The point is not that memory is nothing more than a pile of loose facts and a catalog of tall tales. It’s that retrieving any memory alters its accessibility, and often its content. There is an emerging theory that accounts for these and related ideas. It’s called the New Theory of Disuse, to distinguish it from an older, outdated principle stating, simply, that memories evaporate entirely from the brain over time if they’re not used. The new theory is far more than an updating, though. It’s an overhaul, recasting forgetting as the best friend of learning, rather than its rival.
