this post was submitted on 07 Aug 2025
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The Monkey's Paw
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No, humans definitely need to learn how to walk and talk.
Just because it happens subconsciously doesn't make it any less learning. Babies don't know how to walk, they need to practice and learn it. Nor do they know how to speak, they must also practice and learn it.
If you were to unlearn everything in your life, your brain would be indistinguishable from a newborn - by definition. Your brain only changes itself through learning. Also, adult brains have has far less neuroplasticity than toddlers so enjoy being unable to learn even a quarter of the knowledge you gained when you were a child.
But the post doesn't say that we "unlearn everything in our life" - it says we lose our memory.
Acquired behaviors (note that I won't refer to them as "learned", because the distinction made between "learning" and "acquiring" is a useful one for many reasons - I'd be happy to go further in depth here if you're interested!) are stored in different parts of the brain than what we commonly refer to as "memory".
If you're hung up on the definition of memory, we need look no further than the fact that a common synonym for amnesia is "losing one's memory". If you want to use a definition of "memory" that goes beyond what people usually mean when they say it, that's fine, but then our comments here seem to boil down to a disagreement over definitions, rather than a disagreement over empirical facts.