What's next

I recall seeing an article from 1969 about musical chord recognition: the psychologist was diligent and sought to relate her theory to neural architecture of the inner ear. I don't know if she was successful but I do know I'm not even trying. I cannot say or even imagine what the brain-cell embodiments of moments or memories, loud or soft, booming or peeping, are. That's the chief and obvious shortcoming of this model.

But that's the chief and obvious shortcoming of most psychological models. They can still propel useful inquiry. This model immediately suggests the following:

Though it is not necessarily useful for computer modeling of dementia in general, it is useful here to keep in mind what is being modeled here: not loss of memory, but incontinence of memory. That is, remembering not too little but too much, and then being fuddled by all those memories, to the point of forgetting (so to speak) that they reside in the past - they are not the present, as much as they may feel that way. That the past is always there, and is always fully recoverable, this model postulates. In early 2013, in Tabatinga, I sat at an open-air bar and a middle-aged patron who was so drunkenly accommodating I took him for an employee reminded me, for the first time, of another Brazilian bar experience I'd had, way back in 1989. That one was in Chapada dos Guimarães, and may have been overshadowed by activities the next week; anyway, I remembered it at last, the genial drinking, the sudden silence, and the stranger turning to me and asking, "Say...weren't you in Japan last year?" After an amazed interval, I answered: "No." Bringing the house down, he said, "Well, neither was I!" It was quite gratifying to see this mini-movie all over again. But viewing it, I never forgot I was still in Tabatinga. Well, Tabatinga was louder!

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