The way people remember something, and how it actually happened.

I think that many ( most?) people believe that memory in the human brain functions in the same way as a digital recording device ( i was going to say a video recorder or a film camera).
It just passively records everything in an unbiased manner. The human brain doesn't record so much as try to make sense out of input and then store that as easily as possible...not as accurately as possible.

 

Unfortunately, in a court of law, eye-witness testimony has often been enough to get someone convicted of murder. I've always believed that eye-witness testimony, lacking forensic evidence to back it up, should be treated as hearsay. But what do I know, I can't even remember to buy all the stuff on the grocery list my wife writes for me.

 

Some people I've encountered practice the art of diversion which is hard to respond to if you are an honest type. It appears as a lie about another person or possibly yourself. You get caught up in the unbelief trying to decipher why the person diverting is lying about you or if another person, if the lie is true or not, and miss the fact that it's a diversion to move the focus off the actual person or act that is trying to be covered up. Once you experience a couple of these your go-to-game is to consider the situation as a diversion first, verify if that's the case, then deal with outcome and the people involved. So eyewitness testimony, is not always as straight forward as it seems. However, some times it is and you have to be able to read through the experience.

Kind of like the political game that's been going on over the last couple of years.

 

A family member was in a car accident and the guy at fault swears she hit him at top speed (despite the fact she had just gone over a speed bump and she was 3/4 of the way across the crossing.

Our memories fill in the gaps rather than record what happened. The guys from Pink Floyd basically had to accept that no ones memory was correct so maybe x didn’t say y to z.


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I bristle up a little every time I see a movie or TV show where someone points at hard evidence and says, "that's just circumstantial." In real life, so-called circumstantial evidence is more reliable and more persuasive to a jury than most eye witnesses are.

 

In one circle I'm part of, there's a very famous story about how a particular yearly event got started. The protagonist tried for many years to change the myth to truth. Then he gave up, stating that the myth was a better story anyway.

 

@The Angle

footprints across snow = circumstantial evidence of somebody going from here to there

very reliable, to establish A fact: somebody probably went from here to there

 

Rashomon is a great movie.

 

There's been over 200 people released from death row who were there due to eye witness testimony and that DNA evidence later revealed to have been innocent. Plenty of TED talks from very knowledgeable people about the fallibility of our memory.

 

This occurs all the time between me and my three YOUNGER brothers. We will be talking about things that happened when we were kids (sometimes them being mere toddlers) and our accounts vary wildly. One example that came up two weeks ago.....I mentioned that it was unusual that the house we grew up in had no door from the front garage into the house. You had to get out of car in garage, walk out the garage door, shut it, then go in the front door. My brother (six years younger) said there WAS a door into the living room. I said WHERE?.....there wasn't. He described a certain wall. I said that's where the built in bookshelf was located. HE didn't remember a built in bookshelf AT ALL. We dropped it, but later in a phone call with another brother (two years younger than me) I mentioned this. He said our dad once mentioned to him that there was a door once upon a time, but that was where he BUILT THE BOOKSHELF. It was done when I was probably a year old, so no one else had yet been born.....I didn't even remember. The first brother (six years younger, and not even born) thought he remembered a door, and would have sworn in court that he did. They moved away from that house when he was about sixteen (I was already gone) so he SHOULD have remembered the bookshelf, but he swears he has no memory of it. Things like this happen all the time.....I'm just surrounded by imbeciles! (not really)

 

Thank you for mentioning this. It's long been an example of the problem of how we remember things, as well as the relativity of perspective. Citizen Kane would also go hand in hand with Rashomon.

By the way, during my Kurosawa phase, I was aided by Vision Video on Broad st there in Athens, as they had almost every Kurosawa film ever made.

 

the lesson is: don't believe anybody. Not even your mother. People are either lying or unable to remember the simplest detail; yet they tell that story like it is the truth.

 

Researchers have pointed to the fact that recalling something actually alters it, at the cellular level. So each time we recall something, we're changing our memory. That's a lovely thought. Many years before that research, Phil Lesh once remarked that each time we remember something, we're not recalling the event itself, only the last time we remembered it. So it appears memory functions like magnetic tape, degrading with each use.

Another interesting thing about memory - I recently noticed that memories I have about past times and events are a fabrication of sorts. The emotions/feelings, mental tone/feeling happening at the moment is 'encoded' into the memory. This creates a sense and recollection of certain times and places having qualities that aren't actually inherent to them, they are projections created by the mind, and superimposed on the experience. Yet my mind tells me that is how it was.

As someone once remarked, "Your mind is lying to you."

 

I've heard recently that when we remember something, we're not working with the event itself, but with the most recent recollection. So what this tells me is that if you lie to yourself enough about something, you'll end up believing it as truth. Which makes me wonder if you could actively revise your memory, and potentially pass a lie detector test based on what you have told yourself over time.

Edit: missed Endless Mike's post by moments.

 

Not even yourself.

 

It's not even about "lying" to yourself. People with all the right intentions can have false memories.

 

I have a vivid memory of being on the school bus hearing Willie do "Blue Eyes Crying In The Rain" which was sparked last night by the Ken Burns Country doc. Well, the song, and album was released in 1975, my senior year of high school. I didn't ride the bus in 1975, I drove to school. Hmmmm. I'm sure there is a rational explanation. ;0)

 

Great minds think amuck!

This last spring, I was involved in a program that used as part of its process, a technique to do exactly what you're asking about - intentional revision of memories. In this case it was used for something positive and healthy, and not intended to deceive in any way. But it could be used otherwise. As you pointed to, it is likely happening all the time, although people aren't aware it is what they are doing. That's a comforting thought. I guess reality is what you can get away with.