How do our memories work?

How our brains record and recall memories is quite a complex matter to the extent that I'm not sure whether scientists fully understand yet how our memories function.

Given the fact that all the cells in our body are constantly regenerating (all cells die to be replaced by new ones,) I find it counter-intuitive that we have the ability to store 50-year-old memories in cells and about a body that weren't even around 50 years ago. While I'm sure this happens because the memories are passed around between cells, but what I find interesting is that the body/cell substance that we were in our memories is not the same body/cell substance we are today. This means that we are not the substance of our bodies, we are our memories.

Imagine what life would be like without memories? We would constantly be like newborn infants, having to learn everything from scratch. We wouldn't know how to talk, walk, eat or do anything that we've learned to do since we were born. Everything important to us would not exist. No family, no friends, nothing we like or dislike. There could be no comparisons, no interpretation, because for all those things we rely on recalling things from our memories. I think it is fair to say that we are our memories.

Let us now reexamine life from the perspective of memory. As we age, we experience certain memory loss. Some memories fall away and others remain. If we are our memories, then some of us is lost with age.

There is a Jewish law that states that he who forgets what he has learned is considered as if it had cost him his life. Our memories are our life, losing them is in effect like losing our life.

How can we hold onto our memories and minimize natural memory loss?

Perhaps one way is by not having too many memories. The more we try to remember, the more we end up forgetting. The same Jewish law suggests reviewing what you have learned over and over again in order to retain the memory and prevent its loss.

Hence, perhaps it should be suggested that if we spent less time collecting new ideas and experiences and more time revisiting, reinforcing, and re-experiencing our past memories, we would lose less life in the long run. On the other hand, we would also have less life to lose. At the very least this should leave us with something to think about with regard to all the useless information we consume in this age of digital information overload!

Gyroscopes and Angular Momentum

The counter-intuitive nature of these neat little balancing spinning tops can be quite fascinating and useful.

Come to think of it, nowadays, not only do airplanes use them to keep from rolling, they're installed into our iphones and ipod touches as well, to power all that tilt recognition technology.

But there are also all these cool counter-intuitive inventions that you can make from them (although I don't know how useful this one really is practically speaking).

So, if you never understood how segways balanced on just one wheel, I guess by now you should have kinda figured it out.

What do these paintings have in common?

What do all the above pictures share in common?

They are all mouth and foot paintings, created by people with disabilities! (see hundreds more here)

We marvel at people with disabilities who are capable of accomplishing remarkable feats. But could it be that a deficiency in one area can mean an efficiency in another? Does a deaf person have a stronger disposition to the sense of sight? Do the blind have a heightened sensitivity to touch?

We humans are finite beings, we have limited energy and limited capacity to experience the world around us. But when we are faced with an incapacity in an area that others generally are not, do we get to focus our energy on developing another capacity and become unusually talented in that area?

The following video segment introduces Derek Paravicini, a blind and autistic individual who has developed a remarkable ability for processing musical sound:

Groupthink

Several days ago, I posted about the wisdom of the crowd, how larger numbers of people tend to be more accurate as a group than even bright individuals independent of the group.

There is a somewhat reverse phenomenon that psychologists have dubbed "groupthink." Groupthink is when the wisdom of group consensus is valued over individual critical evaluation. Not only is group consensus not always wise, sometimes it can be catastrophic. The following video points to the presence of groupthink in the catastrophic explosion of space shuttle Challenger on December 28, 1986.

So, how do you decide when you are better off following the crowd and when is it potentially harmful to do so?

I would say, when it's a guess, follow the crowd, but when the decision involves expertise, listen to the experts. The wisdom of the crowd is after all somewhat counterintuitive.

Yes, We All Like to Follow the Flock

We pride ourselves of being independent thinkers. We also demonstrate our need for approval from others in society. Well, what happens when we put independent thinking up against conformity? Do we do what we think is right? Or do we follow the masses?

We might know what is right, but the following experiment seems to indicate that we will still do whatever we see everyone else appears to be doing, as counter-intuitive as it may appear, even when we know it is wrong.

Ring Around the Earth, Plus Some

A timeless puzzle:

Imagine you have a rope with a perfect length to wrap snuggly around a perfectly spherical earth (the circumference of earth is approximately 24,859.82 miles (40,008 km)). Now imagine the length of the rope is extended just 10 feet and again wrapped around the earth (supported so it keeps it tautness and doesn't fall).

What is the size of the gap between the earth and the rope?

If you haven't heard about this before or run the math, you'd probably think an extra 10-feet would make no noticeable difference to a rope wrapped around the entire circumference of the globe. But, guess what?

Just an extra 12 feet on almost 25,000 miles would be 1.6 feet off the ground around the entire circumference of the globe.

To make things even stranger, compare that with a string pulled tight around the circumference of a baseball and then extend it by 10 feet. Surprise! It would also be 1.6 feet off the ground. Counterintuitive, but true.

Here's how to do the math:

The Braess Paradox: When Faster becomes Slower

About two years ago, New York Times reported on Mayor Bloomberg's decision to close Broadway to vehicles to ease traffic. The problem was it only eased traffic by about 4% which was much less than the 17% projected.

But why would closing the most effective route to cut diagonally across Manhattan ease traffic?

Counterintuitive as it may seem, closing the most efficient route is often a good way to ease traffic. This occurs when it is clearly the shortest route to take so all drivers wanting to take the shortest route (basically everyone) will end up taking it. This is caused by creating a disturbance to the equilibrium that exists when you to have two equidistant routes to get from point A to point B and the drivers split rather equally between the available routes. The principle is called the Braess Paradox.

To quote Wikipedia:

"Braess's paradox, credited to the mathematician Dietrich Braess, states that adding extra capacity to a network when the moving entities selfishly choose their route, can in some cases reduce overall performance."

Are humans really all that much smarter than apes?

Counter-intuitive as it may seem, in this fascinating learning interaction between man and ape, it appears apes have quite a keen skill for picking up language.

I mean, responding to a verbal command, could you find the image on the touchscreen from such a wide selection much faster than the ape in this clip does?