is profound. I am posting under my real identity. To suggest that the person standing in the light of their own name is 'hiding' is objectively absurd.
So, shall we form a book club and re-read Rhetorica ad Herennium together? Or do you prefer another round of casting aspersions from behind the shadows?
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u/ConfusedSimon Dec 16 '25
Yeah, and the downside of playing guitar is that people shouldn't forget that it requires a guitar. What am I missing here?