Obviously currently this doesn’t happen, but assuming there would be some techniques or devices for learning more – would there be a limit to how much our neural networks in the brain can store?
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Technically yes, but were we to live for 200 years and continue to learn all the time there would still be excess capacity.
“how much” is a very literal concept which is being used to describe something very abstract. The brain learns by constructing algorithms that predict patterns. The more you learn, the more accurate your algorithm. For memories, you only actually store key aspects, and your brain reconstructs the rest as needed, which is also improved the more you challenge your memorization abilities.
So is it possible to fit an algorithm in the brain possible of reconstructing reality? I am not sure. If it were, all knowledge within our reality could be extrapolated. Is our current reality a simulation of just such an extrapolation being performed one layer up? Good question.
“how much” is a very literal concept which is being used to describe something very abstract. The brain learns by constructing algorithms that predict patterns. The more you learn, the more accurate your algorithm. For memories, you only actually store key aspects, and your brain reconstructs the rest as needed, which is also improved the more you challenge your memorization abilities.
So is it possible to fit an algorithm in the brain possible of reconstructing reality? I am not sure. If it were, all knowledge within our reality could be extrapolated. Is our current reality a simulation of just such an extrapolation being performed one layer up? Good question.
“how much” is a very literal concept which is being used to describe something very abstract. The brain learns by constructing algorithms that predict patterns. The more you learn, the more accurate your algorithm. For memories, you only actually store key aspects, and your brain reconstructs the rest as needed, which is also improved the more you challenge your memorization abilities.
So is it possible to fit an algorithm in the brain possible of reconstructing reality? I am not sure. If it were, all knowledge within our reality could be extrapolated. Is our current reality a simulation of just such an extrapolation being performed one layer up? Good question.
I think brain “storage” or neural memory is more analogous to knots than boxes on a shelf. As people age, sometimes neurons start working weirdly or connections that were strong become weaker or confused. People have been writing things down or making likenesses forever, and nowadays, we keep records like files on a computer or, in an office setting, in cabinets or on shelves. So, the kinds of devices you’re describing exist – they’re called flashcards and notebooks.
I think brain “storage” or neural memory is more analogous to knots than boxes on a shelf. As people age, sometimes neurons start working weirdly or connections that were strong become weaker or confused. People have been writing things down or making likenesses forever, and nowadays, we keep records like files on a computer or, in an office setting, in cabinets or on shelves. So, the kinds of devices you’re describing exist – they’re called flashcards and notebooks.
I think brain “storage” or neural memory is more analogous to knots than boxes on a shelf. As people age, sometimes neurons start working weirdly or connections that were strong become weaker or confused. People have been writing things down or making likenesses forever, and nowadays, we keep records like files on a computer or, in an office setting, in cabinets or on shelves. So, the kinds of devices you’re describing exist – they’re called flashcards and notebooks.
There really isn’t a universal definition for information, so it’s impossible to determine if there is a physical limit of information a brain can store. Is “information” even a physical?
If information is physical then it may be limited by the number of neurons in the brain that handles storage of information. If you say information has equivalent mass then maybe the theoretical limit is defined by the mass of a brain. But the brain is a bit more complicated than that, there are electrical signals and different chemicals in your brain and we don’t have a 100% understanding of how the brain functions.
I think the simple answer is that, we don’t know because there isn’t a clear definition of what information is.
This reminds me of an episode of Married With Children where Kelly was on a game show and her brain only had room for a finite amount of info, she learned something new during a break, and the answer to the next question was what she lost in her brain when she learned the new thing. Hilarious drama ensued.
Yes and no. Your brain is a pattern matching machine. If you learn a fact, you will retain this pattern 100% correctly only for a short time. Over time, any patterns you learn will be absorbed into larger patterns and can therefore become incorrect unless you retrain the original pattern regularly. This is why people who read something, often repeat it incorrectly or with poor understanding later, because they’ve integrated something into their existing patterns and it has become altered by those pre-existing patterns.
The reality is, your brain has essentially no storage capacity for actual hard data in the sense of “1+1=2”. That would take a memory larger than the Universe to store your life’s experience. However, you have a massive capacity for patterned data and you can re-pattern this data continuously forever. You will forget specific patterns almost immediately, but the created patterns are what make you “you”.
As to “how much can I learn in a lifetime”, well that is variable but we can look to history for some guidance. Humans who existed before books were common (i.e. a secondary storage mechanism outside the brain), could generally remember enough to live their lives and some could remember things like plays and stories that they would tell to each other or on stage. Generally, by the end of ones life, one will remember only snippets of what happened over the course of ones life. This suggests that our brain storage size is really quite limited in comparison to the demands of our life span.
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