On Memory.

Eh, blast. Every time there's one of these "On a subject" posts, they usually end up as mere rants. Perhaps if I took psychology it'd be more interesting to read and write these things. And actually end up making sense.

Well. Memory. Funny little thing that helps us to remember events of times past. Even if you haven't got a creative bone in your body, your memory can apparently conjure up events of wonderous surrealism and complete falsehood. Even if you can't remember what you stepped into the kitchen to get, your memory can helpfully recall the embarassing moments of your childhood for you.

This queer phenomenon known as "remembering" allows one to recall, with near perfect ambiguity, precisely what happened that left that scar of a memory on one's brain. However, this amazing skill is usually not what people notice when recalling things. Nope, what people usually notice is all the long gaps in their memories. For example. What did you eat on this day 3 years ago? How many pages did the newspaper have today? Things like these are not supposed to be hard to remember, really (what did you have for lunch today?) and the answers we've seen before (if you read the newspaper, you should remember how many pages you read) so why the inability to answer?

Well, answering such inane questions with little bearing on one's well-being is really a waste of time. Who cares if the newspaper had 8975 pages today. (Bad example. Everyone would complain.) Who cares if the square root of 7 is 2.645. Here we have to delineate the two types of memory: (Not conscious and subconscious but) USEFUL and NOT USEFUL.

Admittedly, there is little difference between the two. After all, if one appears in a quiz show and some question like "What is the scientific name of the ixora?" is worth $100,000, obviously this little bit of trivia, usually completely irrelevant to life, becomes a life-changing piece of knowledge. However, typically knowledge that is of the practical variety is directly related to some aspect of one's daily routine, and has usage in one's life, like knowing how to brush one's teeth. If all these little things like knowing how to walk and remembering one's phone number were tallied, you'd be surprised how much you know.

Unfortunately, remembering things is scarcely this easy. Mathematics would be one realm where many people complain of specific amnesia, forgetting that important little formula before a critical test. (Trigo factor formulae come to mind here, or rather fail to.) If only we could all have better memories (although those "Improve Your Brain" genre of books all seem like they were written for laughs at us common people and seem utterly useless.) Such things as remembering acronyms, chains of pictures and funny sentences for the Reactivity Series, pi to 40 places and "how to answer AQ" seem extremely gimmicky. It may help some people, but personally, I think the best way is to forget all these tacky methods of memorisation and just remember whatever it is you should be remembering.

Running out of steam here. I think I'll end off, maybe pick up the thread of this train of thought later... if I remember.

To SCP-797...

...(Not late this time) Happy birthday! SCP-797 is now over one year old. By a matter of minutes. Even if it doesn't officially exist. (Here's the link.)

Well, unlike the other post (sorry 559) I have something prepared for this occasion. Um, only a handful of people may get this one, but what the hey. I'd like to dedicate this to the inspiration of 797:



;-)

SCP-797 is a year old. Enjoy.

To SCP-559...

...Happy birthday! (Oh the irony, I'm wishing a birthday cake a late birthday.)

It's been a year since 559 went up. And it remains after the huge purge! Yes! Good to see it survived the wave of deletions (with a healthy rating, at that.) Well, hallelujah and お誕生日おめでとう!