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Can your brain really be full?

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Re: Can your brain really be full?

#51

Post by irl_zebra »

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…

I feel the same way, especially after thinking about it while reading this article. It's the same thing even with small and specific things as well. For example, we did a home winemaking course and forgot how to drive afterwards. The brain is truly a marvel.

Re: Can your brain really be full?

#52

Post by jivardo_nucci »

danieltillett wrote: post #15
gluelogic wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So you're saying it's a hard number and, one-for-one, if something new goes in, something old goes out?

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 doubt that. It is more likely that you are impatient. Recall of older experiences can be frustratingly slow.

To recover old info, first concentrate on it and recall as much as possible (what you call "metadata"), and then simply cease focusing on it. Your mind will "re-hydrate" the archived experience in the background. Sometimes this may take a day or two, but usually it requires less than 10 minutes.

Reconsider the memory periodically: each time you should feel an indicator of whether progress is being made (even though the memory isn't yet fully recovered).

Re: Can your brain really be full?

#53

Post by derekp7 »

anotheryou wrote: post #12
rawnlq wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be technical ... from a information theoretical point of view your brain definitely can't hold infinite information so it definitely fills up in the sense you can't possibly be adding information without evicting/corrupting something else. I personally don't think we can reach that point within a human lifetime though. Something more interesting to think about is the limits of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Working_…

when we don't reach it in our lifetime, why do we have that over-capacity than? The brain already consumes something like 20% of our energy.

Maybe that excess capacity helps with efficiency? I know that some computer filesystems and flash devices get extremely slow when they start hitting 99% capacity.

Re: Can your brain really be full?

#54

Post by LordKano »

reagency wrote: post #42
LordKano wrote: post #41

That's my greatest fear. I'm terrified of the possibility that there could be a day when I hit my maximum capacity and have to forget things in order to be able to learn new things.

You forget things every single day.

Perhaps but I can't remember what.

Re: Can your brain really be full?

#56

Post by shasta »

derekp7 wrote: post #49
shasta wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So you forget things. Everyone does. Now demonstrate that forgetting is caused by learning. It seems you just assumed that part.

One way of demonstrating this is if the rate of forgetting old information increases when you are doing some intense learning (either studying in school, or taking additional vacations, etc).

Has that been your perception? How do you measure that?

Re: Can your brain really be full?

#58

Post by danieltillett »

shasta wrote: post #45
danieltillett wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

So you forget things. Everyone does. Now demonstrate that forgetting is caused by learning. It seems you just assumed that part.

This is definately hard to prove particular since we are talking about my own perception of my brain. Due to the nature of my career I have never had to stop learning new concepts and skill and the pace of this learning has been pretty constant over the last 25 years.

What I can say is that up until my late 20s this learning did not seem to come at the expense of past learning or memories. Since then I have noticed that while I can still learn new things at around the same pace as in the past, that new learning seems to kick out the old.

Since my ability to learn has not changed (I have had to do courses and other external tests that confirm this personal observation), then the most parsimonious explanation is that new learning is coming at the expense of old learning which is just another way of saying my brain is full :)

Of course it is possible that my memory storage capacity is just getting smaller with age, but if this was the case I would expect it to impact on my ability to learn new things now. My perception is my brain can hold around 30 years worth of learning and as you get old that capacity gets stretched to the point that gaps start to appear. While better than the alternative, getting old is not good :(

Re: Can your brain really be full?

#59

Post by danieltillett »

jivardo_nucci wrote: post #52
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 doubt that. It is more likely that you are impatient. Recall of older experiences can be frustratingly slow. To recover old info, first concentrate on it and recall as much as possible (what you call "metadata"), and then simply cease focusing on it. Your mind will "re-hydrate" the archived experience in the background. Sometimes this may take a day or two, but usually it requires less than 10 minutes. Reconsider t…

One of the problems with doing this is the "recovered" memories are not exactly reliable.

One of the good things about my memory is if I remember something it accurate. I used to win lots of bets (for drinks mostly) by exploiting this - people would tell me X happened and I would say no it was Y and would they like to bet on it. I was always amazed at how many people would accept these bets even after losing to me many times - it seemed they forgot that I had an accurate memory :)

Re: Can your brain really be full?

#60

Post by danieltillett »

drdeca wrote: post #36
gluelogic wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So then the brain must have some kind of weighting algorithm to decide what memory of equal value to jettison. Surely learning a few new URLs poses no risk to remembering which kind of car you drive? And on the subject of memories, are all memories information? If you learn something new in mathematics, do you risk losing the memory of the cake at your fourth birthday party, or only something technical you learned ab…

Your mention of the idea of DoSing someone's brain reminds me of Ewen Cameron's experiments attempting to "depattern" people. (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unethical_human_experimentation... ) Rather horrifying.

Cameron's "experiments" (torture) seemed to revolve more around sensory depravation and electric shock therapy (one of the major side effects of electro-shock is serious memory loss).

This does bring up an idea I had from years ago where instead of making prisons as boring as possible we make them amazingly interesting places where the prisoners have to use their brains constantly all day. The idea being that all this information will slowly push out the ideas and thoughts of the old person to be replaced with a new ideas and memories that make the person less likely to commit crime once released. The person should come out of prison a better person than they went in.

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