

Our Irrational Fear of Forgetting - anupj
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/22/opinion/22gullette.html

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MichaelGG
Nonsense. Your memories comprise much of who you are. Losing them is like
losing parts of yourself, and it's extremely disconcerting.

I'm only 29, but I've had a few points of memory loss (amongst other mental
issues). You've done things, significant things even, but have zero
recollection. I've had to go to my email and IM archives to verify events and
convince myself that yes, they happened. It's shocking when you find out days
or whole weeks have happened, yet they are just erased from your mind. Imagine
if a family member asked you about your trip to X, a place you'd never gone,
yet everyone acted as if you had. You'd laugh and think it a joke, until you
realised it wasn't a joke - then how'd you feel?

Coupled with dementia and other symptoms of Alzheimer's (or another loss of
mental function), it's no wonder some would want to kill themselves. Why would
you want to live in a disjointed dream, perhaps with a constant sense that
something is terribly wrong, but not understanding what's happening? Why would
you want to destroy others' memories of you, by leaving them with years of
"not you"?

I probably have 2 or 3 decades before things are really bad (perhaps a lot
more with advances in medicine and technology), but if I ever get too bad, I'm
going out on the highest note possible. If not for me, for my family.

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orangecat
_The fact that only 1 in 8 Americans older than 65 has Alzheimer’s fails to
register._

That's supposed to be comforting? Alzheimer's isn't the only way for your mind
to fall apart, and a lower bound of 12.5% of that happening doesn't give me
warm fuzzies. Aging really, really sucks and we need to fix it.

~~~
archgoon
Smokers have a 11-17% chance of developing lung cancer, according to this
study.

<http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/7895211>

~~~
corin_
As a smoker, my two thoughts are:

1.) I'd rather have a 10% chance of dying than a 10% chance of living many
years with something like Alzheimer's.

2.) I'm not someone who says "I wish I could quit but I'm addicted", I find it
easy not to smoke but I do it because I really enjoy smoking. I'm trading
possible early death with current pleasure. Alzheimer's doesn't have any
upside or choice involved.

~~~
ewald
You say it like if you smoke, you cannot get Alzheimer.

~~~
corin_
No, I really don't. I was merely pointing out the difference between smoking
risks and normal risks. As a smoker maybe I have an equal chance of getting
lung cancer as Alzheimer's, but personally I'm more worried about the latter.

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Meai
Let me summarize the article: "Forgetting stuff every now and then isn't that
bad."

Yes, that is indeed the entire content of the article. I apologize if the
article is meant as a joke, I'm not entirely sure either way. This makes me
wonder:

"[...]but she discovered an upside to forgetting. She had forgotten old
rancors as well as President George W. Bush’s name."

I also wonder why I keep reading newspapers.

~~~
Alex3917
Dunno, this article really hit home to me. This past year has been the first
time I've been involved in a relationship that's gotten to the transactive
memory phase, and that's kind of scary. On the one hand it frees up cognitive
cycles to let you do things you never could have done otherwise, but on the
other hand there are chunks of your life that are disappearing. (If I remember
correctly, this is theorized to be one of the reasons why men are more likely
to commit suicide after a breakup.)

I guess that's the way it's always like with our parents, but somehow it feels
different with a significant other.

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6ren
I have a fear of forgetting insights i just had - it's not irrational, because
if I don't grab them quickly enough they vanish (though sometimes come back).

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blahedo
"...she discovered an upside to forgetting. She had forgotten old rancors...."

This bears repeating, because it's both interesting and unexpected. I have a
relative with Alzheimer's—diagnosed a year ago—and while the signs are
unmistakable, she's also still perfectly conversational, reasonably
independent, and most surprisingly, much more amiable towards people to whom
she was formerly rather cool. Our best explanation is exactly as stated in the
article: that she had basically forgotten the rancor.

Anyway, I saw her so clearly in that line of the article I had to point it
out, because it was (and still is) so surprising to us that this would be an
effect of Alzheimer's.

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maeon3
We are measuring our own human memories against the flawless nature of
computer system memory and as a result people are raising the bar on what
"normal human memory" should look like.

We shall just have to decrease the amount of time it takes for humans to
access the flawless computer memory.

When the amount of data for one person to remember becomes too great then
increased specialization is required.

~~~
wahnfrieden
We can also take advantage of computers to help us to be able to actively
recall things, using spaced repetition systems. These are an attempt to make
long-term memorization as efficient as possible.

