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> I personally prefer the idea, that your memory qualitatively changes in spite of language acquisition, you get another (upgraded) way to access your memory, a

> I personally prefer the idea, that your memory qualitatively changes in spite of language acquisition, you get another (upgraded) way to access your memory, and then you forget the old (legacy) way. I like this explanation because my own memories from the time I was ~3 yo are strange (conditionally on I could reproduce them well and not to invent things), they are almost eidetic. I think people stick too much to the idea that human memory is kinda like computer memory. "Remembering" trauma could also mean that the brain's structure changes in some way as a result of trauma without necessarily recording how the event exactly went. Reminds me of a video of WW1 shell shocked soldiers I saw recently. It's not the exact memory record of the events which broke those men. Something more profound changed in their brain.

ordu 3y ago
I do not suppose that human memory is like a computer. Thinking of how it works, I believe it works a bit like LLM, you formulate a prompt and get memories. It is an automatic process an you do not see the details, like what the prompt was used. And suppose if at some point you've learned how to a) store memory in a categorized form; b) use prompts formulated in a language (or at least in categories of language), then you can "forget" the old way of prompt generating. > "Remembering" trauma could also mean that the brain's structure changes in some way as a result of trauma without necessarily recording how the event exactly went. This is too vague to my taste. Isn't any memory a brain's structure change?
- The_Colonel 3y ago
  > Thinking of how it works, I believe it works a bit like LLM, you formulate a prompt and get memories. It is an automatic process an you do not see the details, like what the prompt was used. In some ways, LLM seem to work kinda like brain. It doesn't remember the exact details, more like patterns, from which it then attempts to reconstruct the memory. > Isn't any memory a brain's structure change? Well, yes. I guess what I'm trying to say is that such events produce much larger changes in the brain in comparison to non-traumatic events. In the sense that the child's behavior changes as a result. For example, the child can gain a new phobia which can persevere much longer than the memory of the actual event. My overall point is that even if you forget the actual events, you will carry the consequences of such trauma anyway.

ordu 3y ago

I do not suppose that human memory is like a computer. Thinking of how it works, I believe it works a bit like LLM, you formulate a prompt and get memories. It is an automatic process an you do not see the details, like what the prompt was used. And suppose if at some point you've learned how to a) store memory in a categorized form; b) use prompts formulated in a language (or at least in categories of language), then you can "forget" the old way of prompt generating. > "Remembering" trauma could also mean that the brain's structure changes in some way as a result of trauma without necessarily recording how the event exactly went. This is too vague to my taste. Isn't any memory a brain's structure change?

The_Colonel 3y ago
> Thinking of how it works, I believe it works a bit like LLM, you formulate a prompt and get memories. It is an automatic process an you do not see the details, like what the prompt was used. In some ways, LLM seem to work kinda like brain. It doesn't remember the exact details, more like patterns, from which it then attempts to reconstruct the memory. > Isn't any memory a brain's structure change? Well, yes. I guess what I'm trying to say is that such events produce much larger changes in the brain in comparison to non-traumatic events. In the sense that the child's behavior changes as a result. For example, the child can gain a new phobia which can persevere much longer than the memory of the actual event. My overall point is that even if you forget the actual events, you will carry the consequences of such trauma anyway.