From: Gary Miller (garymiller@starband.net)
Date: Tue Jul 01 2003 - 09:48:42 MDT
> AFAIK, those memories turn out to be complete fabrications,
> and are an excellent example of just how little we remember, and how
> much our brain fills in the gaps with pure bullshit.
If that were true then how do you explain eidetic or photographic memory
Where certain individuals can remember every word on a page after only
Reading them once?
It seems to me that our brain has to make up memorys when our
recollection
Of the past is imperfect and it is just trying to make sense of the
partial
memories by connecting the dots.
But what if it's just our retrieval mechanism that's flawed and those
perfect
memories lies just out of reach due to our imperfect retrieval
mechanisms.
Consider alzheimer patients who have spells where they do not remember
anything
and then at other times they can recount events that happened long ago
in great
Detail.
-----Original Message-----
From: owner-extropians@extropy.org [mailto:owner-extropians@extropy.org]
On Behalf Of Emlyn O'regan
Sent: Monday, June 30, 2003 10:43 PM
To: 'extropians@extropy.org'
Subject: RE: TMS...the truth is out there...
> At 09:31 AM 7/1/03 +0930, Emlyn wrote:
> >> Also can memorys be selectively reactivated. I have heard
> stories of
> >> old
> >> Memories long thought lost being reactivated during brain
> surgury. If
> >> so how
> >> does one go about developing a map?
>
> >AFAIK, those memories turn out to be complete fabrications,
> and are an
> >excellent example of just how little we remember, and how
> much our brain
> >fills in the gaps with pure bullshit.
>
> AFAIK, *all* memories turn out to be fabrications, not quite
> compiled from
> pure bullshit but certainly reconstituted each time they're
> recalled, and
> shaded differently according to the context of recall and the
> cumulative
> history of their past recall/reconstruction. You never step
> into the same
> memory twice.
>
> Damien Broderick
Yes, exactly. It's one of those lovely mental features that obscures
even further the meaning of self, for those of us who wish to extend
it's existence.
Emlyn
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