Urvi Bhuwania 15: The Importance of Forgetting
The Importance of Forgetting
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I often find myself forgetting a lot of various details on a daily basis and my friends often make fun of me for how quickly I can forget things that were just told to me. For adults, forgetting minor details becomes even more worrying as they start to wonder if their poor memory is a potential sign of dementia. However, people often forget that there is actually great value in forgetting for the overall efficiency of the brain, beyond just being able to let go of bad memories. It is actually a relatively new field in science that has only really undergone thorough exploration in the last few decades or so.
As vast and complex as the mind is, the brain only has a certain capacity for memories it can store and effectively process. With the sheer amount of sensory input that individuals receive on a daily basis, it would be impossible to store vivid memories of all of our experiences and knowledge. Scientists have actually determined that there are specific parts of the brain that operate with the goal of intentionally forgetting and letting go of seemingly unimportant memories. Just like therapists advise clients to let go of bad memories so that they are able to move forward in the present, the brain takes this job upon itself by discarding certain experiences to make space for others.
However, I wonder how truly accurate this intentional forgetting is. Often times, I find myself holding on to really odd, random, and rather irrelevant memories while forgetting those memories that I consider significantly more crucial and pertinent to my daily life. If anything, the brain's tendency to forget certain experiences seems almost random, but then again, it is also incredibly feasible that our brain already filters out a sizable amount of irrelevance from our memories and we are just too used to it to recognize it.
Yet another perspective that Tom Siegfried looks at is that the brain's ultimate goal is to make solid decisions that maximize the potential and survival of an individual. This would at least explain why its so taxing to memorize so many math and physics formulas when they are clearly not imperative to one's survival. As Siegfried further expounds, retaining only the general gists of memory can help us better generalize patterns in our environment and make better decisions in the future. It's analogous to regression or fitting a data set for a science class. If you choose a curve that matches much too closely to the chosen data set, it will be that much worse at extrapolating other points. Similarly, if our memories our so detailed to only embody one specific instance, it will be that much harder to understand the world in a more generalized manner.
Sources:
https://www.columbiapsychiatry.org/news/why-forgetting-good-your-memory
https://knowablemagazine.org/article/mind/2019/why-we-forget
You make an interesting comparison between fitting data into a curve and our brains choosing certain information to memorize. I think it would be so cool if in the future we could have some crazy technology that allows us to store certain memories or information for us to access later like an external hard drive or USB. It would be even cooler if we can upgrade our brains with more storage like we can upgrade our portable and electronic devices.
ReplyDeleteHey Urvi, you should remember to log out of your computer in Mr. Millard as I see you signed in quite a bit. Anyways, your blog reminded me that forgetting can also be a good thing. Now that I think of it, it makes sense why the brain forgets information because it storing every bit of detail can be quite strenuous. These days we rely on knowing where to find information so much that we have lost some of our memorization skills. I think the baby boomer generation must have had a better memory because they did not have access to the internet and actually relied on their memory more.
ReplyDeleteHello Urvi,
ReplyDeleteI love the point you made about how we are so used to our memorization to recognize how much irrelevant information it filters out. Most people question where our memories are stored or how they are formed, but another good question is what decides what information is kept and what is ignored or discarded. I do not remember what scores I got on my finals in 9th grade, but I remembered them vividly sophomore year. When did that information become irrelevant? How did my brain decide that? I guess I should appreciate it rather than question it. Our memory may be ultimately controlled by some divine algorithm we have yet to discover.
Hi Urvi! It relieves me to know that our limited memory capacity can also serve us good. I also find myself holding on to irrelevant memories while forgetting the more important ones. Seeing Siegfried's perspective, it definitely makes sense why math does not process in my memories the same way movies do.
ReplyDeleteHi Urvi! Wow, your comparison between a best fit curve and our brain choosing memories to become knowledgeable of the general trend is a really fitting comparison that puts everything into perspective for me to understand your blog. Combined with a few blogs I’ve read previously, I see the appeal of forgetting. I actually did not know that there was a specific part of the brain that deals with forgetting. I always learn from your blogs, so thank you!
ReplyDeleteHi Urvi! Your blog definitely reassured me that forgetting things isn’t so horrible after all. We tend to think that forgetting things isn’t good because it just means we are having memory loss etc. If we remember everything then it’ll just be hard to filter things out, group them together and be able to remember how things connect to other things. Especially in classes such as AP Bio, it’s so important to be able to make connections between each and every one of the topics we have learned about to be able to remember the information. If we simply just remember the information, we won’t be able to answer the questions that have to do with detail and it might be harder for us to remember all the specific information we need to remember at specific times with so much information. Thanks for making me realize that and thanks for sharing!
ReplyDeleteHi Urvi! There are people out there who never forget anything. Though sometimes I think it is a blessing, it can actually be quite painful. I am so thankful for my terrible memory, as I would be miserable if I could remember all the embarrassing or infuriating situations in my life. I am interested in how you said the mind has a certain capacity for memories, as it is not yet scientifically proven how much memory can be stored in our long term memories. The brain truly is fascinating and mysterious.
ReplyDeleteHi Urvi—it is interesting to see human fitness and memory merge. Our evolutionary goal is to just propagate our genes—nothing more. So, things that are the norm in the twenty-first century are deeply inhuman. Our sleep schedules, our work life, our 13 year retirements were not in mind when humans branched off of another hominid species.
ReplyDeleteHi Urvi, it certainly makes sense that we are built to only really remember important aspects and not have perfect memories. I’ve heard of schools where the main formulas or the periodic table are given on the exam because there isn’t really a point to memorizing all of it. It seems more important to do the calculation or the analysis of a problem rather than trying to call up what exactly the mass of an element is and how many electrons it has. Although certain main elements should be memorized, definitely not all of them. As a relatively forgetful person myself, your blog helped me remember that sometimes it is good to forget.
ReplyDelete