Surely autobiographical memory needs to be somewhat accurate to help us survive? Nevertheless changing stories to self-enhance may have been another evolutionary pressure.
I have written my memoirs in stages - and very soon realised why Clive James entitled his own as "unreliable"...
I went on to try and cross check with long lost friends from the past, the anachronistic anomalies that told me something in my linked chain of events was definitely wrong.
some of what they said only made things worse, adding new corrections that could be completely right - but which are likely to have also been retold by them and fallen prey to the same phenomenon.
In some ways it is comforting to think that this is an evolutionary trait that is perhaps, universal.
This is very interesting, I think we would all find errors if we documented it. Despite the errors, memory is good enough to survive and write comments on Substack.
I guess if we all can learn to live with the knowledge that our memories are just "good enough", it may be a useful humbling from the position that most take - that their memories are certainly correct.
All research shows that witnesses to a crime misremember multiple aspects of what they saw, but if we recognise this at an institutional level thousands of criminal cases will be thrown out... and just for an example, the woman who misidentified Andy Malkinson as a rapist convincing the police and system to give him 17 years in jail,
That will never happen, and will be the upside of this change towards reality - whilst thousands of guilty people going free will be the downside.
Yes wrongful aquittals would increase if memory evidence was always rejected. It would give criminals comfort if all memory evidence was dismissed. Nevertheless, a real deep dive for physical and documented evidence must always test the theory that the memory is reliable or not. In some cases, memory evidence should not be the sole reason to convict (e.g., 30 year old purported memories that were recoverd in 2022).
I have written my memoirs in stages - and very soon realised why Clive James entitled his own as "unreliable"...
I went on to try and cross check with long lost friends from the past, the anachronistic anomalies that told me something in my linked chain of events was definitely wrong.
some of what they said only made things worse, adding new corrections that could be completely right - but which are likely to have also been retold by them and fallen prey to the same phenomenon.
In some ways it is comforting to think that this is an evolutionary trait that is perhaps, universal.
This is very interesting, I think we would all find errors if we documented it. Despite the errors, memory is good enough to survive and write comments on Substack.
I guess if we all can learn to live with the knowledge that our memories are just "good enough", it may be a useful humbling from the position that most take - that their memories are certainly correct.
All research shows that witnesses to a crime misremember multiple aspects of what they saw, but if we recognise this at an institutional level thousands of criminal cases will be thrown out... and just for an example, the woman who misidentified Andy Malkinson as a rapist convincing the police and system to give him 17 years in jail,
That will never happen, and will be the upside of this change towards reality - whilst thousands of guilty people going free will be the downside.
Yes wrongful aquittals would increase if memory evidence was always rejected. It would give criminals comfort if all memory evidence was dismissed. Nevertheless, a real deep dive for physical and documented evidence must always test the theory that the memory is reliable or not. In some cases, memory evidence should not be the sole reason to convict (e.g., 30 year old purported memories that were recoverd in 2022).