Context is critical for biological memories because evolution knows that memories are going to be reinterpreted by a future you that is not the same as past you.
Your future brain might have undergone puberty and remodeling with the hormones. It might have aged. It might have learned all kinds of stuff that makes the past knowledge seen in a new way. Memories are living and they are constantly adapted. I wonder how much of that capacity is in the cleverness of the host’s mechanisms, or is it in some sort of basal competency of memories to adapt and survive and maintain themselves in whatever medium they can?
As William James said, “thoughts are the thinkers”. Maybe it’s a collaboration of both – the drive of memories to persist and the agency of the plastic cognitive apparatus that helps them adjust to a new environment.
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