forgetting is crucial to good thinking

[alocispepraluger102]

occasionally, one finds an article that runs counter to conventional thinking. the discussion possibilities concerning arts and their performance can lead to interesting discussion.

forgetting is crucial to good thinking

Solomon Shereshevsky could recite entire speeches, word for word, after hearing them once. In minutes, he memorized complex math formulas, passages in foreign languages and tables consisting of 50 numbers or nonsense syllables. The traces of these sequences were so durably etched in his brain that he could reproduce them years later, according to Russian psychologist Alexander R. Luria, who wrote about the man he called, simply, “S” in The Mind of a Mnemonist.

But the weight of all the memories, piled up and overlapping in his brain, created crippling confusion. S could not fathom the meaning of a story, because the words got in the way. “No,” would say. “This is too much. Each word calls up images; they collide with one another, and the result is chaos. I can’t make anything out of this.” When S was asked to make decisions, as chair of a union group, he could not parse the situation as a whole, tripped up as he was on irrelevant details. He made a living performing feats of recollection.

article continues with link.

[mjzee]

Looks like an interesting article. Unfortunately, open only to subscribers.

[alocispepraluger102]

Looks like an interesting article. Unfortunately, open only to subscribers.

try this approach it's the 4th article down on the right.

Mscitech daily

[David Ayers]

Forgetting is fun. First I learned to forget small stuff that didn't matter, like the number of seeds in an average dandelion clock. It was easier than I thought. The total number of air miles logged by the Anglo-French Concordes was harder to forget, but I did it. The next challenge was harder: forget the name of everyone who participated in Hitler's Nuremberg rallies. So many names to forget! And how to forget Hitler? To forget him, I needed to forget World War I, because that was what motivated him. To forget World War I, I had to forget the causes of World War I (once upon a time they flocked to mind only too easily - now: nothing). Really the whole epoch of international diplomacy since the Eighteenth Century had to be rendered nothing but a featureless rubble. Then the rubble had to be swept under the carpet. Then the carpet had to be thrown into next-door’s skip and replaced with laminated flooring. That had to warp, be removed, broken in pieces and jammed into the bin. Then the bin had to be wheeled away down the street, past the end of the street, past the end of all streets, way out beyond the city, beyond cities, to and beyond the end of civilization, until the wheels rotted and became dust, the bin walls biodegraded (taking about 200 years) returned to the environment, became one with the environment, which then had to change and change again beyond recognition, absolutely unrecognisable each time, never leaving any trace in my mind to remind me what once might have been. Ah, those were the days. It's all coming back to me.

[mjzee]

Looks like an interesting article. Unfortunately, open only to subscribers.

try this approach it's the 4th article down on the right.

Mscitech daily

Thank you! I now see the entire article. I hope I don't forget to read it...

[alocispepraluger102]

ah, here's the rub----

can we create a disease and market cures.????

"Researchers are investigating pharmaceutical ways of finessing forgetting..."

[medjuck]

This must make me a big thinker.

[JSngry]

ah, here's the rub----

can we create a disease and market cures.????

"Researchers are investigating pharmaceutical ways of finessing forgetting..."

What am I missing here?

[golfcrazy1984]

ah, here's the rub----

can we create a disease and market cures.????

"Researchers are investigating pharmaceutical ways of finessing forgetting..."

What am I missing here?

That's been a trusted source for forgetting a bad day. Or celebrating a good one.

[JSngry]

A day? Just a day?

[.:.impossible]

Ha!

[alocispepraluger102]

ah, here's the rub----

can we create a disease and market cures.????

"Researchers are investigating pharmaceutical ways of finessing forgetting..."

What am I missing here?

That's been a trusted source for forgetting a bad day. Or celebrating a good one.

i'm heading for my fav taphouse for some pharmaceutical forgetting, i forget about what. in fact, i'm getting steamed.

Edited January 24, 2012 by alocispepraluger102

[BruceH]

If forgetting is crucial to good thinking, then I must be a great thinker.

[jazzbo]

Anyone remember the episode of a short-lived sitcom called "It's Like You Know" where they go to a doctor who has developed a method for people to forget what they want to? Yeah, it was sort of a rip of "The Sunshine of the Eternal Mind," but it was hilarious. That was a great series. Not available on dvd damnit!