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Can your brain really be full?

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Re: Can your brain really be full?

#21

Post by jotm »

danieltillett wrote: post #10

My brain is definitely full. Every new thing I learn comes at the expense of something else I know (I guess this should be past tense). The funny thing is I still remember when my brain had spare capacity - I used to fill it with arbitrary facts like what page I was up to when I was reading dozens of books at once. When I was young I never read one book at a time or used bookmarks. I would just remember the page I wa…

Don't know why you're downvoted.

Technically, our brains do get full, even this article basically says so.

It's just that we don't experience error messages or shut down when that happens - instead, old memories are replaced with new ones.

The total capacity is limited, but the ability to create new memories is unhindered.

I wish we could choose what we forget, but it seems it's possible to choose what you remember - just relearn that stuff or recall it more often, then it will be at the top of the search results, so to say :-)

Re: Can your brain really be full?

#22

Post by danieltillett »

hellameta wrote: post #20
danieltillett wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pretty much. Since around my late 20s everything new going in has been at the expense of something old. The only interesting thing is the loss is not a first in, first out system nor is it based on importance. I have retained pointless memories from the past and lost things that were quite important. All I can say is that my capacity is finite and I have reached the limit.

I'll concede that this might be true - but you most certainly can't validate it based on these descriptions. In fact, by definition, you are unable to forget "something" for every other "something" you learn. In fact - if you know you forgot something - is that not a new piece of information? Now that I'm writing it out I think it's definitely nonsense actually - sorry. As a parallel consider music (a "single" domain…

No I am not trolling. The reason I know (more precise I think I know) that every new piece of information I learn is at the expense of something old, is that the old is not always lost without the metadata about the old being retained. I am often left with the memory of having once known something, but now lacking the actual knowledge. To give you an example I often come across plant species where I know I once knew the name (I can even often remember where I first learned its name), but I can now no longer tell you what it is. Basically I have memories of what my brain used to be like without it being like this anymore.

Re: Can your brain really be full?

#23

Post by jotm »

hellameta wrote: post #20
danieltillett wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pretty much. Since around my late 20s everything new going in has been at the expense of something old. The only interesting thing is the loss is not a first in, first out system nor is it based on importance. I have retained pointless memories from the past and lost things that were quite important. All I can say is that my capacity is finite and I have reached the limit.

I'll concede that this might be true - but you most certainly can't validate it based on these descriptions. In fact, by definition, you are unable to forget "something" for every other "something" you learn. In fact - if you know you forgot something - is that not a new piece of information? Now that I'm writing it out I think it's definitely nonsense actually - sorry. As a parallel consider music (a "single" domain…

I think it's possible to know that you forgot something. You can remember the title of a song, but the lyrics/details are deleted and replaced with a much shorter "memory was deleted to free space" message :-)

Re: Can your brain really be full?

#24

Post by danieltillett »

jotm wrote: post #21
danieltillett wrote: post #10

My brain is definitely full. Every new thing I learn comes at the expense of something else I know (I guess this should be past tense). The funny thing is I still remember when my brain had spare capacity - I used to fill it with arbitrary facts like what page I was up to when I was reading dozens of books at once. When I was young I never read one book at a time or used bookmarks. I would just remember the page I wa…

Don't know why you're downvoted. Technically, our brains do get full, even this article basically says so. It's just that we don't experience error messages or shut down when that happens - instead, old memories are replaced with new ones. The total capacity is limited, but the ability to create new memories is unhindered. I wish we could choose what we forget, but it seems it's possible to choose what you remember -…

Yes you can choose to some extent what to remember, but if you have a good memory it is impossible to recall all your old memories so you don't forget them. My memory is still really good (I am hardly suffering from dementia), but it is not able to add new memories without losing the old. I hate this, but I can't really do anything about it :(

Re: Can your brain really be full?

#25

Post by [deleted] »

hliyan wrote: post #6

No more than a neural network can be full. To anybody who has worked with neural networks, the following comes as no surprise: old information is sometimes pushed out of the brain for new memories to form Weights in a NN like the brain would just gradually shift. Older, seldom-accessed information will slowly fade. That said, a NN can suffer from the trying-to-be-jack-of-all-trades, ending-up-an-idiot problem.

[deleted]

Re: Can your brain really be full?

#26

Post by anon4 »

hliyan wrote: post #6

No more than a neural network can be full. To anybody who has worked with neural networks, the following comes as no surprise: old information is sometimes pushed out of the brain for new memories to form Weights in a NN like the brain would just gradually shift. Older, seldom-accessed information will slowly fade. That said, a NN can suffer from the trying-to-be-jack-of-all-trades, ending-up-an-idiot problem.

You could alternatively say that the brain is constantly full.

Re: Can your brain really be full?

#27

Post by danieltillett »

jotm wrote: post #23
hellameta wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'll concede that this might be true - but you most certainly can't validate it based on these descriptions. In fact, by definition, you are unable to forget "something" for every other "something" you learn. In fact - if you know you forgot something - is that not a new piece of information? Now that I'm writing it out I think it's definitely nonsense actually - sorry. As a parallel consider music (a "single" domain…

I think it's possible to know that you forgot something. You can remember the title of a song, but the lyrics/details are deleted and replaced with a much shorter "memory was deleted to free space" message :-)

This is true - the metadata about a memory and the actual memory are often stored seperately. In regard songs memory loss seems to occur with the song title before the cord progression is lost. This results in the classic old person lament that all new music sounds the same.

Re: Can your brain really be full?

#28

Post by indrax »

hellameta wrote: post #20
danieltillett wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pretty much. Since around my late 20s everything new going in has been at the expense of something old. The only interesting thing is the loss is not a first in, first out system nor is it based on importance. I have retained pointless memories from the past and lost things that were quite important. All I can say is that my capacity is finite and I have reached the limit.

I'll concede that this might be true - but you most certainly can't validate it based on these descriptions. In fact, by definition, you are unable to forget "something" for every other "something" you learn. In fact - if you know you forgot something - is that not a new piece of information? Now that I'm writing it out I think it's definitely nonsense actually - sorry. As a parallel consider music (a "single" domain…

You can take a hash, delete the file, and record the deletion. You'll use less space, know something is missing, and even be able to identify the deleted file if you encounter it again.

Re: Can your brain really be full?

#29

Post by rndn »

hliyan wrote: post #6

No more than a neural network can be full. To anybody who has worked with neural networks, the following comes as no surprise: old information is sometimes pushed out of the brain for new memories to form Weights in a NN like the brain would just gradually shift. Older, seldom-accessed information will slowly fade. That said, a NN can suffer from the trying-to-be-jack-of-all-trades, ending-up-an-idiot problem.

Another possibility is that two activation patterns are so similar that they interfere and thus they merge, one replaces the other or they both become useless noise. See also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forgetting#Interference_theori...
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