The unpopular facts of memory

LOL newsletter membership 26

Welcome to the 26th issue of the membership newsletter. You can also join the membership plan to receive weekly long-form articles. Recent content includes:

Powerful Everyday Rituals

What if happiness is a ghost

Emotional Intelligence 101

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I've already explained many facts about memory to my friends, which often go against common knowledge. Today, let me share with you a few more secrets about memory.

From a young age, we intuitively feel that memory is a recording made by the brain, and when we recall something, it's like playing back an old videotape. But that's not quite accurate - the process of memory retrieval is not a complete replay.

In reality, our brain can only store a very small portion of our memories. We also often exaggerate and distort our memories, making inferences.

In modern life, everyone has countless photos and videos stored on their phones. If we suddenly want to find a specific photo, it can take a long time (unless you have the assistance of a powerful language model AI). But sometimes the brain can react faster, unable to pinpoint the exact location, but quickly using contextual clues to roughly locate the photo. This is the magic of human memory - it focuses on quality over quantity, storing and retrieving information on an as-needed basis to conserve energy.

This on-demand storage and retrieval also has the advantage of being highly flexible, unlike the rigid search process of traditional machines.