| The main problem with human memory is that read operations are also write operations. http://koehlerlaw.net/2010/09/on-human-memory-and-eyewitness... http://faculty.washington.edu/eloftus/Articles/sciam.htm http://agora.stanford.edu/sjls/Issue%20One/fisher&tversk... http://townhall.com/columnists/jacobsullum/2011/08/31/your_l... Human memory is continually being reshaped, and is not a reliable archive of anyone's experience. The other problem with the human brain's large capacities in general is that bandwidth to and from the brain constrains the brain's interaction with the environment. I have read (I'm sorry I don't remember the source off-hand) that human sensory organs have a huge information capacity, and the human brain has a huge capacity both to process and to store information, but the nervous system's connections between sensory nerves for input or between motor nerves for output are strictly limited in bandwidth, so you always have to ignore much of what you could perceive or do. A really good book about the built-in capacity for human self-deception is The Folly of Fools: The Logic of Deceit and Self-Deception in Human Life by Robert Trivers, http://www.amazon.com/The-Folly-Fools-Deceit-Self-Deception/... which is full of interesting information about limitations of the thinking of all organisms, especially human beings. |