
How the sense of an ending shapes memory - AndrewDucker
http://timharford.com/2016/05/how-the-sense-of-an-ending-shapes-memory/
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Benjammer
Kahneman's book, Thinking Fast and Slow[0] is a great read if you like to
think about memory and how thinking functions in practice

[0] - [https://www.amazon.com/Thinking-Fast-Slow-Daniel-
Kahneman/dp...](https://www.amazon.com/Thinking-Fast-Slow-Daniel-
Kahneman/dp/0374533555?ie=UTF8&*Version*=1&*entries*=0)

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madaxe_again
This can be an interesting thing to be aware of and play with. Taking his
example of pain - if you know that your reported perception of pain will be
down to your own judgment and where it sits within your narrative, you can
start to play with the narrative, lie to yourself, alter your response.

A simple example is in physicality. Suppose you're rowing a 2km race. You
break it into eight 250m chunks in your head, because a 250m sprint is am easy
thing, and aa long as you knowingly don't know that there's more pain coming,
you treat each sprint entirely independently, and squeeze that much more out
of yourself.

A slightly more complex example is in flat-out rewriting, where you
consciously choose to either interpret or reinterpret an event in a light you
convince yourself to be true. Years later all you remember is your new truth.

I mean, people do the latter inadvertently and crappily all the time, as he
describes. Why not do it deliberately? I quite like being in charge of my
narrative, even if I cheat with tippex and autoindoctrination.

Sure, you end up forgetting which reality is really real, but again, it
doesn't really matter - narrative reality is entirely subjective anyway.

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mikekchar
I often have to pass on bad news in my job. For example, if we realize that
there is a problem and estimates need to be pushed. Or if I'm mentoring
someone, sometimes I have to adjust their perception of their performance. In
many cases I've tried to lead in with casual conversation, then break the bad
news. This seems to work very poorly. Instead it is better to lead in with the
bad news, deal with the fallout and then finish on an up note. I've never
really understood _why_ this order is more effective, but it makes sense to me
now. Very interesting.

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eridius
It makes a lot of sense that the ending affects the entire experience. We tend
to implicitly assume that things will proceed as they have in the past,
following a trajectory. So, to use the Formula One example, since he started
strong and finished weak, it's perfectly reasonable to believe that if there
were more races, he would have continued to do badly and lose the
championship. But if he had started weak and finished strong, then it's an
easy assumption that if there were more races he would have continued to do
well.

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harryjo
Remember when restaurants used to serve a chocolate mint with your bill? Andes
Candies kept the restaurant industry afloat.

~~~
cpncrunch
Used to?

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aaronbrethorst
If you want to learn more about this, Google for "primary and recency effect,"
or look for serial position effect:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serial_position_effect](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serial_position_effect)

