Current Events > Isn't it crazy how we remember so little of our lives?

(+) Yeah! (+)

People who say they have a good memory. Lol. Let's say the average person remembers 0.000001% of their lives, then a person with a good memory remembers 10x that at max.

We don't remember nada. You don't remember the last word you spoke out. You don't remember where your toes were 4 minutes ago. You don't know what mechanism caused your toes to move.

Using gamefaqs to illustrate this, if you're someone who browsed these message boards 5 hours everyday for the past 15 years, then you've read millions of posts, created hundreds of thousands of posts, and communicated with millions of other users. And despite the volume, you remember only 0.00000000001% of it.

(Note my numbers do not reflect any coherent quantity. They're simply a metaphor for scale. Additionally it's tough to quantify a memory. Time might be a good quantifier. Though time is continuous. But that's a different topic. High AF right now)

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Some people remember better than others

WalkingLobsters posted...

People who say they have a good memory. Lol. Let's say the average person remembers 0.000001% of their lives

As someone with a terrible memory, this still seems ridiculous. Plus a lot of stuff is mundane and just not worth renembering

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i remember gamefaqs.com supporting the 2003 iraq invasion

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stealth "i have memory loss" topic

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I've been thinking about this a lot lately. What are we, if not our memories? Pretty overwhelming.

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Lost_All_Senses posted...

As someone with a terrible memory, this still seems ridiculous. Plus a lot of stuff is mundane and just not worth renembering

That's my point. A lot of is mundane and not worth remembering. But it happened. Our brain just immediately disposes of it.

MorbidFaithless posted...

I've been thinking about this a lot lately. What are we, if not our memories? Pretty overwhelming.

It's pretty wild. You ever think about relationships with other people? Your perception is just a feeling predicated by the 5-6 memories you can recall of them instantaneously. But what's interesting is those prior 5-6 memories are significantly warped and revamped to fit the emotions of their preceding memories. Recollection of a memory always changes.

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If you want to be super pedantic and literal then yeah but the examples you gave are so mundane they don't even register with me as "memories".

I feel the opposite, being totally amazed by memories. Stuff that is pretty mundane but maybe attached to an interesting event - like remembering vaguely what the halls of a hotel look like. Why would I need to know that? The halls aren't exciting. I don't know why, I just do.

GrabASnickers posted...

If you want to be super pedantic and literal then yeah but the examples you gave are so mundane they don't even register with me as "memories".

I feel the opposite, being totally amazed by memories. Stuff that is pretty mundane but maybe attached to an interesting event - like remembering vaguely what the halls of a hotel look like. Why would I need to know that? The halls aren't exciting. I don't know why, I just do.

I mean that's fine. I'm not trying to be pedantic. If I had used more narrow terminology then no one would want click on or read my topic. It's the phenomena of how bizarre it is that we take and in and toss out so much.

Regardless, I do think that's a really nice memory to have, and reflects the inherent way we as vessels in this life choose to both visualize and remember it.

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jeffhardyb0yz posted...

Thats why you should live in the now and enjoy the moment

I actually agree with this. This is the right way. To look at it from another perspective, this also includes taking away the motivation and action to seal a memory into your brain.

On the opposite end, look at hoarders. They have an inherent desire to cherish as many memories as possible, but they also realize they're capped. They do know, however, that they can compress those memories by having an object nearby to decompress those memories. The object serves as the reverse hash function. It's pretty crazy stuff.

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I choose to believe most of it is somewhere in my memory.

but yeah I hate it, and i have a bad memory so this effect is 1000x worse.

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Fine by me, my life has been worthless garbage anyway

joe40001 posted...

I choose to believe most of it is somewhere in my memory.

but yeah I hate it, and i have a bad memory so this effect is 1000x worse.

I think a lot of our memories are compressed, but reevoking the senses that created those memories could decompress them in some form to evoke a similar emotion. But I do believe that it's just not possible.

And I don't believe random movements like moving your foot while watching Toy Story 3 23 minutes and 42 seconds in is a good memory to store. Another weird thing about that storage is there is also no discrete boundary for a delta of time. And what I mean by that is that you can continuously divide that delta forever. So it's pretty amazing how our brains have some natural approximation for that boundary.

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It's why I'm so attached to music and memories. Especially with video game music that plays in certain areas of games. I take walks a lot and change up routines. That helps form more memories too.

The whole thing about being young and enjoying life really is true. The variety of experience makes ways for memories as you get older. If you're always doing the same mundane life then yeah it will feel like a blur.

Also, keep a journal and dream journal. You'll be surprised how it's like unlocking a lost memory years later reading.

Flauros posted...

stealth "i have memory loss" topic

Lol
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wesastro911 posted...

It's why I'm so attached to music and memories. Especially with video game music that plays in certain areas of games. I take walks a lot and change up routines. That helps form more memories too.

The whole thing about being young and enjoying life really is true. The variety of experience makes ways for memories as you get older. If you're always doing the same mundane life then yeah it will feel like a blur.

Also, keep a journal and dream journal. You'll be surprised how it's like unlocking a lost memory years later reading.

Yeah I'll definitely keep a journal. That can reduce or even replace my hoarding tendencies.

Have you gone back and read some really weird shit?

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A lot of our memories are locked away unaccessible on a whim because it would overwhelm us. However, our brain instantly recognize patterns and then that memory is accessed perfectly at the time it is needed.

This is why creative improvisation feels like magic. Creators aren't just pulling things from thin air. Somehow the brain can actually grow this aspect of accessible memory storage. I do it when playing piano.

Now someone like Robin Williams had a genius level of accessible memories he could pull together in a fusion of ideas leading to brilliant comedy.

A LOT of what the brain does is taking shortcuts in that way to reduce data useage/load. Sight seems like something that should be everything we see but the reality is the brain makes a loooot of built in and learned assumptions which is why stuff like this looks so weird
(The cars are all actually the same size)

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GrabASnickers posted...

I feel the opposite, being totally amazed by memories. Stuff that is pretty mundane but maybe attached to an interesting event

Recently, I was rewatching Doctor Who while playing Xenoblade.
Now, when I watch those episodes of Doctor Who, I remember exactly where I was in Xenoblade when I watched them ~7 months ago.

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BTW this is what John Williams was talking about in the home alone soundtrack:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5kHH6LJpEbQ

Being so old you don't really remember the real feeling of christmas but trusting somewhere deep down it still exists in you.

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I can barely remember the names of any of my high school teachers, yet I randomly remember where I was when I heard a song on the radio 10 years ago. I remember a meaningless verbal exchange with a cashier 3 months ago.

The brain is weird.

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Just wait until you're OLD like me. So many memories, so little brain.

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Most of what you remember isnt exactly right anyway

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Pepperidge Farm Remembers

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I gave up trying to parse that car picture as a bad job. (ie fools errand)

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I wish I could stop remembering the bad stuff.

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Thought about this a little more. A math analogy made it a little bit more clear for me to understand.

Our memories are compressed in our head. Our brain solves math equations, specifically a surjective function. The inputs to the function are everything that you've taken in from your environment and your internal self at any given time. Everything is fed into this function in your brain which can reproduce a memory; albeit, not precisely but with a reasonable degree of accuracy to invoke the same emotion upon memory creation.

That's a very blunt way to look at it. The function is self-modifying, i.e. it may invoke different emotions the next time you recall a similar memory.

What's interesting to note is because the function is surjective, different input combinations can evoke a largely similar memory.

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