IPFS News Link • Science

Faulty Memory Is a Feature, Not a Bug

• arclein

A few days later, when the narrator goes to collect his books, he finds that Funes has memorized, in just a matter of days, long and complicated passages in Latin, despite no prior knowledge of the language. Funes tells the narrator that, ever since the accident, his memory has changed. He no longer can forget. As Funes describes it, his experience is now of one "intolerable richness and sharpness." Whereas the rest of us look out and see a tree here, a group of people there, Funes sees the pixel-level information, frame by frame. Because he retains the full clarity of these scenes in memory, his memories have indistinguishable precision when compared to his present reality. Funes details the consequences of his now infallible memory. Sleep eludes him and he finds basic aspects of language perplexing. It is difficult for him to comprehend that the word dog "embraces so many unlike individuals of diverse size and form." And, "his own face in the mirror, his own hands, surpr


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