Our mental capacity for storing data is a strange thing. Why do we remember specific facts, figures, dates, incidents? Why don’t we remember others?
What is it in our human makeup that puts something into the memory banks, keeps it there, then allows you to extricate itself, as necessary?
I’m not sure there’s a formula for what we remember. There is probably some brain science and studies that indicate the triggers for our memories and how we store information, but I doubt a strong enough formula can reliably predict what we save, store and evacuate.
Useless storage is another category that’s hard to figure. I’ll give you a case in point. A good friend of mine can crush incredibly arcane questions on Jeopardy with great rapidity. This is an art (and memory) form.
How does this person do it? Was there specific schooling in her background that allows her to pull up the information quickly to pose the proper question in Jeopardy? Does it come from relentless reading? Did teachers emphasize certain learning tactics as she grew up? Does her brain pick up on certain cues? Is the stored information in her brain massively useful? I don’t have a clue.
Coming up with those Jeopardy questions doesn’t make anyone a genius per se, but it does mean they are very good at remembering specificities and can push that information to their vocal cords to press a button to win the contest. It is clear though that SOME function is served by retaining that type of data.
Having that information stored in your brain isn’t crucial to survival. It might help you get ahead in the world, yes, in certain professions.
Another friend of mine jokes repeatedly when she defeats the bot in various app games, like “Connections” or “Wordle.” She loves crushing the machine, demonstrating human agility and ability over software programming. I’m with her there.
Her mind, too, stores a lot of what she says is “useless data.” I’m astounded on a regular basis on how thoroughly and quickly she wins at these games based on being able to pull things up from her memory and make connections.
I think she doesn’t give herself enough credit and deflects the praise, but her high level of skill at those games gets back again to the question of, “Where did she learn all that stuff? Where did her initial learning (and then the storage) of this information come from?”
Until brain storage studies more completely explain how one brain keeps something and another disposes of information upon contact, we willl never know the answers to these questions. Maybe, decades in the future we will know more.
For now, what I know is that these friends trounce me in “Jeopardy,” “Connections” and “Wordle” on a regular basis. They are nice to me, complimenting me when I surface occasionally with some random tidbit of information out of the blue that makes sense on Jeopardy or Connections. But their abilities are far beyond mine.
Everyone’s brain is different. Both of these friends have brains that function at a much higher level than mine when it comes to crushing it in games requiring memory storage, retrieval and integration. Mine? I don’t know, I was probably looking out the window during grade school, daydreaming, watching the clouds.
What is it in our human makeup that puts something into the memory banks, keeps it there, then allows you to extricate itself, as necessary?
I’m not sure there’s a formula for what we remember. There is probably some brain science and studies that indicate the triggers for our memories and how we store information, but I doubt a strong enough formula can reliably predict what we save, store and evacuate.
Useless storage is another category that’s hard to figure. I’ll give you a case in point. A good friend of mine can crush incredibly arcane questions on Jeopardy with great rapidity. This is an art (and memory) form.
How does this person do it? Was there specific schooling in her background that allows her to pull up the information quickly to pose the proper question in Jeopardy? Does it come from relentless reading? Did teachers emphasize certain learning tactics as she grew up? Does her brain pick up on certain cues? Is the stored information in her brain massively useful? I don’t have a clue.
Coming up with those Jeopardy questions doesn’t make anyone a genius per se, but it does mean they are very good at remembering specificities and can push that information to their vocal cords to press a button to win the contest. It is clear though that SOME function is served by retaining that type of data.
Having that information stored in your brain isn’t crucial to survival. It might help you get ahead in the world, yes, in certain professions.
Another friend of mine jokes repeatedly when she defeats the bot in various app games, like “Connections” or “Wordle.” She loves crushing the machine, demonstrating human agility and ability over software programming. I’m with her there.
Her mind, too, stores a lot of what she says is “useless data.” I’m astounded on a regular basis on how thoroughly and quickly she wins at these games based on being able to pull things up from her memory and make connections.
I think she doesn’t give herself enough credit and deflects the praise, but her high level of skill at those games gets back again to the question of, “Where did she learn all that stuff? Where did her initial learning (and then the storage) of this information come from?”
Until brain storage studies more completely explain how one brain keeps something and another disposes of information upon contact, we willl never know the answers to these questions. Maybe, decades in the future we will know more.
For now, what I know is that these friends trounce me in “Jeopardy,” “Connections” and “Wordle” on a regular basis. They are nice to me, complimenting me when I surface occasionally with some random tidbit of information out of the blue that makes sense on Jeopardy or Connections. But their abilities are far beyond mine.
Everyone’s brain is different. Both of these friends have brains that function at a much higher level than mine when it comes to crushing it in games requiring memory storage, retrieval and integration. Mine? I don’t know, I was probably looking out the window during grade school, daydreaming, watching the clouds.