Dormant Memories
I found this experience of rediscovering dormant memories fascinating. Here are my top examples:
Qualitative(?) Processing Unit
Back in high school, or perhaps college, I stumbled upon a research paper that I’ve never been able to find again. The author, a Stanford (?) PhD student from Africa, proposed a radical idea – building a processing chip that prioritized energy efficiency over accuracy. While its error rates would be much higher than conventional, energy-gobbling CPUs, the law of large numbers would ensure the final calculations were “close enough.” For years, this concept lingered in the back of my mind. It wasn’t until I began writing my novel that this memory resurfaced, providing the ideal scaffold for my AI narrative.
Great Nothing
Of course, the lazy yet logical answer would be that I wrote The Vault around the ideas I found fascinating. On the surface, this is by far the easiest and perhaps the most compelling explanation.
Another possibility is that these memories were already stored in my brain, and the act of writing reestablished the neural pathways to them. There are slight variations of this theory. For instance, perhaps it isn’t the writing per se, but the sudden collision of concepts. Such a coalition of ideas provided the precise jolt needed to bring hibernating memories back to life. Or it could be a simple instance of context-dependent memory retrieval.
The most likely answer is a hybrid of these two explanations, as writing is truly an iterative process.
Then there is the explanation my limbic system finds far more appealing. It is the answer that just feels right: somehow, my younger self knew that certain memories were worth holding onto. It is akin to the anthropic principle, but on a microcosmic scale.
In more relatable words, I find certain ideas resonate more deeply than others. To use a culinary analogy, this resonance goes far beyond ‘wow, this dish tastes so good; I am going to order it again.’ It is much more visceral than that – like the food critic Anton Ego having that soul-stirring flashback upon tasting the humble ratatouille. Some ideas and feelings are just intensely personal. They grab hold of me like a hostage and won’t let go, beckoning me to give them meaning.
The mystery is that, unlike Ego’s affinity for ratatouille, it wasn’t maternal care, or any form of warm emotional reward that bound me to certain ideas. I simply felt, intuitively, that these concepts would have deep implications across my entire lifespan. While it sounds preposterous on the surface, the idea isn’t entirely outside the boundaries of theoretical physics.
“Theoretical physicist Brian Greene uses a famous “loaf of bread" analogy in his book The Fabric of the Cosmos to explain Einstein's block universe. He describes four-dimensional spacetime as a complete loaf where past, present, and future all coexist, and different observers slice it at different angles depending on their motion.”
Although one might infer otherwise, I am not implying a deterministic universe or a lack of free will. Rather, I am espousing that time seems to behave differently when I engage in certain tasks. Whether it is the sensation of time halting or dormant memories roaring back like tsunamis, time seems to yield its mighty grip, whenever I immerse myself in the activities I find interesting.
Estimating which of these explanations is technically ‘right’ might be an interesting epistemic pursuit, but I am far more interested in their practical implications. In other words, how does believing one explanation over the others change how I behave today? This is the exact metric I use to evaluate religious faith. Everyone believes their own religion is the true one; rather than debating the dogma itself, I am infinitely more interested in how their faith shapes their daily actions.
The reason I gravitate toward this final explanation is its influence on my behavior. The implication is clear: if I believe that certain memories will roar back in the future, then I must remain true to myself and relentlessly pursue the ideas that deeply resonate with me. As of today, there are many subjects that captivate me, but one particularly fascinating topic is the Great Nothing. I am excited to see how my future self will wrestle with the concept of this massive, inexplicable cosmic void.
