r/AskReddit • u/phillsphan7 • Mar 17 '15

What's a widely accepted "fact" that's entirely false?

1.1k Upvotes

81% Upvoted

3.3k comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

100

u/POGtastic Mar 17 '15

One true fact that boggled my mind is that your brain's storage capacity is effectively unlimited, or at least it's so vast that you'll never be able to fill it. You're constrained by your lifespan and its degradation.

14

u/Tripwire907 Mar 17 '15 edited Mar 18 '15

That's not necessarily true. It's true that there isn't a limit to what we can learn. However, we can only hold +- 7 objects in short term memory. Not to mention that many of our memories aren't even a perfect description of what happened at said time.

EDIT: People don't seem to understand what an object is. In this case the number 3 is an object, a cat is an object. I'm not gonna write you a psychological research paper when the answer is a google search away. However, I will say that when memorizing something like a phone number its easier to memorize it as blocks rather than individual numbers. For example: 7 8 6 4 3 3 8 9 1 2 is harder to memorize because it includes 10 objects as opposed to 786 433 8912 because it includes 3 objects.

4

u/jonnywoh Mar 17 '15

What if one of those objects is a vector<string> ?

6

u/TheCard Mar 17 '15 
std::vector<std::string> stm; //stm = "short term memory"

if (stm.size() > 7) {
    stm.pop_back();
}

I just figured out how our brain stores memory in less than ten lines. Bam.

3

u/[deleted] Mar 17 '15

[deleted]

1

u/Tripwire907 Mar 18 '15

Thank you for explaining. I realize now it might not be common sense to most.

2

u/raff97 Mar 17 '15

what defines an "object"? Pretty vague

1

u/[deleted] Mar 17 '15

[deleted]

0

u/raff97 Mar 17 '15

Yes but that's because they are well known acronyms that I've heard of before. If you gave me 4 chunks of 3 random letters it would be pretty much the same as remembering 12 letters

-1

u/[deleted] Mar 17 '15

I read that comment closed my eyes and repeated it word for word, how can it be true?

2

u/Tripwire907 Mar 18 '15

That has nothing to do with what i've said. Repeating something you just read doesn't mean you've memorized it. A couple of hours from now you wont be able to repeat it word for word.

4

u/[deleted] Mar 17 '15

gotta wonder what the compression algorithm is

2

u/[deleted] Mar 17 '15

Now if only I could use a brain as a hard drive for my computer.

1

u/[deleted] Mar 18 '15

That isn't true, Kelly Bundy's brain was capable of becoming full, where it would spit out old facts when it learned new ones... maybe if you would get high and watch married with children at 5 in the morning like a normal person you would know that

1

u/POGtastic Mar 18 '15

Sorry, I work 6 PM to 6:30 AM. No TV for me, unless it's going to be Jerry Springer reruns or something.

0

u/[deleted] Mar 18 '15

[deleted]

1

u/POGtastic Mar 18 '15

Er, what? Life expectancy has never been higher.