Memory

What'd you do yesterday? Last Tuesday? What were you like two years ago? Five? As a child? How many memories can you bring to mind between the ages of 5 and 10? We hardly remember anything, and it's quite scary.

We think we do, but tests show that our memories are absolutely awful.
It's true for all memories; procedural, semantic. Implicit, Explicit.
We remember less than 10% of the fraction of things that we studied very hard at during university. We forget most faces and names.
It is said that we remember what is important, but this is also mostly wishful thinking. We remember STORIES which we made up about what is important. We don't remember almost any meaningful event accurately (much less scary and dangerous ones), it's just that we repeat, adapt and rehearse stories of the event and our lives to ourselves over and over again, so we remember the stories.

To recall your memories better, be in the same state that you were when you encoded the memory. If you were drunk when studying, get drunk for when writing the exam and you'll probably remember more.
Those who learn lists of words underwater recall those same lists better underwater than on land. Those with bipolar disorder remember things they learnt during a depressive episode better during their next depressive episode than when they're on a manic high. So to recall more, be in a similar setting, time of day, frame of mind and energy level.

Schema-consistent information is also remembered better: Old stories are adapted eg the "black substance that came from mouth" from horror stories of old became "foamed at the mouth". Canoes become boats.
People who witnessed a bank robbery were more likely to later recall that the robber was acting "weirdly" and say that he had a moustache. People first recall their attitude and emotional state during the event. Second, they justify that attitude to the audience of today. Thirdly, they reconstruct the memory from these attitudes.
This is partly how false memories are made, of which we have a surprising abundance. If you ask kids that have never been lost in a shopping centre an average of 7 times whether or not they can remember being lost in a shopping mall, on average, they'll start to say that they can remember it happening once. We use a vividness heuristic (how vivid something is) to judge whether or not our memory is of a real or imagined event, so the longer we imagine something for, the more vivid and hence real it appears to be later.

Lastly, some pointers on if you want to remember something:
- Chunking. You do this all the time, eg with phone numbers 9437-8756 is easier to remember than 94378756 . Now chunk the chunked bits, optimal size 4. You could chunk any type of material
- Translate it in to your own natural mental, idiosyncratic inner language
- Make the information somehow significant to your identity
- Labouriously try to connect the information to everything else you know. Do it cross-modally by connecting it to sights, smells, sounds, and ideas.
- Rehearse it all day. Rehearse it periodically over a long period of time. Set up reminders of it everywhere
- Pnemonics, songs etc. There are people that can't speak that can sing full songs. That should be quite fascinating!

The Search Function

1] We are unaware about HOW we recall things….the process seems to occur completely outside our control, as does the beating of the heart. So how does memory recall work? You don't think very hard; you more hope your brain fetches the memory for you. And yet you're happy when you remember something. I guess the pride is that you stored that memory to retrieve in the first place! Is the brain scanning for associations? To what could the brain’s “search mechanism” be compared? A computer searching for files? What is the “method of storage”? -------- When you get the feeling that you are "getting close" to remembering the answer, or if you get the feeling it starts with an M, are you literally searching somewhere near the information required and have briefly scanned over it, or a part of it? Somebody help me out with this one!

2] For memory scientists. I figured out something while playing Memory Blocks (where you flip blocks, trying to find matching pairs). Which you should investigate. I only ever set the record the first time I play, so the short-term memory must confuse itself, the map of which block is where the second time I play must interfere with the map from the first game. Etc

3] If somebody asks you “What do you think about X” you often realise during your response, mid-sentence, that you are wrong (or that you have not given the matter adequate thought). This is because different parts of the brain work at different speeds. (On a slightly different but related note, nobody says “I hear a ball dropping now” – you know the event will be finished by the time you’ve completed the sentence, yet you say “I’m in Love” because the parts of the brain making you feel love are active for much longer periods). After somebody asks a question, our auditory systems often start responding before our brains have been able to recall ideas we learnt before and stored, and ideas we no longer actually believe in start to stream out. Then the other systems of the brain catch up, and we realise that we’ve been talking bullshit. Goddamn

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An atheist says, hey, let's not spend our time and money building a church, let's build a hospital instead.