Chapter 192: More About Memories

Sunday, May 8, 2005

Sunday morning I got up to study as usual, remembering not to use a light blob to light my way.

I started with some memory sharing tests, and found it even easier than the last time I'd tested it. It took no noticeable effort, either for the "retriever" or the "sender". (Sending memories was so easy now - requiring nothing more than being willing - that at this time we started referring to the two participants as the "retriever" and "owner". "Sender" wasn't appropriate because it misleadingly implied that person had to do something.)

Although it was effortless, it wasn't perfect. It wasn't even dramatically better than the last time we'd tested it. The remaining restraint was what I thought of as an indexing problem, and that had only improved a little. An algebra-trained mind trying to do a calculus problem (for example), didn't know precisely what calculus knowledge it needed, so it took some time for the right knowledge to 'appear' in the retriever's mind. This delay varied, but was often a handful of seconds, which is a heck of a long time to take to remember something.

I wasn't complaining though; I was too busy being happy. It was incredible that we could share memories and knowledge at all, and I was extremely happy that my ability to do so was good enough to eliminate the major problem I had been facing with the college courses being so interrelated. I had been living in fear that I'd have to get every mind to study every subject, which would have slowed me down by a factor of two, plus required me to redo the currently two courses with the teams swapped. It also would have meant sending one of my two computer systems back to OSU, which would be embarrassing to me and Prof.

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[[In a normal mind the memories are managed subconsciously. You don't consciously 'file' your memories, create indexes, etc. Even when you consciously retrieve a memory, it's really nothing more than a conscious request to your subconscious to get it for you. The subconscious - among its HUGE number of other tasks - is the 'librarian' of your memories.

The subconscious mind is no dummy. In some respects it's far smarter than your conscious mind, including because it can process information a GREAT deal faster, not being slowed down by the artificially reduced speed at which your conscious thought crawls. That's trained into you by the mechanical limits of human speech and hearing, in a process that makes as much sense as the Space Shuttles' engine size being restricted by the width of horses' asses. Both are logically absurd, stupidly restrictive, but true.

My four subconsciouses had learned to communicate and cooperate with each other; by definition, without my consciously being aware of it. So when I had a memory retrieval need, it was possible for two (or more) subconsciouses to work out what I needed, retrieve it from the owner's memory, send it to the retriever's conscious mind. The process was very similar to an ordinary memory retrieval, except for the parts where the subconsciouses worked out what I needed, which took a variable amount of back and forth communication between them, and transferring the resultant memory/knowledge across the 'bridge' between minds.

In some cases, the quickest and easiest approach was for the retriever's subconscious to tell the owner's subconscious what the problem was, so the owner's subconscious could get all the memories it knew would be needed to solve it. This was the easiest approach for nearly all of my college work, because the 'problem space' was so limited. In other words, the retriever's subconscious could define or repeat the problem to the owner's subconscious very quickly and easily. In other cases though, the 'problem space' was far too large to transfer (e.g., in social settings). In which case it was more a matter of the owner's subconscious suggesting possible memories, which were accepted or rejected depending on their fit to the problem.

Minds are constantly looking for ways to be efficient. To a large degree, that's what "intelligence" is, an intelligent person having an efficiently organized and mind and brain. This occurs both at the conscious level (you consciously learn tricks to solve problems faster - see "Example" four paragraphs below) and definitely at the subconscious level (it MUST get more efficient, because experiences accumulate throughout life, and interrelationships between those experiences grow exponentially). Thus what I have described above - my subconsciouses learning to cooperate in memory retrieval - was entirely consistent with normal brain/mind functionality, just extended into a multi-mind situation. All of this was occurring without my consciously being aware of it, except to have the initial need to be able to access each other's memories.

One VERY nice consequence of this internal methodology was that whenever the subconsciouses worked on a memory retrieval task, they swapped memory indexes back and forth, which they remembered. (To a much lesser extent, the memories themselves too, but I'm mostly talking about the indexes.) The more calculus problems an algebra-trained mind worked on, the more calculus indexes it accumulated in its own mind. In other words, we got more and more efficient at accessing each other's memories, eventually to the extent that it was usually not noticeably slower than accessing our own memories, depending on the subject. A problem involving rapidly changing knowledge wouldn't have had a chance to be shared around, but a stable body of knowledge would have its indexes 'cached' in every mind.

Because we were happy to share our memories, something our subconsciouses were well aware of, the cunning little devils got clever enough to preempt the sharing process in some areas of knowledge, such as our college studies. As new knowledge came in to one mind, it would file it away like a good librarian should, but it would also tell the other librarians what it'd just done, providing them with the indexes in case they later wanted the knowledge.

This was a large process (think of the number of indexes you have for all your memories, especially as every memory has multiple indexes!), so it took several weeks. It was also considerably complicated by a major event that occurred within that timeframe (which we'll get to soon), but when it was done, my life was considerably easier. Not just f0r my college studying either. For example, after a mind came off duty, the process of bringing him up to date with what he'd missed became much quicker, easier and more complete, as he had many of the memory indexes in place already.

"Example" of a problem-solving trick at the conscious level, as mentioned above, is a little technique to square any number ending in "5" (e.g., 205^2). Drop the 5, remembering only the rest of the number (in this case 20). Multiply that by itself plus one, i.e., x(x+1), (e.g., 20 x 21 = 420). Append "25" onto the back of the answer (in the following, the "&" symbol means "append"): e.g., 420 & 25 = 42025. In other words, 205^2 = 42,025. Thus 15^2 = 1x2 & 25 = 225. 25^2 = 2x3 & 25 = 625, etc. I read this in a math book I was reading for 'fun' when I was about ten (me = geek). I thought it was very cute, so I remembered it (correction: me = geek^2). I have used it in school several times, often dramatically impressing the class, as doing 65^2=4225 as fast as 6x7=42, looked impressive. Everyone thought I was very intelligent. I knew they were wrong, because it was merely a trick, but I enjoyed the momentary attention and glory, which I rarely got normally. But - I have subsequently learned - they were correct to think I was intelligent. Traditional "intelligence" is a mind that knows many such tricks. The fact that nearly all of those tricks are subconscious doesn't make them any less "tricks", or the person any more deserving of being called "intelligent".]]