Your memories are fiction

>
> http://hplusmagazine.com/editors-blog/science-proves-youre-stupid
>
> Science Proves You're Stupid
>
> Written By: Joe Quirk
> Date Published: January 16, 2011
>
> You can't understand your brain unless you break it.  Without brain  
> damage, you are incapable of acquiring any insight into how your  
> mind works, because your brain is sublimely designed to trick you  
> into thinking you have a clue.
>
> Your memories are fiction.
>
> Robert Burton describes an experiment in his book On Being Certain:  
> Believing You Are Right Even When You Are Not, which everyone with a  
> strong opinion should read.  Immediately after the Challenger  
> explosion in 1986, the psychologist Ulric Neisser asked 106 students  
> to describe in writing where they were when they heard, who they  
> were with, how they felt, what their first thoughts were.  Two-and-a- 
> half years later, the same students were assembled and asked to  
> answer the same question in writing.  The new descriptions were  
> compared with the originals.  They didn't match.  People had changed  
> facts about where they were, who they were with, what they felt,  
> what they thought.  When confronted with the original essays, people  
> were so attached to their new memories they had trouble believing  
> their old ones.  In fact, most refused to revise their memories to  
> match the originals written at the time. What struck Burton was the  
> response of one student: "That's my handwriting, but that's not what  
> happened."
>
> I saw the movie Casablanca in high school.  One particular scene was  
> so vividly corny it was emblazoned on my memory.  I often recited  
> the saccharine scene in my mind and chuckled to myself over the next  
> two decades.  I saw the flick for a second time in my thirties, and  
> waited eagerly for that sissyboy scene. When it came, I thought I  
> was seeing an alternative scene!  The characters said different  
> things and were standing in different parts of the room.  Plus I had  
> to grab for a box of tissues.  How could my memories so drastically  
> overwrite what I actually saw?  And how could Rick let their love  
> die like that?
>
> Now here's the weird part:  Today, I don't remember the scene that  
> moved me in my thirties.  I still remember the scene I laughed at as  
> a teen.
>
> You're so clueless about your own experience, you've already re- 
> written the paragraph you just read.  Close your eyes and sum up  
> what was just said.  Done?  Now when you re-read it, you'll find you  
> don't remember the words, but only your impression of what was  
> said.  Once you say it, you replace your vague impression with your  
> act of verbalizing it. Associate Professor of Cognitive Psychology  
> Jonathan Schooler calls the effect "verbal overshadowing.""
>
>
> How much time do you spend verbalizing?  Every time you talk, you  
> destroy the memory of what you're talking about.
>
> Your memories can be selectively erased.
>
> Famous experiments by neuroscientist Karim Nader demonstrated that  
> each time you remember something, you demolish the old memory and  
> recreate a new one.
>
> In order to store a memory, a protein structure needs to form in the  
> brain.  When rats are given a drug that disrupts this protein  
> formation while they're trying to form a memory, the rats are unable  
> to learn.  Now here's the weird part.  Once a rat becomes an expert  
> at some knowledge — like knowing that a certain sound precedes a  
> shock — and researchers inject the drug while he's trying to recall  
> the memory, the memory is erased permanently.  The rat returns to  
> the same state of ignorance he was in before he ever learned.  No  
> other memories are harmed by the drug, only the memories the rat is  
> trying to form or recall. That means the protein that encodes the  
> memory is being rebuilt every time the rat accesses the memory.
>
> The drug, anisomycin, has been used to selectively erase the  
> memories of humans tormented by post-traumatic stress disorder.  If  
> the patient takes the drug while being asked to recall the traumatic  
> memory, the memory dims.  Some of the remembered events take  
> different pathways through the hippocampus and reach consciousness,  
> but the emotional intensity associated with amygdale is toned down,  
> becoming hazy and painless.
>
> Remembering is an act of creation.  This led to Yadin Dudai,  
> professor at the Weizmann Institute and author of Memory from A to  
> Z, to arrive at the paradoxical conclusion that the most perfect  
> memory "is the one that exists in a patient with amnesia."
>
> Remember that person who pissed you off in high school?  It never  
> happened.  You made that event up.   Don't bother writing your  
> memoir, because there's no such thing as a memoir.  Fiction is stuff  
> you know you're making up, and memoir is stuff you don't know you're  
> making up.
>
> Hey, dumbass.  You can't even figure out what already happened in  
> your own life.  How are you going to figure out what's going to  
> happen in the future for everybody?
>
> The Feeling of Knowing is Separable from Knowing.
>
> The feeling of knowing is exactly that, a sensation.
>
> Dr. Burton demonstrates that the experience of knowing occurs  
> independently from the "logical steps" you think you take to arrive  
> at a conclusion.  In fact they arise from different regions of the  
> brain.
>
> Burton hypothesizes that Obsessive Compulsive Disorder is an  
> inability to experience this feeling of knowing.  No matter how much  
> the patient proves to himself that his hands are clean, the car door  
> is locked, he won't forget his keys, he just can't believe it.  He  
> can know that something is true; he just can't feel that it's true.   
> Other patients with brain lesions experience similar disconnections  
> between knowing and feeling they know, such as being convinced that  
> a table has been stolen and replaced with an exact replica, or that  
> mother has been kidnapped and replaced with an identical imposter.  
> They look at familiar things and don't feel that they are right.
>
> Just as precise knowledge can come without any feeling of knowing,  
> the feeling of knowing can come without any precise knowledge at  
> all.  Burton analyzed the transcripts of people experiencing  
> mystical revelations:  "It's all so clear!  Everything makes sense!"  
> — who are always unable to speak in specifics.  Religious ecstasy  
> suffuses a person with a pervasive sense of knowing all, utterly and  
> completely, despite having no particular insight to attach the  
> feeling to. Mystical revelation is indescribable precisely because  
> there is nothing to relate it to but "allness" or "the universe."   
> Some epileptics in the initial stages of their seizures describe the  
> same transcendent ecstasy.  You can have the experience, too.  When  
> a scientist administers an electrical zap to your temporal lobe, you  
> will use the language of prophets.
>
> Our susceptibility to the intoxicating feeling of knowing is why  
> humans everywhere are afflicted with what Burton calls "an epidemic  
> of certainty."  Attend your next H+ Summit, see if you see any  
> symptoms manifested, and wait to catch the exultant virus.
>
> Reason is Never the Reason
>
> Do you aspire to be a rational person?  Careful what you wish for.
>
> A man who had a tiny tumor cut out of the cortex near the frontal  
> lobe of his brain seemed fine at first.  He passed all intelligence  
> tests and retained all faculties.  But once released to daily life,  
> he was paralyzed by an inability to make the simplest decision.   
> Sitting at his office desk, he spent twenty minutes deciding whether  
> to use a black pen or blue pen, carefully thinking through every  
> implications of each option.  Family and friends reported that the  
> subject became the most hyper-rational man who could talk endlessly  
> through the details of scheduling conflicts, listing the pluses and  
> minuses of every possibility, unable to settle on a decision.   
> Cognitively normal people who listened could always see his every  
> reasonable point.  Nothing he said about any particular  
> consideration was irrational.  But as Antonio Damasio, a guy  
> accustomed to dealing with cognitively weird people, said, "You  
> wanted to bang your fist on the table and say, Just make a decision  
> already!"
>
> It turns out the theologian Jean Buridan's medieval "proof" of free  
> will is mistaken.  He claimed that a hungry ass equidistant between  
> two bales of hay would freeze forever if it didn't have free will,  
> because both choices are equally valid.  (Buridan's ass is like  
> Newton's apple:  Untrue folk analogies are the vehicles in which  
> memes travel.)
>
> I've never been an ass equidistant between two equally large bales  
> of hay, but I have been an asshole equidistant between two equally  
> large pieces of ass, and I promise you I did not freeze. It takes  
> very little thought to act in such circumstances.  In fact, the less  
> you think, the easier action is.
>
> It looks like the brain has an automatic timer, a wound spring  
> pushing an emotional impulse to choose.  We didn't evolve to know  
> the world, but to make the most statistically efficient decision  
> given limited data and time.  Without impulse to close the deal, no  
> decision is possible with pure reason. With enough thought, every  
> possibility can be made to appear equally valid.  Reason is a tool  
> to serve impulse, not the thing that provokes decision.   You can  
> reason your way to any conclusion you want.  Wanting is the key.
>
> Neurosis may be a poorly developed impulse to over-ride maddening  
> rationality.  You may notice stupid people don't suffer from  
> neurosis.  It's only guys like Woody Allen who drive you crazy  
> rethinking every consideration.  Something has to override analysis  
> paralysis, and it ain't more analysis.
>
> In our leaders we admire the virtue of decisiveness, an ability to  
> "act from the gut," unperturbed by egghead considerations.  But, of  
> course, a leader's confidence is not based on knowing the cascading  
> domino effects of his decisions.  Leaders act decisively with moral  
> clarity in a state of ignorance.  That's why we follow them.  Their  
> lack of doubt is infectious.
>
> Did you want to believe in a scientifically supported possibility  
> for negligible senescence before you discovered leaders who believe  
> it?
>
> Why did that answer just pop into your brain?  Why should answers  
> "pop" into your brain at all?
>
> You don't know why you just thought that.
>
> Neuroscientists Michael Gazzaniga and Roger Sperry found that people  
> with a severed corpus collosum, the thumb-thick bridge between the  
> left and right hemispheres of our brains, act with two different  
> wills, each with roughly half our higher capacities, operating  
> independently in the same skull, without consulting the other before  
> they make a decision.  True story:  The left hand takes a shirt off  
> the rack, and the right hand grabs it and puts it back.  The left  
> hand gets so frustrated, it tries to strangle the person like Steve  
> Martin in The Man With Two Brains.
>
> The left hemisphere is in charge of language.  The right hemisphere  
> is in charge of visual imagery.  When you flash an image of a spoon  
> to the eye that corresponds to the right hemisphere, the patient  
> with a cut corpus callosum will say he sees nothing.  When asked to  
> grab the object using the hand that corresponds to the right  
> hemisphere, the patient will grab the spoon they just said they  
> couldn't see, yet still be unable to say what they are holding.
>
> When Sperry flashed "WALK" to the right hemisphere in charge of  
> visual representation, the patient got up and walked across the  
> room.  When asked why he did that, he (the left hemisphere, in  
> charge of language) said, "To get a Coke." Imagine Sperry's  
> astonishment at that moment, knowing the real reason why that person  
> walked across the room. The language hemisphere spontaneously  
> contrived a reason, yet the person who owned the brain had no notion  
> of this.
>
> The left hemisphere was shown a chicken and the right hemisphere was  
> shown a snowfall. When Sperry asked the patient to choose a picture  
> that goes with what they see, the hand controlled by the left  
> hemisphere picked a claw, and the hand controlled by the right  
> hemisphere picked a shovel.  Interesting.  Both hemispheres can  
> independently and simultaneously pick an image that goes with what  
> they saw.
>
> Then Sperry asked (the left hemisphere, in charge of language) why  
> he chose a claw and a shovel.  He responded without hesitation, "Oh,  
> that's simple.  The chicken claw goes with the chicken, and you need  
> a shovel to clean out the chicken shed."
>
> If each hemisphere can spontaneously fabricate a meaning for every  
> action, you've got to wonder how other more subtle parts of our  
> brains are spin-doctoring reasons why other subtle parts of our  
> brain are doing things.   If quick-witted lies pass between the two  
> big parts of your brain, why shouldn't they go on among the little  
> parts?
>
> Why did you choose that for breakfast this morning?  Why are you  
> still dating that jerk?  Why can't you stick to your diet?  Why are  
> you considered the most reliable source as to the "reasons" you do  
> you things?  Nothing told you to get a Coke.  You chose to get a  
> Coke.  Right?
>
> You're the Worst Judge of Yourself
>
> Hey numbnuts, cognitive science demonstrates that you're not bright  
> enough to realize what a clusterfuck your life is, because you're  
> wired to tell yourself a coherent story after the fact.  Microsecond  
> by microsecond, your neocortex spins a story that says: "I meant to  
> do that."  Your conscious mind thinks its Sherlock Holmes, but  
> really it's Maxwell Smart, tripping through life and weaving  
> coherent excuses to maintain the illusion of control.
>
> Take a look at your life, for instance, dipshit.  How much did you  
> completely screw up and blame on others, and how much of the good  
> stuff did you stumble into randomly, then take credit for as if you  
> planned it all along?
>
> More so than you think.  Clever experiments with memory recall show  
> how we cast narratives back to justify what happened.  We think our  
> lives have meaning to the extent we are able to look back and pick  
> and chose the events that draw a coherent narrative, then we  
> unconsciously alter all those events to confirm what we want to  
> believe about ourselves.
>
> When it comes to our self-assessments, we are all susceptible to the  
> Lake Wobegon Phenomenon: When quizzed, most people rate themselves  
> as smarter, more attractive, more optimistic, better leaders, and  
> less biased than average.  Even if you beat the average in one of  
> these domains, the chances of you beating the average in all five  
> domains is slim. Chances are, you're below average in more than one  
> of these domains.  How do I know this?  I'm smarter, more charming,  
> a better leader, and less biased than most people.
>
> I had a chance to talk to the class bully from my high school, who  
> told me about how good life had been to him.  I decided not to  
> mention this was the first nonviolent encounter we ever had.  He  
> brought up a mentally handicapped guy who got beaten even worse than  
> me and boasted that nobody messed with that kid when he was around.   
> I stared politely into his face amazed at what a deluded sense he  
> had of himself.  I remembered him as relentlessly, inexhaustibly  
> evil.  For an instant I wondered if I should question my sense of  
> myself as a mature, faultless victim whose rapier witticisms should  
> have provoked applause rather than pounding, but then I thought  
> better of it.
>
> The mind has a mind of its own.  But even that's not in charge.
>
> Your Arm Makes you Think you Control It
>
> Have you clicked away from this article yet?  Why not?  Because it's  
> not up to you.  You can't even choose when you click your mouse.
>
> In a famous experiment, Benjamin Libet stuck people's heads into an  
> electroencephalogram and their arms into an electromyogram, then  
> asked them to move their finger whenever they chose.  Libet found  
> that motor activity in the brain began a quarter second before the  
> subject became conscious of choosing to move his finger.  Here's the  
> sequence:  First, motor activity in brain.  Quarter second later,  
> patient consciously decides to move.  Quarter second later, patient  
> moves.  Conscious choice does not cause motor activity.  Motor  
> activity causes conscious choice.
>
> Did you just say… Bullshit!  Where did that come from?  A  
> spontaneous reaction is not reasoned.
>
> Reason is the act of justifying a spontaneous reaction.  Reason  
> rushes into the milliseconds after you instinctively react.  Next  
> time you make a snap judgment, ask yourself how much reasoning your  
> can fit into the space of a snap.
>
> Hey dingbat.  Thoughts are spontaneous.  Reason is torturous.  The  
> impulse to believe sets up the maze.  Then reason finds a path  
> through, convinced it's the only path available, unaware the same  
> brain made the maze.  Crucial to your ability to conclude is a  
> preconscious elimination of alternatives.  Everything you think you  
> know is a con your brain plays on your conscious mind.  Including  
> how you feel about the guy writing this.
>
> You Don't Know Why You Like or Dislike People
>
> How confident are you of your assessment of my personality?  Do I  
> seem like a prick, or a raconteur you'd like to have for dinner?  It  
> depends less on your objective judgment than whether you're holding  
> a warm drink.
>
> Researchers asked people to participate in a study where they rate a  
> written portrayal of personality.  Just before half the subjects sat  
> down, the researcher said, "Could you hold this for a sec?"  Half  
> the subjects held the warm cup for about one second before they sat  
> down.  The other half were never asked to hold the cup.  Then they  
> were asked to read a description of a person.  Then they were asked,
>
> “How do you feel about this guy?  Rate him on a scale from one to  
> ten.”
>
> The people who held the coffee for a second rated the described guy  
> on average 20% higher than those who didn't.
>
> Those of you who are drinking coffee, or maybe those who just did  
> somebody a small favor, probably like me more than those who aren't  
> and didn't.  The rest of you can go fuck yourselves.  (I'm not  
> holding anything warm at the moment.  Wait a second, my dog just  
> moved onto my lap.  I apologize for what I just wrote.  Can't we all  
> just get along?)
>
> Next time somebody makes an impression on you, ask yourself if your  
> reaction is based on your judgment or your digestion.
>
> The Sack of Meat our Dreams Drag Around
>
> Many transhumanists tell me triumphantly that human nature has been  
> left behind.  So why are they bothering to tell me?  All humans  
> everywhere care what other people think, spontaneously react when  
> their values are challenged, argue with tribemates about what's  
> true.  See the comment button below?  Why doesn't your cat find this  
> button irresistible?  Why can't you choose to be more like your  
> cat?  Turn off your mind, go sit in the sunbeam, give not a shit,  
> and be content.
>
> Hey, you're still reading.  How long did you consider the option to  
> stop chasing opinion and contributing your own?  Why does your cat's  
> brain gravitate naturally toward the Buddhadom you must discipline  
> yourself to achieve?  It's that damn human nature again.  It won't  
> go away, not even the part that desires to transcend it, a  
> particularly unique feature of Homo Confabulus.
>
> If we can deny our own stubborn human nature, we can block out any  
> information that contradicts what the author Tamim Ansary calls "the  
> fruitless longing for transcendence" that drives much delusion.
>
> Joe Quirk is the author of Exult, an epic myth about hang gliding  
> and grief, and It's Not You, It's Biology: The Science of Love, Sex  
> & Relationships, a humorous science book translated into 17 languages.
>

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