Why do we forget?

Philosophy Forums Psychology and Mind
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I’m involved in fair trade, and I can’t say I really love what I’m doing, so now I stay in it because I view it as a hobby that I can do whatever I want with. Everytime I learn about fair trade principles and its general history though, I always end up forgetting important details that other members of my group seem to know offhand. Is there a reason why I can’t remember this stuff?

If I really don’t have a heart for something, is that the sole reason why I will never absorb and retain information as well as other, more active members of the fair trade group?

Additionally, I always uncover great truths as I walk back and forth from my university to the GO train, but then I forget them a day later. If I am convinced that they are great advancements, I wonder why I forget? Its like nothing sticks in my brain except for some very strange things.

I’m not sure there really is an answer…my theory is I forget because I have no motivation to remember. Then, what is the basis for motivation? Motivation would be a natural extension of your self, what one feels is “right” to do. Or in some cases it is enforced, like studying for an exam.

Then it is clear to me that enforced motivation (and its weaker brother, self-enforcement - ie. I promise myself I will quit smoking, lose weight, learn about fair trade etc.) is useless. But then even my natural motivation for asking questions and realizing great truths does not leave me with lasting knowledge, for I forget it the next day. And I really thought these were amazing insights!!

So then, motivation is not really a factor. Its interesting to me, that in retrospect, the things I remember I learned when I was relaxed and stress-free. Free inquiry and pure interest, with an empty mind, allow for remembrance, while a clogged, over-burdened mind filled with thoughts can never retain the information it learns.

Hmm…now I wonder, why do I learn at all? Am I enforcing myself to learn to maintain an image, or because I feel I must head in a certain direction? Is there such thing as learning without having a destination in mind? I feel like that latter is true learning. Spontaneous learning…these are my stream of consciousness thoughts. What do you all think? Why do we forget? Is it related to the basic question of why do we learn? Hmmm

EDIT: of course! My final paragraph makes the concept clear. If we learn for self-image, then that is enforcement. But often one may learn when one feels he is free, when really the underlying reason is unconscious in its nature. I learn science…because I love it? Or because I want to be like Einstein? Those who are not aware of their motivations are doomed to learn based on self-coercive “motivational” factors, and thus will never learn at all. So, the answer is, one must learn the mind before one learns a subject, indeed understand why the subject is being learned at all. Yay! Unless I’m wrong…there might be some things I haven’t considered. I guess I’ll just leave this here…hopefully it won’t get deleted as I like this post. Its a nice summation of my fluid thoughts.

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Don’t you remember?

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Do you smoke pot?

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some of us can remember in what year Genghis Khan was born (1162), where some of have trouble with our own birthday…

eat some fish er something… brain food.

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Why do our brains forget things? Basically, I assume it is for the same reason we delete files from our computers, or close programs that we aren’t using. It’s to save resources. What makes the brain so powerful is its ability to cut-corners when calculating, analyzing, and deciding. Forgetting and not remembering is one major way the brain is able to work quickly and efficiently.

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the connections between braincells become degraded and eventually seperate which isolates the “information” within secluded parts of the brain… un useable…

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Exactly wonderer’s explanation I was going to make.

The important difference between brains and modern computers is that modern computers use logic gates and the modification of information batteries.

Brains use continuously random yet streamlined pathway combinations of electrons. Memory is not only dependant on storage and gates, but moreso the redundancy of connections and simultaneous neuron triggers.

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Wonderer, your explanation is true, as are your points, Gaiaguerrilla. But I would say those our more explanations of how than why. Although, I realize now that how explains mechanically [i]why[i]. Still, I just took the question from more of an evolutionary view.

I’ve also read that one important reason for sleep is to allow the brain to decide what to make into long-term memories and what to forget. Have any of you some information about that?

Anyway, if the brain functioned more like a modern computer it wouldn’t work for its purpose. Our brains require the efficiency and quickness to quickly come up with good solutions to problems and obstacles, without having to analyze every little detail of every possible solution to see which one is the best. I suppose I’m guilty of comparing the brain to a modern computer, but I meant it as an analogy to show the value of not storing all information.

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if we didnt forget we wouldn’t be so diverse…

also if we didn’t forget our brains probably would have capped in size…

having information in your head that you cannot forget is painful…

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The most widely belived theory (or it was 6 years ago when i did studies on memory) is that we have 3 types of memory. The first kind I cannot remember the name of, (which is quite ironic realy) and lasts for about 2 seconds, this is normally the information that our brain takes in but does not find important, its the in one ear and out the other kind of stuff, and includes things like a shop keepers eye colour for example, or the pattern of wall paper in a hallway you walk through. Short term memory lasts for 30 seconds, or less and included most of our day to day thinking, anything that we deem important will be thought on for a longer period than 30 seconds, when this happens it becomes long term memory which is said to last our whole lives. (Excluding brain degridation etc) As we have alot of information to take in our brains need a filing system, and so long term memory is often “forgotten” even if in reality it is not actually truely forgotten ie it can be found again using cirtain tecniques. Often this can be done by retracing your steps, (even in the case of studied learning, going back to the classroom where you committed the information to long term memory can more often than not cause you to remember more.) also it has been shown that we can unearth very old memories, such as those from our early childhood, and also repressed memories eiethose memories that our brains exclude from our minds as a saftey mechanism, eg memories of abuse. These can be found using regressive hypnosis.

So using this model, memories are never forgotten, if they are committed to long term memory, just stored in a part of your brain that you do not have imediate access to, all short term memory is thrown away as it is counted as unusefull.

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I have forgotten everything I know about memory.

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Rhinoboy was pretty much spot on… that memory model is the Atkinson-Shiffrin memory model and the shortest form of memory (as he said he had forgotten the name) is Sensory Memory.

There’s a couple of other memory model’s like Baddeley’s working memory model which is slightly more complex and to be honest I can’t remember entirely how it works.

According to Atkinson and Shiffrin though, it is believed that the long term memory has an infinite capacity and information can be stored for an infinite amount of time. Forgetting is generally down to the links between braincells weakening, as mentioned earlier… also there are other ways such as displacement wherein a memory is ‘replaced’ by another… head trauma can cause amnesia… defense mechanisms such as repression (also mentioned)…

Rehearsal is probably the best thing for committing memories to the long term memory. Semantic rehearsal (putting a meaning to the information being learned) is possible the most effective. Also, it is thought that cues are very good at aiding memory. For example, if you are to take an exam you are best studying for that exam in an environment most akin to an exam room as you are more likely to remember things you have learned if you are trying to recall them in the room in which they were committed to the long term memory. It is the same for when people are present. I had a psychology tutor who would always stand at the front during exams and every year someone would come up to her claiming to have been unable to recall something for an answer. When they looked up and saw the tutor at the front, the visual cue caused them to remember her teaching what they were trying to remember. I even did it myself.

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Yeah, lets not pretend like any of us hear fully or even partiallyunderstand why we forget things. Every example so far is either straight out wrong or so misinformed and outdated it doesn’t matter.

theres been huge steps in memory research in the last decades, until some geniuses edit some kind of massive volume about memory that takes into account results from dozens of fields including the shit found out these last 5 years in neuroscientific approaches, we can stop asking the question like it can be meaningful anwsered in a post.

I know I don’t fully understand modern neurobiological research/science currently, theres plenty of shit about the physics and molecular biology about the brain that I don’t properly understand, how could Ihope to understand memory effiently? I can’t, I can have a rough layman’s idea, but until we all do this education in full, we can’t really know, even if we did fully understand the current scientific literature, more research needs to be done.

I can say the shit offered by rhinoboy is idiotic and beyond wrong and that part of the reason we forget things is because our brains cannot retain an unlimited amount of information (like any computer) and that we can tell if someone actually forgets somthming based on fmri studies.

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If anyone is serious about understanding memory, they should try to fully educate themselves on biology like i’m trying, which includes neuroscience.if you want to truly have a chance to understand things, it requires hard work and dedication, years of dedication that most people here don’t have. How many people in this thread devoute themselves to reading a few text on neurobiology a week and filling the between time with articles from relevant peer reviewed shit?

I could bet that almost no one here does (to those of you who do, you’re my heroes) but most of us aren’t those people, almost all of us aren’t that person right now but to seriously comment on threads like this we need to be, or at least, be striving to be like that as a real life goal.

These threads just annoy me, it seems like no one has a real idea about the question their asking, or exactly how far-reaching and complex the anwser might be.

It certainly doesn’t come down to some idiotic half explanation out of psychology, but would envoke cell dynamics that none of us would likely understand without years of study.

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Cyrene,

I don’t even know how long the human memory has been studied for but I can say one thing for sure… they are theories.

I doubt we will ever fully understand the workings of the human mind let along just one single aspect of it. Like Rhinoboy said… these are the theories that are most universally agreed with. Just because someone offers to put forward a theory (especially a theory that has been in circulation for some time and has been widely credited as a possibility) does not make the poster an idiotic one. I am not devoting my life to biology or neuro-science but I am dedicating my adult life to psychology so its very unlikely that I will state something I do not know, unless I state that I am not entirely familiar with the facts.

You already said yourself that not a single person here has any idea as to the complexities of the human mind and how to genuinely answer the proposed question and I agree with you, but as you yourself also can not answer the question you are in very little position to declare that someone is wrong. A theory is not scientific fact. If you disagree with them, then fair enough. But realistically you can not say that they are wrong. Even the greatest neuro-scientists, biological and cognitive psychologists in the world can not give us a right answer. They can merely give us theories.

As a social psychologist, biological psychology isn’t really my field but I’ve studied memory enough to know about a number of memory models and theories of learning. Not my own theories… credited theories that are still taught in universities today.

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It seems more than enough has been posted about the specifics of memory so that anything I have to say would be nothing more than superfluous semantics. However, I simply wanted to state that one reason we forget, and must, is that our brain is only capable of containing so much. In this sense I mean to say that we have to forget in order to function properly or else it would be an information overload.
As far as information that you’re attempting to retain is concerned, I cannot stress enough the importance of repetition. If you’re having trouble then exercise through reading and reflecting back upon what you’ve read, solve puzzles, play brain age(I do believe it works), and take at least three omega-3 tablets daily. There was a study done in England(I apologize for the lack of sources as of this moment. I’ll try and find it later) that supposedly showed great improvement in cognitive ability and memory when a group of elementary school children ingested the omega-3. Although, given the amount of research done on said oil and the praises sung of it in popular health culture, I’m sure you can find its benefits easily.

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You probably forget because you’ve got a hundred other things going through your head. The brain has limited focus, if you’re splitting this focus through a couple of different modes of perception - listening to music or gazing out the window - whatever, while you work, you’re cutting down on the amount of attention available for laying down new memory/skill maps in your brain.

Also check any medication you may be on - even stuff like anti-histamines drops your ‘mental quickness’ down a few notches, as does quitting smoking or giving up caffeine.

Next time you study - and this will sound a bit dumb but try it anyway - try cutting down on the sensual information you’re getting - get comfortable, face a blank wall, put on some headphones or earplugs, and sensually deprive yourself a little - this will tend to divert the brains attention into the remaining avenue of sensual information - your textbook. Also cut the way you study into chunks - marathon sessions and then nothing are crap at cutting new long-term memories.

Just prior to an exam, have a quick cramming session, no new material, just a recap of stuff you’ve already looked through.

If nothing else works, get a mp3 recorder, record yourself reading through the facts you want to learn - then go into a pitch dark room, or blindfold yourself, and listen, stopping every now and again to jot down notes about what you remember.

Willfully limiting the ammount of activity in one area of the brain, the visual cortex for example, creates limited hyper-activity in other areas.

They use the same techniques of deprivation to help people get over stroke-damage, its a matter of getting the areas of your brain you wish to use more fully working harder, at the expense of other, competing areas.

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The truth is you don’t forget anything. Your subconscious mind stores everything in a ‘Memory Bank.’ The only reason you ‘forget’ is because you didn’t place importance on what you were doing. Have you forgotten to tie your shoes? “Mastering Your Hidden Self.” all you need to no friend

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That’s okay, Faust, because I remember everything that you know about memory as a result.

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Here’s a view from ‘this’ perspective;
One ‘moment’ is a universe with us in it, complete, with certain memories in our minds.
We call that ‘knowing’. ‘Knowledge’ being, in this case, the sum total of all of our memories at any particular moment.
Another moment’s universe (also complete) has us without certain memories in our mind (in that moment). We interpret that as ‘forgetting’.
Another moment might include a particular memory, again. We call that ‘remembering’.
It is a matter of Perspective.
Peace