Having both episodic and semantic memory is what lets a mind change on a dime without erasing what it already learned, and it is why humans can learn from so little data.

So it gives us this enormous amount of flexibility to stop on a dime and change, without having to erase everything we’ve already learned. And that solution is incredibly powerful, because it gives you the ability to learn from so much less information, really, and it gives you that flexibility. So one of the things I think that makes humans great is having both episodic and semantic memory.