Brain memory has nothing at all to do with computer memory.
The only thing the two share is the word memory.
Put computer memory out of your head or you’ll get lost in this.
Brain Memory:
It is a very simple mechanism. The function that makes you as a human, remember you; is a basically a short circuit. It can be wonderful to experience life fully aware. It can also be hell to experience life unaware of anything remotely self. That makes one other-aware and ripe for the indoctrination.
Awareness is the condition that has given the species a future. It has permitted creation of all things by humans. It has grown over the years to encompass more and more perspectives. And now, it has started to reverse. That must stop and the only way to stop it is to learn how it works and use it instead of the brain using you.
In all creatures with brains a single long term memory function provides the grounding in reality for sight and sound and temperature and pressure senses. The memory of your life is not stored in your head like computer memory. It is moving through your head like a wave through water. Each new sensory stimuli starts a new chunk of memory across both main sense pathways and as it processes it is joined by comparable past memories, from long term, to form the new perspective based on now, and then.
Which process is dominate determines the behavior of the individual. Dominate long term is a reactionary animal, quick to anger, uncontrolled rage. A robot. Dominate short term is a person who uses long term for reference not for function. People are born with one or the other dominate but it does not have to stay that way. It does not take a great deal of real estate to hold a fluid long term memory. It is only processing two samples per second for each sensor input. Staggered by the biological clock. And brain memory is not Memorex.
If you can only use ‘then’ (normally until about 8 years of age); the product of a collection of all of your past, you become a reactionary machine. A robot. A child. If you can identify now, as not then, that is where the second memory of humans rises up to be noticed. Whereas your long term memory has data in it (albeit quite small and hard to recover) from your entire life it only contains the memories you have remembered. If you do not recall a memory it will fade, i.e.: it will be reduced in amplitude each time it is recalled, even in part. Your life’s memories are recent. Unless you lingered on things when younger you will not have those things now in memory. Memory is collective NOT specific. There is NO X and Y location of any brain memory as a memory is made up of every sensor, hearing and seeing over every clock cycle.
That second memory accounts for most of your head’s real estate. The grey matter, the folds are all short term memory. Why so big? That hinges on the main design attribute of the brain. Efficiency.
Brute speed is not needed, nor is it wanted in a confined biological space. Efficiency is unlike any current computer based attempt at replicating intelligence. (Helps to know what that is, first.)
Simply put: every input in your body is taking 2 samples per second. That 1 sample per half second then becomes efficient.
To understand this:
The first comparison to long term memory puts 30 long term memory chunks against each 1/2 second sensor input. 60 per second.
Each of those chunks is compared to 30 short term memory chunks. 1800 short term per second.
Input = 2 per second
Long term = 60 per second
Short term = 1800 per second
Motion = 10 per second
THAT is efficiency. There is not one single computer today, nor can there ever be a computer that has speeds that fast. A distributed system, parallel and backward looking that is so refined that each motion is backed by thousands of processes. Emotion is also an output at the same rate as motion. Without an active short term process, humans become elementary animals.
That short term is where the short circuit is. Instead of sending a comparison of input versus long term back to long term as all other creature brains do, humans (healthy ones) take the comparison with long term and short term and sent it to long term and short term. Self awareness, free will, knowing you are you, knowing you even know anything. With short term looping into itself and lasting all of seven seconds the resulting data pushed into long term includes that loop of short term. THAT is where you get the concept of self. A loop. A short circuit that is the gift of knowing. It is where you comprehend you are you and not the cardboard box in the corner. That short term allows you to know your tail is your tail, if you still had a tail.
Then, while those 1800 short term chunks are being sent to long term they are collected in matching chunks, 30 per half second. AND.. an output of 10 per second is sent to muscle. Depending on what the corresponding input has been.
If your short term is dominate, your long term will contain a record of your life with you leading it. If your short term is NOT dominate, your long term will contain a record of your life without you leading it. The latter allows others to control you. The latter is what is wrong with this species and what must be fixed.
You can do the math on that one in your head.
Understanding how it works goes a long way to understanding how to make it better. If you learn how the brain works you can start using it for you instead of whatever you are reacting to.