is it completely new knowledge? because to you you cant recall anything about it, before experiencing it again but to you it's like the first time. so is knowledge you have learnt, not thought about for 30 years, then re-learned, brand new knowledge?
There is decay theory , which proposes that memory is forgotten over time while there id interference theory which proposes that information learnt will interfere with other information , making it harder to retrieve some information. Decay theory is generally out of favor among memory researchers and generally takes the notion that there is no forgetting in long term memory ,but just retrieval failure. Learning has three stages , encoding,storage and retrieval. Think of it as having a a storage of CD albums. Over the years you will accumulate more and more Cd's and if I ask you to retrieve an album you have not listened to in 20 years you'd have a hard time finding it. Just like the CD it isn't brand new so is knowledge previously learnt it's just difficult to retrieve. another reason you can't retrieve the knowledge is that it's context dependent, so if the environment and state of mind during encoding and retrieval is different, then retrieval is harder.
I studied them theories when I was considering psychology as my major in college....glad I came to my senses lol On da real doe....I think its more of a blend of all those theories. Memories decay but also new infomation can interfere with old memories. This gives rise to things like false memory syndrome, implanted details, and hindsight bias, among others.
I think you may forget some knowledge, but it will still be extremely deep within your memory. And when you relearn it, you have that -Oh Yeah!- feeling. It all has to do with what memories you need access to, and less important memories will naturally fade away. But my opinion says they are still buried deep in there somewhere.
the way i see it, you take in information. that bit of data gets saved physically (somehow) in the brain. you build synapses between that data and other data which allows you to relate bits of data to another, forming knowledge. i believe any time you take in data of any kind it is saved, although you may not have formed enough synapses to ever make use of it. eventually you may form some of those which causes you to remember that long forgotten data.
"Marijuana affects the memory" - Dave Chappelle, Science, and our own experiences. To answer your question, yes. It's one of the many drawbacks.
Everything you learn remains in your brain somewhere, even if you can't consciously recall it...which is why it's been shown that it's easier to learn something a second time, even if you don't consciously recall the information.
What? This discussion has nothing to do with Marijuana. And yes it does affect short term memory, but not long term. And interestingly, there are people who remember every single thing they experience. They cannot forget. These people are called savants. They always have a form of autism, accompanied by an extremely amazing ability. I've seen some savants that read full books in minutes, draw the city of new York with ever detail after just one helicopter ride, and one boy who mastered the piano around ages 7-9. But many have the ability to not forget. There's plenty of this on YouTube.
^ there are people with superior autobiographical memory , and with exception of their very accurate autobiographical memory , they're high functioning people with the lack of any apparent deficit. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2zTkBgHNsWM
we can really get into it if ya want and say you already know all information that could ever exist and just cant access it like a forgotten memory