

Why A Good Memory Is Bad For You - ca98am79
http://www.technologyreview.com/blog/arxiv/25283/

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thunk
Couldn't foragers remember food sources perfectly well, but still not
exclusively visit them? I don't see how these results necessarily implicate
memory. Habit, sure, but not memory.

~~~
ars
Quite agree, this paper (or at least the summary) is nonsense.

And this:

    
    
      Take as an example the question: if the ability to
      remember is such a good thing, why hasn't evolution
      given us photographic memories? The answer according to
      Boyer and Walsh's model is because we'd starve when the
      local supermarket went out of business.
    

Has to be the stupidest thing I can ever remember reading in a purportedly
scientific article. If I have photographic memory why would I visit the
supermarket more than once, after it closes? Just because I remember that
there was food there doesn't mean I'm required to go there.

~~~
derefr
It may be nonsense when applied to _humans_ with our fancy pre-frontal
cortices, but in lower animals there's no interdiction between memory and
action—that is, animals always do "the first thing that comes to mind." To put
it another way, every memory an animal has _is_ a habit. You would visit the
supermarket after it has closed because it's hard to break that habit
(disestablish a memory with a number of positive re-trainings), even when you
"know" that it's no longer true (from a single negative re-training).

Consciousness is theorized to be precisely the brain experiencing indecision
between two alternative motor programs (i.e. habits), and rationally picking
one or the other. Animals don't do that.

~~~
gnaritas
> Animals don't do that.

I hope you don't really believe this. Animals are not automatons, they do
think and they do plan.

~~~
derefr
I never said animals didn't _plan_ , and make decisions; I said they weren't
_conscious_. There's a big difference.

 _Planning_ is the evaluation of alternative, _non-conflicting_ motor programs
to determine the cumulative utility of a decision branch. (Basically, a
decision-tree A* algorithm.) Animals do plan, but planning is not experienced
_consciously_ —it simply happens.

Human planning happens on this pre-conscious level as well. If you've ever
been in a "flow state" where you felt like you didn't actually have to think
about anything, because you just "reacted" the right way to every
problem—that's planning. That's how it feels to be an animal.

 _Thinking_ is, as far as neurology has figured, the resolution of problems
that occur during planning by the use of the neocortex to classify features of
the current environment into schema, and re-trigger the planning process with
expectation programs, looked up from those schema, substituted for motor
programs. The most common form of thinking involves verbal expectation
programs (basically, saying things to ourselves, in our heads, and then
reprocessing those words as if they were external sensory inputs.) This is
experienced as consciousness, and as far as we know, only humans do it.

Without the ability to think consciously—to resolve motor-program conflicts—an
animal can't "argue" with itself about which course of action to choose.
Instead, it just has a best intuition about which one will work out, and goes
with it. These intuitions rely greatly on habituation—in fact, without
expectation programs (and thus without semantic knowledge), memory as a whole
consists purely _of_ process knowledge—internal finite-state machines of
habituated reactions.

~~~
thunk
And all that somehow implies they won't forage until they forget where they've
found food before? Even if they've since struck out at those same locations?

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stretchwithme
I'll have to remember this next time I'm foraging at Whole Foods.

Evolution probably hasn't given us a photographic memory, most likely, because
doing so doesn't provide a benefit worth the expense. which is not the same as
saying photographic memory would actually hurt us.

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Aegean
I think its not only about memory, but about how rewarding it is to seek new
opportunities than constantly sow the existing ones.

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defdac
Reminds me of Metropolis light transport.

