GreyWolf

Many people associate a great memory with intelligence. Actually, memory in and of itself is only a single facet of intellectual ability. It is related to, and part of, intelligence, but one can be supremely intelligent and have a poor memory, and be relatively unintelligent and have an excellent memory. While people always think they wish they could remember MORE, there is an evolutionary advantage to being able to forget.

One of the most fascinating books ever (and quite short) is Aleksandr Luria's book "The Mind of a Mnemonist" (also called "The Story of S"). It is about one of the extremely rare cases of true eidetic memories. Luria was a well known Russian psychologist who encountered a young newspaper report, S., who had an absolutely perfect memory (and in some way, seemed to also suffer from synesthesia in that his memories combined all the senses - voices had colours, tastes, and textures). He could remember incredibly long lists of words after only a few minutes of study, forwards, backwards, or in random order; even hours, days, weeks, or years later.

And that was a problem. As the number of lists got longer, it became more difficult for him to find the correct one. It was easier for him to write down his grocery list, not because he could not remember it, but because he could remember last week's, and the week before, and the week before, and so on and so on.

He was actually of ordinary intelligence, and his memories became a burden to him. Much of his time was devoted to dealing with how to use them effectively. Without an efficient storage and retrieval system, too many memories overwhelm the intellect. Forgetting protects us from ourselves.

We are not our memories. We are largely the sum of our experiences, and how we reacted and continue to react to them, which is different. Many of those experiences are actually forgotten, as nature intended.

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The secret to great marksmanship is deciding what the target was AFTER you've shot.