
Is the Immediate Playback of Events Changing Children’s Memories? - myth_drannon
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/25/well/family/video-altering-memory.html
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JuliusSu
This is similar to the point made in Ted Chiang's short story "The Truth of
Fact, the Truth of Feeling." When writing replaced oral storytelling, people's
memories and experiences shifted as well. He makes the case that having one's
experiences always available for playback will create another kind of shift.

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markdown
I used to be able to remember lots of phone numbers. Now I don't even know the
numbers of close friends and relatives. I've outsourced that job to my phone.

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om3n
Your brain my not remember the phone numbers, but it contains the location of
(or the pointers to) the object that contains the phone numbers.

Sort of reminds me of the "extended mind thesis"

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extended_mind_thesis](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extended_mind_thesis)

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taneq
Yeah, I've noticed that I remember a lot more information these days as...
external references? Breadcrumbs? Like, I have no idea what that person's
called but I know I got an email from them last Thursday so I can look it up
if I need to. Or I don't know the exact phrasing of a quote but I know the
exact search term I'd use to find it on the web.

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dasyatidprime
Now, what happens when, say, memories of conversations turn into pointers to
chat logs that are stored on the central server, where they can be modified,
deleted, or your access taken away by the service or nowadays often by the
other party?

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knd775
I automatically backup all of my tweets to a google sheet that I then download
periodically. I don't necessarily do it for the reason that you gave, but
that's definitely a reason to to something like this.

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sysbin
I'm not sure if I agree with the reshaping idea. I do share the opinion that a
person gains more self awareness for how others see them when examining the
self from third person. Although, I don't assume the past first-person
memories would be modified or altered and if they were ingrained moments. The
brain doesn't know to overlap memories by some hidden timestamp of oh these
both happened at the same time! Another way of looking at it is if I hated
some type of vegetable young and enjoy it now. I still remember how I used to
hate it when I was young. Furthermore, I think kids have an advantage nowadays
if they want to master some type of choreography by examining how people view
them on stage.

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randomvectors
> The brain doesn't know to overlap memories by some hidden timestamp of oh
> these both happened at the same time!

It kind of does. Each time you recollect something you change the memory of
the event (this is also mentioned in the article). Repeated recollection can
have varied effects from (simplified) "I don't recall the original event, I
recall the last time I thought of it" all the way up to creating false
memories. I think there's been quite a bit of research on how this relates to
interrogation techniques and the reliability of eyewitness testimony.

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marktangotango
I caused a car accident 25 years ago when I drove through a stop sign and was
hit in the side by another car. Other than being rattled quite hard I suffered
no ill effects although it totalled both my car and the car that hit me. I'd
driven that same route several times over the past year, I had just been in a
daze or something on that occassion.

I spent a few days recuperating at home, sore as hell. During that time I
replayed the incident several times in my head, and thought I had a clear idea
of the stop sign I missed and what it looked like. I went back later, and the
intersection was nothing like I had convinced myself I had remembered it
being. Specifically I'd convinced myself the stop sign was partially obscured,
and it wasn't.

This experience shook me for a long time, and gave me a deep distrust of my
own memories. There's a reason why eye witness aren't entirely reliable, I'd
experienced it myself.

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NikkiA
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automaticity](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automaticity)

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hybrids
Seems to run contrary to the concept of human memory being supremely
_unreliable,_ and that our subconscious has a tendency - beyond the feeling
everyone's familiar with of memories being "vague" and "difficult to remember"
\- to actually _edit and reshape_ the concrete details from the way they
actually happened. Obviously, given a certain context, this can result in
terrible consequences. I remember this being discussed at length in the book
"Subliminal: How Your Unconscious Mind Rules Your Behavior"[1] w/r/t
eyewitness testimony of criminal acts, but perhaps in some cases, our
distorted perception of reality may be a important mechanism to our own self-
esteem, provided that it doesn't go too far.

[1] [https://www.amazon.com/Subliminal-Your-Unconscious-Rules-
Beh...](https://www.amazon.com/Subliminal-Your-Unconscious-Rules-
Behavior/dp/0307472256)

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ricardobeat
Does it? I think it corroborates that concept, showing that you might
immediately “edit” your memory based on video of the events.

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trevyn
Is there a workaround for the NYT paywall that I’m missing? They’re blocking
incognito windows now somehow.

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mallomarmeasle
Best workaround is to pay to be a subscriber, and support quality journalism

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dougmwne
Where can I buy quality journalism from? I don't think the NYT qualifies, and
I'm saying that because most articles lack substance, not because I'm bothered
by its bias.

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anchpop
WaPo is pretty good, as is Reuters. Forbes is also decent in my experience.

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jkeuhlen
Forbes is good and bad. It's good when written by Forbes, but half of the
articles I come across there these days are from "contributors" which can be
just as bad as reading HuffPo.

