An interesting article about aging and the mind in the NYT. The premise of the article is that as we age, what people think of as forgetfullness is actually just an increased retrieval time caused by the presence of more stuff. This seems right to me, as I’ve found as I age that I can do many intellectual tasks better than I did in my 20s, but the appearance to other, younger people, might not be as impressive because I don’t have that install recall of trivia that I used to have.
It’s because of more rows!
1 response so far ↓
1 Joseph Hunkins // May 27, 2008 at 10:47 am
Interesting… and a provocative corollary to this is that when machines attain awareness they’ll have far fewer of these speed constraints. Already machines hugely outperform us in math and retrieval times.
Leave a Comment