The Geometry of Forgetting
Why do we forget? Why do we remember things that never happened? The conventional answer points to biological hardware. We propose a different one: geometry. Here we show that high-dimensional embedding spaces, subjected to noise, interference, and temporal degradation, reproduce quantitative signatures of human memory with no phenomenon-specific engineering. Power-law forgetting ($b = 0.460 \pm 0.183$, human $b \approx 0.5$) arises from interference among competing memories, not from decay. The identical decay function without competitors yields $b \approx 0.009$, fifty times smaller. Time alone does not produce forgetting in this system. Competition does. Production embedding models (no...
| Authors | Sambartha Ray Barman, Andrey Starenky, Sophia Bodnar et al. |
|---|---|
| Primary category | q-bio.NC |
| Published | 27 March 2026 |
| Last updated at source | 27 March 2026 |
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