People who forget are often more intelligent

Professor Blake Richard of the University of Scarborough, in Ontario, has analyzed the role of forgetting in the cognitive function of the brain.

His most recent study on memory shows that unlike what we're used to listening to, in fact frequent forgetting, is a sign of intelligence in brain function.

The true purpose of the memory is to help in the decision making process. It's important that the brain forget details that didn't work out in order to focus more on making decisions in the real world.

When you recall only the essence of a conversation or a social meeting compared with every detail that happened, that means that your brain forgets the details, but it creates fundamental naked memories that are more useful for future decision making and forecasts.

If you're trying to be presentable in your daily life and your brain is constantly bringing multiple conflicting memories, it makes it harder for you to make a well-informed and accurate decision.

The second way that forgetting helps us make better decisions is by allowing us to generalize past events in new ones. In artificial intelligence, this principle is called regulation and functions by creating simple computer models that give priority to essential information, but they eliminate specific details when large data sets are analyzed, allowing wider application.

The purpose of memory, it's to make you an intelligent person who can make decisions considering the circumstances, and an important aspect of helping you do this is to forget some trivial information.