If you are implying that human memory has infinite capacity, that's not possible. The human brain is a finite, physical thing. It can't store an infinite amount of data.
If you just mean that human memory has a finite capacity that's much larger than anyone has come close to reaching by storing the memories of a normal human lifetime, that might make sense.
Do you have any references for your statements about memory? I'm not familiar with whatever science there is in this area.
The claim that everything is there does not imply infinite, or even large capacity.
Consider an exponentially weighted moving average - you can just keep putting more data in forever and the memory requirement is constant.
The brain stores information as a weighted graph which basically acts as lossy compression. When you gain more information, graph weights are updated, essentially compressing what was already in there further. Eventually you get to a point where what you can recall is useless, which is what we would consider forgotten, and eventually the contribution of a single datapoint becomes insignificant, but it never reaches zero.
> The claim that everything is there does not imply infinite, or even large capacity.
It implies enough capacity to store everything. But what you describe is not storing everything.
> lossy compression
Which means you're not storing all the information. You're not storing everything.
> When you gain more information, graph weights are updated, essentially compressing what was already in there further.
In other words, each time you store a new memory, you throw some old information away.
Which the person I was responding to said does not happen.
And this description is based on what?
I didn't mean either of the things that you are wondering whether I meant, so i can't give you evidence of those things you made up yourself.
If you have questions about my comment, I'm happy to try to explain myself better
"I didn't understand you at all, so you must have meant either A or B" is not the way to reach an understanding
> i can't give you evidence of those things you made up yourself.
I didn't ask for that. I asked if you have references for what you said. Even if I misunderstood you, that shouldn't be a reason for you not to give references for your statements, if you have them.
If you don't have any references to back up your statements, then I'm not sure what you're basing them on.
Your words: "Every memory your brain has ever produced is still there [..]"
How would that not imply infinite storage?
It wouldn't imply infinite storage because human life is not infinite in time and memories do not accumulate at an infinite rate in storage consumed per unit time, so the total storage over a human lifespan is finite, so the claim can be true with finite storage.
It is almost certainly false, but it doesn't require infinite storage to be true.
> human life is not infinite in time and memories do not accumulate at an infinite rate in storage consumed per unit time
Which would put it into the category of the second part of my comment--which the person I was responding to said was not relevant to what they meant.
> The human brain is a finite, physical thing. It can't store an infinite amount of data.
True, but it doesn't really detract from his statement because do we really know what that upper bound even is? I don't think we come close to the theoretical storage limit... So saying "every memory you have is permanently stored" is effectively true, at least true enough for a thought experiment like this. Perhaps when people live to be 200 years old and we know more about the brain we can test this, though.
I used to be weary of learning new, complex things, thinking I'd "lose" old knowledge XD
> I don't think we come close to the theoretical storage limit
That was the point of the second part of my comment--which the person I was responding to said was not relevant to what he meant.