[0] https://old.reddit.com/r/github/comments/1kx72aa/github_cybl...

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44113281

Points: 8

# Comments: 5

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43673919

Points: 1

# Comments: 0

So, if at retrieval time, your beliefs (e.g. now you support legalisation of marijuana) and knowledge are different than what they were during the memory encoding (e.g. you didn't support legalisation of marijuana), because you see yourself as "consistent" you may actually remember the memory tinted with your actual beliefs (e.g. you were a supporter all along).

Furthermore, as we lose the complete experience details from our episodic memories, we start filling the gaps with our current knowledge and beliefs, too, to achieve some consistency of the event...

Quite interesting, but obviously, lots of variables and different things come into play in this topic.

It's not an absolute, I was telling OP that, in fact, there was some research on what he mentioned. Basically, that memory is linguistic-context dependent, but as a subset of cognitive-context dependent (as well as physiological-, affective-, and several types of context). This doesn't mean that memories are ONLY linked to language, they have lots of different associations, things that work as a cue of the memory, this (language) is only one of them.

> You can have a stroke and lose language and still retain and form memories.

What does it mean to "lose language"? Are you unable to speak, to express yourself, to comprehend others, all together? What memories do you retain and form? Are you talking about semantic memories, or episodic memories? How do you measure that those memories are retained and formed, if you cannot test the subject due to the impossibility of communication?

It's a lot more difficult than absolutist statements.

Edit: typo (thinks->things)

Funnily enough, apparently the language in the different parts of memory process (i.e. encoding+storage+retrieval) stems exactly from "digital computer memory" :), psychologists in the 40s/50s looked at the development of computers and started making analogies with the brain.

> I wonder if revisiting memories often enough will reencode them before they are lost?

Well, you have Ebbinghaus' forgetting curve, which shows how (in this case, semantic) memory decays with time but, with rehearsal, the memory trace (i.e. the neural substrate) gets "stronger" ("neurons that wire together fire together") and lasts longer in memory.

There are multiple types of "forgetting" (Schacter's "The Seven Sins of Memory"), what we usually mean by it is the "transience sin", i.e. forgetting because of elapsed time. There are several views why it happens, mainly storage failure, i.e. that memory trace getting weaker, or retrieval failure, being unable to get the right "memory cue" to retrieve that memory.

So, probably, if you start associating one particular [0] cue with the memory, and training that over time, yes, it should be possible to not-lose the memory (I don't think it will help with Alzheimer's, though).

The funny thing is that every time you retrieve a memory from long-term storage, it gets re-encoded before it goes back to storage so, basically, every time you remember you are modifying the memory a bit with your current biases (another sin!), thus also forgetting :).

[0] And choosing the best cue is already a hard topic, as it should be different enough as to not trigger many different memories ("cue overload principle" from Surprenant and Neath's "principles of memory"), and the memory should be not so different enough that you may get the risk of other singular memories interfering with it.

We had/opted to acquire the services of a company "expert in email deliverability" (Return Path), who somehow provided detailed metrics of how our IPs were scored by MSFT. I always wondered why MSFT didn't provide those scores by themselves, and how a 3rd. party could have access to them.

Re. your comment... slow ramp-up is the only way, with constant monitoring of deliverability and consequent adjusting of recipients (i.e. removing those who do not open or hard-bounce). I did also wonder if paying that company perhaps gave us a headstart when adding new IPs...

[0] https://doi.org/10.1002/acp.1242

[1] https://doi.org/10.1037//0096-3445.129.3.361

[2] Nevertheless, I am usually dubious about multiple experiments confirming related things from the same author(s).

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43362659

Points: 25

# Comments: 16