4 ms·

I think some memories are closer to lossless compressions than lossy which I wonder if it's more of a scale where memories can slide between the two modes with

I think some memories are closer to lossless compressions than lossy which I wonder if it's more of a scale where memories can slide between the two modes with varying degrees of fidelity. Like there are memories that I know I shouldn't remember from childhood that I can remember clearly and others I barely remember what year it happened. So I have to wonder if some of this seeming lossless-ness is more fractal-like in nature where one can just reconstruct from the base encoding and expand it outward to fill in sufficient detail to seem like it's perfectly captured when it's really just merely the reconstruction.

withinboredom 5y ago
I vaguely remember reading something that traumatic or “very important” memories never go through the usual process of becoming memories. Instead, when you recall them, your brain physically “relives” it so it is never forgotten. Probably a evolutionary trait to make sure we learn as much as we can from the experience. This is also why you remember those “times you almost died” in slow motion. Your brain goes into a high resolution mode in those cases, which you remember as slow motion, like speeding up a camera and playing it back at normal speed. Sorry I don’t have any sources, I’m just a casual reader in this space.
bee_rider 5y ago
If you are taking a truncated SVD, the math says that it is the best representation of that data for a given truncation size, and will even give you a measure of how good that representation is. But picking how good you need often ends up being a kind of annoying and fuzzy heuristic thing. In addition, some data just gives you better singular values, and so fundamentally compresses better. I guess the brain probably is dealing (in a hugely non-mathematical way -- it is just an analogy!) with a similar sort of thing. Somehow we pick some memories to keep in great detail -- either because they seem to be very valuable, or because they just seem to compress nicely. It is a bit funny that one name for this sort of thing is a "singular experience."

withinboredom 5y ago

I vaguely remember reading something that traumatic or “very important” memories never go through the usual process of becoming memories. Instead, when you recall them, your brain physically “relives” it so it is never forgotten. Probably a evolutionary trait to make sure we learn as much as we can from the experience. This is also why you remember those “times you almost died” in slow motion. Your brain goes into a high resolution mode in those cases, which you remember as slow motion, like speeding up a camera and playing it back at normal speed. Sorry I don’t have any sources, I’m just a casual reader in this space.

bee_rider 5y ago

If you are taking a truncated SVD, the math says that it is the best representation of that data for a given truncation size, and will even give you a measure of how good that representation is. But picking how good you need often ends up being a kind of annoying and fuzzy heuristic thing. In addition, some data just gives you better singular values, and so fundamentally compresses better. I guess the brain probably is dealing (in a hugely non-mathematical way -- it is just an analogy!) with a similar sort of thing. Somehow we pick some memories to keep in great detail -- either because they seem to be very valuable, or because they just seem to compress nicely. It is a bit funny that one name for this sort of thing is a "singular experience."