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To Remember, the Brain Must Actively Forget

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Re: To Remember, the Brain Must Actively Forget

#81

Post by remedan »

bpizzi wrote: post #70
adriand wrote: post #17

I remember sitting at a bar in a distant city in some other country one night, and the person next to me, who I had just met that day, suggested that we do a shot together. Now these shots were big, and it had already been quite the night, and I remember thinking, "If I do this shot, it's probably the last thing I'll remember tonight." It was, but that's not the point of this anecdote. This experience gave me the ide…

Personnaly I would never use such a drug. I conceptualise myself as a tought-based kernel with a bunch of meat around to make it run. This kernel tries hardly to think about itself as 'one thing' (you don't achieve much with schizophrenia), and that relies heavily on this kernel being able to trace a continuous stream of tought back to its birth (at least as far as it can remember). Alter this stream and you loose yo…

What's your opinion on the common teleportation dilemma? If there were a machine, that would instantly destroy my body and assemble it somewhere else (even from completely different atoms) so that from my point of view, I instantly vanish and appear elsewhere, does this count as interruption to my line of consciousness? Doesn't really seem like it to me. After all, my memories and thoughts are stored in the patterns of matter and those are preserved.

Re: To Remember, the Brain Must Actively Forget

#82

Post by mattmanser »

2muchcoffeeman wrote: post #75
ehnto wrote: post #63

Minor and probably not that interesting anecdote: I always struggled to remember sequences of numbers. Even if I had looked at the number just a fraction of a moment ago, they were gone. I would have to do things like repeat them over and over or remember two numbers at a time. I was always buzzing in my head anout remembering the numbers and that produced a noise that I think made me forget. Then I started cleaning…

Have you tried remembering the number as a picture rather than a list of digits? Works for me.

I'm not the grandparent, but after doing "Learning How To Learn" course on coursera[1] (very good), I finally realised I suffer from Aphantasia, where I don't see images in my imagination.

Even though I'd tried loads of memory techniques over the years as I have a very poor memory, I'd never really understood people actually see images. I thought they meant that they were, like me, simply listing the properties the image would have in your head.

So all these techniques like "remembering the number as a picture" never worked well from me, and finally explained why all the common techniques people recommend are pretty useless. It turns out people have a huge variation on how good they are at visualising things in their minds eye, and I'm right near the bottom in terms of skill.

On the plus side it turns out that I can make images appear, having done some exercises to help it, although I didn't keep at it and it still doesn't come naturally. Most people can improve and there are very few cases of people not actually being able to do it. I also read of one man who'd had a stroke and lost his ability to picture things in his brain.

Oddly, I am very quick at generally orienteering myself in new places and picking up map layouts in games, even though I don't visualize anything in my head.

[1]https://www.coursera.org/learn/learning-how-to-learn

Re: To Remember, the Brain Must Actively Forget

#83

Post by palad1n »

8bitsrule wrote: post #48

If we remembered everything, he said, we would be completely inefficient because our brains would always be swamped with superfluous memories. Yet there are a few people who, it has elsewhere been claimed, can remember details from every day of their life, on demand. What's 'superfluous' to one of us may be essential to others... a strictly subjective judgement. Some of us are specialists, others generalists. The tro…

https://abcnews.go.com/Entertainment/actress-marilu-henners-...

Re: To Remember, the Brain Must Actively Forget

#84

Post by mjburgess »

taurath wrote: post #79
jeffwass wrote: post #15

Relevant convo between Sherlock Holmes and John Watson (My choice of Italics highlights). Below excerpt from A Study in Scarlet , Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, 1887. —— My surprise reached a climax, however, when I found incidentally that he was ignorant of the Copernican Theory and of the composition of the Solar System. That any civilized human being in this nineteenth century should not be aware that the earth travelled…

I actually wonder what the neurological research is on this subject. Does too much information crowd other information out?

The brain will keep around information that is used automatically. In my experience its a very bad idea to forgo learning something out of the expectation that it won't be used. I did this often, and it was catastrophic for me -- it turns out we're not very good assessors of what we will need.

Doyle was a crank.

Re: To Remember, the Brain Must Actively Forget

#85

Post by bpizzi »

remedan wrote: post #81
bpizzi wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Personnaly I would never use such a drug. I conceptualise myself as a tought-based kernel with a bunch of meat around to make it run. This kernel tries hardly to think about itself as 'one thing' (you don't achieve much with schizophrenia), and that relies heavily on this kernel being able to trace a continuous stream of tought back to its birth (at least as far as it can remember). Alter this stream and you loose yo…

What's your opinion on the common teleportation dilemma? If there were a machine, that would instantly destroy my body and assemble it somewhere else (even from completely different atoms) so that from my point of view, I instantly vanish and appear elsewhere, does this count as interruption to my line of consciousness? Doesn't really seem like it to me. After all, my memories and thoughts are stored in the patterns…

Teleportation isn't very concerning to me, because it's basically against known physic rules for now on. Theoretically I would be very wary of teleportation, on a pragmatic level: if I don't own the teleportation process on an extreme level then there's too much risk to be altered in some (maybe dramatic) way.

However, there's a variant that sucks my thoughts sometimes: what about transferring a full brain's backup into a valid recipient?

Classical application would be life extension: going into a "blank" body/brain (or big enough computer) when mine is too old to carry on. It's still very inconceivable nowadays, but much more attainable than teleportation I think.

You can't "switch off" the old brain, copy it, and "switch on" the new one, because that would pose the same questions as teleportation. Neither I wouldn't start a copy process, wait for it to complete, commit suicide and set alive the new body/brain in the same time.

The obvious solution would be to find a way to connect two brains (be it an organically or computerized brain), extend the thought in such a way that there would be full redundancy of memories between the two devices, and the switch off the old one.

I guess I read too much hard sci-fi :)

Re: To Remember, the Brain Must Actively Forget

#86

Post by jibreel »

saiya-jin wrote: post #78
ehnto wrote: post #63

Minor and probably not that interesting anecdote: I always struggled to remember sequences of numbers. Even if I had looked at the number just a fraction of a moment ago, they were gone. I would have to do things like repeat them over and over or remember two numbers at a time. I was always buzzing in my head anout remembering the numbers and that produced a noise that I think made me forget. Then I started cleaning…

hmm, I am a bit opposite - no issues with remembering even longer numbers (learned long serial numbers of all posters on the wall as a child just out of boredom), but introduce to me 2-3 people I haven't seen, and I simply can't remember their names. Feeling like a incompetent idiot guaranteed. Names stick like 2 seconds around in my memory and are gone. Heck sometimes even a single person is an issue. My memory ain'…

Me too, i can never quite seem to remember names, it can be very embarrassing, sometimes i even forgot the names of my cousins i haven't seen in a long time.

My theory is that, we don't internalise names and link it to the respective person for it to be anything memorable. but what do i know...

Re: To Remember, the Brain Must Actively Forget

#87

Post by flabbergast »

>> Hardt said. “It filters out the stuff that the brain deems unimportant.”

Most of the things I learned at school I forgot; all the math and so that I never need in my life. More than half of the curriculum is just rubbish for our brains IMAO.

Maybe this helps to start making compulsive education more pragmatic. At this moment I see kids coming from school knowing how to do advance math they'll never ever need. But basic knowledge about what is healthy food or not, or knowing how the industry is poisoning almost anything you can buy in the supermarket, they have no clue.. And I believe knowing those things do matter for our brain, we would not easily forget.

Re: To Remember, the Brain Must Actively Forget

#88

Post by tjoff »

flabbergast wrote: post #87

>> Hardt said. “It filters out the stuff that the brain deems unimportant.” Most of the things I learned at school I forgot; all the math and so that I never need in my life. More than half of the curriculum is just rubbish for our brains IMAO. Maybe this helps to start making compulsive education more pragmatic. At this moment I see kids coming from school knowing how to do advance math they'll never ever need. But…

Just because you wouldn't remember how to tackle an advanced math problem doesn't mean it has been wasted.

You've gained experience and you can identify what you don't remember. Even if you can't remember it it is no longer magic, which is invaluable by itself.

Also the process of learning these abstract concepts is arguably the most important skill you learn in higher education. You might recognize what is required and you do know how to pick it up when you are faced with it - or know when you need external help.

Re: To Remember, the Brain Must Actively Forget

#89

Post by kaybe »

flabbergast wrote: post #87

>> Hardt said. “It filters out the stuff that the brain deems unimportant.” Most of the things I learned at school I forgot; all the math and so that I never need in my life. More than half of the curriculum is just rubbish for our brains IMAO. Maybe this helps to start making compulsive education more pragmatic. At this moment I see kids coming from school knowing how to do advance math they'll never ever need. But…

After I ran my head against math for some time and actually noticed changes to my mind structure, I am sceptical. Studying math is not (just) about the knowledge you gain, it is about the reasoning structure behind it, like a workout for the brain.

Learning things is not (just) about the facts you know afterwards. I read so many books I forgot at least half of what was written there, but my worldview and thinking was altered from that.

Not that the other stuff isn't very important too of course..

Re: To Remember, the Brain Must Actively Forget

#90

Post by sirclueless »

mjburgess wrote: post #84
taurath wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I actually wonder what the neurological research is on this subject. Does too much information crowd other information out?

The brain will keep around information that is used automatically . In my experience its a very bad idea to forgo learning something out of the expectation that it won't be used. I did this often, and it was catastrophic for me -- it turns out we're not very good assessors of what we will need. Doyle was a crank.

There's a related corollary to this question though, which is whether systems that require less human memory enable you to remember other things better.

For example, your phone can dial dozens or hundreds of your friend's phones without you remembering their numbers. This means you never need to use their phone numbers and hence don't remember them. A reasonable question you might ask is whether you are now free to spend that brainpower memorizing other, more useful things? Or are you actually less capable of memorizing other things because you are exercising your memory less?

There are other similar examples, for example password managers and even just general Google-able trivia. Is it a good thing or a bad thing for general intelligence that humans need spend less time memorizing these things?

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