

The Importance of Teaching Computers to Forget - CoryOndrejka
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/reviews/2010/02/teaching-computers-how-to-forget-and-why-it-matters.ars

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gwern
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.

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jerf
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?

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aarongough
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...

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timwiseman
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
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!

