okay i have a thought experiment for you imagine you use a notes app in your phone over the next
10 years to record everything you think of your thoughts your to-do list your calendar
your contacts will that ruin your memory this is a question that i've had for a while because it was
actually the topic of the first video that i made and uploaded to this youtube channel seven years
ago and i've been thinking about how this video stacks up to the kinds of things that i make now
so i had it fact checked i haven't watched this in seven years because i know the production value is
super dodgy and i'm sure that most of you have never seen it so let's dive in okay here we go
i'm a little nervous in 2009 a plane was flying from new jersey to buffalo new york as it cruised
on autopilot at 16 000 feet it encountered a massive storm front approaching the airport the
plane's controls began to shutter loudly a sign the plane was losing lift and might stall the
pilot took action he pulled back on the controls lifting the plane's nose this was precisely the
wrong thing to do instead of preventing a stall he caused one the plane spun out of control and
plummeted into a house killing all on board both the plane and the house kind of look like they
were made by an eight-year-old which is to say that if you want to get good at something all you
need to do is to do it for seven years and then you'll be able to make really good arts and crafts
it's like the 1000 hour rule all you have to do is do this for a thousand hours over the course
of however many years and you'll be great how had this pilot forgotten his basic emergency training
is technology ruining our memory so i think what we've learned about a lot of aircraft
training over the past few years is that maybe the pilot never got their emergency
training in the first place also there's so many plane channels now aviation channels
but even like wendover production and cgp grey make all of this plain content
was this the first popular plane video we're all living in the age of google when we google
one thing in wikipedia another we're not relying on our brains but on our fingertips is it making
us dumber the ipad first consider there are two types of memory non-declarative memory for skills
emotions and movements like how to ride a bike and then there's declarative memory for facts and
information like your phone number or the capital of australia is so bad okay my fact checker has
written a note here saying that there's lots of other ways we can characterize memory as well
episodic versus semantic retrospective versus perspective working memory versus long-term memory
but she didn't write down any other definitions of those so if you're interested in further
information on them you'll have to google it so when we use technology to look up information
we're extending our declarative memories but is that at the expense of what's in our brain okay a
note from my fact checker is that non-declarative memory is correct but it's important to note that
non-declarative memories are unconscious so we ride a bike we drive maybe subconscious we'd
write a but am i fact checking my fact-checker now the hippocampus is a major part of the brain
we use in declarative memory function it gives us the ability to retain recall memories about facts
like the largest animal on earth and events like your first kiss or the first cd you bought
the formation of new declarative memories relies on both the hippocampus and a region around it the
parahippocampal gyrus you know what's interesting about the parahippocampal gyrus is that i never
use terms like that anymore because to so many people they to most people they mean absolutely
nothing so now i'm more likely to say another area of your memory center in your brain or something
like that that is much more vague except it plays better into a narrative lessons from vanessa
so what happens when we have information at our fingertips and we don't need to remember facts
anymore well the process in our brain of how we form retain and recall memories remains the same
what changes is what we choose to form memories about okay so on what changes is what we choose to
form memories about i do have a fact-checking note that the study is phrased this way but the authors
don't actually show the way that we remember things is different from how it was in the past
so maybe it's jumping to conclusions you could say instead of remembering more facts
we remember where to find them this is called the google effect i think the google effect is
such a cute name still in one study participants were told they could later look up the answers
online did not make the effort to remember general trivia when asked a question people actually
thought about computers and search engines instead of searching their own memories for the answer
the use of external memory systems is called transactive memory and is not new
einstein once said i do not carry such information in my mind since it is readily available in books
plus we've relied on other people to remember things for us like a husband or wife now there's
a third wheel in the relationship google i'm so embarrassed to laugh at myself and it's
connecting us like never before as for that lump of matter inside of our heads that's connected too
for our declarative memory using technology just means we're tweaking our memory hard drive so we
remember where the files and folders are where we can find information not necessarily the
facts themselves this will probably happen more and more as our relationship with devices grows
but it's not necessarily a bad thing fmri scans show that for people who are internet savvy
areas of our brains are way more active searching for information online than when reading a book
in our brains the hippocampus is still working the same way we're just choosing to retain the
most efficient way to find information and that's usually online we're all sharing the
work of remembering and it makes us collectively smarter okay the whole world of fmri studies is
very interesting so this is true but doesn't mean that the internet is making us smarter
maybe it's not that prior internet experience is causing increased brain activation it could be
that people whose brains are less active choose to use the internet less well doesn't
that make us all feel good if we're using the internet more and our brains are more active
but this is another interesting thing about fmri studies is that
if there is more activity in your brain it means there's more blood flow in that area that's how
these scans measure brain activity and what does that actually mean it means you're using
more of that area of your brain but does that mean that you're smarter in any way
what is smarter how do we measure that this is where fact checking just becomes a whole debate
it's actually pretty adaptive the only disadvantage is when you need knowledge
on the fly for split second decisions all you can search is that lump of matter inside your head
if you have a burning psychology question really in the comments
and subscribe to braincraft for a new video every other week please subscribe
but i don't know if i'll be able to answer all of your burning psychology questions anymore
okay this is my last fact-checking comment overall the way the internet is changing the way we learn
think and remember is probably pretty complicated and not fully understood welcome to social science
research i actually asked my fact checker to give this video a mark like it was a university
assignment and she has given it a B grade but she has written that most people and the scientists
who wrote the first study generally want to make a cohesive straightforward story but memory is super
complicated and there will always be nuance and contradictory findings but overall i'm actually
pleasantly surprised by the video i thought it was going to be terrible and it had a nice story there
was some cute bits of animation even if they were kind of dodgy and some jokes maybe i don't make
enough effort to make jokes anymore and i think i had such a low expectation of this going in
that i'm very pleased and surprised which is why we all need to realign our expectations of life
on a more serious note when i started doing this seven years ago i was using an old camera
and whatever light was coming through my window and now i have a whole community i have lots of
documentaries on my channel i have a youtube original look how far we've come i'm feeling
very grateful to have had a lot of opportunities that youtube has brought so thank you for watching
thank you for subscribing and my biggest thanks goes out to my patrons on patreon who have kept
this channel alive over the past couple of years if you have the means and you would like to join
the community i will leave a link to the braincraft patreon down in the description
if you can't join patreon please share this video with someone or share another video
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feed the algorithm because it's a hungry hungry little algorithm thanks again bye