the advantages of fuzzy memory

If cognitive enhancements would be out there on the market, if you could go and buy more memory hard drives for your brain, many of us, that appreciate living in our own mind quite a bit, would buy them.

Some people would love more processing power, some people would love to remember things more accurately and simply be able to store more details of events over longer periods of times. Some people would just love better working memory.

I for one always imagined I would be one of those people that could finally get one of those clearly indexed memories that other people seem to possess - that I will finally remember the titles and authors of the books I read, of the movies I see, of the songs I hear, and be able to quote previous research without having to look it up.

Tape-recorder memory, who says its bad? I say bring it on and let me try it!

Except there might be a big price to pay, bigger than having your nose bleed like Johnny Mnemonic after saying Hit me! (gosh I would love to say that just before they load some AI and Cog Sci Encyclopedia in my brain).

This price might be something quite essential to our human version of cognition, version which we still seem to appreciate more than that of computers, at least at the moment. It might be creativity, and out-of-the-box problem-solving.

It might very well be that what makes us tick and go outside our own knowledge is this very fuzzy version of memory that we have (and blame so much most of the time).

Human memory is many times a process of reconstruction. Yet we might proceed to this reconstruction without actually having all the pieces. We might start from some reference points which we have memorized, then apply our commonsense knowledge to fill in the details. In this process, memories become altered (and yup, it has some disadvantages concerning eye-witness testimony).

But other than that it is great! It allows us to mix knowledge from different times. Instead of sticking to the fact and reciting them back and forth, it allows us to build new types of knowledge and memories, new relations. Some of our great mental leaps or inferences might come from having to fill in some missing detail in a fuzzy memory, running a search across present knowledge, finding a match and then adding this match to the previous knowledge, thus constructing a new piece of knowledge through this process of memory reconstruction.

Without fuzzy memories, this would not be possible. Previous details would not fade away, with the possibility of being replaced by other more accurate or new knowledge, in a way which yields new relationships, inferences and moments of insight.

So think again before getting that memory chip, your inability to remember might make you the smart unique constantly self-upgrading intelligence that you are!

Behavioral space versus measured space

They are people that can't measure space. That can't look into the distance at the next signpost and say - yeah man, about 300 m until that one; or about 90 feet to the left of that turn you will find the post office.
Conversely, it is hard for these people to interpret instructions given in this language.
Measuring space in various types of units and having the ability to interpret these measurements by translating them back to some form of representation or ability to use them as cues for the environment is an useful skill.
But there are other skills that relate to space which one can be good at, despite doing poorly with measurements. Behavioral space is one of them.
We are talking in behavioral space terms whenever we say or have the feeling of "my phone is right here" (to my right/left; near my hand, within reach, etc) , or "the coffee cup is over there" (subtext - and I only need to make a step and lean forward to take it).
These types of representations don't talk about measurements, or at least not objective ones (e.g. in metric units) - or perhaps I don't have any friends that normally say "my coffee cup is one meter to the left on my desk).  This way of perceiving space relates to our own body size, ability to move and reach for things (and our experience with that), the time we feel we would need to do so, and our feeling of access and affordance of objects around us based on the things above.
Of course, a subconscious measurement might happen - our brain might measure arm span, arm reach, speed of reach or walk, project movement on the space between us and the object we are thinking about.
But whatever the units we are using (e.g. step size/speed and arm reach) they are not meters or feet.
One can be extremely good at predicting movement in one's own behavioral space, and therefore be able to measure it, but very bad when it comes to projecting slightly more artificial, "objective" units (like meters) on space (be it concrete space we are looking at or an imaginary space we have experienced).

You might be able to catch something falling down a shelf near you, to know exactly how much to lean to get a folder from a drawer - it is rare that we lean to get something and then feel we need to lean a bit more (trying to get something from a very high shelf does not count).
Our brain seems to compute all these distances on the fly and gives us the experience of a flow-like motion. If you think that is a little thing, think again!
Arm span has to be projected on distance to be covered, so that we walk the distance before actually reaching if our arm span is not enough, or move our rolling chair, or lean. We have to compensate for that extra distance somehow, otherwise we would reach out to grab things and only then make a few steps towards them. Instead we move towards these objects and then reach.
We also need to know when to stop, when we are close enough to reach, what is the distance of our arm span, and what is the best orientation of our body in order to have the right orientation for our muscles to coordinate the grab.
Most of the time, we step towards the shelf we need to grab an object from, and our arm starts moving upwards during the last phases of getting close to the shelf. This isn't, in any way, a simple feat. And to give that feeling of flow, that we normally associate with the "simplicity" if out movement, our brain has to learn a lot about our own body, movement, the environment, distance/size, etc.
If you want to understand how great of a feature this sensation of simplicity and flow of movement is, try starting to develop a movement skill you are not used to - or remember how it felt when you learned how to ride a bicycle, how to drive, how to swim or play a musical instrument. As a pianist, I know how developing new types of movement in different speeds feels anything like simple (I swear sometimes it feels like you are being asked to move your ears, or some muscles you have very little control over), and when you finally get simplicity and flow in your movements, your brain has managed to integrate all those movements, understand the distances and speeds involved, and is able to now coordinate them to perfection.
If you learn a new skill which involves a different type of movement (playing darts? pool? badminton?), or different distances, you can let yourself observe how your brain is feeling it's way into motion flow. During such an experience (which can involve a certain degree of frustration), one learns to appreciate more the marvels of our behavioral space and our movement repertoire.