4 ms·
I've always found two things interesting about memory. First, it often seems many more memories can be stored than recalled. This becomes apparent when you ca
by sema4hacker 2y ago
I've always found two things interesting about memory. First, it often seems many more memories can be stored than recalled. This becomes apparent when you can't remember something to the point of being certain you've forgotten, only to later recall what you were trying to remember. (My definition of a good trivia question is one you can't answer until you're told the answer and you realize you knew all along.) And of course people who have the ability to apparently remember everything indicate memory capacity can be enormous.
Second, I've often thought I can correctly remember a scene from a movie or TV show I saw decades ago, but when I see it again I realize I got a tremendous number of details wrong, indicating that particular stored memory is very general in nature and not accurate at all.
- DecentShoes 2y agoRe trivia, I often find myself thinking "I would have definitely gotten that if it was multiple choice". I agree with your second paragraph too. I often think of a certain tone of voice or pacing with which a line was delivered, and it ends up being completely different when I rewatch it. And yet there are still Mandela Effect people out there insisting their memories are 100% infallible and it's more likely there's a global time travel conspiracy to change a dot on a KitKat package than that they misremembered something small.
- choilive 2y agoSince LLMs/AI are all the rage these days - I also found a similar behavior with LLMs. If I ask a difficult recall question (usually some very niche medical knowledge) it will get it wrong or just hallucinate. But if I ask it in the form of a multiple choice question, it often gets it right. If memory works better when prompted with the information this way - I wonder how similar LLMs and humans actually encode memory?