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On Forgetting

忘却は記憶の失敗ではなく、知性のもう片方の翼 — そんなエッセイ。

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Most of us treat forgetting as a problem to be solved. We buy planners, take photos of meals we want to remember, write down passwords we will lose anyway. The implied assumption is that more memory would be better. But neuroscientists who study the architecture of human recall keep arriving at the opposite conclusion: forgetting is not a leak in the system. It is a feature. The brain that remembered everything would be unable to think. Every time you recognize a friend's face, you are quietly suppressing thousands of irrelevant similarities — the strangers with similar haircuts, the photographs you saw last week, the abstract concept of a face. Recognition is, in part, the active forgetting of everything else. The same is true of language, of decision-making, of finding your way home. People with extraordinary memory, the rare cases who recall every day of their lives in detail, often describe it as a burden, not a gift. They cannot generalize easily. They cannot let things go. The wisdom in the old phrase "forgive and forget" turns out to be more biological than we thought. To remember everything would be to live, permanently, in the past. The mind is built, instead, to lose just enough to keep moving.

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we buy planners, take photos of meals we want to remember, write down passwords文法
手帳を買い、覚えておきたい料理の写真を撮り、パスワードを書き留める
動詞句の3並列。エッセイのリスト書き出し。
The implied assumption is that more memory would be better.語彙
暗黙の前提は『記憶が多いほどよい』だ。
〈the implied X〉= 『暗黙の X』、評論文の標準語彙。〈would be〉= 仮定法的判断。
forgetting is not a leak in the system. It is a feature.表現
忘却はシステムの漏れではない。機能だ。
〈not A. It is B〉= 短文連投で論調を絞る。〈leak〉= 『漏れ』、〈feature〉= 『機能』、テック比喩。
The brain that remembered everything would be unable to think.文法
すべてを記憶する脳は、考えることができないだろう。
仮定法 (would be unable to think)。仮想の存在を論じる典型構文。
you are quietly suppressing thousands of irrelevant similarities語彙
無関係な何千もの類似点を静かに抑制している
現在進行形 + 副詞 quietly。〈suppress〉= 『抑制する』、認知科学・心理学の専門語。
Recognition is, in part, the active forgetting of everything else.表現
認識とは、ある意味で、それ以外のすべてを能動的に忘れることだ。
〈in part〉= 『一部では』、コンマで挿入。〈active forgetting〉= 『能動的な忘却』、矛盾語法 (oxymoron)。
the rare cases who recall every day of their lives in detail表現
人生の毎日を詳細に思い出せる稀な人々
〈cases〉(症例) を人として扱う関係詞 who。〈in detail〉= 『詳細に』。
They cannot let things go.表現
物事を手放せない。
〈let X go〉= 『X を手放す/解放する』、慣用句。
turns out to be more biological than we thought表現
私たちが思っていたよりも生物学的なものだったらしい
〈turn out to be〉= 『〜だと判明する』。〈more X than we thought〉= 比較構文。
To remember everything would be to live, permanently, in the past.文法
すべてを記憶することは、永久に過去に住むことだ。
to不定詞主語 + 仮定法 (would be) + to不定詞補語。哲学エッセイの定型。
to lose just enough to keep moving文法
動き続けるためにちょうど十分なだけを失うように
〈just enough to + 動詞〉= 『〜するのにちょうど十分なだけ』、量を絞る上級表現。