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

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

directorsblog.nih.gov

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

91–100 of 349 posts

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

#91

Post by Borrible »

MarkusWandel wrote: post #76
MarkusWandel wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

>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?

No, that is perfectly normal, and it starts much earlier, weeks sometimes days after leaving the code. Depending on its complexity and level of its abstraction.

You mentally build something highly abstract without much emotional or bodily bond. Your brain has not much incentive to rememeber it.

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

#92

Post by jjoonathan »

rektide wrote: post #75
copperx wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Does ANKS engage with empirical models beyond what is necessary to hype up cellular automata?

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

#93

Post by samstave »

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…

How do theories such as "The 100th Monkey" as well as transferred information via DNA to offspring translate to ML|AI at all?

For example, couldn't a sufficiently developed AI modify some code/libraries it utilizes/learns from/creates, to ensure any new spawns of said AI/ML/Bot has the learned previous behaviors?

I doubt 100th Monkey will ever hit AI.

So that's an interesting aspect to the limits to AI 'evolving'

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

#94

Post by 8note »

rektide wrote: post #75
copperx wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Isn't wolfram's new kind of science purely rational? No observations of the universe needed

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

#95

Post by qiskit »

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.

It's not just decades old memories. Memory of recent events is likely to be suspect. Which is an issue for the legal system because it relies so heavily on eyewitness testimony.

https://theconversation.com/new-research-reveals-how-little-...

Not only is human memory unreliable, it is also malleable. And if we are just a collection of our memories, then who are we really?

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

#96

Post by TameAntelope »

I think this is why it's hard sometimes to argue in support of something you believe, even if you're right.

At one point, all of the relevant facts and figures were loaded into your working memory, and with that information you arrived at a conclusion. Your brain, however, no longer needs those facts and figures; you've gotten what you needed from them, and they can be kicked out of working memory. What you store there is the conclusion. If it comes up again, you've got your decision, but not all of the information about how you arrived there.

So when your decision is challenged, you are not well equipped to defend it, because you no longer retain why you arrived at that decision, just the conclusion itself.

It's immensely easier to trust that you arrived at the right conclusion and the person who is in disagreement is missing something, than it is to reload all of the facts and figures back into your brain and re-determine your conclusion all over again. Instead, you can dig in, and resort to shortcuts and logical tricks (that you can pull out without needing to study) to defend what you've previously concluded (possibly correctly, but without the relevant information).

If this finding ends up being generally an approximation of how our brains work, it could explain a lot about what's happening to global conversations, particularly around the Internet and on social media specifically. It also suggests a possible solution; make the data quickly available. Make it as seamless as possible to re-load those facts and figures into your working memory, and make it as unpleasant as possible to rely on shortcuts and logical tricks when arguing a point.

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

#97

Post by samstave »

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…

>able to compress data into a _useful_ representation. Note that as a result of this, the quality of the compression is important. Some forms of compression might be very efficient but they also tangle concepts together, resulting in loss of composability

---

I wonder if various factors inform how/what compression is used on a memory...

For example, a memory of putting the object back where it belongs/got it from vs the memory of a violent attack is through the lens of emotional (trauma) and thus the memories will be stored differently.

Its interesting in that I have been wanting to post an ASK HN on memory and dreams...

Now with this post, and your comment, I will post that.

---

The idea is that the surunding meta-information of a memory is important.

Lenses of senses that colour a memory are many, and individualistic.

i.e.

A person who is a psychopath, has an emotional block on the lens that they would see their actions through (remorse, guilt, empathy, etc) - thus they may not recall or RE-MIND themselves of an action/situation.

A memory that is laid with a sensuous experience, such as sex with someone you love/lust deeply may last a lifetime.

Certain things that one does/says can also lead to a lifetime of regret ; a cringe-worthy action/comment from decades ago can still haunt your thoughts.

---

I think the mystique btwn ML and biological memories is a really interesting space, as an ML|AI based system will never achieve the 100th monkey or DNA|biological transfer of information, but an approximation/facsimile based on evolved|updated libraries/files/code which are maintained exclusively by the AI entity will/does exist

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

#98

Post by ladyattis »

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 think some memories are closer to lossless compressions than lossy which I wonder if it's more of a scale where memories can slide between the two modes with varying degrees of fidelity. Like there are memories that I know I shouldn't remember from childhood that I can remember clearly and others I barely remember what year it happened. So I have to wonder if some of this seeming lossless-ness is more fractal-like in nature where one can just reconstruct from the base encoding and expand it outward to fill in sufficient detail to seem like it's perfectly captured when it's really just merely the reconstruction.

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

#100

Post by bweitzman »

mherrmann wrote: post #44
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…

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.

How do you tell if something you're trying to determine as intelligent or not has formed a model?
Post reply on HN