Thread: Memory: the Forgotten Fundamental

Originally Posted by Sageous

Instead of telling you why I disagree, I offer you a test: Run the top ten memories you possess through your mind (okay; just run ten vivid memories, but be sure to go back a few years, and be honest with yourself), and then ask yourself how many of those memories were preserved through memorization. I have a feeling that you will find most or all of them became accurate, vivid, and above all stable memories all by themselves, with no conscious input from you necessary. It's probably not wise to underestimate the power your mind has for accurately storing information; since our our identities and occasionally our lives depend on efficient memory storage, our "given" hard-wiring for the process is pretty good.

Again, yes, if what you are trying to remember is dull or not critical in a long-term sense (i.e., dates for a history test), then memorization might be necessary. But, given that LD's -- especially in the beginning -- tend to be far from dull and, I believe at least, tend to have real long-term value to you personally, they really do not fit into that mundane experience that doesn't get remembered well.

This holds true, I think for the quality of lucid moments being recalled upon waking, As well.

I know this is going to be long and unrelated but, I felt the need to comment:

Fair enough, those examples were all memorable without use of memorization. Still, I can’t help but argue that sometimes, we do take our memory for granted, even for those vivid memories. For example, as I did the test, I remembered an event that occurred a year ago, when my soccer team had won our very first cup after years of trying. It was a very memorable experience; the match was close and it got decided during the last 10 minutes. We even organized a party after it. We celebrated, we drank and laughed, and all over an incredible night.

Several months ago, I was talking with my friends about it, and I was surprised to know I had ignored some of what had happened that night. Sure, the instances where I was personally involved in were easy to recall, like who scored the winning goal, or the final score, or the general occurrence of events. However, if I wanted to remember more than that, then it gets complicated. For example, when talking with my friends, we had to dig a little bit to find out who else ended up scoring, or who made the final pass to the last goal, or how was the natural flow of the game. Where we below score all the time? Did D. score first, or was it J. who did that? Oh yeah! I remembered E. scored that awesome goal against three players. No! that was during the semifinals, remember? Oh, I see, so how was E.’s goal in the final? You see, we ended up remembering more together than what I could by myself. The memories were still there, but I needed a little help to access them. Who knows in how much detail I can remember the game after a couple more years.

The memories that stay with us after all those years end up being the most important, the most memorable. Nonetheless, those moments take part overall in a bigger memory of the experience, where the rest of details might be left ignored.

So, I offer to you a counter test to your test: relive those 10 memories, just this time, bring with you someone who was also present in them. Then, compare both memories and see if you missed anything. And that’s the thing, you’ll end up having a better memory together than by yourself. Sometimes, you may end up including people or events inside that never happened! And this is how false memories work, the important event is included, but the rest of the story that surrounds it changes.

Memory is like a muscle, the more you use it, the better you get at it. For the rest of our lives, the skewing of our memories is to be expected and not of concern, as we can still remember the general gist of events that occurred in reasonable detail. But, during a dream, where an alteration of a memory can suppress our awareness, then it could become an issue.

This may be true, but I have something for you to consider: Focusing your attention to memorization -- say, repeatedly exercising a memory for the sake of being sure it is accurately recording (though, again, you might be underestimating your brain's ability to be accurate on its own) -- seems to be an action that would do a lot to draw your attention away from the dream itself, as well as your state of mind. So sure, you might perfectly memorize the dream snippet on which you are focused, but you might be doing so at the expense of your lucidity, thanks to the distraction of that focus on something other than your dream, and your presence in it. I'm not sure if that trade would be worth making.

Well, I meant it more as an exercise when one is awake. You make sure the memory is successfully consolidated before you sleep, and then, (theoretically) the mind alone would have an easier time accessing the same memory without too much hassle on our part during the dream. Then again, if it were to fall on our hands, because we have practiced beforehand, then it would also become a lot easier to remember during the dream. So, losing lucidity shouldn’t be a problem. Also, we’re talking about an exercise that could take you mere seconds, a minute to do at most, so it isn’t too much work the way I see it.

I may be a bit dense here, but I've never quite gotten why people have trouble understanding that, once its been accessed*, the presence of memory does not necessarily equal remembering specific things.

I think people might be trying to look for more meaning in what is, to me at least, very simple: that the presence of your memory serves to complete "You" in the dream, and it does so on its own by allowing memory to help define/contextualize your surroundings, your presence, and your Self, as it does in waking-life. Just as there is no need to intentionally remember things to navigate waking-life (i.e., your best friend's name, who your mother is, where the bathroom is, what foods taste best, how to brush your teeth, etc.), once you have accessed memory in your LD, there really is no need to remember things in order for memory to function helpfully.

*[Perhaps the confusion lies right there? I think I've said pretty frequently on this thread that you do need to initiate your access to memory with an episodic memory; preferably a recent, simple one, like remembering that your actual body is where you left it, asleep in bed. Once that bit of remembering succeeds, though, there should be no need to do any subsequent remembering for as long as you maintain your waking-life self-awareness.]

I think the issue is not that it’s difficult to understand, like you said, the idea is very simple, the problem lies during memory access, not after it. I could be wrong. I can only speak for myself here, but as a beginner I end up falling into this type of errors more times than I would like to admit. It’s as if I say the word elephant but ask you not to think about an elephant. Sometimes you can’t help it, it’s natural. I know in my case when I tried it, I intended to remember that I had my real body asleep and what that means. But, as I did, I got distracted and ended up thinking about or visualizing/feeling my actual body in bed, and ended waking up. Then again, maybe I’ll get better at ignoring this the more I do it in my dreams. Or maybe it really is that simple to do, and everyone here is having fully lucid dreams left and right, and I’m just here overcomplicating my life over nothing.

Again, consciously remembering is not the only thing that memory does for us. What matters -- at least in terms of what I'm talking about here -- is the presence of that part of your mind, of your identity, that is memory, and reconnecting that part with waking-life awareness in the dream. Though they certainly have a better chance of surviving into waking-life if memory is present during the dream, specific memories are really not the priory here.

So it isn't so much recognizing the meaning of memory's presence, I think, as much as it simply to allow that presence to be, well, present.

Yep, that’s what I was referring to about when I talked about meaning, as in the objective of the exercise we’re doing when accessing memory.

Now, time, at last, to set aside my annoying and ever redundant disagreement:

To save you from further annoyance, if you feel I haven’t gotten the point yet, just ignore the above responses. I’ll take it as a need to reread again and understand.

Sure; if I understand you correctly, that could work.

If what you're saying is that the very act of memorization tends to create access to memory, then we could -- instead of struggling to remember that sleeping body, or being non-lucidly fooled by a false memory -- simply commit to memory something in the dream, and the commission of that memory (aka, memorization) fires up memory in the dream. That seems like a good idea, and might deserve some testing. Who knows? with a little experimentation you might just introduce a new technique for powering up lucidity during the dream -- a technique that could be easily practiced in waking-life, which is important.

If I've completely misunderstood that paragraph, as I fear I may have, let me know.

I’m saying that the very act of memorization could IMPROVE access to memory. For example, if I’m being fooled into non-lucidity by a false memory (like an episodic memory of me sleeping in bed), I can memorize the memory of it before I sleep. Then, next time I’m dreaming, should I fall into that path again, it won’t matter, because the episodic memory would not be subject to alteration (theoretically). In the end, there won’t be a false memory, which in turn won’t cause lucidity to be lost (I assume), and, it could still leave one fully lucid.

Although, what you propose is something I hadn’t considered at all and may be a better idea than what I had proposed!

Also:

instead of struggling to remember that sleeping body, or being non-lucidly fooled by a false memory

Another idea I had. When I was reading on memory, I found an interesting fact. Our brain can determine in advance whether there is any point in searching memory for something. So, anything that is absurd won’t retrieve a memory. For example, if I were to ask you: “What is Socrates’ telephone number?” your brain would recognize such question as absurd in that no search could ever produce an answer, thus, no memory to be retrieved.

Looking back at dreams, even non-lucid ones fall into this concept. Therefore, there are times and ways for false memories to never exist, as they are absurd, even for a dream. That, I find very intriguing. So, one could (theoretically) access memory without any need to remember anything, by asking questions like these when lucid.