About learning things on similarities of how brain and the Internet work, I reminded the words I wrote in the title.
I guess, that might be right ... I mean, the words in the title might be right.
Coz, you know, if a guy had a good memory enough to remember everything what he saw during his journey, he'll never need any cyberspaces for his photographs.
Plus, human memories can make all the visual memories more vivid than the actual thing which the person saw; that means, humans are able to combine deeper information, like their personal thoughts and what they strongly focused on, to their visual memories.
That could be considered as a better memory in a way, because people tend to look at photos they took during trips while they're reminding some things referred to the shot sights.
However, that also means that the visual memories of human-beings could be easily biased.
Is that a thing that we can simply call an accurate memory?
NO WAY.
In terms of just memorizing things (especially images and information from scientific articles), human brain could never go beyond the capacity of cyberspaces.
Besides, only if we had an Internet nowadays*, human brains only need to remember some triggers of starting our researches, and that we'll easily be able to get loads and loads of information those we might want to look for. *later than 1989 here
Can human brain store those craps all the time without missing anything?
...NO, unless the person has an annoying super computer in his/her head...
Although, we never can forget this fact that human brains are the final deciders of which information to take, however they cannot remember all the shitty-massive quantities of all the information floating in the cyberspace of Internet.
That means, who is actually taking the information out of the cyberspace has to have a certain quality of knowledge on things they are looking for.
Without the knowledge, the person will simply start drifting in the flood of cyberspace-information those are not necessarily true.
See what's going on in Japan right now!
What a pity that people without really knowing about the thing they fear are making all the rumors and another new information based of rumors!
BTW, has anyone reminded about the story of Tron while thinking things about cyberspaces?
That might be a film that can offer us this question; "what's the superior/inferior of human/cyberspaces compared to other?"
Actually I have a different take on human memory. I believe that we are indeed capable of remembering just about everything that we see, but also that a "normal" human brain selectively chooses parts of that memory to keep for our consciousness. i.e. You would have to think harder, or have some sort of "trigger" as you mentioned in order to remember the finer details.
ReplyDeleteWhat is consciously remembered I think, depends on our environment and upbringing, as well as personal tastes and preferences (a caveman would be more inclined to remember where to get food, than the deadlines for his next assignment for example).
The benefit of the Internet then is that it is not only a collection of knowledge from various people, but also inclusive of that preference and bias. That gives rise, as you say, to rumours and such but I doubt that the people involved have any purposeful intention to deceive. Rather, they are merely reflecting their preferences and bias.
Maybe then the problem is not so much that such rumours are propagated, but rather that we take appropriate care to not propagate or deceive ourselves with such information. Knowledge is, after all in its collective sense devoid of intent and it is we who decide what to do with that knowledge.
TNX for your comment! :D
ReplyDeleteActually, I didn't know that the post you've made was filtered in a spam category ... maybe that's coz of the setting. :(
Now, going on to the main content...
>> Actually I have a different take on human memory. ...
Well, that could be a better description of human memory, rather than mine.
Coz, as you might already know, as a function, human brain IS remembering everything what the person sensed; literally, EVERYTHING.
But like you mentioned in the caveman example, human brain is highly capable of selecting more important memories out of a massive bunch.
That is why human memory cannot essentially "memorize" everything; I mean, human brain cannot activate every single memory in brain all the time, but most of the memories automatically recorded in there are sleeping under the person's unconscious.
>> The benefit of the Internet then is that it is not only a collection of knowledge ...
True.
If a person is able to see through everything in the Internet without loosing his/her "complete intention", he/she will also be able to see the rumors and biases as straight facts, understanding that those are there coz of Internet-users' preferences.
>> Maybe then the problem is not so much that ...
That could be an easier way like 100-times-easier.
I guess, it's about how we could keep being neutral in all kinds of arguments.
Plus, if we need a true information about what we don't know at all, we need to have an eye that works that way anyway.
This has turned in to a very interesting discussion on human memory and how it works. I imagine there are scientist and philosophers who've looked in to the matter who can provide useful explanations and metaphors.
ReplyDeleteWhat I enjoy about a format such a blogging, is that it allows us to present and discover individual ideas such as those expressed by you and Mome. In a sense, it doesn't matter who is right so much as that each of you are trying to figure it out together.
Thanks for the thoughtful discussion.
>> What I enjoy about a format such a blogging, is that ...
ReplyDeleteAbsolutely ... I strongly agree with the feeling.
Plus, since I experienced some psycho. classes before, I know some things briefly ... but reading psycho. articles written by experts are kinda too much for me most of the time, and moreover, sometimes, the arguments don't make sense in terms of how I feel, but not the actual knowledge.
So, to me, having such a place (e.g. blog) is REALLY valuable; it enables me to understand arguments from my feelings as well, coz the people joining the conversations could be a good "translator" sometimes. :)