Venkatesh Rao ☀️
@vgr
One insight from my worsened memory in recent years (whether a Covid after effect ot aging or something more ominous) is how clear the link between emotions and memory is. Things that never evoked any emotion are most easily forgotten. I used to think strong emotions reinforce the associated memories. Now I think all memories are intrinsically sentimental. If you could truly care about nothing you’d have true amnesia. Identity is memory is temporally coherent sentiment history. People with very strong but not eidetic memories simply have a high baseline of caring mildly about almost everyone and everything in the world. My mom is one such person (in her 80s she still remembers like a hundred plus birthdays of extended family members; it’s her freak superpower). I used to have a strong general knowledge memory of history, science etc, but not for personal info.
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_slow_crypto 🌅⏳🪁
@slowcrypto
@deficlinpsy thoughts?
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Jo
@deficlinpsy
true… thank goodness REM sleep ‘launders out’ much of the emotional association so that we don’t re-experience it *as intensely*, every time we remember the thing that would be exhausting and, of course, for traumatic memories that haven’t been adequately processed, it *is* exhausting (Enter EMDR…)
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