A thing that irregularly irritates me about my brain is that it appears to have different algorithms for answering the questions ‘where should I look for X?’ and ‘where should I put X so that I'll know where to find it next time?’.

The usual illustration of this is that I lose something, and after searching everywhere decide I'd better give up looking and buy a new one. When I get the new one, I try to think of somewhere good to put it so I'll be sure of being able to find it next time – and the place I decide on is often somewhere I hadn't yet looked for the old one, and guess what I find there when I do?

My brain doesn't seem to want to make it easy to solve this problem, because its where-should-I-put-this algorithm doesn't like being invoked counterfactually. If I pretend I've just bought a new one and ask myself where I should put it, I'm likely to get the same set of answers as I did from the where-should-I-look-for-it algorithm; it's only when I've really just bought a new one that the real where-should-I-put-it algorithm activates and I'm able to frustratingly find the old one after all.

It's terribly annoying and I wish it would stop it. Bah.