It feels like notes about the situation rather than it being in memory. Memory has more "attention". I think that "it starts to fail" is load bearing here.
I feel like memory has like 5 parts, and LLMs are missing 2 of them:
current working memory
short term what is immediately happening without it being in "RAM". I differentiate here vs working in like thinking fast and slow. Keeping things in working memory is work! You can vibe away short term memory. I had excellent short term memory while I was messed up, I could keep time well. I think LLMs can do this with notes.
mid term: Vague awareness of things like what day a week it is or what you did 2 hours ago. This is where my memory personally failed
long term memory of experiences. You can fake this with memory.md
generalized wisdom for pattern matching long term memories
LLMs seem to be missing that part I was missing. Im probably projecting and anthropomorphizing. But i relate: I would confabulate a ton and didn't know anything was wrong for a while but things seemed off.
Context is like working memory but not short term or mid term. I think you can imply short term with big enough context.
My categories are purely anthropomorphic to me but just wanted to say where I disagreed.