The title can’t really express what I mean, but it goes like this:
Lets say you know 1000+ people and remember all their birthdays. There’s only 365 days, so they may share some dates. But if you pick any random day, you easily remember that it’s John Smith, Joe Brown, and Colonel Mustard’s birthdays on that date. This applies to many other correlations, not just birthdays or people.
On a computer this is an easy database query. But how do our brains organize and present it so readily?
In: Biology
The brain doesn’t “store” information directly like a computer does. When neurons fire off, they cause different neurons they are connected to to also fire off with different probabilities depending on how strongly they are connected. This way stimulus leads to patterns that had been reinforced before, which then lead to patterns that have been reinforced by those previous patterns. If we want to be technical, neurons in the human brain do the same thing as nodes in a neural map in AIs. Connections become stronger or weaker depending on usage.
Therefore, a “mind map” is probably a more accurate way to represent the way information is stored. You learn that John Smith’s birthday is on May 10, so whatever pattern makes you think of John Smith will get connected to the pattern that makes you think of May 10. Same with James, Joe, etc, whose birthday is on the same day.
One big strength of this kind of a brain(as opposed to one made of fixed, hardwired patterns like in circuits) is it’s ability to handle correlations, but at the same time, those connections are probabilistic in nature, so you might get “side effects” by getting unintended information returned, that is also related. You’re trying to remember John’s birthday? May 10, got it. Oh, James also has his birthday on May 10? Didn’t James’ wife make nice steaks when you went to visit for dinner? Now you’re thinking of steaks. This is why reinforcement is important. The connection between between the starting point and the ending point in this line of thought doesn’t come up frequently, so that path doesn’t get reinforced through repetition, so it’s less likely for this “misfire” to occur.
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