For people who specialize in one particular occupation like being a SWAT officer, or chicken sexing as this book made so aptly clear, what underlies their skill in those jobs is intuition. They've learned what they've learned based on the past experiences which in turn molded their skills, and they themselves cannot pinpoint the exact reason that burglar looked so suspicious or why that particular chicken is male; they just know. Intuition makes experts see the world non-experts don't. The author describes the skill of memorization along the lines of causality working in the opposite direction. By effectively placing the imperative knowledge needed for such jobs in what the author calls the "memory palace", these experts in turn become the cause of the intuition seen in their processes.
Likewise, people that forget (like really forget) more often than remembering not only lack this strict intuition, but a sense of time as well. People with Alzheimer's, or any imperative memory disease of that sort, have minds that are quite literally out of the loop. Without time, there is no place for memory. There is no spatial technique to remember the path taken to school. However as the author puts it, while monotony collapses time, novelty unfolds it. We have an inherent connection to images seen before, whether we've sought to remember them or not. Associating images with parts of a familiar setting is crucial for memory, and that even extends to victims of Alzheimer's. Even though cases like 80 year old EP in the book may forget 50 or so years of his entire life, he can still remember paths he'd take in the city even though he could not exactly pinpoint why he remembers. So while people like him like strict intuition, they still possess some form of it regardless.
The book suggesting that people with memory disorders, such as Alzheimer's, seem to lack a sense of overall time really interested me. When I read that part, I stopped and thought about it for a moment. Because they do not create anymore long-lasting memories, they do not even know that happened, so it is like they are still in that time, though time as we know it still continues. It is like they are stuck in a mental time loop, in a sense. They cannot progress and move forward in time because of their lack of memory.
ReplyDeleteI find it interesting that the author associates picture images with the memory of someone with Alzheimer's because I've read in many stories and articles about the relatives of someone with Alzheimer's remember their faces but not memories with them. It's quite touching and sad. I agree with the author's saying that intuiton helps a lot with someone's memory even if they forget.
ReplyDeleteIt’s interesting to compare the differences between somebody that has Alzheimer’s and someone who doesn’t as something to do with time. I found it really interesting when I read that in the book because it’s not only applying space and time to everything around us but to place it in something that we can control most of the time.
ReplyDeleteAnd for the memorization, of certain things over others, I can’t remember if it mentioned in the book or not but I feel that the man who can remember paths to his city is partly just muscle memory. Which is still important to remember but it is a different type of memory that doesn’t really include any thinking to it.