| Yes |   | 18 |
| No | | 10 |
| I don't know | | 13 (your vote) |
| | Total Votes: | 41 |
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| Author | Message |
King_of_Smart 
The King Is At Your Service
Posts: 1120
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 Posted: 06:32PM Feb 3, 2008 |
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Can memories fade away after a period of time and be replaced with another?
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Trickster1992
Posts: 10827
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Posted: 10:09AM Feb 6, 2008 |
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Yes and no.
Yes; It would seem like it.
No; That's not actually the case.
I prayed last night that I could forget everything that happened on the computer. I knew it wasnt that bad so I just prayed I'd forget about it. I've realized that my mind is now very strictly blocking it out, but I still have the ability to pluck it if I want. Which I don't.
Thus, my memory is gone, and yet it's still there. It makes me wonder if maybe when you delete stuff on a computer, it's not really completely deleted..
I see there is 8 votes (possibly more).
People, this is a TOPIC, not only a poll. Voting is great but I think KOS intends for us to post.
---This message was edited on 10:10AM Feb 6, 2008---
When united we come to the land of the sun, with the heart of a dragon we ride! ~I believe in Jesus Christ as my savior~ |
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BrownEyes
Posts: 1067
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Posted: 01:02PM Feb 6, 2008 |
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I don't understand the question. 
Are you asking if we believe memories of things that actually happened fade away and are replaced with something we only think happened but didn't?
~BrownEyes~ |
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King_of_Smart
The King Is At Your Service
Posts: 1120
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Posted: 01:35PM Feb 6, 2008 |
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No, I mean if you have a memory, and it fades away, will another memory you have take its place.
Trickster has a good answer.
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brainster 
Panthera Tigris
Posts: 16305
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Posted: 01:07AM Feb 7, 2008 |
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I think memories just get repressed over time, in a cache at the back of your brain somewhere. I've had experiences where I would hear of someone or something from way in my past and "it would all come back to me". For instance, I heard a very old song the other day, one I haven't heard in over a decade or more, and the minute the song started, I was humming along and knew every word of it. Surprised myself. But today, I no longer remember what that song was!
I guess our brains sets up an attic of sorts, keeps things in a box to look at and examine later. But like an attic, these thoughts might never resurface for lack of a trigger.
As to deletion on a computer, you're right Trick, things never get deleted in the true sense. The area where the content you're deleting just gets flagged as "available" for other new content if needed. But if there is other empty space available or this space never comes up for overwriting, you'll still have the "deleted" file on the hard disk. That's the logic that drives programs that recover data. There are more advanced ones too that can dig deeper, but that's the basic concept of why we can retrieve deleted data.
The tools of the mind can be wrongly used, but the mind possesses no wrong tools. |
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King_of_Smart
The King Is At Your Service
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Posted: 08:04PM Feb 14, 2008 |
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Thanks for the post brainster. Good answer.
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friesaregood
Read the Neverending Story!
Posts: 564
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Posted: 10:43AM Feb 29, 2008 |
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The thing is, though, people forget things. Doesn't that in itself show that we can lose memories? As to whether or not they can be replaced, well, yeah, I think they can. I mean, you always hear about how people go to hypnosis and find out that they had repressed memories of themselves being greatly abused as a child, and most of the time they never actually were. They fabricated the false memories.
NaNoism - A mix between a typo and a grenade |
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Queen_Nesh7
Posts: 88
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Posted: 10:46PM May 30, 2008 |
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i dont think ppl actually forget things i think that the memory is there but its jus somewhere in the backs of there minds and they could get it out if they really tried. i think that sub consciously we control what we remember like if our minds which we "suposably" control decides what it wants to remember and what it doesnt even if "we" really want to..??idk that sounds confusing to me but in my head it makes sense?? 
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mumbojumbo1234
Posts: 609
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Posted: 03:10AM Jun 5, 2008 |
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Memories can't be replaced in a physical sense in the mind like they can on a hard drive.
Like Brainster said, when you hit delete, the File Allocation Table (or Hierarchical Filing System, or New Technology Filing System, whichever), removes the flags it had pointing to the sectors the data was on, so it's marked as empty. The data's still as much there as it ever was, in a physical sense. It's only until you write over it that it's gone, and even then there are still electromagnetic traces left, so nothing's ever truly gone (hence the "even more advanced" recovery she mentioned).
However, in the brain, you have an infinite amount of space.
Okay, not infinite. But you've got about 150 billion neurons, and, I believe, each one is connected to about 10,000 others (hence the enormously associative nature of our brains). A single neuron can store a map of a human face, so you're not likely to run out (unless maybe you live to be a hundred..... thousand).
New thoughts actually physically change our minds. When you're learning new things, you're literally rewiring your brain. When you learn something new, it branches off things you already know, and becomes connected with preexisting information. The more you access it, the more it becomes connected with, and the less likely you are to forget it.
Now, what you can do, is have new memories supersede old ones.... for instance, seeing the same friend every day for five years probably means you forget what they looked like five years ago. But the memory hasn't physically taken the place of the old ones... our brains store information in a very redundant manner, meaning, for instance, your name is all over the surface of your brain. That's one reason why there are some things (like your name) that you an always recall in a flash 100% of the time, whereas sometimes you can't quite recall the directions to that restaurant you were supposed to be at ten minutes ago, or how you sometimes blank on a word.
Certain things of course can inhibit the laying down of short-term memory into long-term memory (I think regulated by the hippocampus)... alcohol is one of them (a lot of it), and lack of sleep is another.
As for praying to forget something.... that's completely ridiculous... and I'm not really sure I much believe it, unless you were so tired or devoted to forgetting that your thought processes got in the way of your short-term memory of what happened before it had its pants on... (or more realistically, it really wasn't anything very important, or you would have remembered) =/
"Reality has a liberal bias." -Steven Colbert |
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MoneyPitch
Posts: 8
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Posted: 03:57PM Jul 18, 2008 |
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Trickster1992 wrote: Yes and no.
Yes; It would seem like it.
No; That's not actually the case.
I prayed last night that I could forget everything that happened on the computer. I knew it wasnt that bad so I just prayed I'd forget about it. I've realized that my mind is now very strictly blocking it out, but I still have the ability to pluck it if I want. Which I don't.
Thus, my memory is gone, and yet it's still there. It makes me wonder if maybe when you delete stuff on a computer, it's not really completely deleted..
I see there is 8 votes (possibly more).
People, this is a TOPIC, not only a poll. Voting is great but I think KOS intends for us to post.
Actually when you delete stuff on the computer, its not really gone, its just "marked" to be overwritten.
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rebelgirl13
Posts: 154
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Posted: 12:39AM Jul 19, 2008 |
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idk if that's really so, but i think that after sometime, your brain could alter your memory, and you could honestly think thats what really happened, or how it went. like let's say that something happened, like my frends got in a fite over him making fun of her, and next month, i could totally turn it around, and think its 100% true. wierd tho, isnt it...?
No One's Normal |
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grilledcheese 
HomeSkillet
Posts: 3597
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Posted: 01:36AM Jul 19, 2008 |
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I remember one time I was at the fair with my friend Jon when we were 13. I remember something I said, and he remembers the same situation, but totally different.
It's a funny world we live in. Speaking of funny, do you know how I got these scars? |
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Radioguy
Posts: 2990
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Posted: 04:00AM Jul 19, 2008 |
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My memories never vanish, they just get tucked away in my vast mental library, indexed several different ways, should I ever need them in the future. The may gather layers of dust, but they are still retrievable by my subconscious mind, though sometimes it has a bit of dusting to do before it can begin the search process. I need to upgrade, so that I can become more human..
---This message was edited on 04:25PM Jul 31, 2008---
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mumbojumbo1234
Posts: 609
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Posted: 06:20PM Jul 19, 2008 |
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Lol, good work with the picture there.
And no, not all memories are in there, some do disappear, others are never laid down at all. Your subconscious is not so powerful that it may resurrect evanesced memories.
"Reality has a liberal bias." -Steven Colbert |
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snappytom
Posts: 328
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Posted: 05:45AM Jul 29, 2008 |
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Can memories fade?
Hmmm. Interesting thought.
I know people who believe their own b***s***....they, for example, do something but their 'memory' of the event is invented...what I mean is they 'talk it up'...and then, the longer they keep telling the story and repeating it over and over, their memory of the event changes. Then if you point out to them that that is not how it really was...they get angry at you because it doesn't fit their 'new' memory. I think an example of this would be someone who gets drunk...they think they are superman [in reality they are behaving like a knob!] but they think they are really cool and brag about it.
I don't know if that makes alot of sense...
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friesaregood
Read the Neverending Story!
Posts: 564
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Posted: 10:20AM Jul 31, 2008 |
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Yeah, that made sense. That also reminds me of all the times my brother and I have remembered something completely different. I'll have a strong memory of how it went down, but so will he. And our versions are opposites. 
NaNoism - A mix between a typo and a grenade |
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snappytom
Posts: 328
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Posted: 09:44PM Jul 31, 2008 |
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Yes. My sister-in-law is CONVINCED her brother [my husband] set her koala fluffy bear toy on FIRE and kicked it over the fence because they were having an argument...this was when she was 4 and he was 11.... BUT he EMPHATICALLY denies all knowledge of this incident!
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grilledcheese
HomeSkillet
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Posted: 02:16PM Aug 1, 2008 |
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It's weird how some people remember the same memory, only a bit different.
My brother and I always argue about who said what in the past. "I said it", "no I said it", etc
It's a funny world we live in. Speaking of funny, do you know how I got these scars? |
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snappytom
Posts: 328
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Posted: 12:13AM Aug 2, 2008 |
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so the conclusion we might be coming to is that memories don't vanish they evolve into a memory you'd rather have....
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