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The Importance of Teaching Computers to Forget

9 points by CoryOndrejka 17y ago

gwern 17y ago
Borges would roll in his grave at yet another desecration of 'Funes the Memorious'; the point was not that a good memory somehow is a curse. Borges was, yet again, revisiting his favorite theme of 'the map and the territory': that abstraction is useful and fundamentally different from the raw data/reality. A map is good insofar as it is unfaithful and the more faithful the map, the less useful & mappy it is. This, of course, has nothing to do with the author's thesis, which I regard as being about as sound as the argument that everyone ought to die at 70 years because to live longer or nigh forever would render life meaningless.
- jerf 17y ago
  There's at least two ways to be "forgetful"; we can either actually destroy data, or we can simply account for it less as time goes by. It should be noted that most people's brains actually work on the latter principle. But that will require a paradigm shift in both law and culture, because right now we don't have that. I draw an extreme example for didactic purposes, though the principle extends to much smaller cases: Suppose within our lifetimes we develop effective immortality. Do you want to be classified as a "sex offender" in the year 3000 because when you were 19 you went driving down the road, mooning people, and you mooned a cop accidentally?
aarongough 17y ago
Perfect memory & recall seems to be a long-running theme in many near and far-future Sci-Fi books... I commented to my girlfriend the other day that if I was ever given the option to have it I would refuse. An example: my cat died at the start of the year, a thoroughly heartbreaking occurrence. If I had perfect recall of that event, including my emotional state at the time, I think I would be emotionally and mentally crippled for the rest of my life...
- timwiseman 17y ago
  An interesting point. But it seems like the ideal solution is the capacity for perfect recall. Being able to recall everything you have experienced at will seems to be virtually all good, so long as you are not forced to be constantly conscious of it at all times. To extend the story of your cat (I am sorry incidentally. Loosing a pet can be rough), I suspect you probably would like the ability to remember every detail of the good times when you so chose, you just don't want to have to deal with thoughts about the death all the time.
  - aarongough 17y ago
    Thanks Tim! I do agree with you, voluntary recall would be fine. Recall as we have it now is largely linked to triggers that can kind of ambush you (in both good and bad ways) with little notice. A smell, a sound: all bring up memories... If I could consciously make the decision to recall everything I did on some day 10 years ago, that would probably be quite useful!

9 points by CoryOndrejka 17y ago

gwern 17y ago

Borges would roll in his grave at yet another desecration of 'Funes the Memorious'; the point was not that a good memory somehow is a curse. Borges was, yet again, revisiting his favorite theme of 'the map and the territory': that abstraction is useful and fundamentally different from the raw data/reality. A map is good insofar as it is unfaithful and the more faithful the map, the less useful & mappy it is. This, of course, has nothing to do with the author's thesis, which I regard as being about as sound as the argument that everyone ought to die at 70 years because to live longer or nigh forever would render life meaningless.

jerf 17y ago
There's at least two ways to be "forgetful"; we can either actually destroy data, or we can simply account for it less as time goes by. It should be noted that most people's brains actually work on the latter principle. But that will require a paradigm shift in both law and culture, because right now we don't have that. I draw an extreme example for didactic purposes, though the principle extends to much smaller cases: Suppose within our lifetimes we develop effective immortality. Do you want to be classified as a "sex offender" in the year 3000 because when you were 19 you went driving down the road, mooning people, and you mooned a cop accidentally?

aarongough 17y ago

Perfect memory & recall seems to be a long-running theme in many near and far-future Sci-Fi books... I commented to my girlfriend the other day that if I was ever given the option to have it I would refuse. An example: my cat died at the start of the year, a thoroughly heartbreaking occurrence. If I had perfect recall of that event, including my emotional state at the time, I think I would be emotionally and mentally crippled for the rest of my life...

timwiseman 17y ago
An interesting point. But it seems like the ideal solution is the capacity for perfect recall. Being able to recall everything you have experienced at will seems to be virtually all good, so long as you are not forced to be constantly conscious of it at all times. To extend the story of your cat (I am sorry incidentally. Loosing a pet can be rough), I suspect you probably would like the ability to remember every detail of the good times when you so chose, you just don't want to have to deal with thoughts about the death all the time.
- aarongough 17y ago
  Thanks Tim! I do agree with you, voluntary recall would be fine. Recall as we have it now is largely linked to triggers that can kind of ambush you (in both good and bad ways) with little notice. A smell, a sound: all bring up memories... If I could consciously make the decision to recall everything I did on some day 10 years ago, that would probably be quite useful!