Comment by Wowfunhappy
7 hours ago
> You can’t keep infinite knowledge in your brain.
For what it’s worth—it’s not entirely clear that this is true: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperthymesia
The human brain seemingly has the capability to remember (virtually?) infinite amounts of information. It’s just that most of us… don’t.
You can't store an infinite amount of entropy in a finite amount of space outside of a singularity, well or at least attempting to do that will cause a singularity.
Compression/algorithms don't save you here either. The algorithm for pi is very short, pulling up any particular randomm digit of pi still requires the expenditure of some particular amount of entropy.
It's entirely possible for this to be literally false, but practically true
The important question is can you learn enough in a standard human lifetime to "fill up your knowledge bank"?
> It’s just that most of us… don’t.
Ok, so my statement is essentially correct.
Most of us can not keep infinite information in our brain.
It's not that you forget, it's more that it gets archived.
If you moved back to a country you hadn't lived or spoken its language in for 10 years, you would find yourself that you don't have to relearn it, and it would come back quickly.
Also information is supposedly almost infinite, as with increased efficiency as you learn, it makes volume limits redundant.
I do take your point. But the point I’m trying to emphasize is that the brain isn’t like a hard drive that fills up. It’s a muscle that can potentially hold more.
I’m not sure if this is in the Wikipedia article, but when I last read about this, years ago, there seemed to be a link between Hyperthymesia and OCD. Brain scans suggested the key was in how these individuals organize the information in their brain, so that it’s easy for them retrieve.
Before the printing press was common, it was common for scholars to memorize entire books. I absolutely cannot do this. When technology made memorization less necessary, our memories shrank. Actually shrank, not merely changing what facts to focus on.
And to be clear, I would never advocate going back to the middle ages! But we did lose something.
There must be some physical limit to our cognitive capacity.
We can “store” infinite numbers by using our numeral system as a generator of sorts for whatever the next number must be without actually having to remember infinite numbers, but I do not believe it would be physically possible to literally remember every item in some infinite set.
Sure, maybe we’ve gotten lazy about memorizing things and our true capacity is higher (maybe very much so), but there is still some limit.
Additionally, the practical limit will be very different for different people. Our brains are not all the same.
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It is also a matter of choice. I don’t remember any news trivia, I don’t engage with "people news" and, to be honest, I forget a lot of what people tell me about random subject.
It has two huge benefits: nearly infinite memory for truly interesting stuff and still looking friendly to people who tell me the same stuff all the times.
Side-effect: my wife is not always happy that I forgot about "non-interesting" stuff which are still important ;-)
1) That's not infinite, just vast
2) Hyperthymesia is about remembering specific events in your past, not about retaining conceptual knowledge.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8kUQWuK1L4w
APL inventor says that he was developing not a programming language, but notation to express as much problems as one can. He found that expressing more and more problems with the notation first made notation grow, then notation size started to shrink.
To develop conceptual knowledge (when one's "notation" starts to shrink) one has to have some good memory (re-expressing more and more problems).
The point is that this particular type of exceptional memory has nothing to do with conceptual knowledge, it's all about experiences. This particular condition also makes you focus on your own past to an excessive amount, which would distract you from learning new technologies.
You can't model systems in your mind using past experiences, at least not reliably and repeatedly.