The memory illusion
Think you have a good memory? Think again. Memories are our most cherished possessions. We rely on them every day of our lives. They make us who we are. And yet the truth is they are far from being the accurate record of the past we like to think they are. True, we can all admit to having suffered occasional memory lapses, such as entering a room and immediately forgetting why, or suddenly being unable to recall the name of someone we've met dozens of times. But what if we have the potential for more profound errors of memory, even verging on outright fabrication and self-deception? Dr Julia Shaw uses the latest research to show the astonishing variety of ways in which our brains can indeed be led astray.
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What Hacker News says
- There's a great book called "The Memory Illusion" by Dr. Julia Shaw
http://www.memoryillusion.com/
It's very easy to get false convictions, and to make people believe false memories. There have been widely replicated experiments.
- Memory is a story we tell ourselves about the past, and the memory is recreated every time we tell the story. It's very possible to have real memories of things that never happened. We can make them entirely on our own, or people can put them into our heads. Real memories of things that never happened.
Dr Julia Shaw's "The Memory Illusion" contains a readable account of doing so.
