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Human brain compresses working memories into low-res ‘summaries’

directorsblog.nih.gov

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Re: Human brain compresses working memories into low-res ‘summaries’

#71

Post by metamuas »

axg11 wrote: post #35

Compression is a component of general intelligence. A few years ago I was very sceptical of machine learning ever leading to general intelligence. I've since changed my mind. There are a lot of parallels to this work and the concept of "embeddings" in machine learning. Intelligence requires the ability to generalize. A prerequisite for generalization is the ability to take something high-dimensional and reduce it to…

I have always thought that the best measure of intelligence is compression of information. If you can create a smaller, abstract model that is still accurate despite a loss in details, then you are intelligent.

Re: Human brain compresses working memories into low-res ‘summaries’

#72

Post by vharuck »

MarkusWandel wrote: post #4

It all works this way (though a certain female family member would disagree, claiming to remember conversations word-for-word years later). But my memory works this way. A summary "party at so-and-so's house, weather was nice, overall vibe was ___". The rest is context. You know what the house/backyard is like, you know the general feel of that time of year, you know the crowd that usually comes, you can easily synth…

>I can build up a relatively vivid mental image of my walking route to school (from the bus terminal) over 40 years ago. Is it accurate? Who cares.

Not only that, but by recalling and rebuilding memories, how gaps are filled in depends on your current mental state. For example, if I'm feeling depressed and brooding over past social interactions, I'll likely imagine people having meaner expressions or saying harsher things than they did. The big problem is that your memory of the event is "written over" based on the rebuilt memory. Again, only the seemingly important bits, but people are more likely to remember emotionally strong portions. Like those imagined harsh words.

I realized I was doing this when I thought a professor strongly disliked me, avoided his classes for a couple years, but then found him pleasant. My depression and social anxiety had warped my memories over the years. Being aware that this happens really helps. I trust negative parts of memories less, and I consciously stop myself when I start to brood (or at least, have fun with a puzzle while thinking back on things).

Re: Human brain compresses working memories into low-res ‘summaries’

#73

Post by rtpg »

MarkusWandel wrote: post #4

It all works this way (though a certain female family member would disagree, claiming to remember conversations word-for-word years later). But my memory works this way. A summary "party at so-and-so's house, weather was nice, overall vibe was ___". The rest is context. You know what the house/backyard is like, you know the general feel of that time of year, you know the crowd that usually comes, you can easily synth…

I mean loads of people have very precise and good memories. Photographic memory as a term exists for a reason

Re: Human brain compresses working memories into low-res ‘summaries’

#74

Post by MarkusWandel »

Borrible wrote: post #69
MarkusWandel wrote: post #4

It all works this way (though a certain female family member would disagree, claiming to remember conversations word-for-word years later). But my memory works this way. A summary "party at so-and-so's house, weather was nice, overall vibe was ___". The rest is context. You know what the house/backyard is like, you know the general feel of that time of year, you know the crowd that usually comes, you can easily synth…

>claiming to remember conversations word-for-word years later And, is she right or does she likes to be right?

My accusation is that the conversation memory works the same way as the BBQ party memory. You remember a skeleton. This subject was discussed, and things were said that gave me a feeling of ____. And a few more easily compressed details. The rest is interpolated. Imagine a language model the size of GPT-3 being trained on one particular person's manner of speaking and then given a one-paragraph summary of a conversation to get it started. Barring an audio recording or a transcript, who's to say that these weren't the words that were spoken?

Of course the engineer is tempted to test this by secretly recording a conversation and trying to trip up the perfect rememberer, a year later. But the non-geek life experience accumulated says don't go there.

Re: Human brain compresses working memories into low-res ‘summaries’

#75

Post by rektide »

copperx wrote: post #66
mherrmann wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A nice definition of intelligence I've heard is exactly the ability to form models of the world with predictive power. And a model is essentially a compression of real-world data. Physical laws are a great example of this.

Creating models with predictive power is also a precise definition of science.

Instead of reasoned & formula based models, now we have purely empirical models. See Wolfram's New Kind Of Science.

Re: Human brain compresses working memories into low-res ‘summaries’

#76

Post by MarkusWandel »

MarkusWandel wrote: post #74
Borrible wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>claiming to remember conversations word-for-word years later And, is she right or does she likes to be right?

My accusation is that the conversation memory works the same way as the BBQ party memory. You remember a skeleton. This subject was discussed, and things were said that gave me a feeling of ____. And a few more easily compressed details. The rest is interpolated. Imagine a language model the size of GPT-3 being trained on one particular person's manner of speaking and then given a one-paragraph summary of a conversat…

I should add that as a geek I ought to have a better ability to remember, say, computer code that I've written. But am I the only one who, going back to something I haven't touched for two years, has to re-learn my own code?

Re: Human brain compresses working memories into low-res ‘summaries’

#77

Post by BizarroLand »

tartakovsky wrote: post #55
bgroat wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the incredible story "Funes the Memorious" the eponymous Funes has an absolutely perfect memory, but is functionally mentally handicapped. He can't even abstract to the existence of "trees" because he can recall and diff all of the details of every tree he's ever seen. He can't even identify that he's seen a particular tree before, because he can diff how different it looked in a particular configuration of leaves…

Makes me think of … Asperger’s.

I would think it's being an megasavant, sort of like Kim Peek. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kim_Peek

Not capable of functioning independently or surviving for any long period unassisted but having a brain and cognition setup that allowed for amazing feats of mental wizardry. If you could have that ability and function normally in society you could do some astounding things.

Re: Human brain compresses working memories into low-res ‘summaries’

#80

Post by jjeaff »

petercooper wrote: post #60
MarkusWandel wrote: post #4

It all works this way (though a certain female family member would disagree, claiming to remember conversations word-for-word years later). But my memory works this way. A summary "party at so-and-so's house, weather was nice, overall vibe was ___". The rest is context. You know what the house/backyard is like, you know the general feel of that time of year, you know the crowd that usually comes, you can easily synth…

though a certain female family member would disagree, claiming to remember conversations word-for-word years later Surely many people do. Otherwise you wouldn't have all these biographies and non-fiction books packed with conversations people have managed to recall in a level of detail enough to not get sued. I can barely remember a line of conversation from this week, let alone important ones from years ago, so I al…

I think most people remember the basic concepts and then they fill in the details using what they know about the situation and participants. I have remembered events a certain way that in my mind was very clear. But upon reviewing said events in old video, it turns out I got quite a few details wrong. Sometimes two people will recall the same event very differently. Which is why I think our justice system relies far too heavily on witness testimony.
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