والجُرحُ في زَمَنِي مَا كانَ مُندَمِلًا
حَتَّى أَقُولَ اْستُجِدَّ الجُرحُ أو فُصِدَا

مَالَ النَّخِيلُ عَلَى الزَّيْتُونِ مُسْتَمِعًا
لِيُكْمِلَ السَّرْدَ مِنْهُ كُلَّمَا سَرَدَا

On Mind and Memory

When Freud formulated his theories in the early 20th century, he frequently employed metaphors from physics and hydraulics; the mind as a hydraulic machine filled with libido whose force must be channeled and directed into useful and acceptable behaviors (catharsis) or the machine will malfunction. In the age of computers we frequently describe the brain as a supercomputer of carbon and fat. Today, in the age of artificial intelligence and artificial neural networks, we imagine the computers of the future to be brains made out of silicon... Our analogies, it seems, do not explain nor describe the mind as much as create an interpretation, a framework, a spectacle, through which we construct a theory that tries to explain the mind as we want to understand it in the context of the spirit of our age and describe it within the larger framework we—at the time—use to describe the world. These analogies are not scientific descriptions. They are statements of dogma.

Today, because we liken the brain to a computer, thus we ask questions like "what is the full capacity of our memory?" and scientists try, with a straight face, to estimate an answer that ends in -bytes. (Last I checked, it's 2.5 petabyte, or 2,500 terabytes). Maybe if the Sumerians were asked, they would've given a count in clay tablets, and the Egyptians in papyrus. The answer (and the question), thus, reveal more about the spirit of our age and the way we approach life and knowledge, than it reveals an actual insight about the mind itself.

One faulty assumption about human memory is that it can become "full" in the same way a computer's memory becomes full. Yet, what experience and experiment show is that human memory grows in a peculiar way, where "more is less". It grows by association. Before I explain further, here's a very simple observation to think about: why is it easier to remember 9112001 than 7381729? For a computer, the first sequence of 7 numbers take on the same space in its memory as the second sequence of 7 numbers. Its memory does not differentiate information based on ease of memorization, only by how much space it takes on the hard drive. On the other hand, human memory does not seem to have the attribute of "space" or "capacity," and when we say figuratively that one's mind does not have a place for a new information, we often mean that it's becoming very hard to learn anything new at the moment. Human memory has another interesting attribute called "chunking" where associated informations are chunked together to make one information, thereby making it easier to remember them both together, than each alone. The first sequence is easier to remember because usually it resembles a famous date (september 11th, 2001), so all 7 numbers are chunked together into one single information. But the second sequence doesn't ring a bell, so to speak; it's 7 different pieces that all must be committed to memory. In other words: the more related information that you know, the easier it becomes to remember all of them since each connects to the next like links in a chain.

This "learning by association" is most evident in medicine: it is often easier to remember the clinical manifestations of a disease or a treatment if you can already associate a peculiar story with them than if you simply and forcefully try to commit them to memory like a list (e.g. warfarin being used first as a rat poison) or if it can be associated with another topic you're familiar with (you can easily remember INH's side effects if you realize they resemble those of vitamin B6 deficiency than if you make them into a list). In congenital heart diseases, you can save yourself a lot of the trouble recalling and comprehending the different aspects of these illnesses by simply understanding and remembering the embryology of the heart. Same goes for a line in a book or a verse in a poem. More is less; the more related information you know, the less effort you need to recall all of them and to memorize new ones. It's as if your whole body of knowledge becomes one tangled web of associations, connections, and tangents. Attention and past knowledge and experience all aid the memorization of the new. A computer, on the other hand, doesn't care about relatability of information. In the end it's all the same; ones and zeros that must be committed forcefully—so to speak—to memory. Which is why it's easier for a computer to remember a long, chaotic string of digits or a grocery list than it is for a human. Human memory probably works like hyperlinks in a wikipedia page. But this is an analogy after all, and analogies can be misleading.

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— Game of Thrones finale

Every generation laughs at the old fashions, but follows religiously the new.

- Walden, by H. D. Thoreau

Caught in the relaxing interval between one moral code and the next, an unmoored generation surrenders itself to luxury, corruption, and a restless disorder of family and morals.

- Will and Ariel Durant, The Lessons of History

إذا زُكِّيَ أحدٌ مِنهم خافَ مِمّا يُقالُ له، فيقول: أنا أعلَمُ بنفسي مِن غَيري، وربي أعلَمُ بي مني بنفسي.

— الإمام علي بن أبي طالب (ع)

كان الرجلُ من أصحاب النبي ﷺ إذا زُكِّي قال: اللهم لا تُؤاخذني بما يَقولون، واغفِر لي ما لا يَعلَمون، واجعلني خيرًا مِمّا يظنون.

Bot:
"دخل إبليس على الجنيد في صورة نقيب [رتبة صوفية]، وقال: أريدُ أن أخدمك بلا أجرة. فقال له الجنيد: افعل. فأقام يخدمه عشر سنين، فلم يجد قلبه غافلًا عن ربّه لحظة واحدة. فطلب الانصراف، وقال له: أنا إبليس. فقال: عرفتك من أوّل ما دخلت، وإنما استخدمتك عقوبةً لك؛ فإنّه لا ثواب لأعمالك في الآخرة. فقال: ما رأيتُ قوّتك يا جنيد! فقال له: اذهب يا ملعون، أتريد أن تدخل عليّ الإعجاب بنفسي؟ ثم خرج خاسئًا."

صـ92 من تاج العارفين

قال: "كنتُ بين يدي سَرِيٍّ ألعَب، وأنا ابنُ سبعِ سنين، وبين يديه جماعةٌ يتكلمون في الشكر؛ فقال لي: "يا غلام! ما الشُّكر؟" قلت: "الشكر ألّا تَعصيَ الله بِنِعَمِه" فقال لي: "أخشى أنْ يكونَ حظُّكَ من الله لسانك!" قال الجنيد: "فلا أزالُ أبكي على هذه الكلمةِ التي قالها لي السري"