Received: by alpheratz.cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk id FAA01852 (8.6.9/5.3[ref pg@gmsl.co.uk] for cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk from fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk); Mon, 11 Mar 2002 05:48:57 GMT Message-ID: <001401c1c8c7$7739ac40$5e2ffea9@oemcomputer> From: "Philip Jonkers" <philipjonkers@prodigy.net> To: <memetics@mmu.ac.uk> References: <3C8C4D09.000003.24213@oemcomputer> Subject: Re: is forgetting adaptive? Date: Sun, 10 Mar 2002 21:39:10 -0900 Organization: Prodigy Internet Content-Type: multipart/alternative; boundary="----=_NextPart_000_0011_01C1C87C.03A61340" X-Priority: 3 X-MSMail-Priority: Normal X-Mailer: Microsoft Outlook Express 6.00.2600.0000 X-Mimeole: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V6.00.2600.0000 Sender: fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk Precedence: bulk Reply-To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
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Scott:
> Thinking of what Daniel Schacter says of possible evolutionary advantages
to
> transience (reduction of memory for specific things as a function of time)
> in _The Seven Sins of Memory_, one wonders if a "perfect" or permanent
> memory store might actually be an evolutionary albatross. What would
happen
> if you never forgot anything? What if you could recall every explicit
detail
> of every event in your entire life like it just happened? Could you
function
> normally with such a cognitive overload? Would you eventually run out of
> room for new memories?
>
> In the short-term it might be good for me to recall that I have some
frozen
> dinners in my freezer so that later I can cook a meal. The ability to
> maintain this short-term information may have long-term survival
advantages
> harkening back to ancestors that needed to recall momentary sources of
food
> or caches on the savannah. OTOH, would it do me any good to remember that
I
> had a particular brand of frozen microwavable dinner in my freezer back
say
> 10 years ago? Would it do me any good to painstakingly recall every
package
> of microwavable dinner I had ever retrieved from my refrigerator? Maybe
the
> basic ideas that I can buy these dinners at various local supermarkets and
> that I have recently stored them in the freezer would suffice. In the
> ancestral environment, likewise, it may have been advantageous to remember
> that certain areas were where food had often been stored in the past, but
> not the explicit details of every cache. Would it do the savannah dweller
> any good to remember that particular cache from 10 years ago when there
are
> more recent caches to recall?
>
> If something is no longer current or pressing, why remember it? Wouldn't
it
> be better for this memory (or at least its particulars) to recede,
allowing
> space for newer, more pertinent, information?
Given a metabolism that requires resources to remember things
I would rather say that the opposite: remembering is adaptive and
that forgetting is the cop-out default. As you already suggested
remembering everything that crosses your path for eternity
is a sheer waste of energy and undesirable if the memories are only
of temporal use. A species with a good memory emerged only when
there was a real need for the species to have a good resource
draining memory. Socially interacting animals fit the bill I think.
Philip.
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