When I was young I had already become suspicious of subjective experience as a tool to learn about the real world, even that part of that world which includes objects known as humans.
I was deeply impressed by such things as optical illusions.
Only many years later, when I had become interested in how the brain works did I realize (when someone pointed it out to me) that subjective experience is an excellent source of hypotheses, or at least raw data to be explained in any adequate brain theory.
The Imaginary Landmark
I don’t recall who told me of a mnemonic trick.
Its current deployment is as follows.
You are about to drive to a place a few miles away but a place that you seldom go to.
To get there you drive about half way to work and then depart from your normal route to get to the novel destination.
Most people who drive are familiar with passing the turning point and continuing as if going to work.
The trick is to imagine for 5 to 10 seconds the intersection where the unusual turn is required.
If you imagine this intently for just a few seconds then when you get to that intersection the exceptional situation will come to mind even if you are then thinking about something entirely unrelated.
It is easy to see the adaptive advantage of this.
It is normally good to be able to navigate familiar routes without requiring an attention span with the duration of the entire journey.
It is good to have time to think of other things.
I imagine the hunt where plans are made collectively with directions on where to go.
The function seems now perfectly adapted to driving.
My attention is directed to the novel turn about 1/2 block before the turn.
This suggests that part of my head is unconsciously running ahead and thereby notices the “landmark”.
This suggests a mechanism that is shared with a strategy to avoid places with traumatic long term memories.
The imaginary landmarks are all gone in 24 hours.
An Eating Agent
I will pour a cup of coffee, or open a can of Coke.
I put it down and get involved with something else.
In a few minutes some agent of the stomach in the brain reminds me that there is a remaining unconsumed batch of stuff.
I suspect it is the same agent that suggested the initial acquisition.
When it is potato chips, this agent is aware whether the batch is gone and it pesters me further only if some of the batch remains or I am indeed hungry.
This observation leads to the useful plan of getting out a limited supply of potato chips and closing the bag.
If I am not hungry then the agent is satisfied when the supply is gone.
Otherwise, if the bag is open, the agent is unsatisfied until the bag is empty, even when I begin to feel a bit sated!
This scheme is more pleasant than invoking “will-power” to stop.
Car Keys
I had a friend who would occasionally make some comment apropos of my imminent departure—and this would be before I had thought of leaving.
I realized each time, however, that I was indeed anxious to leave.
He told me how he did this.
I would take out my car keys.
I would do this before I was aware that I wanted to leave.
Now I often notice that I have my car keys in my hand as the first signal that I want to go.
The Illusion(?) of Repeated Dreams
When I was very young, perhaps five years old, I had a very disturbing dream.
It was especially painful in that it was repeated, or at least it seemed as if the experience had had several antecedents.
I remember thinking That dream again as I awoke.
Shortly afterwards it occurred to me that if I had had the dream previously, I would certainly remember having remembered it, for it had upset me for a good part of a day.
I could not remember having remembered it.
I don’t think that I resolved that problem but now it seems to me that I probably had the dream just once and that there was some déjà-vu mechanism that falsely made it feel as if it were not the first time.
There may indeed be a common failure mode of the situation recognizer that gives the term déjà vu such power.
Short term number memory
When I look in a book index for a word and see the corresponding page number I quickly close my eyes, even as I turn to the main body of the book, and transform the image of the numeral into the English sounds that name the number.
Even with my eyes closed, especially with my eyes closed, the image of the numeral is vivid.
Then I open my eyes and look at page numbers within the body of the book and compare those with the sounds of the English name of the number that I found in the index.
I find that decoding an Arabic numeral is quick, but obliterates the short term memory of the image of the numeral from the index.
The memory of the sound, however, is more robust and is not displaced by images of new numerals.
This observation is consonant with Julian Jaynes idea that language was adaptive because it let people remember complex ideas, sort of like a disk drive can store more stuff than RAM.
In particular they could convey and remember a plan to capture an animal.
Murphy’s Section
Where did I park my Car
When I park twice in one day in the same neighborhood, I recall the first place I parked and not the second when I look for my car the second time.
I can not imagine any adaptive advantage to this bug.
Finding long lost Items
When I find something that I had been looking for, I usually put it ‘where it belongs’.
Later when I need it again, I remember where I found it but not where I put it.