Easter eggs in this one lol (Patreon)

Do you ever wish you could google search your own memory?

Do you ever wish you could google search your own memory? I’m SURE anyone older than 20 has noticed that their memories have really started to suck over the years. Well, it’s real, and it’s not just you getting old. Scientists call it the Google Effect (Sparrow, Liu, and Wegner, 2011). But why does it happen, and what can you do about it? The Google Effect on memory occurs when people believe they can find the information again in the future. You may not realize it, but our brains do what’s called directed forgetting– if you believe you don’t need to remember something… you won’t. Since it’s become so easy for us to find information, we don’t bother to remember it. In a way, the advent of the internet and mobile technology has kinda turned us into cyborgs. Our consciousness has been offloaded, and in fact, enhanced, by computers. Pretty sick if you think about it. However, the unfortunate part of this is that because you’re metaphorically sitting on your intellectual ass, the brain circuits connecting stored memories to the mechanisms we use to pull them out from storage, get weak and flabby. To counteract this, there are a few different strategies I’d recommend using. First of all, the inverse of directed forgetting is also true. Tell yourself you need to REMEMBER the information with your BRAIN, not with the phone. Going forward, start training the mental “muscle” of memory retrieval by FORCING YOURSELF TO ACTUALLY USE YOUR MEMORY instead of instantly googling something you’re struggling to recall. If you’re stuck, start listing all the things you remember that are associated with that memory. Where did you learn about it? Who said it? What physical features does it have? What does it remind you of? How did it make you feel? What wrong but “interfering” memories are getting in the way? Memory representations are stored as branched, linked, networks of neurons that get reactivated in a pattern that’s unique to whatever it is you’re trying to remember. Some neurons that represent it’s shape, some that represent it’s sound, some that represent the context of when and where you learned it. If you can reactivate enough of the peripheral features of the thing you’re trying to remember, you might knock over enough dominoes to kick off the rest of the cascade.