Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stuff
Speaker 1: Works dot com. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.
Speaker 1: My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Julie Douglas. You know, Julie,
Speaker 1: we are basically our memories. We are. We are a
Speaker 1: stack of cards. In each card is a memory, and
Speaker 1: they form who we are. That that alone can be
Speaker 1: kind of tricky to wrap your your head around, and
Speaker 1: and it is kind of a simplification. But but still
Speaker 1: we are made up of memories where where all these
Speaker 1: these uh these recollections of things that have happened, things
Speaker 1: we've learned, and they form who we are. So the
Speaker 1: idea that some of those memories are false memories is
Speaker 1: really fascinating. Yeah, because it means that part of what
Speaker 1: we are is not factual. It's a fabrication and and
Speaker 1: and it's and even more to the point, it's one
Speaker 1: thing if you build some fabrication into who you are.
Speaker 1: I'm a support Yeah, yeah, I try and believe something
Speaker 1: that's not real every day, something new, you know, uh
Speaker 1: and uh and build it up to him at least
Speaker 1: fifty fifty. But but but the idea that there are
Speaker 1: parts of us that we think are true, that are false.
Speaker 1: That's that's the really fascinating and or chilling thing. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and uh, what we're talking about is specifically a book
Speaker 1: called Seventh Sins of Memory by Daniel Schockter. And he
Speaker 1: was on a panel that you saw at the World
Speaker 1: Science Festival covering memory and what happens with memory? Yes,
Speaker 1: in New York City. Uh, as it was. Yeah, it
Speaker 1: was a fascinating talk. We referred to to some of
Speaker 1: the stuff that was brought up in our previous episode
Speaker 1: on on memory. What do we talk about? That's what
Speaker 1: happens when you record as many podcasts. That's that's a yeah,
Speaker 1: false recall there. But but but but Yeah, as we've
Speaker 1: discussed before, memory is uh is not this perfect thing.
Speaker 1: It is a they in a sense, you could say
Speaker 1: that it's it's a flawed system. It would be more
Speaker 1: accurate to just say a memory is ephemeral because a
Speaker 1: lot of the flaws that are there are a part
Speaker 1: of its operating system, Like we can't remember everything, so
Speaker 1: you're gonna forget things, um and uh, and in memories
Speaker 1: are we were always having to update information. So there's
Speaker 1: a potential for disaster there. And I know that we've
Speaker 1: talked about this before that when you have a particularly
Speaker 1: strong memory that has to do with like saying nine eleven, right,
Speaker 1: you know, where were you on nine eleven, that your
Speaker 1: potential for recall is actually hindered by the fact that
Speaker 1: you're a magdala isn't on high alert your emotional center
Speaker 1: of your brain, so your hypocampus is not necessarily really
Speaker 1: accurately recording things at that moment because your amingdala is
Speaker 1: kind of taking over. So that's just one example of how, um,
Speaker 1: you know, you can come away from an experience having
Speaker 1: really strong emotional feelings and saying, yes, I was there
Speaker 1: and I was wearing this shirt and so on and
Speaker 1: so forth, but um, you're actually hamstrung and your billy
Speaker 1: to bring up those particular details, even if you feel
Speaker 1: certain that that's the way it went down, right, and uh.
Speaker 1: And it's also important to stress that memory is a
Speaker 1: rather complex system. It's not just a situation of oh,
Speaker 1: here's the part of my brain that does memory, and
Speaker 1: it's doing memory right now. There it goes it remembered
Speaker 1: something and then wrote a new memory. Now we have
Speaker 1: There are several different types of memory, and they're all
Speaker 1: sort of working in a in a chorus and uh,
Speaker 1: uh you know, I mean it's it's very much like
Speaker 1: an orchestra scenario where no no particular instrument is playing
Speaker 1: the tune that everything together creates the song that you're hearing.
Speaker 1: So you have things like episodic memory for events, semantic
Speaker 1: memory for facts in general knowledge, uh, priming memory for
Speaker 1: unconscious activation of memories and reminders. Conditioning from that Pavlovian
Speaker 1: experience where the dog here's the dinner bell and starts
Speaker 1: salivating even though the meal hasn't members in it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and the priming one is something we're gonna talk about
Speaker 1: a little bit too, But that one is interesting. What
Speaker 1: you're saying is you're can meeting sort of unconscious memories,
Speaker 1: ain't even really aware of of this database that you're
Speaker 1: building up. So in his book, Shackter lays out what
Speaker 1: he calls the seven Deadly Sins of memory, and uh,
Speaker 1: it's a fascinating look at it. I mean there's some
Speaker 1: bleed over between one and another, but uh, like the
Speaker 1: three first that he goes through transience and that's just
Speaker 1: basically I'm not going to remember, um, this fact from
Speaker 1: ten years ago because my brain forgets things over time.
Speaker 1: That's that's pretty simple. Like when you and and then
Speaker 1: there's gonna be this uh basic absent mindedness. And this
Speaker 1: is where you don't remember what somebody told you because
Speaker 1: you were you know, involved in another task or you
Speaker 1: were driving and uh, you suddenly got distracted. You say,
Speaker 1: you're listening to this podcast while driving, and suddenly you
Speaker 1: have to you have to deal with some sort of
Speaker 1: near wreck experience. You're maybe hoping me not, but you're
Speaker 1: probably not going to commit to memory, at least not
Speaker 1: committed strongly. Um, whatever you're listening to on a podcast
Speaker 1: or radio. Uh. Then there there's a also blocking And
Speaker 1: this is what happens when you're like, oh, um, what
Speaker 1: was the actor in the Yeah, the actor and the
Speaker 1: thing which I do all the time, what was what
Speaker 1: was that film with Val Kilmer in it where he
Speaker 1: has a sword? You know that that kind of thing.
Speaker 1: And you'll sit there and will be agonizing, you know
Speaker 1: what was that person's name? And someone will be like
Speaker 1: look it up an IMDb and you're like, no, I
Speaker 1: have to think of myself. And for me, I'm always
Speaker 1: like that guy that was wearing shoes and like never
Speaker 1: giving anybody good clues and so from there he breaks
Speaker 1: out some of the things that can happen. Some of
Speaker 1: them are are sins that basically color memory, like suggestibility,
Speaker 1: which is really fascinating his own right. This is this
Speaker 1: is like, for instance, the scenario where um, the police
Speaker 1: are grilling a witness to a crime and trying and
Speaker 1: trying to find out like who is the who they
Speaker 1: saw at the scene, and they will sometimes sometimes even
Speaker 1: kind of unconsciously hint that this is the person you
Speaker 1: should pick, so sort of like leading the witness leading
Speaker 1: in the courtroom before, where it's like that line of
Speaker 1: questioning is really putting that idea in your head. Yeah,
Speaker 1: like if I was to say, so, Julie, your favorite
Speaker 1: food is pizza, right, well, yes it is actually yes.
Speaker 1: I mean that's kind of a horrible example, but but
Speaker 1: I'm leading you. You know, It's like the the answers
Speaker 1: and the question. The answer that I want is in
Speaker 1: the question that I ask you, like cheese, like sauce?
Speaker 1: Do I ever? And then there's also just persistence, which
Speaker 1: is for instance, a traumatic memory that keeps showing up.
Speaker 1: But the one that we're going to discuss in detail
Speaker 1: today is misattribution. This is a particularly fascinating. This. This
Speaker 1: is like memory distortion on steroids can be. Sometimes it
Speaker 1: can be pretty simple, like a day to day thing.
Speaker 1: There's a predictability factor that we rely on when we're
Speaker 1: bringing up a memory, right, we're taking it out of
Speaker 1: the drawer, and misattribution seems to fall prey to our
Speaker 1: need to fit details into a framework right, even if
Speaker 1: the pieces don't fit. Um. There's a kind of familiarity
Speaker 1: that exists, right because you you have some of the
Speaker 1: facts right, you have some of the facts wrong, but
Speaker 1: your mind wants to try to square that and um,
Speaker 1: so you know, even though it's it could be wrong,
Speaker 1: it feels right to you because on some level you're
Speaker 1: familiar with some of the details. And there a bunch
Speaker 1: of examples of what misattribution can be. Like one of
Speaker 1: the most most obvious ones would be an example of
Speaker 1: where you try and remember, um, like where you met
Speaker 1: somebody or a year and you end up the memory
Speaker 1: is fine, except that there's a detail wrong in it,
Speaker 1: or a couple of details wrong, and it's basically got
Speaker 1: gotten a little mixed up, that your order has been
Speaker 1: slightly mixed up. From the kitchen they bring they bring
Speaker 1: you the burger you ordered, but they give you fries
Speaker 1: instead of the side salad that you requested, right right.
Speaker 1: So you actually recall something, but you might map it
Speaker 1: to the wrong place or time or to the wrong person,
Speaker 1: and then you've got an imagined event that you ascribe
Speaker 1: to a reality. Which this is really fascinating, where we
Speaker 1: end up remembering something as fact, like we remembering something
Speaker 1: as action that we merely imagined or thought about doing.
Speaker 1: And the great example of this is something happens to
Speaker 1: me way too often, and that is where I'll leave
Speaker 1: the house and I'll actually lock the door, but then
Speaker 1: I'll check it again, double sure that I locked it,
Speaker 1: or sometimes walked to the car and then walk back
Speaker 1: and then check that I locked it again, which is
Speaker 1: just unexcusable to come back for the third time. But
Speaker 1: it's but I can't I can't remember if I thought
Speaker 1: about locking it or I did lock it. The same
Speaker 1: with the things like blowing out the candle in the
Speaker 1: bathroom or turning off a burner. These are vital things
Speaker 1: we need to do, and we're making the middle note,
Speaker 1: do it, do it, do it, But then after the fact,
Speaker 1: we can't remember did I just think about doing that?
Speaker 1: Or did I actually do it? Did I imagine myself
Speaker 1: doing it? And um, if you go on the World
Speaker 1: Science Festival site, you'll actually see a clip of this
Speaker 1: example in In the example, it's not necessarily the person
Speaker 1: imagining themselves doing something or himself doing something, but it's
Speaker 1: this clip of this guy talking about how for many
Speaker 1: years he harbored this resentment against his cousin for ruining
Speaker 1: his eighth birthday party by swinging the bat, the pinona,
Speaker 1: all the candy out. So he sees his cousin at
Speaker 1: some point, you know, a couple of years ago, he's
Speaker 1: now an adult, and he says, remember that time that
Speaker 1: you completely ruined my eighth birthday party? And his cousin says,
Speaker 1: what are you talking about. I was away at summer
Speaker 1: camp at your eighth birthday party. And he said that
Speaker 1: he immediately realized that he had concocted this, this memory,
Speaker 1: and it's just just like that. He thought, Oh, that's
Speaker 1: completely right, this he was at summer camp. And I
Speaker 1: think that's fascinating. And I know that there are examples
Speaker 1: for myself that you know, I've done the same thing. Um,
Speaker 1: And for whatever reason, our minds kind of conjure these
Speaker 1: these alternate realities. These are these are basically um binding errors,
Speaker 1: um binding failures. Even in memory binding and and again
Speaker 1: they you basically have two kinds um I mean memory
Speaker 1: binding is the is the gluing together of various components
Speaker 1: of an experience into a whole. Is the bringing together
Speaker 1: of the different um the saw had the main dish,
Speaker 1: the garnish, and the condiments into the complete order. And
Speaker 1: in a binding failure, the the time that the event
Speaker 1: occurs at the action or the object, et cetera, is
Speaker 1: not bound to the particular time and place. And again
Speaker 1: it can It can deal with with real events and
Speaker 1: just sort of mix them around or imagined or just
Speaker 1: purely thought about events. Yeah. Yeah, So that's really interesting
Speaker 1: that you'd have to have that sort of sequential binding
Speaker 1: in your head. Otherwise things kind of go awry if
Speaker 1: you don't have that glue in place. In the books,
Speaker 1: Actor describes an experiment where younger and older adults were
Speaker 1: shown one object and then as to imagine a second object.
Speaker 1: All right, So in the first case they had them imagine, say,
Speaker 1: a magnifying glass. So that's easy to imagine, you know,
Speaker 1: it's like a stick with a round thing. At the
Speaker 1: top that you look through to see, you know. Um.
Speaker 1: And then they imagined that they saw that they actually
Speaker 1: saw a magnifying class there it is, so the actual
Speaker 1: object with it. And then they imagined a lollipop, and
Speaker 1: a lollipop is also a stick with a own thing
Speaker 1: at the top, but with an entirely different purpose. Um.
Speaker 1: Then they also did a dissimilar thing where it was
Speaker 1: like a screwdriver and a coat hanger. And when they
Speaker 1: looked at at the results, they found that that older
Speaker 1: adults were more likely to say they'd actually seen the lolly,
Speaker 1: which yeah, But but they had a number of tests
Speaker 1: subbosely that were actually said, yeah, I saw the law,
Speaker 1: you showed it to me. So the examples of of
Speaker 1: the thing we imagine in the thing we perceived becoming confused,
Speaker 1: which is more it's more likely when there is some
Speaker 1: sort of semantic link between the two. Yeah, yeah, Well,
Speaker 1: and again there's that familiarity, right, it's the context, and
Speaker 1: it gives a sort of fire to your convictions. And
Speaker 1: you do see that more in the elderly, who rely
Speaker 1: on that sense of familiarity to corroborate their memories, and
Speaker 1: they have a harder time recalling specific recollections. You also
Speaker 1: see this sometimes uh like the misuh the misattribution of
Speaker 1: the source of a memory, and that this may have
Speaker 1: happened to a number of you. Where are you So
Speaker 1: you hear something from a friend and then you misremember
Speaker 1: it as being something you saw on the news, which
Speaker 1: can get you into some trouble sometime if you're you know,
Speaker 1: in a dinner party and you're like, oh, yeah, such,
Speaker 1: such and such, and then people were like, I don't
Speaker 1: think that's right. I think you you may have got
Speaker 1: the wrong You're like, no, I saw that on Fox News.
Speaker 1: It must be true. Well, seeing I was thinking about that,
Speaker 1: and I was thinking, that is why language is so
Speaker 1: flawed for us. And of course it's great because it's
Speaker 1: what we have to communicate with each other with. But
Speaker 1: I was thinking, here's here's a good example of something
Speaker 1: like the health care bill in the United States. This
Speaker 1: conversation began to happen around it, and there are all
Speaker 1: sorts of bits of information, information that's unleashed and and
Speaker 1: some of that has been misremembered, intentionally or not. And
Speaker 1: you have these conversations going on and it's being processed
Speaker 1: by the public at large, and then mass confusion ensues
Speaker 1: and you're talking about things like the death panels and
Speaker 1: all that. Yeah, yeah, I really have any any any origin.
Speaker 1: In fact, it was more about people coloring the debate
Speaker 1: with exaggerated ideas or just misconstruing information. And maybe they
Speaker 1: weren't trying to do that intentionally, but I think it's
Speaker 1: fascinating that you have this black and white document that exists,
Speaker 1: and yet the reality that's been created around it, or
Speaker 1: had been created around I guess depending on how you
Speaker 1: look at it, uh, is quite different from what the
Speaker 1: actual document is. And a lot of this I think
Speaker 1: again has there's that suggestibility factor and um this uh
Speaker 1: also this the the wrong source, right, because you could
Speaker 1: sit around in a dinner party and mistake what someone
Speaker 1: might say at the table for fact that was you know,
Speaker 1: reported Fox News or NBC, and so it just really
Speaker 1: muddles the conversations that we have and the reality of
Speaker 1: of um of what we're all looking at. You know. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Another possibility is that if you're watching say twenty four
Speaker 1: hour news show, and you don't really end up in
Speaker 1: remembering whether you heard something on an opinion based section
Speaker 1: or um a more a factual news report. Um, you
Speaker 1: know it's the same. Gonna go with a you know,
Speaker 1: a newspaper did you get on the opinion page or
Speaker 1: from the like the ap stories right? Or a blog
Speaker 1: right that it's that a blog that's been researched and
Speaker 1: documented or is it just someone's blog that says I
Speaker 1: hate Monday's right. Well, I like in my own research
Speaker 1: for articles, here at how stuff works. Like, sometimes I'll
Speaker 1: find myself in a situation where and we'recalling a fact
Speaker 1: from the research I've done, and I have to I
Speaker 1: try to steer away from even looking at sources that
Speaker 1: I that could potentially be problematic because ideally, like I've heard,
Speaker 1: like some people can argue that, say, a Wikipedia article
Speaker 1: is a good starting place for legitimate research because even
Speaker 1: though you you have to cast out on the article itself,
Speaker 1: since anybody can update it and in quality varies sometimes
Speaker 1: right in quality very significantly. There's some fine Wikipedia articles
Speaker 1: out there, but then there are some that are just
Speaker 1: really incorrect, really flawed, or poorly written. So some people
Speaker 1: say start there, then you know, use that as a
Speaker 1: jumping off place for real research. But the problem there
Speaker 1: is that you'll run across other facts you'll start putting
Speaker 1: together an article or something, and then you'll put something
Speaker 1: in and you'll misremember the source. So something you ended
Speaker 1: up thinking is from say this New York Times article
Speaker 1: or something published in a perior view journal is actually
Speaker 1: from the Wikipedia article or a blog referring to one
Speaker 1: of the uh, the primary sources and uh, and it
Speaker 1: just gets confusing. So it's a topsy turvy world. All right,
Speaker 1: we're gonna take a quick break and when we come back,
Speaker 1: we're gonna look at a little something called a memory
Speaker 1: conjunction error and how you and I could possibly be
Speaker 1: ripping off things without us even knowing we're doing it.
Speaker 1: This podcast is brought to you by Intel, the sponsors
Speaker 1: of Tomorrow and the Discovery Channel. At Intel, we believe
Speaker 1: curiosity is the spark which drives innovation. Join us at
Speaker 1: curiosity dot com and explore the answers to life's questions.
Speaker 1: And we're back. So memory conjunction air. This is another
Speaker 1: fascinating aspect of misattribution UM where two memories are combined
Speaker 1: into one. Generally, this is going to revolve around words
Speaker 1: and faces and uh, and with with words especially, it's uh,
Speaker 1: it's important that there's some sort of semantic link there
Speaker 1: is that the example of Varnish and Spaniel, and sometimes
Speaker 1: people mistake that for Spanish. Right they've seen or they've
Speaker 1: seen that sort of sequence and they think, oh, I
Speaker 1: heard the word Spanish. Yeah, there's list of a semantic
Speaker 1: link there, but more of a like a linguistic link.
Speaker 1: I guess that's the sound of the words. You know,
Speaker 1: like you're you're You're probably not going to have a
Speaker 1: memory conjunction error involving like two things that are completely different.
Speaker 1: But say you didn't know anything about wrap and you
Speaker 1: were introduced, because it will it will actually like happen
Speaker 1: with you know, people you're introduced to, Like if you're
Speaker 1: in a in some sort of line of work or
Speaker 1: just in your social life, find yourself meeting a lot
Speaker 1: of new people, you may have a memory conjunction error
Speaker 1: um when you try to recall information about them later,
Speaker 1: Like say you're introduced to Snoop Dogg and Little Wayne,
Speaker 1: both rappers, and if you weren't familiar with them, you
Speaker 1: might instead remember that you met one person like a
Speaker 1: name like little Dog or you did it correctly or
Speaker 1: a little Snoop Snoop or something yeah, so um and
Speaker 1: But then even crazier is it can occur with faces
Speaker 1: where you'll meet two people with similar faces and then
Speaker 1: you'll commit to memory a face that is um a
Speaker 1: combination of the two, which is so great, Yeah, and
Speaker 1: so like that your mind would construct this third person
Speaker 1: out of the two people. Like a lot of what
Speaker 1: we're talking about with memory, it does raise some problematic
Speaker 1: questions when the memory is important, because it's one thing
Speaker 1: if you just met some people at a party and
Speaker 1: then you get their names mixed up, or you know,
Speaker 1: if it's some piddling thing you know where you you
Speaker 1: accidentally say that you're, you know, the source of some
Speaker 1: little news it was in New York Times when it
Speaker 1: was really Washington Post or something. But when people's lives
Speaker 1: are on the line, when you have criminal investigations and
Speaker 1: witness testimonies. Yeah, And one of the best examples of
Speaker 1: this is Donald Thompson, who is a memory researcher himself. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Australian guy, and uh, he was arrested one morning in
Speaker 1: connection with this rudal right, horrible saw it on this
Speaker 1: lady who said, this is the guy, he was there,
Speaker 1: this is the one arrested him. She was so sure
Speaker 1: of it that police were actually able to track him
Speaker 1: down by the way he looked right like she had
Speaker 1: this idea of him cemented in her mind. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: so they brought him in. But the thing is, Donald
Speaker 1: Thompson had this just air tight alibi because he would
Speaker 1: at the time of the attack, he was doing a
Speaker 1: live TV interview and I ironically enough, he was talking
Speaker 1: about the the the ephemeral nature of memory and about
Speaker 1: false memories while this is going on. But the person
Speaker 1: was like, no, that's him, this is the guy, that's right.
Speaker 1: So while while she was being attacked, while she was
Speaker 1: being raped, she was that that television program was on,
Speaker 1: and she actually encoded his face onto the rapist face. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it was a misastribution of of the face to the
Speaker 1: wrong context or the wrong context to the right face,
Speaker 1: which I mean, it's such a simple example of of this, uh,
Speaker 1: but but just such a telling one. The idea that
Speaker 1: she saw the face on the TV and then that
Speaker 1: becomes the face fixed in the memory of the event. Well,
Speaker 1: and then she had mentioned though that the big takeaway
Speaker 1: from this is that I eye witness testimony is just
Speaker 1: egregiously flawed. In the nineteen eighties, more than seventy five
Speaker 1: thousand criminal trials per year were decided on the basis
Speaker 1: of eyewitness testimony. This is from Daniel stractor Um who
Speaker 1: wrote about this in several different articles. Uh. And then
Speaker 1: another point that he likes to make is that in
Speaker 1: an analysis of forty cases in which DNA exonerated wrongfully
Speaker 1: imprisoned people, thirty six of them were put in the
Speaker 1: clinker because of eyewitness testimony. So it's really one of
Speaker 1: those things you need to back up and actually look
Speaker 1: at the system and how it's conducted um eyewitness testimony
Speaker 1: and UM and in fact, Janet Reno I believe tried
Speaker 1: to reform this system and has to a certain degree.
Speaker 1: And most police departments now when they do lineups, they
Speaker 1: don't necessarily bring everybody in the room. Uh. And the
Speaker 1: reason is is because even though you could have the
Speaker 1: say someone um stole your wallet, even even if you
Speaker 1: had the thief in that lineup, there could be someone
Speaker 1: that looked a lot like that thief. In your mind
Speaker 1: is misremembering and then uh fingering the other person who
Speaker 1: is innocent because they look like the thief. So now
Speaker 1: they're starting to take people in one at a time
Speaker 1: so that your mind doesn't get too confused and you
Speaker 1: can actually sort of fare it out, you know, yes
Speaker 1: or no, is this the person that did it? But
Speaker 1: even then, as we've discussed, the memory memory in them
Speaker 1: is complex and flawed enough as it is, without the
Speaker 1: without the the the investigation process, making it even worse. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: and yeah, you cannot do away with with uh this
Speaker 1: you know, wholesale, because this is the person you know,
Speaker 1: to which this act was uh, that this act happened to.
Speaker 1: So you've got to have some sort of credence and
Speaker 1: those details that some of that is going to be true.
Speaker 1: There's another story that the chapter brings up in his
Speaker 1: book that that I found particularly fascinating, and this involves
Speaker 1: a British photographer who they just referred to by the
Speaker 1: initials Mr. And this is the early nineties photographer you know,
Speaker 1: deals with with a lot of faces in his time.
Speaker 1: And he's I believe it was in London. He's, you know,
Speaker 1: a lot of crowds around, and uh, he suddenly noticed
Speaker 1: that he started seeing some more celebrities than usual, you know.
Speaker 1: And you live in any big city or even a
Speaker 1: you know, small smaller cities, occasionally you're gonna see somebody
Speaker 1: and you're like, oh, is that is that Brad Pitt?
Speaker 1: Is that you know William Schatton out front? Turner? Yeah,
Speaker 1: Bonnie's my my wife, Bonnie, her dad looks kind of
Speaker 1: like Ted Turner. Um. So he has been mistaken for
Speaker 1: Ted Turner on on a few occasions where people are like,
Speaker 1: I think they've actually come up and asked him before.
Speaker 1: That's awesome. I hope he runs with that, just pretends
Speaker 1: like he always has a Bison burger in his hand. Yeah.
Speaker 1: But but this guy said, you know, he was noticing
Speaker 1: it a little more often than his than his normal
Speaker 1: because there's one thing to be like, oh I think
Speaker 1: I saw that actor on on the tube this morning. Uh. No,
Speaker 1: he was. He was seeing it regularly, and he'd be
Speaker 1: out with his wife and he would he would be like,
Speaker 1: is that who I think it is over there? And
Speaker 1: she would like be like, no, I don't think that's anybody.
Speaker 1: I think you're mistaken, And he got so strong that
Speaker 1: he was. He would be he just feel compelled to
Speaker 1: go and approach these people and and be like you're
Speaker 1: you know, you're Brad Pitt or you're you know whoever,
Speaker 1: and they would look at him like he was crazy.
Speaker 1: So he went to the doctor and he found out
Speaker 1: that he had multiple sclerosis, which had compromised his frontal lobe,
Speaker 1: which is involved in the consolidation of information from short
Speaker 1: term to long term as well as like spatial navigation.
Speaker 1: When you see a face that looks sort of familiar,
Speaker 1: we all have this happen, you know, where at first glance,
Speaker 1: it looks like someone we know or a famous person,
Speaker 1: and then we realize it's not. So when you see
Speaker 1: the face, there's a part of the brain that identifies
Speaker 1: it as a familiar face. Yeah, like your pattern recognition software. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And then but there's another section that has all the
Speaker 1: ideas and all the biographical information that kind of fact
Speaker 1: checks the initial report. What so one part says, hey,
Speaker 1: I think that's Brad Pitt over there, and the other
Speaker 1: part of your brain says, no, that's not Brad pet
Speaker 1: because he actually looks a little different and he would
Speaker 1: never dress like that, you know, thanks like that. In
Speaker 1: this British photographer, Mr, the frontal lobe damage had made
Speaker 1: it so that his brain didn't sufficiently scrutinize the signals
Speaker 1: that were generated by the weakly activated facial recognition system.
Speaker 1: In his brain. So was it the fact checker that
Speaker 1: was down? Yeah, but or basically the the connection between
Speaker 1: the two the signals were. It's kind of like in
Speaker 1: the in like a movie where one person is telling
Speaker 1: the other what to say to like a radio headset,
Speaker 1: and the signal gets distorted so that the ancication from
Speaker 1: this hilarity us and hilarity us we're in this case
Speaker 1: um not not exactly hilaritous no, no, no, But I
Speaker 1: do think it's interesting that his his database, his backup
Speaker 1: database with celebrities, you know, as a photographer. Yeah, well,
Speaker 1: I think and also I mean celebrity is they're the
Speaker 1: modern deities of our pop culture. So even though we
Speaker 1: don't know like Madonna, we have seen so many images
Speaker 1: of her, and we have biographical information, we have biographical informations,
Speaker 1: so it's almost as if we do know her, even
Speaker 1: though we don't have personal knowledge of her. Um. And
Speaker 1: it's just this tail us just so fascinating too, because
Speaker 1: it underlies just how complex memory is, that there are
Speaker 1: multiple systems going on in something as simple as saying, hey,
Speaker 1: is that who I think it is? Oh no, it's
Speaker 1: not right, and that you could have some of the
Speaker 1: smother wiring just not quite right, and then of a
Speaker 1: sudden you're seeing Madge everywhere. So let's get to plagiarism
Speaker 1: and uh yeah, amnesia. This is pretty fascinating and scary,
Speaker 1: especially for us since we work uh in a field
Speaker 1: of composed of research and writing well, and there's so
Speaker 1: much research that we're filtering on a day to day
Speaker 1: basis that Yeah. Um. I first became aware of it
Speaker 1: when we were talking about the music podcast not excuse me,
Speaker 1: not music, but dreaming and you know what, what can
Speaker 1: happen in our dreams? And Paul McCartney when he wrote Yesterday,
Speaker 1: he wrote it in a dream, woke up and immediately
Speaker 1: went to the piano and he was fearful that he
Speaker 1: had actually ripped that off, which is called kryptome kryptomnesia.
Speaker 1: Uh yeah, there's a there's a great scene in the
Speaker 1: by the way, Yeah, um, not in this and maybe
Speaker 1: he had access into the world through his dreams and
Speaker 1: still there from a parallel universe, parallel Paul. There's a
Speaker 1: there's a great example of this in the HBO series
Speaker 1: trem ay Um that takes place in New Orleans does
Speaker 1: with the Aftermathickatrina, where there is a violinist and she's
Speaker 1: trying to write her first song, and she she worked
Speaker 1: really hard on this, and she's so proud of it
Speaker 1: when she finished, and she plays it for a couple
Speaker 1: of friends and they're like, oh, that that's sounds good,
Speaker 1: and they don't have the heart to break it to
Speaker 1: her that she just played a Bob Dylan song. Uh see.
Speaker 1: And and so that's exactly what ends up happening with people.
Speaker 1: Crypto Amnesia is when we produce from memory another person's writings,
Speaker 1: writings or ideas, and and we end up having a
Speaker 1: memory misattribution going on, and that we don't remember that
Speaker 1: it was this other person's ideas. We we idea, we
Speaker 1: think it's our own, we think it's a novel thought.
Speaker 1: And you can see this just at the very basic levels.
Speaker 1: If you've ever been in a meeting and you've said
Speaker 1: something or you've heard someone else say something, and then
Speaker 1: like you know, on to five minutes later, someone else says, hey,
Speaker 1: I've got this idea, and they say the exact same thing.
Speaker 1: It happens all the time. I'm sure I've done that.
Speaker 1: I'm sure I've ripped off people ideas and meeting before
Speaker 1: you just don't even know that you're doing it right,
Speaker 1: because you're processing this is new information to you. Um. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Unintentional plagiarism has been examined in a number of studies,
Speaker 1: and there there was one where people were asked to
Speaker 1: generate examples of particular categories of items, like a species
Speaker 1: of bird, and they were found that up without realizing,
Speaker 1: people plagiarized each other about four percent of the time,
Speaker 1: and subsequent studies using more like natural procedures have found
Speaker 1: even higher rates like that, sometimes as much. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1: And it involves that thing that we talked about before,
Speaker 1: which is called priming, And that's the unconscious influence of memory. Right,
Speaker 1: your brain activates certain words or ideas and and just
Speaker 1: kind of files them away, and then when you go
Speaker 1: to create something novel concerning that topic, then then you're,
Speaker 1: you know, unconsciously bringing up those exact words. And we've
Speaker 1: seen those time and time and again in history. In fact,
Speaker 1: Carl Young was looking through some of Nietzie's writings and
Speaker 1: found a couple of paragraphs that were completely ripped off.
Speaker 1: He probably didn't even know it from another person. Uh,
Speaker 1: they were there, stunningly, some familiar and similar to each
Speaker 1: other that Uh, you know, there are times that people
Speaker 1: will take whole passages that they don't even realize that
Speaker 1: they've committed to memory and bring them up just you know,
Speaker 1: and it's sort of one of those things You're like,
Speaker 1: why can't I have that sort of uh memory recall
Speaker 1: when I want it and not when I want it?
Speaker 1: But it's gonna gonna actually hurt my career, right, And
Speaker 1: I've been counted that too, in like in the newspapers.
Speaker 1: Remember one incident where a writer ended up being accused
Speaker 1: of plagiarism and and at the time, I was kind
Speaker 1: of like, wow, how why did they do this? Because
Speaker 1: this person would never do do this, you know, because
Speaker 1: it's as a writer you don't. I mean, it's the
Speaker 1: worst thing that could happen pretty much as far as
Speaker 1: your your actual career performance, because done intentionally, it's like
Speaker 1: the lowest, laziest thing. But is this really underlines it?
Speaker 1: It's not always an intentional act it there. Sometimes it's
Speaker 1: just about the flawed nature of memory that we end
Speaker 1: up recalling a source word for word, uh, when we
Speaker 1: and think that those are our words on the page. Yeah.
Speaker 1: They had another example in the seven sins um a
Speaker 1: shocked her did and it was of George Daniels, who
Speaker 1: wrote Science in American Society, and it was it was
Speaker 1: doing really well. I got released and you know, great reviews,
Speaker 1: and and then as he was sort of going through it,
Speaker 1: he realized that he had quoted directly from a number
Speaker 1: of sources, not ever meaning to thinking that those were
Speaker 1: his complete novel thoughts. And he was completely horrified and
Speaker 1: in fact came out and said, WHOA, I didn't realize that,
Speaker 1: you know, these sources had gotten in my brain to
Speaker 1: the extent that I was actually plagiarizing, which I believe them,
Speaker 1: because you know, I think that he was. You know,
Speaker 1: he had that moment of let me look back at
Speaker 1: my my book that I created, and then all of
Speaker 1: a sudden, that false, the falsity of that memory started
Speaker 1: to fall away. Yeah. For our final section here, one
Speaker 1: of the things that that really fascinated me reading about
Speaker 1: mis attribution is, like we we talked about before, it's
Speaker 1: the idea that these these memories form who we are,
Speaker 1: and the idea that there could be a false memory
Speaker 1: and they're making us up, composing who we are, and
Speaker 1: we don't realize that it's false. But here's an even
Speaker 1: crazier idea, then imagine we could scan the brain and
Speaker 1: by scanning the brain tell if a memory is false
Speaker 1: or not, even if we have no idea, and this
Speaker 1: is it sounds very sci fi, but is in fact
Speaker 1: something that we can do and has been done. Chapter
Speaker 1: actually scans some brains with some test subject while just
Speaker 1: for fun, well while they were citing list of words, uh,
Speaker 1: and they were correctly and false recalling some of the
Speaker 1: words in the list. And he reported that while the
Speaker 1: scans were very similar, they were quote cantalyzing hints of difference. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there have been a number of studies since then looking
Speaker 1: into exactly what's going on um and and the idea
Speaker 1: is that there's you know, there's that that fact checking
Speaker 1: process similar to the whole I see the face, and
Speaker 1: then another section of the brain determines whether or not
Speaker 1: that that familiar faces actually who we think it think
Speaker 1: it is. Some more things are going on. So the
Speaker 1: idea is there's something in that activity and that fact
Speaker 1: checking that can be scan and and therefore there'll be
Speaker 1: some sort of little tell tale sign that that this
Speaker 1: memory that you just recalled is flawed. So there's been
Speaker 1: a number of additional studies since then, and looking at
Speaker 1: them you'll see the results fall on both sides, but
Speaker 1: a number of them do point to the idea that
Speaker 1: there is a slight difference occurring when a false memory
Speaker 1: is brought to mind as opposed to a true memory,
Speaker 1: because you can see the basically the the fact checking
Speaker 1: section of the brain is weaker in false memories. Okay, yeah,
Speaker 1: sh doctor says this too, which I think is interesting.
Speaker 1: Beyond an exercise and scientific fortune telling, these studies managed
Speaker 1: to trace some of the roots of transience to the
Speaker 1: split second encoding operations that take place during the birth
Speaker 1: of a memory. What happens in frontal and temporal regions
Speaker 1: during those critical moments determines, at least in part, whether
Speaker 1: an experience will be remembered for a lifetime or drop
Speaker 1: into the oblivion of the forgotten, which I think is
Speaker 1: fascinating that you can take these scans and you can
Speaker 1: see a fall memory at work. Yeah, and it's the
Speaker 1: mere fact that it's like the the the illusion of
Speaker 1: a false memory becomes a part of the illusion of
Speaker 1: who we are, and then the machine can see through
Speaker 1: the self believing illusion. It's just mind blown to me.
Speaker 1: I think so too. And I think that that we
Speaker 1: should end the podcast by by doing a little exercise.
Speaker 1: And this was actually done on the panel that you attended, right,
Speaker 1: And this is this is a little test to see
Speaker 1: how good your memory is. And this is the one
Speaker 1: that they used at the World Science Festival. It's a
Speaker 1: word list and I'm going to repeat some words and
Speaker 1: I just want you guys to to listen for a
Speaker 1: moment I really think about them. Here's the word list. Candy, sour, sugar, bitter, good,
Speaker 1: taste tooth, nice, honey, soda, chocolate, heart cake, eat pie. Okay, okay,
Speaker 1: this is the list. And this list, of course is
Speaker 1: bringing up a bunch of ideas for you, right, there
Speaker 1: are some associations for you. Um and what semantic link
Speaker 1: going on? Yeah, there's a semantic link. There's there's a
Speaker 1: story that your idea is conjuring right now and shocked.
Speaker 1: He actually does this to the audience and then he
Speaker 1: reads out some of the words to test whether or
Speaker 1: not people have actually remembered or misremembered something on that list. Now,
Speaker 1: that's a long list, but it's interesting because there could
Speaker 1: be a suggestibility factor here, right, Okay, So here's the test.
Speaker 1: How about the word taste. Was the word taste on
Speaker 1: that list? Yes, yes, okay, you're right correct? Good? What
Speaker 1: about the word point no correct dissimilar from everything on
Speaker 1: the list? Yeah? Yeah, that just kind of stands out,
Speaker 1: doesn't it. Okay, Um, we got a couple more words.
Speaker 1: What about the word sweet? Yes, no, it was not see,
Speaker 1: but the semantic link is there. I just assume sweet
Speaker 1: because everything else was around right, right, But you can't
Speaker 1: help it, right because your your brain is already making
Speaker 1: the framework in that connection, that familiarity that we talked
Speaker 1: about that makes us feel certain about the decisions or
Speaker 1: the memories that come up for us. So I don't know,
Speaker 1: I would love to hear from from the audience about
Speaker 1: whether or not they also I thought that sweet was
Speaker 1: part of that list, because in the audience that I
Speaker 1: think the majority of people, yeah, we were like, yeah, yeah, totally.
Speaker 1: We heard that. Maybe some people were you know, hip
Speaker 1: to what he was doing, and they were, well, yeah,
Speaker 1: the panelists are like they all had that trush our
Speaker 1: cat smile, or they had their and their their iPad
Speaker 1: out and they were like jotting them down if they
Speaker 1: they were said, which is cheating. But for the record,
Speaker 1: But hey, if any of you have any any comments
Speaker 1: on on this, if you have some experiences with false
Speaker 1: memory you'd like to share, be they simple things that
Speaker 1: occur every day, or if you have some of the
Speaker 1: fun nominal Star story you would like to tell us
Speaker 1: so we would love to hear about it. You can
Speaker 1: find us on Facebook and Twitter, we'll blow the Mind
Speaker 1: on both of those, and you can also drop us
Speaker 1: an email at blow the Mind at how stuffworks dot com.
Speaker 1: Be sure to check out our new video podcast, Stuff
Speaker 1: from the Future. Join how Stuff Work staff as we
Speaker 1: explore the most promising and perplexing possibilities of tomorrow.