On 19 Mar 1997, Will Nelson wrote:
>nutty at brain (Madhusudan Natarajan) writes:
>> One of the fascinating features of the human brain is that there
> is no apparent maximum amount of information that can be stored.
> People learn throughout their entire lifetimes, and that learning
> keeps getting stored in some fashion. There are retrieval problems,
> but it's all in there.
Is this really true?
I am in my forties, and I notice that my ability to recognize faces
(especially of students) is decreasing. I recently learned C++/Java, and
I was amazed how effort that costed me.
Some things go well, though. Subjects that I found difficult 20 years ago
cost me relatively little effort when I give it another try. But real new
things, like objected oriented programming, cost me much effort.
As one gets older many things are not interesting any more: subjects like
pop-music or politics become very boring. (Pensions become however
interesting ... )
Anyway, I think that one often remembers events of once youth well because
they were written on a clean slate. As one gets older, one writes over
already present text, and unless one has forgetten a lot, one can expect
interference.
> Will Nelson
> Solstice Software Products
> SunSoft
>wnelson at dna.eng.sun.com>
Anthonie Muller
The Thermosynthesis Home Page
http://www.ed.ac.uk/~awjm
