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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Galen @Gnosis 🦉
@galen
Reading through SoP, seeing so many Frances Yates ‘Art of Memory’ pieces, I can’t help but observe that the teacher’s trauma has inflected the coursework.
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Venkatesh Rao ☀️
@vgr
Other way around :) I paid no attention to memory as a topic until it started showing up in sop research
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Galen @Gnosis 🦉
@galen
It’s awesome to see the area of research come back into public focus. Her original paperback “Art of Memory” contains one of the greatest fold-out-illustrations in the history of academic publishing.
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