My earliest memory is being in a crib, looking up at the ceiling, and being overwhelmed with claustrophobia. I also remember other things, like riding my toy truck into a crater in the middle of the road.
But do I really remember events from several decades ago, or do I just remember remembering? At age four you remember what happened at age two, but at age six, do you still remember what happened at age two or rather do you remember the much more recent remembering of what happened at age two. So by the time you’re in your thirties thinking you remember your toddler years, you’re just remembering a remembering of a remembering etc. Perhaps each memory of an event is like a xerox copy of the last time you remembered that event and so the quality decays each time and perhaps you only have so much time to remember the event (or remember its memory) before it’s lost forever.
Did I just come up with a new theory of long-term memory that will revolutionize cognitive science? Doubt it. Someone else probably though of it first.
Pumpkin Person 
why were you in a crib when you were 3+ years old peepee?
no one remembers anything from age 2 or less.
It feels like a real memory from before the age of 3 but maybe i’m just remembering something I imagined at a later age
I remember getting lost and the police finding me since I had wandered off in my apartment complex from the age of 2 and a quarter.
Obviously traumatizing….
Also getting flipped off by my Mexican babysitters, hanging with cousins at an extremely young age, etc. My memory vault is extensive.
You have to understand that memories in a larger Pakistani and Indian family shaped my perceptions of the world. I have memories of them that are all types of wild.
What animal has the best memory? Ive said before memory is maladaptive in humans and I still believe that from an evolutionary perspective.
whereas monk is straight up unapologetic black genius.
art tatum? is that a joke?
Monk is a genius in a much more narrow way than Oprah
narrow vs broad…
it doesn’t matter peepee.
history has spoken.
monk is THE black genius of the 20th c.
one of top 5 minds of the 20th c.
Time magazine listed the 20 most influential artists & entertainers of the 20th century & Monk was not among them (Oprah was):
Picasso, Corbusier, Graham, Chanel, James Joyce, T.S. Eliot, C. Chaplin, Spielberg, M. Brando, Igor Stravinsky, L. Armstrong, Frank Sinatra, Rodgers and Hammerstein, The Beatles, Bob Dylan, Aretha Franklin, Lucille Ball, Jim Henson, Oprah, and Bart Simpson.
I hve thought about that also, regarding some if my earliest memories. I believe we reenforce them, and it is possible that they also change over time. I have never mentioned this or discussed it with anyone before. Brings up the subject of false memories and confirmation basis also.
I think every-time we remember something we change it because our mind fills in the gaps we don’t remember.
kmac is right about preying on europeans’ altruism/christianity.
the gypsies at my local grocery store have been there for 2 weeks.
they have a sign “no money. baby. jesus.” or something like that.
i only noticed today that the “baby” is actually a DOLL.
so you have to ax yoself wtf is in these people’s minds?
they MUST regard non-gypsies as fucktarded fucktards.
the cybernazis’ theory is…
you can push white people around forever.
BUT when they wake up…
it’s LIGHTS OUT!
Probably the diffeeence is epidemic memory versus semantic memory.
When you say remembering remembering its more having stored the knowledge of the memory than the memory itself.
I doubt it’s possible because for most people episodic memory starts around 7yo. Some exception people have very early episodic memory staring around 2yo but it could be a knowledge (semantic memory) that created an imagination that becomes episodic. It is known that episodic memory are modified by later knowledge and experience and are not exactly what was experienced.
For me, it’s all new as I have no conscient episodic memory. I have only information about my past and no remembrance at all. Maybe that where my Lt Commander Data comes from …
And at least Alzheimer won’t destroy what I don’t have.
You are more evolved than us Bruno. Or more archaic. Probably the latter more than the former. Not that they are mutually exclusive though.
I think the episodic memory is good for constructing an identity, to attach feelings to familiar people and objects and places, to help in pragmatic decisions (what did I put in my suitcase, remember to close a window in the cellar if it’s raising), it helps remember things experienced more easily even with a superficial understanding by image and imitation etc it also helps projects onself into a future by constructing from memories in the past.
But it’s also a garbage collector of useless in flux events and feelings. It can give people trauma by reliving bad experiences.
If you’re like me, everything goes through the semantic buffer. So if you don’t think about something happening, it’s gone. I ve learned to think about what happened to me when I am hurt because else I have no way to know what happened to me.
Maybe in a very evolved society already built, people like me have an advantage. In a village where you have to bond and do things by yourself, it may be a handicap.
But it’s probably mutational. I don’t think I have been traumatized but you never know. Maybe I was a raped baby and that would explain the blocking of episodic memory. At least, It’s not chosen !
Load, I don’t know if you noticed but your sentence as contradictory meanings. Because latter as a meaning wich is occurring later (more evolved) but also a meaning as the last or second mentioned (more archaic).
Your last statement helps think you thought more evolved compatible with more archaic because the reverse wouldn’t have much sense strangely, it’s a case of X and Y being « not incompatible » is not really symmetric wich is not inconsistant in a natural language logic wich is not classical logic (like double negative not always being equal to a positive).
Opposites can synergize to create one like saying sweet and sour soup.
I dunno how to explain it but because they reflect different sides of the same coin they are relatively the same thing. Just as nothing and everything or no one and everyone could be considered to be such.
thelonious sphere monk is a test.
if a GOPer groks monk and a dem doesn’t…
who’s the real racist?
“Perhaps each memory of an event is like a xerox copy of the last time you remembered that event and so the quality decays each time and perhaps you only have so much time to remember the event (or remember its memory) before it’s lost forever.”
Unfortunately it’s not, and i covered some of this topic in my recent guest post.
I think my earliest memory was when I was 3 or 4. My grandmother was waking me up for our yearly summer vacation in cape cod where i was born.
My earliest memory is when I was 4. I was on a bed in a small room. My mom was putting on my shoes for church. I was watching a cartoon about Jesus coming out of the tomb. I also remember my mom playing with me, chasing me around the living room.
Early memories you say? jajajajaja I can barely remember anything even from as late as my mid-teens.
Earliest memories are almost always false. I’m in a fortunate (or not so fortunate) camp that my earliest memory is verified as being genuine, as my mom chose never to bring it up — the events surrounding the memory were shameful for her. I had my first Christmas in a motel room. I remember the room, the twin beds and the pool outside. I also remember being in my moms arms when she was accosted by a dangerous looking older man outside the room. She was fine, but that old drunk man shouting at me is my earliest memory.
She was shocked when i brought it up 20 years later, because at the time i was only about 11 months old. I think the distress of this event prematurely jump started my long-term memory.
Well,a quite know thing. And- very likely – the rule is: the more important moment -the more often recalling – the bigger distortion . Plus we are, probably, full of false memories – I mean, completely false ones, mostly in form of stored post-factum visualizations of stories heard from aside. Sad…Or not?
Not to take the comments on to far of a side trip, but your OP about remembering being able to remember something, reminded me of a thought I’ve had concerning lucid dreaming. I have had what i consider to be lucid dreams, but after the latest, I stopped to wonder if it was actually a lucid dream or whether I dreamed I was having a lucid dream?