eli5 why brain memory is imperfect but computer memory is near perfect
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Computer memory is more analogous to a pencil and paper than to a human brain.
If you write something on a piece of paper, then the paper’s “memory” of what was written is perfect. Barring physical destruction of the paper, or using an eraser to get rid of the writing, the words will persist in the same form forever. This is why we can read things that were written thousands of years ago – as long as we still know the alphabet and the language.
So instead of thinking of a computer’s memory as somehow being like a brain, try to think of it as being billions and billions of sheets of paper, each of which will either stay with the value it has forever (or until the computer is switched off, at least), or else the computer metaphorically erases the contents of that sheet of paper and writes something else on it.
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