Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

To Remember, the Brain Must Actively Forget

quantamagazine.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

91–100 of 126 posts

Re: To Remember, the Brain Must Actively Forget

#91

Post by skate22 »

sirclueless wrote: post #90
mjburgess wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 s…

I felt this way for a long time about geospatial directions, but when your phone / gps dies and you have no map, it's kind of a terrifying feeling of helplessness

Re: To Remember, the Brain Must Actively Forget

#93

Post by dpweb »

I know nothing of the neuroscience but I have a theory we look at memory wrong. We see it like storage. You take a cup, put it in a cabinet, and bring it out later.

But what about memories as your brain, not pulling it from storage, but entirely regenerating the experience. So its remaking the cup every time, not pulling it from the cabinet.

False/faulty memory is common. We’re regenerating the experience inaccurately. Like if you drew a picture then had to draw it again. It would look the same but slightly different. The cup after all if stored would always be retrieved exactly as it was.

Re: To Remember, the Brain Must Actively Forget

#94

Post by lamoutasallite »

ralusek wrote: post #49
euske wrote: post #27

So, simply put... - short term memory: transaction journal - long term memory: persistent table - sleep: commit and garbage collection As I often said, Computer Science can explain everything.

I should hope that it can at least explain your brain, which is a computer.

This is a huge misconception.

Re: To Remember, the Brain Must Actively Forget

#95

Post by 2muchcoffeeman »

mattmanser wrote: post #82
2muchcoffeeman wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 i…

I’ve never heard of Aphantasia before.

Funnily enough it never occurred to me to think of things as pictures for my whole childhood. Even though I am almost a completely visual thinker.

It’s worth thinking about how you think. Eg if I imagine time passing as images of numbers, I can keep track of time and talk at the same time. If I count them out in my head, I always loose track within seconds.

Re: To Remember, the Brain Must Actively Forget

#96

Post by dboreham »

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…

Mike Tyson, a Tiger..

Re: To Remember, the Brain Must Actively Forget

#98

Post by cryoshon »

IAmGraydon wrote: post #30
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…

Such a drug exists. Namely, anything of the benzodiazepine class.

kind of, but not exactly.

benzos wipe out most of your ability to inhibit behavior along with your ability to form memories. it practically guarantees that you're a mess.

your concentration goes to shit, along with most of your higher functions... at least at the quantity that it takes to make you black out.

there are a lot of stories about what happens when the "xan man" (the xanax overdose state) comes out to play. most of them are bad.

Re: To Remember, the Brain Must Actively Forget

#99

Post by grawprog »

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'…

I used to be really good at remembering names. To the point where people I met once briefly would get weirded out I remembered their name. As I got older and met more people though, I became terrible at remembering names. Like i'll forget moments after i'm told kind of thing.

Re: To Remember, the Brain Must Actively Forget

#100

Post by cableshaft »

ZainRiz wrote: post #31
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…

There might be a market for this with high end consultants or psychiatrists as a more secure alternative to signing an NDA. It'll be something similar to the movie Paycheck You give the consultant the drug, then proceed to share your secrets with them and get their expert advice on your issue. Then by the end of the day/week/whatever they'll forget everything you told them and your secrets will be secure.

End of the day/week? I assume they'll be detained and watched like a hawk the whole time? There's all sorts of ways to record information that persists even when our memory has been wiped clean. Just take Memento, for example, where the guy tattooed his body with information he kept forgetting, but they don't even need to do that. Pen and paper, talking into a phone, telling a friend the instant you leave, wearing a wire, all sorts of ways to bypass a forgetful pill.
Post reply on HN