re: #75 Prof. Backpfeifengesicht, PhD

One scary example I’ve found:

Memory is terrifyingly fallible.

Studies testing accuracy in eyewitness testimony are disheartening. People are exposed to the test material, and minutes later they’re screwing up the details…big details. Like reversing who was the attacker and who was the victim.

The other thing that’s weird is how performance changes memory. When you narrate an event, you impose a structure on it that maybe wasn’t there. And if you’re trying to be clever, or funny, or drive home a point: well, the exaggerations that were hyperbole or jest the first time you tell a story, become fact as you rehearse and repeat it. And at some point your narration feels like the truth.