I think long term memory is more organized than a hash table. I base this on observation of my own brain during a bad LSD trip, where I seemed to be aware of how I was reaching decisions.
For example, if I looked at a door and wanted to remember what that door was for, I could "see" a vast 2 or 3 dimensional array of hundreds of doors that I had seen before, arranged so that similar doors were near each other, and then I was aware of some kind of focusing in on the region of door-space where doors similar to the target door resided, and then I was aware of some kind of comparison of each of the doors in that region serially with the door I was looking at to find a match, and then the data for the best match was made available to my normal consciousness.
During another part of that trip I was aware of audio processing. I'd hear someone talking and first hear it as unintelligible sound, then I'd be aware of the sounds being broken down into separate sound units, and then recognized as English words, and then the relationships between the words being recognized, and then I'd become aware of the meaning of what I'd heard.
I also had a time during that trip where I was watching visual processing. I'd be aware of how my mind was noticing things in the scene I was looking at, recognizing objects and remembering what they were, and combining that to build an understanding of the scene.
Now I have no way of knowing how much of this was just hallucinations shaped by my knowledge of computers, and how much really was the LSD actually letting me observe consciously mental processes that normally operate as black boxes to the conscious.
It's too bad research using LSD was greatly curtailed when the drug was banned. My suspicion is that what I perceived on that trip was a mix of reality and hallucinations driven by my computer knowledge. With enough experimentation, with people with different backgrounds observing and reporting, we could probably get some real insights into what is really going on in there.
I found LSD did not introduce things that weren't present already. Instead, it removed the filters that are necessary on a daily basis for me to get things done, and suddenly I was aware of and appreciating all the things that my subconscious normally sees and dismisses. The most vivid example of this was an awareness of the patterns and textures surrounding us all the time, as well as the relationship between spatial objects (e.g. a sign or a tree stood out as significant, rather than part of the "background").
For example, if I looked at a door and wanted to remember what that door was for, I could "see" a vast 2 or 3 dimensional array of hundreds of doors that I had seen before, arranged so that similar doors were near each other, and then I was aware of some kind of focusing in on the region of door-space where doors similar to the target door resided, and then I was aware of some kind of comparison of each of the doors in that region serially with the door I was looking at to find a match, and then the data for the best match was made available to my normal consciousness.
During another part of that trip I was aware of audio processing. I'd hear someone talking and first hear it as unintelligible sound, then I'd be aware of the sounds being broken down into separate sound units, and then recognized as English words, and then the relationships between the words being recognized, and then I'd become aware of the meaning of what I'd heard.
I also had a time during that trip where I was watching visual processing. I'd be aware of how my mind was noticing things in the scene I was looking at, recognizing objects and remembering what they were, and combining that to build an understanding of the scene.
Now I have no way of knowing how much of this was just hallucinations shaped by my knowledge of computers, and how much really was the LSD actually letting me observe consciously mental processes that normally operate as black boxes to the conscious.
It's too bad research using LSD was greatly curtailed when the drug was banned. My suspicion is that what I perceived on that trip was a mix of reality and hallucinations driven by my computer knowledge. With enough experimentation, with people with different backgrounds observing and reporting, we could probably get some real insights into what is really going on in there.