Blogpost 5: Who? What? Huh?

Though most of us would like to have a super power memory, it is actually good to sometimes be able to forget. And I am not talking about forgetting because you don't want to remember your old crush, or how your boy/girlfriend dumped you. I am talking about forgetting because the information you garnered was wrong.

In the age of information, answers are just a few clicks away. You can ask if there are classes today, or maybe on how to pick up chicks, anything you can imagine under the sun you can probably find on the internet. But remember that not all of them are true. What if the website that told you if there are classes was outdated, or the guy who wrote the article on how to pick up chicks is actually a jealous girl that is trying to keep you from getting any luck, point is there are lots of information available on the internet, but they may or may not even be true. So you have to forget those misinformation.

This is where hypercorrection comes in. In an article by  Drake Bennet entitled "The science of forgetting" on Bloomberg he mentioned that hypercorrection is when... 

" ...a person learns that something they really thought was true is in fact false, they tend to remember the correct answer. But if they only halfheartedly believed the incorrect information to begin with, they’re more likely to forget the correct answer. "

Meaning that it is actually easier to remember information that you were corrected on. For example, the Americans were the first people on space, where in fact it was the Russians that first orbited earth from outer space. You will remember this fact better now, to a certain extent.

Since errors that we are sure are correct are deeply entrenched in our minds, says psychologist Andrew Butler, overtime we are more likely to go back to those erroneous beliefs. And why is it so deeply entrenched in our minds, because we constantly hear it again and again and again.

Yet another reason why we should forget is that forgetting is actually important in the creation of new memories. This may also be the reason why children are better in understanding semantic memories, or memories that contains meanings and understandings (e.g. language and letters), more than others. Because according to Ian Chant from Scientific American in his article "Forgetting Is Harder for Older Brains' the brain cells...

"...become wired together with new synapses, the connections between neurons that enable communication. When a memory fades, those synapses weaken. "

Now bear in mind that in able to forget, the brain uses a special protein that helps destroy these synapses. But according to research, that as you get older the body produces much larger levels of protein that, instead of destroying these synapses, actually prevents such forgetting, making learning and memorizing new information harder and more laborious as we age.