Perhaps it is evolutionary - natural selection does not favour introspection. The introspective aren't active enough, wallowing in the ghosts of their past. Did the first bipedal hairless apes feel nostalgia or melancholy? Do we only retain that because it is too neutral and adaptation to effect our survival? Perhaps memory has levelled off at the tradeoff point between the quality of our learning and the distraction of our internal lives. We know no more than we do because individuals that remember too much find it a disadvantage, and procreate less readily than those who just do.
Or is this all hokum? Evolutionary psychology, a lovely game for wasting the hours when you can't remember enough to waste them in the past.
OSU
1 comment:
Stimulating reflections. I believe it's a trade-off between price and quality as with everything inherited by evolutionary processes. In my case, a great advantage: my ‘ability’ to forget movie’s plots make me recycle old movies again and again :S
It makes sense we started off developing our memory by recalling only what was pertinent for our survival (apart from the fact that we associate memories with feelings and emotions). I wouldn't forget what represents threat to my life. As far as know, our memory systems are highly complex (oh really?), there is a vast typology of memories (declarative, emotional, procedural, sensory, short-term, DDR3 :P). We could run some experiments in summer with my uncle and the new fMRI scanner they got (you being the subject). Mua-ha-ha-ha-ha (fingers moving simultaneously). It’s so interesting. Maybe we could do some of those experiments of inducing false memories.
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