the.com/forgetfulness
your brain's bouncer, tossing out memories to keep the good ones breathing.
means The tendency or state of being unable to recall information, events, or intentions you'd meant to hold onto.
from Built from English bricks: "forget" comes from Old English "forgietan," a marriage of the prefix "for-" (meaning away, amiss, or undone) and "gietan" (to grasp or get) — so to forget is literally to fail to get hold of a thing in your mind. Add the noun-making "-ful" and "-ness," and you have the full quality of being prone to letting go. Its cousins ripple across the Germanic languages, like German "vergessen," which carries the very same "away-from-grasping" logic.
- feature not bug
- forgetting helps prioritize relevant info over clutter
- tip of tongue
- happens to most people about once a week
- sleep deletes
- the brain prunes weak memories while you snooze
- doorway effect
- walking through doorways literally makes you forget tasks
- infantile amnesia
- nobody remembers being a baby, brain still forming
alzheimer's disease — affects 6.9 million americans, progressive memory loss starting with recent events
transient global amnesia — sudden temporary amnesia lasting hours, documented in thousands of cases, cause unknown
korsakoff syndrome — severe memory impairment from thiamine deficiency, common in chronic alcoholics