As humans, in our lifetime, it is thought that on average we only use around 10% of our brains storage space.
My question is, why did evolution make us that way?
It is not just more stuff to go wrong? Could it be that we are destined to live much longer in the future?
No, there’s no “storage space” in our brains. It is not a hard disk, it is more like a neural network, with distributed information but also many other functions. The fact that we *use* just a small percentage of our brain capacity at any given time is because the nerve cells die as we grow old; we cannot grow new ones, and as other cells have to take over their role, we need a hefty reserve…
It is true that we have no actual storage space, I was trying to simplify things down to make it easier to read!
If something passes into your long term memory (LTM) according to multiple studies, it never disappears. This means that all you need is a trigger to help you remember the memory.
However as you say, nerve calls do die, meaning that if we do not access them, our memories can fade with time.