Forgetting

Forgetting is important part of learning process.

Why is forgetting important?

There are three major positive outcome of forgetting:

Forgetting helps to find exact answer.
Forgetting helps to keep information up-to-date.
Forgetting saves hardware resources.

1. Forgetting helps to find exact answer

Imagine: you were asked: “What is the name of your best friend?”.

Let’s pretend that:

- Your brain remembers everything.

- In different periods of your life you had different friends.

In this case your brain will pick up several names instead of one. As a result:

You will be confused.
At least: you will spend more time to find exact answer.
At worst: you will select wrong answer.

Let’s pretend now that your brain gradually forgets old information. That is the brain still remembers all friends, but remembrances about old friends require some mental concentration.

In this case the brain will return exact answer (for the question “What is the name of your best friend?”).

Resume: forgetting helps to find exact answer.

2. Forgetting helps to keep information up-to-date

Let’s pretend that John Doe is 30 years old now (2003 year). So his brain keeps this information (“I’m 30 years old”).

What will happen if you ask John about his age today? Most probably John will say “I’m 30 years old”.

What will happen if you ask John about his age 10 years later (2013 year)? Will John answer that he “is 30 years old”? Most probably – he will not. At 2013 John will forget that he “is 30 years old” and will remember that he “is 40 years old”.

Resume: forgetting helps to easily update obsolete information.

3. Forgetting saves hardware resources

If some concepts and relations were erased (were forgotten) – some hardware resources are released. The released hardware resources may be used for new information (concepts and relations).

Implementation of forgetting in PCnous

In PCnous forgetting process is implemented by Memory Cleaner routine.