I thought of this topic when writing the previous post, but it does not really fit into that post, so I’m writing it separately. The topic is Memory.

Can you trust your memory?

Have you ever argued with someone because you remember something differently than they do, and both of you are convinced your own memory is correct? One of you must be wrong, or both might be wrong. I was so sure that I did a root canal on my right side when I was a kid, but then my dentist showed me it was done on my left. It is always hard to accept the fact when I’m proven wrong, perhaps because I’m afraid to question my other memories about the past.

In a famous study on false memory, a team of researchers led by Psychologist Elizabeth Loftus successfully planted a false memory in about a quarter of the subjects. They made them believe that, as children, they had once gotten lost in a mall and later reunited with their family. When asked to describe the fake incident, the subjects provided many details that were entirely made up. It is said that if people believe an event did happen in their past, they can fabricate memories of the event. Loftus mentioned the study in her TED Talk here.

It reminds me of the book Homo Deus, specifically the section about Free Will, where Yuval Noah Harari writes about how the left brain would cook up a story to explain why it made a different decision than the right brain. In VSauce’s video The Future of Reasoning, Michael also explains that, when people are tricked to falsely believe they have made some decision, they will come up with reasonings to explain why they made the decision. It seems we have the tendency of lying to ourselves when we believe something is true.

Loftus’ study struck a chord with me. Nobody planted false memories in me or anything (at least not deliberately, I hope), but I have some mental images of past events that happened when I was little, like 2 to 3 years old. I doubt that I can remember things from that age, but at the same time, it’s possible because those events could be memorable. One example is a story that my mom brought up a few times: when I was 2, I sneaked out and walked a few kilometres alone to her workplace, crying and looking for her. I doubt a 2-year-old can pull that off, but I do have some flash backs of it. I remember the wet and narrow street, I remember answering to a concerned stranger that “I am looking for [my mom’s full name]”, and I remember the his expression hearing that. I wonder if I fabricated all these after my mom told the story. She didn’t know I talked to a stranger, but this part could very well be fabricated by myself, just like the subjects in the study who made up the details.

Then it came to me that dreams can be another source of false memory. Sometimes memories of some people or events come to mind, and I have to put in a tiny bit of effort to deduce that the person doesn’t exist, or the event did not happen—they came from my dreams. It’s not likely for me to confuse a whole fake person for being real, but how can I be sure that dreams have not altered my memories about the little details of a real person or event?

Many more questions can be raised here. Does the person really not exist? Did the event truly not happen? Sigmund Freud wrote that you can dream about things you have forgotten. It’s possible that I dreamed about a forgotten person, then I ruled that the person did not exist.

OK, but did I really dream about that person? Freud also wrote that a difficulty in interpreting dreams is that, when people recall their dreams, it is hard to ensure people do not fabricate details intentionally or unintentionally. If I have fuzzy memory about someone or something, and I think they might have come from my dreams, I could involuntarily make up a memory of a dream. How can you be sure that your deja vu really comes from your dream, but not forgotten memory?

There are probably many reasons why we have false memories. Here I just want to point out that memories can be fabricated. People tend to believe what they want to believe, you know.

Did the past happen?

Now really getting into the philosophical realm.

See, it is not possible to prove that the past did happen. The whole world as you know it, along with your memory of the past, could have been created a split second ago.

The “We Live in a Simulation” Scenario

Imagine I’m an important character in a video game you are playing. You made a bad decision, and I died because of it, so you had to load the game to your last save point, then I was alive again. Now in my memory, I would not know I died before. I’d only have the memory up until the last save point.

Now let’s say you use some cheating tool to alter the save file and changed some regrettable decisions you’ve made in the storyline. By doing this, you’ve changed my past and my memory. When you load the game with the altered save file, I would have the new memory.

Now let’s say you downloaded a save file from somebody else. When you load it in the game, I just suddenly come into existence, with full memory about my past, and I wouldn’t know I was a copy of the original.

Now let’s say the downloaded save file came from an older version of the game. In the newer version you are playing on, the developer has removed an event in the storyline because it did not fit. Now what would happen to my memory in this case? Would I remember an event that could not possibly happen?

If we really live in a simulation, any of the above could have happened, but we just don’t know—we wouldn’t know. Typically when a game begins, the main character is already an adult, but they have full memory of their past. How can you be sure that you didn’t come into existence just a moment ago with full memory of your past?

The Boltzmann Brain Scenario

In a Kurzgesagt video, which I had to watch twice to understand, they explained a possibility that your entire existence at this very moment, including your consciousness, your memories, are created randomly by chance.

It’s like billions of years ago, particles in water colliding with each other happened to assemble the first life on earth, there is a chance that particles colliding with each other happens to assemble a bare brain that is conscious and has memory—and this brain is you. This brain may only exist for a brief moment before disappearing, but that’s enough to create your consciousness at this very moment, and maybe you’ll disappear in the next moment. You think you are a human having a life, but you are just some brain that is going to exist for a split second, a dream of the universe.

If their physics are right, at the end of the universe, there will be infinite amount of time for particles to collide with each other due to how dark energy behaves. The chance of particles colliding creating a functional brain with coherent memory may be small, but given infinite time, the chance of this happening is infinitely high.

At the end of their video, Kurzgesagt tries to comfort viewers by emphasizing this is only true if the current physics theories are correct, which didn’t help me at all, because the environment that generates the brain doesn’t have to be the heat death of our universe, right? It could be a different universe where our physics theories are true exactly?

OK, enough philosophical exercise. Back to personal thoughts.

Was that me in my memories?

This may or may not be relatable—when I recall my past, the memory feels more like third person rather than first person. I know it’s my own memory, and the person in the memory was me, but it feels detached, and I almost want to use “he” to refer to myself in my memory. The past feels like a movie about me that I have watched, it’s my lore that was written by someone else, and this “someone else” is the past me, but not me. Does this make sense?

I don’t have this feeling to the memories that are more recent, but only for those from two years or more ago. I tend to think it’s because people change as they mature, and I hate to think the immature guy from years ago was me. I have absolutely zero nostalgia when looking at old childhood photos because that kid is almost a stranger to me, plus I don’t remember much from high school and prior. There is always a very slight taste of disgust towards my past self because it feels like “someone else’s” life has stuck in my memory intrusively.

Maybe I’m making it sound more concerning than it should. I’m really normal.

Do other people’s memories matter?

People say a person dies two times. The first time is when the body ceases to function. The second time is when your name is spoken for the last time, meaning nobody remembers you anymore. If there’s a third death, I’d say it’s when all traces to your existence are gone, so nobody can possibly know you have ever existed.

Frankly, I don’t give a damn about the second and third death. I live in the present moment, and I just want to do well in the present so that the upcoming moments are easier. After the first death, there’s no more present moments, then the second and third deaths don’t matter.

It’s meaningless to try to leave a mark in history. It means nothing to my present moments. I still want to do good and accomplish things, but I don’t care whether people will remember me or not. Fame is really not necessary. If fame can make life easier, I won’t reject it, but fame is often accompanied by responsibilities and expectations, which tend to be troublesome. I wouldn’t mind if people forget about me right away after I die and nobody knows I ever existed.

Except for the people I care about, or the people who care about me. Marx wrote that the human essence is the ensemble of social relations. While I probably have little understanding of his philosophy, it makes sense to me in a way. You are defined by the people around you. If I am important to you, it’d be heartless for me to hope that I’ll be erased from your memory. That would mean taking away part of your essence that makes up who you are. And relationship goes both ways, so I must not forget about you either.

I know the above may sound weird. I’m putting it in an odd way. It may not be agreeable, but I’m not trying to convince whoever is reading this. And I don’t have to change my mind if you disagree with me. People value things differently because they want different things in life. The important thing is to know clearly what you want.

How to memorize things better?

This question came to mind when thinking about what else I can write about the topic.

It reminds me a TED Talk I watched a while ago, about a journalist who was interested in writing about memory contests, and ended up training himself and winning a contest. In the talk, he mentioned a key characteristic about our memory: if I tell you my name is Baker, you’d probably forget soon; but if I tell you I am a baker, you’d probably remember it longer. We tend to remember certain kinds of things easier. A typical technique to memorize incoherent things is to make up a coherent story that represents the things.

Another technique is reenforced memory. In my student years, I have heard so many times that, after learning something, if you want to remember it for longer, you need to review it sometime later. I found this very useful. I often forget what I’ve read after finishing a book, but then I find reading summaries about the book really helps.

The end

Writing this post and the last has been fun. What I wrote are the thoughts I would never speak about in real life. It’s nice to write them down somewhere.

I may do one more. Topic could be Dreams, as I’ve been reading Fraud’s hot takes in Interpretation of Dreams, or Free Will, as it’s easy to write. Not gonna be soon though.