- Nov 22, 2021
- 92
- 149
To my understanding memory generally follows zipf's law, which is to say that as there are more things to remember about something increasingly one's mind can only remember the most prominent aspects, such that we remember far less about things than we think we do (albeit we have to be careful since the impression that we remember things can sometimes trick us into thinking we remember what we do not). This is something valuable to understand because it can then be exploited for personal pleasure: indeed, in a work as long as Lessons in Love, I imagine many could read it start to finish over and over in an infinite cycle of remembering and forgetting details. I once tested this by watching a 6 hour lecture every single day for a month straight, and while at the start I expected to remember everything about the video, in truth every single watch revealed something new to me. Most damning of all was the realization that "micro-distractions" robbed me of significance comprehension: like if you sneeze while reading a line and then click to next line despite, in reality, having not fully parsed the line you just read, or maybe you get a phone call while reading and in that one moment of distraction you advance the text, etc... Over the course of a long work there will be countless micro-distractions which contribute to not only not "remembering" aspects of a work, but having never KNOWN these parts of the work to begin with. This is all to say that there is less need to wipe one's memory than many often assume, and we can exploit the rotten wires of our brains with glee to begin a so-called Hedonism Loop where we repeated our favorite activities over and over and over without ever engaging in anything new if we so desire. It's only when the value of a work is highly concentrated in the "most prominent aspects" that memory-wiping would be truly necessary, e.g. a mystery not worth a damn outside its answer, or a thriller where shoddy craftsmanship is disguised with the anticipation of who dies next.
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