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183 points petalmind | 2 comments | | HN request time: 0.481s | source
1. neRok ◴[] No.45764847[source]
Regarding "a propensity to hold grudges" and "easily move on, forget, not hold grudges": I find this to be the case. I can easily hold a grudge, because it's like the grudge is a post-it-note stuck to the front of my book-of-knowledge. This means I can readily recall the grudge, and that I can also easily forget/move-on from the grudge (just remove the note).

Continuing with the post-it-note analogy, the note can only hold a small amount of information, and so the grudge will be recorded as something simple like "fuck ___, they're an arrogant twat". So then the situation arises where you're talking to someone else and they ask "what do you think about ___?"; and so you answer "I can't stand them, they're so arrogant"; to which they respond "oh really, how so?"; and you can't give an answer, because it wasn't written on the note.

I think this ties in with memories not making you feel the relevant emotions, because the emotion you felt was also just saved as a "fact". I have found though that if I step through all the facts of an "event" and consider each "moment" along the way, that I can often generate the relevant emotion. So say I was remembering an argument, I can remember various facts about the argument and that I was angry about it, but I can't feel that anger. But if I walk through the moments, like `they said this, which made me think that, to which I rightly responded with...`, then eventually I'll start to feel angry just like I would have.

For an analogy on how I think memories are stored differently: then for non-aphantasiacs, I reckon their brain must save `memory.zip`, which contains `video, audio, smells, emotions, etc`. For a person like myself with aphantasia however, it's like I asked ChatGPT for a summary of `memory.zip`, and then I only saved the summary.

Saying that though, I do wonder about the connection between "fact based memories" and aphantasia's lack of mental imagery. Because if >50% of the usefulness of `memory.zip` is from the video, but you can't "see" the video because you aphantasia — then has your brain decided/learned to not bother saving `memory.zip` and instead just save the summary, or are all components of `memory.zip` also corrupt/unplayable?

replies(1): >>45765048 #
2. neRok ◴[] No.45765048[source]
Just to elaborate on the "fast-facts"/post-it-note point I made: it seems there's actually a lot of "facts" ("conclusions") stored in a readily available manor in my brain. All the references/data that lead to these conclusions are stored in some deeper "archive" section though, and aren't readily available.

I guess you could compare them as if they are API's to different LLM's, and my "consciousness" is the web-browser. So it's like;

  - `fast_facts.llm` is a micro model with good breadth and fast response times, but it has little depth. So it's API can be fetch'd without worrying about it blocking the main-thread/browser.  
  - `all_data.llm` is a full size model, but it's slow to respond, and "costs" more to run. So in the browser, it is only lazily-loaded (ie, not always used), and it has to be called async style because you have to wait for the results to slowly "stream in".
And stream they do, because back to my example conversation where someone asks "how are they arrogant?" — whilst I likely wouldn't immediately remember any examples (unless they happened very recently), at that point the request to `all_data.llm` would have been sent, and so after some umm's and ahh's, I might have an answer. Or I might just say "I can't remember off the top of my head, but also ..." start talking about something else, and then after 30 seconds I will drop the classic "but actually, i just remembered, ...".