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.

The thought machine

Computers allow the information-processing paradigm, which has profound implications on both cognitive science and artificial intelligence. Information processing seems to have played for cognition the role that the microscope played for biology.
For a long time I thought that the stumbling block which makes people consider intelligent machines as not truly cognitive was not consciousness, but intentionality. Machines don't have their own goals, they can't choose for themselves to take another path than the one the programmer has endowed them with, neither can they come up with problem-solving skills and methods that haven't been put there by a human.
Processing information for a goal seems to be the defining quality that characterizes living systems, which can brings about cognitive behavior and processes which we don't see in machines.
Yet something is missing from this picture. Sometimes we forget that actually organs keep functioning automatically, just by being alive. That them being alive means they keep attempting to fulfill their function. So the function of our brain might be to process information, be it with a goal or not. It might be in its programming to do so, independent of if the owner has that as a goal or not.
This is where curiosity, as a human/animal trait comes into play. Many humans go out of their way to obtain information which couldn't possibly affect their survival. Yet the drive to acquire more information, to compare it to the previous one, to patch the types of information together, can feel as important for these people as eating (or more, at least until they get really hungry).
So it might be that the information-processing machine is simply in overdrive for some people. That it takes over. And of course they are survival advantages in that (if you are in the right job to manifest that talent, and if you can make a difference to the community through what you are processing).
Perhaps we should also ask ourselves why it is that our information-processing machine seems to always be on. Do we really need to do that much information processing? Is that an inherent part of the human condition, that we would have needed to develop this constant stream of thought/awareness?
Of course we feel that our thought machine sleeps at times - we zone out and can't think of the things we would like to think of, can't solve the things that we would like to solve.
Sometimes our minds seem blank and sometimes our ability to focus is slippery. Our machine can't seem to come to terms with what we want to direct it towards, and escapes our goal, while swimming heavily in its own purposes and plays at information-processing. It keeps on asking us questions we don't want or have the time to answer then and there, instead of helping us solve what we put in our schedule as a priority. It keeps focusing on things that seem unrelated to our task, albeit interesting for the context of our lives or the way we understand the world and universe and things.
That is one of the reasons for which some people use diaries. It is not because they need to constantly say what they did that day. But because they need to give their information processing machine a place to express its concerns, and process all those things that are in the back of our head, and that otherwise would stand in the way of our normal productivity. And they are questions in our head that we can't escape, that dominate our mental landscape in such a powerful way, that the old advice applies "the only way to escape a temptation/desire is to fulfill it".
In this context, the only way to get over that preoccupation that our mind has for certain subjects is to give it free rein to think about them at will and in a focused manner, so that we can then direct it at will ourselves after it has settled into having the answers that it needed, or being closer to them.
The mind-body system might not be a dualistic machine, but our own mind can be one at times, and we can remark and reflect on the difference between the things that we want to think about and the things that seem to "think us".
Our information-processing machine is not a completely tamed one, and perhaps it shouldn't be. As it knows better what our deep goals, interests and questions are than our daily task planner ever could.

Back to the intentional/non-intentional debate, I think there that our information-processing device just plays at times. It is a ludic device that takes pleasure (and rewards are significant for motivating behavior) from being active and trying to think and "solve" the world around us.
This can be easily seen in perception illusions, where we can't help ourselves but to solve certain patterns to some known common pattern. Or we can experience it when we look with no purpose at some patterns on the wall while thinking of something else and realize after a few minutes that our mind has kept on trying to arrange those patterns in various configurations.
The major implication of that thought is that it means we are more machine-like and less intentional than we thought. And that many times it is the machine that drives us forward, not the intention.
So if information processing is a function, and our brain can't help but do it, where does that leave the debate on the importance of intentionality as being a main feature that differentiates human cognition (our benchmark) from machine cognition?
First of all having this ludic information processing machine is not an easy process to replicate in itself. I don't know of any artificial cognitive machine that just keeps on adding random observations and drawing random conclusions and inferences out of them. Are they rules or general guiding principles which apply to our mental play? To be found out.
Second, our intentionality - our goals - might predispose us to gather information about how we can solve those even during our ludic time. We might be collecting information on the weird way the patterns are distributed on the wall and associate it through some far analogy to one of the important problems we are struggling with (and which is goal related) - in fact my research focuses on this process.
Second, there is a definite degree of independence, free will and randomness (read uniqueness if you like) that comes with this ludic information-processing machine, and probably defines the human cognitive experience. To be constantly only goal-directed is, after all, what we imagine machines to be. (very funny that we think that, but we also think that us having goals and free will is what makes us human).
Third, our experience in the world and in our thoughts is sometimes what makes new goals emerge. Which is not an experience replicated by a machine yet. And I don't mean refining goals purposefully - like in the case of creating subgoals in ACT-R. I mean simply thinking about some random things then suddenly deciding some possibility is attractive enough to be worth investigating, or experiencing things and then deciding to make something our goal just because we like it (or without particular knowledge of what cognitive goal that investigation might serve).
Therefore I don't see the idea of our brain being an information-processing machine that does just that all day long cause it likes to and that is its function as something that makes intentionality less important. Perhaps it is just bridging a little bit more the gap of our minds being mechanisms that have their own function, and drive us with the expression of this function, rather then other way around (us setting goals, and constantly directing our machine forward).
How would a neural implementation or model of either intentionality or ludic information processing look like? That is what I would really like to see.

Throwing away main results - the collateral benefits hack

Do motivated people really have their eyes on the prize? Yeah, probably, but you might be surprised about some of their actions. They might just throw away what you thought was the main benefit of their actions, and the goal you thought they were pursuing. And it might not even be that they are behaving irrationally. But that you misunderstood their goal.
I was just thinking about this kind of behavior, from a personal perspective. They are moments when you finally got your lot organized, you know what you have to do the next 50-200 steps to get to your goal, things are finally making sense. You are content: you managed to subdivide a problem that seemed very hard to achieve into manageable subgoals, and all you need to do, in theory, now that you traced a path to your goal, is to keep walking (disclaimer: no encouragement for (a certain brand of) whiskey consumption has been intended here, but c'mon, they do have a cool ads!).
Yet it doesn't happen. You don't get on with it. You don't move to the goal, although it's finally manageable. And its not cause you are lazy - you just discover that now that you finally defined that threatening problem in terms of manageable steps, you can focus on other things, that are far more important to you for some bizarre reason.
 Point taken, the managerial part of your mind is now pissed off with u. And for a good reason: you've been terrified by this problem for so long, and now that finally your brain has provided the solution, instead of defeating the monster you just.... start working on a different task? How uncool is that?
But sometimes you need to trust that your brain knows what it's doing (it got on with keeping your body alive without that much input from you quite well and for quite a while). That you might not be that dedicated to the goal you just mentally solved. That knowing you can achieve it was the main benefit, the thing that helped you move deeper into what it's actually important for you to do.
And sometimes - rarely, but it happens - you might need to just be tolerant with throwing away most of what seems the result of your action. It might be that those results where not what you where there for in the first place, but some collateral benefit, which was a necessary resource for one of your other goals.
I was just thinking about this when I stumbled across a great description of that exact situation in a book chapter by Klahr(1):

"Consider the problem faced recently by an unnamed psychologist in getting from an office at Carnegie Mellon University to a conference room at Colorado resort in order to present a talk about scientific reasoning. The "difference" was one of distance, and among the set of distance-reduction operators were flying, walking, biking, and so forth. Flying was the operator that would most rapidly reduce distance, but it could not be applied to the initial condition: that is, one could not fly directly from one office to the conference site. This presented the subproblem of creating conditions for flying (i.e., getting to an airport). Getting to the airport could best be done via taxi, but there was no taxi at Carnegie Mellon. The sub-subproblem involved making a phone call to the cab company. But all the university phones were out of order for the day during a transition to a new system: only the pay phones worked. An even deeper subproblem: make a call on a pay phone. But a lack of coins made it impossible to apply that operator (no pun intended). However, a Coke machine was handy, and it accepted dollar bills and gave change. So the problem solver bought and discarded a Coke (our emphasis) in order to get on the solution path to transport himself to Colorado."

Well ok, you will say, but I might have thrown away more than a Coke. So what? Solving some problems involves exactly that kind of lateral thinking. The only thing you need to watch for is not to get trapped in too many lateral thinking loops, not to end up throwing away too many portions. Not to end up living in a lateral loop that was supposed to be a life hack and just doesn't take you to your goal anymore.
But to all of you out there that think about yourselves as highly determined people, yet cringe at seeing yourself throwing away main results of what you worked for - relax. Try to understand the bigger goal. And see how smart your brain has been in pursuing it. Don't instill forced discipline just to satisfy your managerial mind - because you came up with too good of a plan to drop it just now. That part of your mind shouldn't be the master. It is just a tool. A costly tool, that takes lots of pride in itself, and likes its own work, but finally just a tool for your deeper goals.
You might be interested to know that some of the most creative minds of the history have done exactly that: hacked into problems, thrown away what to others seemed the main benefit, kept pursuing their task using lateral thinking tools until they got all the little pieces of the puzzle that they needed. And then a solution seemed to emerge out of nowhere (to others).
Just make sure what you are throwing away doesn't have a dangerous impact on your life or others. Other than that, you can keep on playing. It's what problem-solving is all about.
The juggling metaphor of solving tasks is well known: one has too many tasks on one's hands (wonder if one could have to many hands on one's task) and can't possibly cope with everything in the same time. Yet one copes by giving big pushes to the tasks, making them go into a sleeping cycle, when they don't need attention. It's about dealing with emergencies just before they happen. And it is very stressful, although it does imply the somewhat borderline satisfaction of dealing with more than you can.
But this collateral benefits hack is more like what a trapeze artist does. You are not throwing balls in the air, but throwing yourself into goals, being in motion, hoping that the trapeze you just landed will (while still in motion) meet up with another one that will take you a bit closer to your goal, or closer to something that can take you to your goal, or closer to something that is closer to something that can take you to your goal, recursive reasoning for the win!
Part of the path you might have taken might not be intended. It might not be meaningful. It might just be the search for that trapeze which moves you in the range of your dreams, at whatever recursive depth is still exciting for you and still makes you feel near them. And sometimes you might take a path that involved days of tasks just cause you needed the equivalent of a paperclip out of there. But it might be a paperclip without which you can't go any further.
The price that we pay for various parts that we need in our problem-solving might be completely unscaled to what we get from an action. But adapted to the importance getting that thing has for our goals and dreams.
And sometimes taking a path which seems not yours, not meaningful, which seems to take you away rather than towards your goal, is a painful thing (imagine what AI programs must feel when you force them out of their local optima). Yet some paths must be taken, filtered for that paperclip and thrown away. Don't try to keep everything. Drop some balls on the floor. Don't clutch onto them in despair, throw some out there in the world and see what comes back. And find your paperclip!
The creative mind has reasons that the reasonable mind doesn't have...


(1) Klahr,D. (2000).Exploring Science: The cognition and development of discovery processes - Ch.2 Scientific discovery as Problem Solving. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press