Forgetfulness and Intelligence: Forgetting is just as important as remembering

A good memory does not equate to high intelligence

Forgetting is a part of Intelligence

Our brain is setup to forget some things and remember only some.

The goal of memory is not to retain the most accurate information over time, but to guide and optimize intelligent decision making by only holding on to pertinent information. It is important that the brain forgets irrelevant details and instead focuses on the stuff that is going to help make decisions in the real world.

One of these mechanisms is the weakening or elimination of synaptic connections between neurons in which memories are encoded. Another mechanism is the generation of new neurons in the hippocampus. As new neurons integrate into the hippocampus, the new connections change existing circuits and overwrite memories stored in those circuits, making them harder to access.

Our brains spend so much energy storing memories, but also spend so much energy trying to forget information.

In a constantly changing world, old information becomes outdated and not as important to remember. In addition, forgetting helps us to make better decisions by allowing us to generalize past events to new ones. 

The point of memory is to make us intelligent persons who can make decisions given the circumstances, and an important aspect in helping us do that is being able to forget some information.

There is a lot to write about it, but I have just forgot…Sorry.