The Problem of False Memory

the problem of false memory:

of course, ideally, we'd like memory, what there is of it, to be true, but inevitably some of it is false, perhaps only a little part even, but that is enough to make us uneasy, if not question whether we are losing our minds.

as an example, i remember December, 1985, on winter school holiday, as a time of staying up late watching television. in my memory, a few years afterwards, i saw the film, Night Shift, on a Thursday night but also that it was New Year's Eve. now New Year's Eve, 1985, was a Tuesday so Thursday is perhaps a false memory. now for a long time right up to today, i thought i had seen the movie on a Thursday and therefore not on New Year's Eve, but having just discovered TV Tango's website and checking the listings for December 31, 1985 confirms that it was on CBS that day though of course this record may be false as everyone is confused. i thought for years that i had conflated two memories, and before that, that i had seen the movie on New Year's Eve and that December 31, 1985 was a Thursday. now one avenue of thought is that actually yes it was and somehow the calendar had changed after that but that is unlikely as i remember that August 27, 1986 was definitely a Wednesday and assuming the calendar hadn't changed between the two dates and that TV Tango is correct, December 31, 1985 was definitely a Tuesday and i saw Night Shift that night. where did the memory of Thursday come from? i did also have the vague memory that New Year's Day was Wednesday at the same time as thinking i saw the film on Thursday, so pretty confused there.

my dream life has some continuity as well, like a parallel world where i have a different history with the dream versions of people in waking life and in that they often happen in dream versions of places like schools i went to or old homes i lived in. it happened where i realized i was in a dream but struggled to remember whether such things had happened in waking life with people i knew. what i conclude from this is that memory is very bad in dreams, false memories are ever present, which explains why we remember so little of what happened before our lives on earth. that i was born into earth, this world, means that i had an amnesiac break from what went before, my previous life, perhaps i was asleep for days, if not months, dreaming and eventually captured and propelled by my dreams of earth into earth.

so i've muddled days and confused memories or that things had happened slightly differently or that the order was hard to determine, but most disturbingly, have i memories of events that never happened at all but which i have vivid details of in my mind? well, hopefully not, and nothing stands out.

what about when we cannot remember something, like a name, but obviously we have not forgotten entirely because when we check or ask someone, we instantly recognize that as the thing forgotten? there is some residual memory that exists even though we cannot bring it into conscious thought. how does this recognition work? i think it is something like an incomplete electrical circuit and when we introduce the missing element, the current flows and we recognize. now i digress, if the theory of eternal return of time were somewhat true, wouldn't we have a buildup of residue that got bigger and bigger with each repeat of events, that we might predict the future accurately? i don't think we do. and residue must exist, perhaps some of it's ancient, for some things feel familiar to us, without us being able to explain why.

what about the start of time? let us assume our minds always existed, predating earth. it is easy to think, because we don't think we can remember what happened before our lives on earth, that perhaps it is a solipsistic nightmare and that earth began when we were born. what do i remember of the first day? when i think about it, i imagine a scene of the ground covered with pebbles and stones, a reddish brown colour, not much visibility, there was fog, walking forwards slowly, looking around, seeing trees, and alone at first. now presumably, the first day was a shocking time and thus more easily remembered than any other day.

CLEARCHARGE