Off Topic — HabitableZone

Off Topic » in reply to "its capabilities and its limitations"

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ER — (archived)

I've read that there is a lot of shorthand involved in the way memories are stored. When recalling a past event, few of the sensory details are actually stored in memory, only the key items, and the details are filled in with placeholders (like the make and model of the car that hit you may be "made up"). In complex memories which are frequently relived, these placeholders become reinforced until they take on the force of perfect recollection.

If the memory is of an event or place which is frequently repeated or revisited, these details are filled in more completely with the real thing. Perhaps this is why when we revisit places where significant events happened to us, they look so different to us. On the other hand, when we have time to really impress our memories, it can be uncannily accurate. Four years after I left the Navy, I had a chance to take a guided tour of my old ship when she came to town on a good will visit. I remembered every rivet, every weld, every hatch and scuttle. Even the sounds of the fans in the ventilators and the smells of paint, grease, metal and stack gas evoked constant and powerful memories of hundreds of incidents and events from my time aboard.

Then there are the times when you re-read a book, see a movie again, or hear again a recording you really liked once, and now it seems silly or even awful. The sensory experience is the same, but now the software processing it has been upgraded.

It is really important to be aware of this, one must be very careful of how your judgement can be compromised, but at the same time, there are times when you have no choice but to rely on it and you need to have confidence in your ability to interpret things correctly because you may not have an opportunity to take a second look or ask for another opinion.

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