What Would Happen If We Never Forget Something?

[Lombax]

What would happen if we had a brain that never forget something?

[JimF]

There are some people who never forget anything already. Nothing happens.

[mushroom25]

you'd have a brain the size of a plant and then...….. oh god...….
https://sketchfab.com/3d-models/marvin-the-paranoid-android-articulated-color-2c5381728d8241828146a357cd3d8f98

[Calibax]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperthymesia

[jourdain2]

You might win a lot on quiz shows?

[JimF]

Only if all the questions were about your own life events.

[mibn2cweus]

Erm . . . what was the question?

[Peter Pedant]

// There are some people who never forget anything already. Nothing happens.//
ish
used to be called eidetic memories but it was shown that even they forget

the police have remembrancers - staff who have elephant memories. they have pretty damn phenomenal memories.

a few wait on tables - why do they not get good a levels and first class degrees?
memory is only part of getting a degree

[ChillDoubt]

What Would Happen If We Never Forget Something?
————
Isn’t that a trait common in (and invariably exclusively to) females?
They never forget ANYTHING!

[woofgang]

Eidetikers are not quite the same as people with really good memories....its the way that they recall that differs. I was an eidetiker as a child. If I was interested in something or had concentrated on something for any length of time then an image would come up in front of me. Sometimes a still image, sometimes like a video. I couldn't control it and it would block out the the real world. I learned to stand still so I didn't bump into things! The image didn't last long and happily the ability faded as I grew up....would have been no fun when driving for instance! I never mentioned it, I just thought it was normal and every kid had it....then when I was at college getting neurology and psychology lectures someone mentioned it and I went OH I could do that as a kid. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/is-there-such-a-thing-as/

[Bazile]

We'd all be elephants

[tonyav]

Isn’t that a trait common in (and invariably exclusively to) females?
They never forget ANYTHING!

They remember things before it's happened ;-)

[andy-hughes]

We already never forget anything - it's our ability to recall memories that varies.

[THECORBYLOON]

If "everything" means every thing that ever happened, how would each and every action or thing viewed, be noted for later recall and verification ten or twenty years later?

[Peter Pedant]

hi Chilldo nice to see you back
erm - busy in Brum?

a fren' ( not me not me) wandered from the marital bed ( once ) and I asked with child like innocence - "does Louella (*) ever forget this one very large mistake?"
and got the answer " yes for as long as 15 m at a time!"

(*) Louella's name is really - - - ( I wd have to be shot etc )

[dannyk13]

There would be less umbrellas left on buses.

[Peter Pedant]

// then an image would come up in front of me.//
yeah no - I still do that BUT
cant ( unlike the telly progz) cone down on a detail and see the time on the watch etc

it sortta goes pixellated or holes are burnt in the image or goes blurry

There was a lot of interest in the early seventies
as the image retrieval was said to be in the lateral geniculate bodies - far too near the retina for any image processing according to then current views.

The test involved random cross words - and showing another random crossword and asking them to unify them and tell the tester what the piccy was
( abraham lincoln, etc)

they all failed. all of them - none nichty. personne ne pourrait reussir. Non, nein, nay. no one cd do it under lab conditions

surely at the tests at home they hadnt made tracings on see froo paper and cheated? surely not surely not

wez mushie?
forgetting is a positive action - and of course depends on mood and context

do you know I got so bored riding my ickle motor bike 1965 from Blandford to Porton Down ( Novichock-ville, you know THERE) - I used to memorise the number plates of the cars I passed?

even today I come out with = "oh that guy there was shopping in Lidl 15 m ago and the kid cant have been his"

oh we now know 50 y later there is no image processing in the lateral geniculate bodies

[Peter Pedant]

// it's our ability to recall memories that varies.//
hmm ish
lot of interest in the nineties on this and regression therapy under hypnosis.

and recall of child abuse ( even in children ) of the details under hypnosis

and oo er Mrs - completely discredited
I think Raj Persaud did the experiments

show subject a partial video - perhaps a white van careering around a corner and rifle shot/backfire

and recounting the episode - all sorts of things were added - there has been a bank robbery , and shots fired, and that is the getaway etc.....

and THAT boys and girls is why you never have cases now where the witness has been hypnotised ......

[woofgang]

Its a difficult one PP. I couldn't control it when it happened to me and if it mostly occurs in young children then to identify it, you'd need to be watching for the behaviours that stem from it...like my standing still when it happened...and of course time is ticking if it mostly fades as the child grows up. I suspect if I had been identified and investigated, I would have failed under lab conditions..indeed its only by looking back to my memories of it happening that I can link it with concentration or interest in something. The case that was discussed in my lectures and sorry I can't find any reference, is of a child who could draw silhouette images. Apparently she said she did it by projecting the image onto blank paper and drawing a line around it....but of course that may be how she explained it and not actually what her brain did.
I couldn't zoom in or manipulate the image...could only see what I saw. It used to be said that a "true" eidetiker could be identified by the way their eyes moved when they were "seeing" the image. If asked a question about the image, their eyes would move as though they were looking at a real image, if not, whether faking or mistaken, their eyes would look up and away in the same way that people do when trying to remember something. Does your image recall actually block out what is really there?

[jno]

it sounds rather like dreaming while awake, woofgang? - the only time our thoughts are out of our control is normally while we're asleep.

[woofgang]

nothing like dreaming so far as I remember......but of course we know that memory is not reliable....we add in things that we KNOW must have happened as though we actually experienced them...or even things we think happened. I have a few childhood memories that I believe are actually what happened and I try really hard not to overlay them with things I have been told or things I believe.