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It would be interesting to analyze these abilities from the viewpoint of evolutionary adaptation.

Perhaps from the perspective of a band of proto-humans, it was highly adaptive for some members of the tribe to have strong episodic memories, but not necessary for everyone.

Similarly, it was probably highly adaptive for a few members to be gifted with a structured, logical approach to problem-solving. Given the development of language, the whole tribe benefits from the specialized abilities of various members.



Except there no reason to believe one style of memory is more or less related to being a logical/structured thinker. For example visual thinkers may be better at geometry by flipping and rotating images around in their head. Feynman describes solving logical things by reducing them to simple geometric problems.




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