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The Mandela Effect
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In this episode, Megan and Frank investigate the Mandela Effect. Why do so many people "remember" Nelson Mandela dying in prison in the 1980s, or the Fruit of the Loom logo as containing a cornucopia, or the existence of a movie starring Sinbad as a genie? What explains these collective mis-rememberings: parallel dimensions, a government cover-up, a glitch in the matrix? Or should we just conclude that human memory is inherently unreliable? How do false memories arise, and how can we distinguish the real from the imagined? Despite our cultural obsession with preserving every memory, could there be some value in forgetting the past? Thinkers discussed include Augustine of Hippo, Friedrich Nietzsche, Edmund Husserl, and Elizabeth Loftus.
Hosts' Websites:
Email: philosophyonthefringes@gmail.com
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Bibliography:
The Visual Mandela Effect as Evidence for Shared and Specific False Memories Across People
The Deese-Roediger-McDermott (DRM) Task: A Simple Cognitive Paradigm to Investigate False Memories
Understanding Memory and the Human Lifespan | Plus
Loftus & Pickrell 1995 - The formation of false memories.
Chloe Wall - Knowing (from) me, knowing (from) you: Essays on memory and testimony
Total recall: the people who never forget | Memory | The Guardian
Nietzsche: 'On the Genealogy of Morality' and Other Writings
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Cover Artwork by Logan Fritts
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Music from #Uppbeat (free for Creators!):
https://uppbeat.io/t/simon-folwar/neon-signs
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Transcript
Introduction and Mandela Effect Overview
00:00:03
Speaker
Welcome to Philosophy on the Fringes, a podcast that explores the philosophical dimensions of the strange. We're your hosts, Megan Fritz and Frank Cabrera. On today's episode, we're talking about the Mandela Effect.
00:00:16
Speaker
What explains collective misrememberings? Is human memory inherently unreliable? And could there be value in forgetting the past?
Holiday Traditions and Delayed Projects
00:00:39
Speaker
Hey, everyone. Welcome back to episode 28, the last episode of Philosophy on the Fringes that will drop in the year 2025 next time, I guess. This will be out before the new year, right, Frank? Definitely. Yeah.
00:00:52
Speaker
Yeah. Not before Christmas, probably. It'll probably be after Christmas. um Like a late a late Christmas gift for our for our listeners. It'll help you through that post-Christmas malaise. Oh, yeah. The malaise between Christmas and New Year's Eve. That's like the like the weirdest time of the year. It is. Because you feel like you should still be in celebration mode, but it's like five, six days. and you're like, ah it's a little too long.
00:01:16
Speaker
It's a little too long. um Yeah. Are you excited for Christmas, Frank? What asking for this year? I am going to get... do you know? Well, I hope that I'm going to get some of those cologne, la cologne coffee drinks. You know, those lattes in a can thing. Those things are awesome. I love those. Lattes in a can, yeah.
00:01:38
Speaker
Yeah, it's a little bit indulgent. You have $2.50 a can. I can only only abide it and accept that I will drink it for as a gift around the holidays. You're living a rich man's life with your cologne. Too indulgent.
00:01:50
Speaker
Yeah. Okay. What about you? oh you know, I asked for I asked for just like a bunch of like stupid little stuff that I need. Like, I'm going to run out of moisturizer soon. Cream, syrup, serums. Yeah. yes You know, attempts to stop the passage of time yeah through a twelve dollar bottle.
00:02:09
Speaker
And yeah. And then ah Frank and i got each other. Well, our Christmas gift giving to each other is um has been weird historically in that like sometimes we'll get like really nice gifts for each other. And sometimes we'll just not we we'll forget to get each other gifts. I'm going to randomly get each other really awesome gifts just at a random time in the year. Yeah.
00:02:30
Speaker
So this year we just decided that we would surprise each other with a book. We I think this will be a new tradition, too. I think i think we inaugurated a new tradition. It's so low pressure and it's nice because we like books. Yeah. And if you don't like the book, I'll just read it. Exactly. So it works out. um Yeah. So that's what we have going on. Nothing that interesting to talk about. Oh, we did find out for those of you who may be interested in our audible mini lecture series. That the release date ah got pushed back from December 4th when it was supposed to be to the end of May, which is such a far amount to push it back. No discernible reason. Just the wheelings and dealings of showbiz. It's just so much time, though. Like, couldn't they they couldn't push it back a month?
00:03:15
Speaker
we're not We're not allowed to criticize them. Yeah. No, but I mean, no, it's not a criticism. they were They're lovely people and a lovely company and just, you know, sad. But um that gives us more time to work on our website, so that's fine. So, yeah, if you were looking for it December 4th and you didn't find it, that's why.
00:03:31
Speaker
So...
Origins and Examples of the Mandela Effect
00:03:32
Speaker
But let's get into today's episode. We're talking about the Mandela Effect. This is an episode i've been trying to talk Frank into doing pretty much all year. and he's been putting it off and I finally got it for the last episode. um So I'm excited to talk about it. We were supposed to do it for the previous episode, but just I lost interest. And then Megan really yeah you will and reignited my interest. and And hopefully it's going to be good.
00:03:56
Speaker
OK, so, Frank, what is the Mandela effect? Probably most of our listeners have heard of this before, but for those who have not. Yeah. So it's named after the former president of South Africa, Nelson Mandela, who who died in 2013. So according to some people, including paranormal researcher Fiona Broom, did that I get that name right? Fiona Broom.
00:04:18
Speaker
Fiona Broome, yes. So she remembered, or so in the 1980s, she had the memory of him dying in prison. So he went on to become, he was a famous advocate for the end of apartheid in South Africa. He went on to become president of South Africa. She remembered him dying in prison, though, in the 1980s, and so did a lot of other people. So she sent out the bat signal and she said, do you remember this too? The early internet bat signal. The early internet bat signal. Yeah, I'm not sure how she contacted him. It was a mailing list or something. Yeah, chat. Yeah. But she found a lot of people who also remembered him dying in prison in the
00:04:56
Speaker
um And this was very puzzling to her and and presumably all these other people. And what they concluded from this, and this is getting into one of the theories explaining this phenomenon. They concluded that we, that there are parallel dimensions or there's like alternate timelines. And they experienced the one timeline, which I guess merged with a different timeline, because as we know, right, Nelson Mandela did go on to become president.
00:05:23
Speaker
It's tough South Africa. He died in 20... He was doing television appearances up until 2013. Yeah. So, but the the the phenomenon, the puzzle is, why are all these people independently misremembering something? Yeah. Or maybe put a little bit more neutrally, why are they all remembering something for which there is no other evidence that's non-memorial? I mean, there's also a lot of counter evidence. Yes. Like all the evidence from his presidency. Right. And so that's the that's the Mandela effect. so the man it's it's There's a bunch of people independently remember something for which there's either counter evidence or a lack of non-pneumonic evidence. And the Nelson Mandela dying in prison thing, maybe that one doesn't really speak to a lot of our listeners because you know I wasn't alive in the 1980s. And maybe if our listeners were, they don't remember this sort of thing. But there's other more famous ones, I think. I can kind of see the the Nelson Mandela one. Like you can, it's easy to picture this happening though. So you're, you're Fiona Broom, right? You're, you're, you're sitting around your Thanksgiving table in the 1990s and someone brings up Nelson Mandela and you know, your dad says, uh, didn't that guy die? yeah
00:06:31
Speaker
And you're like, oh, that that sounds right. That sounds right. I feel like I do remember that. And then you just start, you know, everyone kind of decides that he died. and then, ah you know, you you read about him in the paper couple weeks later and you're like, wait, what? Yeah. So I can, you know, that one i can kind of see it just, you know, there was a lot happening about Nelson Mandela. He was undergoing trials, you know, and tribulations in his life.
00:06:55
Speaker
ah You know, it was kind of before the the World Wide Web. So that one doesn't seem like super weird to me. But there are other cases of quote unquote Mandela effects. Yeah. So. Right. So what are some other instances of people, a lot of people independently misremembering something right or or remembering something for which there's no other evidence? ah So a lot of people remember the the book series, The Bernstein Bears, being spelled with an E, or it's actually spelled with an A. It's The Bernstein Bears. Yeah, an E They remember instead of S-T-A-I-N. A lot of people remember a movie from the late 80s or the 90s starring the comedian s Sinbad called Shazam, where he plays a genie who gets into hijinks with some kid and stuff like that. Wait, I'm going to stop you right here because I'm pretty sure Shazam, Berenstain Bears and the Nelson Mandela thing are all mismemories of the eighty s
00:07:55
Speaker
ah Has this been discussed? Maybe. Maybe. Maybe. Well, maybe let's... There are a cluster of these V-80s? Let's understand the phenomenon first before we try to explain All right. getting ahead of my myself. Sorry. um And, okay, so we have we have not just a lot of people misremembering some...
00:08:11
Speaker
you know large, important event or the existence of some object or film or something. We also have people misremembering logos, like famous logos. So a lot of people remember the fruit of the loom clothing, clothing company where they sell underwear. Yeah. yeah um So they remember that as having not just fruit, but a cornucopia. So if you go and Google the logo, there is no cornucopia. It's just a bunch of fruit.
00:08:36
Speaker
Sure. A lot of people remember the Monopoly man. He's Uncle Pennybags or something. They remember him as having a monocle, but he does not have a monocle. I feel like I might have remembered that one, but but I also could be confusing him with Mr. Peanut. You're getting ahead of yourself again. Again? Yes, stop. Sorry. Stop explaining things. Okay.
00:08:58
Speaker
Okay, so yeah ah incidentally, our three-year-old wants a monocle for Christmas. What does she call it? The little the little single glasses thing? that She said glasses with one eye.
00:09:09
Speaker
She just came up with that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. She's she is she's a really interesting character. um Yeah, so that's that's basically the idea, right? A lot of people independently misremember something. um So what's what's going on here? That's the question.
00:09:23
Speaker
um So we already we already mentioned one popular theory, the the parallel dimensions theory. You know, the the idea is something really, really weird and esoteric. there's There's an alternate reality out there, and people experience that part of the alternate reality, and then there was a kind of a split. the Reality changed in some way. So like Fiona Broom had memories from a alternate timeline that she's not on right now. Yeah. um But like they like drifted across the timeline into yeah this time. Fiona in this timeline's mind. Something like that. Yeah. I mean, or maybe maybe going back to our episode on past lives. So maybe she has a a very mundane past life memory of of ah herself seeing the Fruit of the Loom logo with the cornucopia. Did she have the fruit of the loom? No, no, I don't think so. I don't think so. But I'm just yeah in a manner of speaking. Yeah, yeah, So that's one like, you know, explanation.
Explanations and Theories
00:10:20
Speaker
That was that was the the the preferred explanation of person that coined the term. Another explanation is that there's a kind of maybe a conspiracy among the elites going back to our Illuminati episode. Maybe this is one of the ways they mess with us by changing things like logos to just to demonstrate their power. Right. Uh huh. Yeah. Uh huh.
00:10:38
Speaker
Another popular theory is that we live in a computer simulation and these sorts of Mandela effects are glitches in the computer simulation. I feel like that's the one I've heard the most. Yeah. Yeah. Right. So the idea is like, you know, reality is not composed of atoms or particles. It's composed of bits, bits of information, we' computer computer code. sure And the the simulators, although they're really powerful, they can simulate this whole universe, they're not perfect. They they mess up sometimes. There's glitches in the code, like there's glitches in Nintendo 64 games. and you Remember, you go through the walls sometimes in inadvertently in in Legend of Zelda. Yeah.
00:11:16
Speaker
And these little little little funny aspects of our world, logos changing, ah these are glitches in the simulation. This this demonstrates that the the simulators are not perfect. right There's no other explanation for these sorts of weird phenomena besides just that we live in a simulation. Yeah. So there's some prominent, like I guess, metaphysical theories of this phenomenon. Any thoughts here, Megan? Yeah. for like Reddit prominent, right? Yeah. Yeah. And just, you know, we are not beyond appealing to Reddit on this podcast. We do it. We're not above. No, we're certainly not above Reddit. but And a lot of discussion about this really does appear on Reddit. There's very few academic sources on this topic, although we will talk about a few of them, one from psychology and one from philosophy, but very, very few sources on this topic, which is kind of unfortunate because it is very interesting, right? It is interesting. it is appealing to a lot of people. A lot of people do have these Mandela Effect memories. I think we do as well. right You already mentioned one.
00:12:19
Speaker
yeah i Yeah. I think I have the Berenstain Bears and false memory. my My way of explaining this is that it it probably has something to do with how i pronounce it. like I've never heard anybody say Berenstain Bears. yeah So I think probably as a little kid, someone reading me these books, I probably just...
00:12:36
Speaker
You know, my memory encoded it as S-T-E-I-N. Here's one that I have, and and my i know my sister has too, is the C-3PO. So C-3PO has a silver leg, one silver leg, C-3PO from Star Wars. That's real life. That's not the Mandela memory. That's that's real in real. In real life, in in the movie, if you pay close attention, if you look at his leg, egg he has one silver leg. I had no idea. Yeah. ah Yeah. That was super surprising to me. like I've been watching that movie since I was five years old. have just learned that. Dozens of times. Yeah. Dozens of times. And yeah if you would have asked me before we did this episode, does C-3PO have a silver leg? I would have said definitely not. he is He's a gold guy. He's golden. He's a golden boy. Golden boy. he is. But yeah, he has a silver leg. I remember him as saying having two gold legs. So what do we do? Yeah. that's I mean, you have to believe it, right?
00:13:25
Speaker
Or. Or. i mean, you tell me. I don't know. ah My brother is extremely convinced about the Fruit of the Loom one. ah Last time we talked about it, he said, and I quote, I know what I saw.
00:13:38
Speaker
He's pretty like he's a really convinced there was a cornucopia. I like that. It's like, you know, I'm not going to try to spec. I'm just the facts. I know i know what I saw. I saw a cornucopia. He's like Scully from season eight of the X-Files. I've seen things I can't explain. Yeah.
00:13:54
Speaker
So, ah yeah, so I mean, I totally do get some of these. The Shazam one, I mean, not really. i never. Sinbad's great. We we watched um we recently kind of recently watched a movie with Sinbad in it. I think this is 2021. God,
00:14:07
Speaker
god really a Pandemic time. ah you We watched The First Kid starring Sinbad. It's so funny. Yeah. And and that that other that boy. That boy. Yeah. In blank check. Yeah. It was really good. So Sinbad's great. But yeah, i don't remember him as a genie or anything like that. So. He doesn't remember himself as a genie either, which complicates matters. Yeah, I mean, it would be weird if he didn't get the glitch in the Matrix. Yeah. All right. So so what's weird about this topic? Maybe I should say what sort of made me averse to talking about this initially. Right. Like we were supposed to do this episode before and I signed against it. And, you know.
00:14:48
Speaker
um I guess what seems weird about having this talking about this topic is it just ah it sort of it seems really mundane. Like people misremember stuff. Whoop dee do. Like what we need to posit parallel universes, like computer simulations of reality, government conspiracies. Like isn't just the simplest explanation that our cognitive ability is not perfect. We misremember stuff. Like what's the problem?
00:15:11
Speaker
Yes. And then my counter yes was that the weird thing about the Mandela effect is that the fact that it's so many people having the exact same false memory, or i guess that's sort of begging the question, but the exact same, ah you know, memory of something that doesn't align with the evidence that we have. Yes.
00:15:34
Speaker
And and there and it's not just um it's not just a hazy memory for most of these people. It's it. I mean, it's as clear as something that happened to you a half hour. yeah That's that's an ah important distinction we should make now ah that they're not just having what's called a semantic memory. Yeah. Well, you you remember a fact. right I remember I remember that George Washington was the first president of the United States. That's a semantic memory. I wasn't there. I didn't i don't have an episodic memory of of seeing him be the first president of the United States. so So they have episodic memories of like watching Shazam, renting it from Blockbuster. Seeing on the news that Nelson Mandela had died. I was there. I was there. Where were where were you when you saw Shazam for the first time? They have these sorts of episodic first person. I was there. You know, they can imagine themselves in the situation. that's That's the puzzle. So I guess, yeah, I mean, yeah, it is weird.
Memory's Role in Knowledge and Misremembering
00:16:28
Speaker
I guess like an analogy that maybe helps stress the weirdness is imagining everyone wakes up having the same dream, right? Like ah like tomorrow, 100,000 people wake up and they have like the exact same dream. Maybe it's about Shazam or something, right? Yeah. yeah That would be really weird. right That would be weird. yeah so ah we Frank and I once had the same dream. yeah same like it was It was about a what was it that was a Whopper.
00:16:53
Speaker
Burger King. When I was pregnant, it was matt with our first kid. That's spooky. We both had a dream. team that i in In the dream, I wanted a Whopper from Burger King. It was like a pregnancy craving. and I woke up and I did want a Whopper from Burger King. Yes, and it it was weird for me to have that dream because I don't really like fast food hamburgers. That was the only time we'd ever been to Burger King, and we've never been there. I had never had a Whopper in my life. Yeah. I don't really like. It's not that would have been in our repertoire. Yeah. So, yeah. so that was So, it would be much weirder if this were, you know, multiplied by an order of magnitude.
00:17:27
Speaker
Should we find that puzzling? Is that a glitch in the simulation? I still find it puzzling. I thought it was weird. You didn't find it more. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, so it is weird. I mean, also, even if you don't think it's weird, it's a nice invitation to talk about memory and this philosophical aspects. There's lots of cool topics in the epistemology of memory. You know, like memory as a source of knowledge. Memory as like a fundamental enabler of knowledge, right? Memory is really important. It seems like you can't really know a lot of stuff unless you have memory kind of tying things together, right? Imagine you're doing a lot of... You're doing a lot You are going through a line of reasoning. You know, all men are mortal. Socrates is a man. Therefore, Socrates is mortal. You can't really get that conclusion unless you remember premise one and two. You got to remember all that stuff in order to justifiably believe the conclusion as a matter of deductive inference or memory ties it all together, right? If you only experienced single moments and didn't remember moment to moment, then you couldn't justifiably believe anything via inference. And so far as like inference has to be a kind of the active inference has to be temporarily extended. So that's like interesting, right? Memory this kind of fundamental enabler of knowledge. You might question whether memory can generate knowledge or whether it merely preserves knowledge. That's an interesting kind of question that philosophers of memory talk about. Here's one that I was always puzzled by in like my early in my philosophical education. Like what if you have the memory of your evidence? You remember you remember something. You remember you had evidence for it, but you forgot the evidence. Are you still justified in believing the thing that you believe? How much weaker does that evidence get? Yeah. Yeah. Right. I always found that like a real interesting puzzle. And that's something haven't explored it very much, but know philosophers of memory have written about this too. Right. Are you still justified in believing the thing if you forget your evidence, but you remember you had evidence? Yeah. So along with the preserving and generating knowledge questions, episodic memory is also crucial for things like being able to experience a symphony or a poem. Yeah. Various philosophers have made this point, but I think Augustine is the earliest one I know of to have done it. But when you say hear a song.
00:19:40
Speaker
You don't really experience it single moment by single moment. There's a sense in which you experience the whole thing all at the same time because you really need all the different measures in order to understand and correctly experience the final one.
00:19:55
Speaker
Yeah, i took a phenomenology class in undergrad. Yes, that is that is. Yeah, that's in phenomenology. Yeah. Husserl talks about this, too. Right. The phenomenology. He does. But ah Augustine talked about it first. But yes. Yeah. A lot of those yeah later phenomenologists talk about it. But I think that that's important. I mean, if you yeah, if you didn't have any episodic memory, then you, you know, you literally wouldn't be able to listen to a piece of music. Yeah. So, yeah. So it's it's crucial. We rely on it for pretty much everything. And so because of that, we end up relying on it a lot.
00:20:27
Speaker
So the Mandela effect, even though a lot of it lives on Reddit, it has kind of been like tested in semi-controlled settings, right? Like people have done research on this. Yeah, not I mentioned this already. not Not much, but I did find a paper published in Psychological Science, or a mainstream psychology journal journal, called The Visual Mandela Effect as Evidence for Shared and Specific False Memories Across People. So this study was composed of four experiments. um The first one just demonstrates that people do ah misremember things in a similar sort of way. So it was the the study was confined just to images, so none none of them none of the Shazam or Nelson Mandela dying in prison things. A very kind of narrow um set of phenomena being studied, just the logos, right? Like Frugal Loom, the Monopoly Man, that kind of thing. So they started out with like 40 image sets, right? And each image image set was composed of three images, the real image, and then two altered images, altered its in slight sorts of ways, like The the image set was the Monopoly Man, Monopoly Man with a monocle, Monopoly Man with glasses, for instance. So they they they got 100 people and they showed them these three images, 40 image sets. And then they checked to see whether people would select at rates greater than chance the altered image, right the one that wasn't yeah canonical. right and yeah they And they found that many of the ones, many of the the alleged Mandela effect images discussed on Reddit, were shown to be ones that the people got wrong. right Okay, okay. So they're like commonly misremembered. Yeah, yeah. So that was that was shown in like a controlled setting. So the the the six or or seven that made the cut were Pikachu.
00:22:09
Speaker
i I guess that one's talked about already. I've never heard that one before. Pikachu is commonly misremembered. Yeah, Pikachu is like where where the brown is on Pikachu is commonly misremembered. On his tail? Yeah. Okay. Monopoly Man, Fruit of the Loom, the Volkswagen logo, Curious George doesn't have a tail. Curious George does not have a tail. C-3PO's leg. And where's Waldo? He has ah a walking stick, like a cane or something.
00:22:32
Speaker
It's not a cane. It's a walking stick. It looks like a cane. I knew that one. I did not know that one. um But the ones that like the the pool of images included things like Hello Kitty, ah Bugs Bunny, the Bluetooth signal. Those ones didn't make the cut. But six of the ones that were are commonly discussed in the Reddit world and the Where's Waldo image made the cut. right These are ones for which people in this controlled setting at rates greater than chance will consistently select um the wrong image. Okay, so there's some images that just like we remember badly.
00:23:04
Speaker
That's one hypothesis, right? So they try to explain like why people do this. and ah one one kind of one possible explanation is maybe they see the so-called non-canonical image in the wild. And so this might partly explain like the C-3PO one, for instance. So a lot of ah in the images displaying C-3PO like in Star Wars site encyclopedias.
00:23:26
Speaker
Wookieepedia? Wookieepedia, like Lego Star Wars stuff. um they They either do not contain his legs Or they actually have two golden legs. So 24% of the images they scraped from Google image search, they had C-3PO with two golden legs. So maybe it's not people's fault for having this this false memory. Because they they might have seen images with C-3PO with two golden legs.
00:23:49
Speaker
But most of the images are not ones where you see the false image. If you Google Fruit the Loom logo, you're not going to get the fruit with the cornucopia. Yeah. Another possible explanation, which I think does some work in explaining some of these, is that you kind of you see what you expect to see when you look at something or when you're remembering something. You sort remember what you expect to remember based on your stereotypes or pre-existing biases or your background knowledge. So you see fruit and you're like fruit tumbles like, you know, beautifully out of a cornucopia. Yeah. There must have been a cornucopia. Yeah, or it could be your pre-existing notion of what a good logo is, right? So maybe you don't quite remember what the logo is, but you think yourself, what would be a good logo? Ah, fruit coming out of a cornucopia, which is a good logo. Maybe it is an even better logo than the actual fruit of the loom logo. That's a nice cornucopia, right? That's exciting. what's weird i was thinking about this when we were when we were talking about the fruit of the loom thing i remember having an idea of what a cornucopia was at like a very young age yeah i'm like where would i have gotten yeah yeah same too right i like where do i see cornucopias nowhere i mean it's it's been an an image in western culture you know a couple thousand years yeah but it's not like we were walking through like looking at still i don't know right i think i think like thanksgiving things like thanksgiving decor perhaps Maybe. I think it was maybe more popular in that kind of stuff in like the 90s. They were still putting cornucopias in pictures and stuff. So this kind of explanation is called a schema-based theory. In psychology, a schema is a kind of category or a mental model that we have that... organizes things into groups. So you think about all the things that are fast, shiny, expensive, and small, and have four wheels, are all sports cars. You know, a thing that is comfortable, that you sit on, that seats two people, and has cushions, that's a couch. Our categories for organizing things, the stereotypes you associate with things, they call those schemas. So our stereotype, our schema for a rich man is a guy with a monocle. So it's no surprise then you might misremember the Monopoly man as having a monocle. It fits with your schema, your stereotype, your concept, your category for a rich dude, which is why the Mr. Peanut, as you mentioned earlier, has a monocle. Yeah. So, I mean, those are some proposed explanations for these sorts of things. Of course, they don't explain every possible Mandela effect image. They're not going to explain the Pikachu thing. lot of people consistently get where the brown is on Pikachu's tail wrong. It explains the Curious George one pretty well. Yeah. Monkeys have a tail. Yeah, right. You know, I think some of these, though, are or might be explained by just like a simple extrapolation. So I got the Pikachu image wrong, like most people in the study. got the Pikachu image wrong. So Pikachu has brown on his two ears. And I said he had brown on the tip of his tail. And I think of that kind of a simple extrapolation. He has brown his two ears. There's another appendage that's close to his ears that has brown, too. So that might be like the kind of unconscious reasoning you go through in getting this thing wrong. Yeah. Simple extrapolation. Another way of explaining this phenomena is just to say that maybe we're just conflating two different things. So the movie Shazam isn't real, but there is another very similar sounding movie that was real. Right, Frank? Yeah. So the movie actually did see as a youth. It's called Kazam and it stars Shaquille O'Neal for a basketball player. And he plays a genie and he gets in the hijinks with the kids. Right. So to me, that's always seemed like the obvious source of this false memory that people have. But a lot of people on Reddit will resist this kind of debunking explanation. They'll say, no, no, no, I remember Kazam and Shazam. And I decided not to see Kazam because it seemed like a ripoff of Shazam. Oh, wow. Interesting. Yeah. So they got excuses for this one. To me, Kazam seems like a ripoff of Space Jam.
00:27:54
Speaker
It might have been, yeah. I don't i don't know the time the times stamps on this. thanks ah But Kazam is probably one of the worst movies ever made. like I love Shaquille O'Neal. I've liked Shaquille O'Neal since I was like five years old. I was a a big follower of the Orlando Magic when I was five years old, when Shaquille O'Neal used to be on the Orlando Magic before we went to the Lakers and whatever. um So, yeah, big fan of Shaquille O'Neal for a long time. Super funny guy. But, yeah, he's terrible in this movie. Very bad movie. Anyways.
00:28:20
Speaker
Well, you can't win them all. But one one really interesting proposed explanation that the authors of the study that we mentioned earlier put forward, but not only say too much about is the idea that maybe some images just intrinsically encourage or stimulate like stimulate these errors. Like the the images intrinsically by their very nature, they they lead people to um misremember them. That's a really interesting idea. like But what what is it about these images that might generate these kinds of misrememberings? They they leave that kind of ah unclear. They don't really say. Because they're not very similar. I mean, you have, where's Waldo, who's like a whole animated character, and Pikachu. And then you have like the Volkswagen logo, which is just some lines.
00:29:05
Speaker
And the Bluetooth logo, I guess that wasn't a commonly misremembered one. But that's also just some lines. So, and then, yeah, Fruit of the Loom. I don't know. Yeah, they all do seem really different. And there's lot of stuff going on in this study. I mentioned there's four experiments. We only talked about the first one where they know they demonstrate that certain images elicit the so-called Mandela effect. um But in the second experiment, they try they try to show that that there's no difference in people's attention to the images. right You might hypothesize that for the the non-Mandela effect images, maybe they're paying more attention, but for the Mandela effect images, they're not. So they use like eye tracking methods to show that there's no so difference in attention to the different images. they They demonstrated that, you know, you don't find the non-canonical images really a lot in the wild, except for maybe the C-3PO one. And they also showed that people will ah make the same errors during recall, too. In the fourth study, they ask them to draw what they just saw, right? so they might have they might have shown people the image for a few seconds, and then they ask them to draw it. They'll thosell still draw it wrong. though They'll draw it in the the Mandela effect style, right? i mean...
00:30:13
Speaker
and be really hard to draw the fruit of the loom logo. Yeah. yeah So what what they're looking for, though, is do do they do they add the feature that shouldn't be there or omit the feature that shouldn't be there? And they do. And and the the researchers found this like remarkable because they just saw the image like five seconds ago. Yeah. And they still they still did it wrong. It's a quote them from... Here, um this low accuracy for the VME image, the visual Mandela effect image, that is remarkable, given that participants had just seen the correct image minutes prior during the study phase, yet still chose the false version to indicate their memory. right That seems to really lend a lot of weight to to the schema theory, to me.
00:30:50
Speaker
yeah um Like, we're we're really going off of, at least in some of these cases, off of deeply ingrained categories that we have in our heads. Yeah, didn't quite like the schema theory as being at least all-encompassing because it doesn't explain the Pikachu one. And they thought that people should have selected the fruit on plate rather than fruit. Maybe they just don't have the right schema.
00:31:13
Speaker
It could explain the Pikachu one. Like, what if you had a schema of, like, that doesn't even seem crazy to me. Like, a lot of, like, cartoon animals have little spots or rings on the tips of their tails.
00:31:24
Speaker
Yeah, Pikachu has... In the canonical version, he has the spot on the beginning it. know, but I'm saying we could have a schema. Yeah, maybe. Maybe. That doesn't seem crazy to me you You could just have the wrong schema. Because I think it doesn't seem to be like any of the other theories explain the five-second forgetting yeah that well. Yeah. So just get a number here. So in the in the fourth experiment where they had them draw the image... In the short-term recall, so they just showed them the image. they and I mean, they only saw it for three seconds, but they still did see it. 20% of the images were still drawn incorrectly. They were drawn in the Mandela effect style. So that's pretty remarkable, right? Yeah. That lends credence, according to them, to the the intrinsic nature theory. The idea that something about these images, these logos... Remember, only so only seven out of 40 made the cut. Something about these seven, Volkswagen, Pikachu, C-3PO, Waldo, Fruit of Loom, something about these, Monopoly Man, something about these makes us misremember them. Do you think that um when people choose like a logo for their company, they have someone test to see if their logo is easily Mandela-ed?
00:32:30
Speaker
I know. Ask your brother. He should know this. Yeah, yeah. My brother's a graphic designer. I should ask him that. Because it it does seem important, right? Like, you want people to remember your logo accurately. um You want, especially, like, say you design, like, clothing or something like that, you want people to not be able to sell knockoffs. And, you know, like, legally, ah which if you have an easily misremembered logo, someone might be able to, like, legally sell things with something close to your logo. And people might just be like, oh, yeah, that's that's that's it. So it does actually have like actual pragmatic upshot yeah in the world. Yeah, this this is a kind of a surprising conclusion to our research is that, hey, this Mandela effect really important if you're into graphic design and marketing. Yeah. Because yeah because you want to make sure you draw your image in such a way that people don't misremember it. And yeah maybe something about some images leads to misremembering. we just have no idea what it is about They have no proposals. they say Something about these images leads people to misremember them, like something about the images themselves. Yeah.
00:33:30
Speaker
OK, so I think a lot of us probably vaguely know that human memory is not that great. ah But we did just talk about how much we rely on our memory, both semantic and episodic, for getting through the world, experiencing normal human things, knowing anything at all.
00:33:45
Speaker
So we rely ah a lot on memory. It's not perfect, but we tend to act as though it is generally reliable. But false memories and especially false episodic memories, it's actually really interesting because until really recently, we actually didn't really know that false episodic memories were possible.
00:34:07
Speaker
It was sort of suggested, there were some things that suggested they were in the 80s, but it was really not until the 90s that they were able to reliably induce false episodic memories in a controlled setting that people really realized that that was a thing. Previously, people had kind of assumed that if you have a first personal episodic memory of something, it basically happened. I imagine they would they thought about it like the way we think about people's reports of being in pain, for instance. They have first-person access to where they're in pain. If they say they're in pain, they're in pain. Yeah, that's just what it is to be in pain. Yeah, that's just what it is to have an episodic memory is to kind of go back, you know, in your head to a thing that happened. Mm-hmm. But as it turns out, that is not the case. And the initiating event that made people really kind of get to work on this was a court case. ah Ramona versus Ramona. It was ah the defendant was a father who was being accused by his daughter, was who was who was a woman, ah not a child. And she was accusing him
00:35:07
Speaker
ah She was accusing her father of abusing her, physically abusing her, sexually abusing her during her childhood for years. And she she brought these charges to the authorities like years and years after they supposedly happened on the basis of what are called recovered memories, which were recovered in therapy. So the woman had been going to therapy for a while and her therapist had done some things to recover memories. This is kind of like a plot point in TV shows sometimes. They do this in the X-Files a lot, yeah right? Hypnosis. yeah Yeah, hypnosis, all these different kind of psychological techniques to recover repressed memories, right? So the idea was that if something traumatic or really painful happens to you,
00:35:57
Speaker
that a natural human impulse is to repress that memory. That has kind of been debunked now, but that was that i mean that was common knowledge back then. like People were like, oh yeah, of course, you repress the memory.
00:36:08
Speaker
So you repress the memory, and then what therapists can do to to help you get better, which was called catharsis, what what catharsis was in the therapeutic setting, was the recovery of these lost memories. And so they had a bunch of techniques for doing that.
00:36:23
Speaker
And so this woman, the the daughter, Ramona was the last name. Isabella, I think, was her first name. She, in in in therapy, recovered these memories of years and years of terrible abuse from her father. So he went to prison was, I mean, I guess he did go to prison for a while. And what followed from that, the kind of tactic that his defense took, which ended up being super great, I guess, was to eventually prove that the therapy sessions had ah implanted false memories in Isabella Ramona or Isabella Ramona. I'm not for sure that's her first name, so I'm just going to call her the daughter. had implanted ah memories in the daughter, not necessarily like on purpose. It's not like the therapist was trying to get the father imprisoned for some reason. um But the techniques that the therapist used gave rise to false memories. And in controlled settings, those same text tactics would give rise to the same false memories in others. So the father ended up being acquitted and was, I think, a year later, he was he was released. This was in 1994. One of the studies right from around this time that showed how false memories work was a study by Loftus and Picrel in 1995. And this is really famous. It's known as the Lost in the Mall study. So they put these tactics of false memory generation to work on a bunch of people who sign up to be part of an experiment. And and by the end of the experiment, all the people being studied are convinced that when they were a kid, they got lost in the mall.
00:38:01
Speaker
Yeah. They remember it. yeah What's the technique? It's like you you you give them some true memories and then you yeah at you sprinkle in a false memory and then is that how it works? And then they- Yeah, so there's three important parts to implanting a false memory. The first one is called priming. Yeah. So you have to get the subject kind of ready to yeah ready to have the memory. And you do that by maybe so making them remember things that cause them to feel something similar. Right. So you're a little kid. You're lost in the mall. How do you feel? You feel really scared. You feel maybe like really sad and overwhelmed. So they might start by bringing up actual memories of things that made you feel that way. Yeah.
00:38:40
Speaker
and They might talk about cases of other children who got lost in the mall that you remember hearing about. Prominent cases or your friend who got lost in the mall. This all primes you to have that and same memory about yourself, right? You're like emotionally already there and you have the kind of like visual, like you kind of know, you know, you you feel like you know what it looks like, what the mall looks like. You're thinking now about the mall that you went to when you you were a kid. You remember what it looked like. So that's called priming. The next step is confabulating. They put you in a position where you have a bunch of facts that kind of and with some blanks that need filled in. Right. and you're like, well, um you know, you remember you were afraid to go to the mall.
00:39:25
Speaker
when you were a young child. Why do you think that? Yeah, right. why Why do you think that might be the case? Why do you think that you were afraid to go to that mall?
False Memories in Legal Contexts
00:39:33
Speaker
Or, you know, why do you think your mom would never let you go to the mall on your own, you know, when you were a teenager? Those kinds of things, things that then your mind searches for an explanation for, an easily available one being, oh, well, because of that one time i got lost in the mall.
00:39:49
Speaker
And then the third step is confirmation. um So if you have a bunch of other people, you know, you say, hey, I kind of I kind of remember getting lost in the mall when I was a kid. Did you? and they said, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Gosh, I remember that, man. Your mom was so worried. And other people confirm your memory. That kind of seals it in. Yeah. So you have these three steps, priming, confabulating, and confirming.
00:40:13
Speaker
And those all ah really, I mean, especially if you have like a trained professional kind doing it. Apparently super reliably creates a false memory. There is another one that i read about that was more recent than this one. This one was in 1995.
00:40:26
Speaker
and And this was just done in a classroom. I guess I don't know what the ethics of this were, but a a psychology professor, I think, caused a bunch of her students in class to remember meeting Donald Duck at Disney World. I think I've told you about this before. Now, Donald Duck's not a Disney character, so there's no reason anyone are not. Sorry, Donald Duck is a Disney character. It wasn't Donald Duck. It was Bugs Bunny because Donald Duck is a Disney. Was it Daffy Duck?
00:40:52
Speaker
No, it was it was Bugs Bunny. ok It was Bugs Bunny for sure. Sorry. They all remember meeting Bugs Bunny at Disney World. Bugs Bunny is not a Disney character. Donald Duck is. Bugs Bunny is not a Disney character. So they would not have met him at Disney World. But the the professor sort of secretly went through this process in her classroom. and She primed them. ah She gave them the the tools to confabulate a little bit. And then they all sitting around each other able to confirm, yes, they you know come to think of it, I think I did meet Bugs Bunny when I was there. And it was surprisingly effective.
00:41:27
Speaker
So the result of these experiments and kind of the success of being able to create false episodic memories made it the case that memories on their own became insufficient evidence to convict someone of these crimes. Probably a good thing considering how unreliable we know memory to be.
00:41:45
Speaker
And that was kind of what made us realize that we could remember something that happened to us even if it didn't. Yeah. So this is something like psychologists have known for a long time. And it's almost like a cliche, like memories reconstruction. It's not just replaying a tape recorder or something like that. Right. Like that that's sort of the conclusion that the the kind of general conclusion that these studies are pointing at. um So here's ah some more more fuel um for the fire. So here's a kind of experiment I like. Another example where we can demonstrate it in a controlled setting that people will misremember things, right? And you can kind of you predict that they will misremember it.
00:42:19
Speaker
so this is called the DRM task named after the Dease, Roediger, McDermott, the the psychologist that came up with the the procedure. so what you do is you people a list of related words like bed, rest, dream, snooze, things of that sort. And then and then you um and you ask them later on to if the word sleep, for instance, was on the list, even if it wasn't. And you can, in cases like like this, people will, um at rates of like 60% to 80%, misremember that the word sleep was on the list that they saw. or They misremember because sleep seems to summarize all the words they saw. us It's very thematically related to all the words that they saw. But it wasn't on the list, but they remember it as being there. And you can do this with a bunch of other lists in a similar sort of way. Give them lists like hospital, syringe, nurse, you know ambulance. Leave out the word a doctor. And then later on, like ask them, did you see the word doctor? And they'll say, yeah, yeah, I did at rates of like 60%. So this is this is ah ah a result that's you know highly replicable, um showing that your memory is fallible.
00:43:28
Speaker
but I did one of these tests. Yeah. Yeah. Someone read off a list, a long list of words. And I, yeah, I got i got some wrong. So some on the list were like piano, horn, and melody. and i And I did remember music being on the list. Yeah. And it wasn't. Yeah. It's kind of it's kind of like, in a sense, it shows memory's fallible. But also, in a sense, it shows that memory memory works well. Because you do remember something thematically related. It's not as though the the misremembered word is something completely unrelated. works good enough. Yeah. Most of the time. It shows like what memory does. It's kind of like rough and ready. It remembers things that's relevant. It tries to summarize things. It's a good heuristic. It's not it's not a a video recorder of of the past.
00:44:11
Speaker
Yeah. So there's another interesting study done kind of on the same theme here by Elizabeth Loftus of the the Lost in the Mall experiment. I think she's one of the most famous people who's investigated this phenomenon. She's one of the those important researchers in the field of false memories. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It looks like this is from the 70s. So she's been working on this for she's working on this for a long time. So Elizabeth Loftus and John Palmer. And it's called Reconstruction of Automobile Destruction, an Example of the Interaction Between Language and Memory. Yeah. And the the basic gist of this study is, you know, if you show people a video, say, of a car crash, and then later on ask them what they saw, the language you use when you ask the question can affect what they remember. So if you ask them how fast do you think the cars were going, the red car was going when it contacted the blue car,
00:45:04
Speaker
Or how fast do you think the red car was going when it hit the blue car? Or how fast do you think the the red car was going when it collided with the blue car? Or how fast think the red car was going when it smashed into the blue car? People will predictably give different answers, right? if you use language that suggests a faster speed, smash, or collided, they will predictably say the car was going faster than those that were just merely asked how fast was the car going when it contacted the blue car.
00:45:31
Speaker
So maybe that doesn't immediately seem like it demonstrates a false memory. But what they did was ah in this study was a follow-up study. So they asked people like a week later, do you remember broken glass in the video?
00:45:43
Speaker
So there was no broken glass in the video. But those that were asked... the the question using the word smashed, they were much more likely to remember there being broken glass in the video, misremember there being broken glass in the video than those who were merely asked ah how fast was the car going when it contacted the other car. It's a real nifty study, right It seems like the way you're asking the question can affect people's memory of the thing, right?
00:46:08
Speaker
I had a thought about this. yes And my thought was that so what what i want to immediately say is that there is an element of like social or conversational propriety at play here. Yeah.
00:46:20
Speaker
Because in normal conversational settings, if someone's asked me a question about ah a collision or a smashing. Yeah. It would be weird to respond with like, you know, oh, they were going five miles an hour. Yeah, yeah, yeah. so I think that's what they did. They did the follow-up experiment. That was supposed to kind of control for just sort of like, because it it seemed like if you're asked how fast was going to smash, they'rere they're telling you that it went fast, right? So you should ask you should right should answer by saying it went at faster speed. Like that's some immediate evidence. They're like, oh, maybe I didn't see it quite right. Yeah, but but they asked them like, do you remember broken glass? And you know that that suggests more that the wording implant in a false memory. Yeah. The the yeah the follow-up study was supposed to be a little more conclusive. um Yeah. So so they refer to this idea of misleading or false information after the fact i'm affecting people's memory during the moment of retrieval as the misinformation effect. So I think all of the stuff you described earlier with the lost in the mall sort of thing is also an example of this as well, the misinformation effect
00:47:23
Speaker
OK, so we've talked about all these methods that people use to either intentionally or unintentionally implant false episodic memories in people. And a lot of these things, the priming, the confabulation, and especially the confirmation, are all effects that we see in large homogenous social groups. Mm-hmm.
00:47:44
Speaker
And especially, I think, in online large homogenous social groups. Yeah. Right. This is sort of been talked about in the philosophical literature on misinformation as like epistemic bubbles is a term that gets thrown around a lot. And it's the idea that, oh, you know, it's really easy in online spaces to get in these situations where you are in, say, a Reddit group or different sorts of forums where everyone kind of agrees with one another.
00:48:21
Speaker
and because of that, if someone disagrees with everyone else on something, they are quickly silenced or convinced out of their their disagreement. um Because an important thing keeping a group afloat is the the ho homogenous beliefs. Yeah. And when there's no dissent, you know correction going on, then like falsehoods can snowball in a way. People can build on falsehoods and then you have this whole tapestry of, you know, right falsehood. that' So you're on these Reddit posts, you're reading all these posts about people experiencing thus and so. That's priming you to to remember it yourself. um People start asking a bunch of questions, you know, well, why why don't you remember...
00:49:02
Speaker
you know, blah, blah, blah, or, or why don't, you know, why is, why is there no mention of Berenstain before year or whatever? Now you can confabulate, you can start giving answers to those questions. And of course, in the group setting, you have lots of confirmation surrounding you. So it seems like, especially the Mandela effect being this kind of, like like we've said, a most, mostly found on Reddit in these groups, it does kind of seem like these are prime breeding grounds for these kinds of false episodic memories.
Collective Memory and Broader Implications
00:49:31
Speaker
yeah And this is ah similar to ah ah a thesis that I found, a dissertation um on this topic. um so So like I said, there's not much written, especially in philosophy, on the Mandela Effect.
00:49:46
Speaker
But I did find a chapter on partly on the Mandela Effect in a dissertation by a Chloe Wall in philosophy. on The dissertation is called Knowing From Me, Knowing From You, Essays on Memory and Testimony. Mostly about like you know technical questions and philosophy of memory and philosophy testimony. well One chapter is on what's called collective confabulation. The idea that groups as a whole can misremember. Not just individuals misremembering and and not just individuals confabulating, but a group as a whole can have a collective confabulation. That was the phenomenon that she wanted to explore in this chapter. And she regarded the Mandela Effect as an example of this kind of thing.
00:50:28
Speaker
Because a large part of the phenomenon is collective. It's individuals interacting online, sharing their memories of Shazam with each other, trying to piece together what the movie was about, trying to explain what happened to the movie. Someone might contribute one piece of information that another person might not have remembered and say, oh, yeah, and I remember that now. And they they build on each other's claims and their their memories and all of that. So for her, like the primary problem here, or the primary malfunction is not the individual level. These people's memories are probably good enough. And in some ways, their misrememberings are to be expected. right it's It's to be expected that you would misremember the Berenstain Bears as the Berenstain Bears. You were six years old. Maybe you couldn't even read that well when you were reading them or when people were reading them to you. you know You forgot about them for 30 years. right It's the kind of thing you would miss. It is also in cursive on the cover, yeah yeah um which I feel like makes it even harder. Yeah. So like it's the kind of like mistake that you you would make if if your memory system were functioning correctly. No one remembers it as being spelled with ah with a z in there. right Yeah. So the memories are similar to, the misrememberings are similar to the misrememberings in those wordless experiments that I described earlier. It's thematically related. It's not completely out of nowhere. So the problem is not with the individual's memory system, but the the group memory system is what's malfunctioning for the reasons that Megan expressed and and other ones, right? The idea that there's echo chambers,
00:52:07
Speaker
um on on On Reddit, you know there's there's prevention of expressions of skepticism, things of that sort. and Yeah, you get downvoted and you're a skeptic, right? And actually, so she she just she ah discusses in her dissertation that on the the subreddit for the Mandela Effect, you can find... filter posts by those that are skeptical or not skeptical of the mandela effect so i guess you got to tag you you either have to or you can tag your post with a skeptic or non-skeptic and then if you wanted to you could just filter out all the skeptical posts yeah and there's there's post she sites of people being kind of kind of you know harangued for expressing skepticism and all of that You know, what interesting feature of like of some of the theories about Mandela effects, some of the weird theories. Right.
00:52:56
Speaker
Or i don't mean that pejoratively, but some of like the more metaphysically intricate ones. Yeah. Is that there isn't really a way to do any kind of like debunking because you could just be like, oh, well, yeah, you remember it that way, of course, because you have the memories from this timeline. But I have the memories from this alternative world. So that just explains why, you know. yeah I guess so like that's, you know, that is that's always, and I mean, like everybody wins kind of.
00:53:25
Speaker
Yeah, i mean, and so too with the simulation theory. I mean, they could maybe they're maybe these aren't glitches in the simulation. Maybe the simulators want us to experience these things, to mess with us. Or since we are simulations in the simulation hypothesis, maybe it's just a glitch in y'all, you know, in in the in the misremembers. Yeah. Yeah, so. Yeah, your code's messed up. Yeah, your code's messed up. My code's okay. Yeah.
00:53:51
Speaker
Okay, so we have, like, just all of this evidence that our memory, you know, is as precious as it is to us. and i And I do mean that. Memory is, like, a really important topic to me, which is one of the reasons I wanted to do the Mandela Effect. It's a really important topic, I think, because it's, like, kind of, like, all we get out of life in a way. That's what all the commercials keep telling us. and like It's all about the memories. Christmas is all about the memories. Well, because literally, I mean, even like your memory of one single second ago, like we're never really living in the now. You know, we can't process things till they've already happened. The now is very, very short. Yeah. so
00:54:27
Speaker
and So, you know, once we process things and know what happened, it's already kind of a memory. So memory is important anyway, is my whole point. But it's not um like Frank said earlier, it's not like a video camera on the past. There's a lot of reconstruction, a lot of things that we get wrong, a lot of things that we leave out. Without other studies that we don't have really time to get into today, but a lots of other studies confirm that we have what's called an optimism bias. We tend to remember the good things that happened and and remember less the bad things that happened. I actually had this experience of our trip that we took several years ago to Greece. Mm-hmm. And I kind of knew this would happen at the time. Our trip to Greece was great, um but there were a lot of bad things that happened on that trip. um We did not plan. we we just didn't know what we were doing. And we just flew to Athens. And that was a mistake. um So there were a lot of bad things that happened. But the bad things happened in such a world historical place. Yeah. the Mars Hill, the Areopagus. Yes. Yes. Got my phone stolen. but Yeah. But yeah, so lot bad things happened on the trip, but a lot of great things did too. And at the time, the bad things felt really overwhelming. And I you know felt like that and you know maybe the trip is ruined, like this really sucks. um But over time, those memories faded so much quicker than the memories of the really awesome parts of that trip. yeah um So we know that this about our memory, that we reconstruct things, that we save the things we want and kind of lose the things we don't. Sometimes we lose the things we want, too. So I guess one philosophical question that I had that when I was thinking about all of this, getting ready for the podcast, is like in virtue of what should we say that a memory is reliable? It does seem like it's kind of part of its function to not be a video camera, to not work in that way, to not capture things perfectly.
00:56:15
Speaker
At the same time, though, we do sometimes want to say the things that we forget or misremember are, you know, those are mistakes. So is memory, like, should we regard this as an unreliable function? You know, ah something about humans that has definitely not...
00:56:32
Speaker
evolved to optimization levels or i don't know. What do you think, Frank? I'm kind of rambling. Yeah, I think I think we should take from lot of the psychological literature and even our own lives when we get things wrong, we get things wrong all the time. We misremember things. We should we should probably think of memory as a lot less reliable than we unreflectively do. But I still think it's good enough. We don't want to have a selection bias here. I think of all the things, like I remember what I had for breakfast. You sum up all the I got it right. I remember too, because you made 45 pounds of bacon. Yeah, right. I didn't make grilled chicken for breakfast. So you sum up all the times you get it right and you subtract all times get it wrong, it's still be a pretty high number.
00:57:17
Speaker
So I don't know. like i I think it definitely should be viewed with caution and humility and all of that. but ah But yeah, I think it's still you know reliable enough and and useful enough. It just should be regarded more as more like inferential, I suppose. right So I think our unreflective sort of view of memory is that it's kind of like perception or introspection. It's like a simple process, you you know and then you form the belief. right I see the table, I form the belief to table. It's good enough, unproblematic, unless you're a Cartesian skeptic, but put that aside. You know, I i experience pain via the process of introspection. i immediately form the belief I'm in pain, right? No inference required, no reasoning required. We unreflectively regard memory as similar to that, as kind of non-inferential. But maybe we should regard memory as inferential.
00:58:04
Speaker
It's a thing that requires reasoning and thinking about in order to draw a conclusion. It's more similar to a deductive argument or an inductive argument than it is to perception. So that's the kind of thing maybe that could help save memory if we put it in its proper context, if if we put it in its proper place.
Memory's Impact on Well-being
00:58:22
Speaker
It's more more uncertain. It's more like an uncertain inference than it is like a simple perception.
00:58:28
Speaker
So in its proper context, when I remember our trip to Athens and I remember all of the amazing sights and that really cool bar that we found and the cats, that not the really sick ones, but the other ones. And I and i kind of don't, you know, i I much less remember the bad stuff.
00:58:47
Speaker
Am I misremembering our trip or when I, you know, remember... I don't know. When I remember a day as having like a pretty distinct narrative flow.
00:58:58
Speaker
But like if I'd recorded it with a video camera, it would not seem like that. Have I misremembered those things? Yeah, it seems like a question is more like, is it is it good? to remember everything or it or is it okay to like more like ethically speaking good qua memory yeah would my memory be better if i remembered everything in a video camera style like would that be remembering better qua remembering and sorry i'm using qua uh this pod but what i mean is would be remembering better according to whatever it means to remember well Yeah, I don't know. What that question kind reminds me of is those people, there's very few of them, but there's some people that really, really can remember their lives in the manner of a video recorder. So they can remember what they did literally on any literal day. You ask them, what would eat for breakfast on December 30th, 1980? And they can tell you, they can see it. Their episodic memory is on overdrive. Hyperthymesia. Hyperthymesia, or sometimes called highly superior autobiographical memory.
01:00:03
Speaker
So there's not many of these people out there, but this is but there are some. And this this is viewed as a kind of psychological disorder because it does seem to negatively impact people's lives, at least those that have been interviewed about it.
01:00:15
Speaker
So one person that's been extensively interviewed about this who has this condition is called, is named Jill Price. And in in an interview that i found from her, she says the following, quote, whenever I see a date flash on the television or anywhere else for that matter, I automatically go back to that day and remember where i was where I was, what I was doing, what day it fell on, and on and on and on and on and on. It is non-stop, uncontrollable, and totally exhausting. Most have called it a gift, but I call it a burden. I run my entire life through my head every day it drives me crazy.
01:00:49
Speaker
So, yeah I mean, like, based on her testimony, it seemed like it would be bad for us to to remember everything. And, like, ah maybe there's a sense in which her memory is malfunctioning, because maybe, like, memory should summarize and only retain what is relevant and forget the details that are irrelevant.
01:01:10
Speaker
ah that's Maybe that's the function of memory. It's not supposed to remember everything. That's to go wrong. So I guess to answer this question, we need to start talking about functions of things, like function of cognitive processes, and then that's raising questions about natural selection, I guess, or however you individuate the function of a thing. But yeah, I think it does seem like it's not very useful for her life and her flourishing that she remembers all this stuff.
01:01:36
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, I'm inclined to agree with you, and I certainly see why that would be awful to have that condition. but I also feel like if we... I feel like we'd have a hard time delineating actual like memory failures from like normal functioning misrememberings from like abnormal functioning memory failing. In your in your ah explanation of this kind of puzzle, you you talk about like narrative and stuff. And maybe that's the kind of thing that's... That aspect's kind of difficult. like As an analogy, I think about like history, right? So academic academic history. You know you have the like the bare facts that all the historians agree upon. And then you have sort of like what they call the interpretation or maybe the causal explanation, the thing that knits together these facts. What's the narrative? what What actually went on? What were the processes? Why did Napoleon do thus and so? That's the kind of thing where there might be a lot of disagreement about. But the kind of but the the bare facts they agree upon. So like, I don't know, like the the the memory certainly applies a narrative. And maybe that's kind of a so more subjective thing. But the memory also supplies some some bare facts. right I didn't make grilled chicken for breakfast. I made bacon. um I might remember a narrative of the day and that might be kind of an imposition, a projection of my feelings or subjectivity not actually out there in the world.
01:02:54
Speaker
Yeah, I guess. I mean, I think... So maybe there's something... Maybe we could say... so I don't think this would be a perfect explanation. but We could say something like when misrememberings are part of like an active reconstructive process for understanding one's life and situating oneself, then that's normal, proper functioning. But when it's like not part of an active reconstructive process...
01:03:18
Speaker
then that isn't. So i'm thinking of people with like dementia, right? How they'll just like lose things. They'll lose the name of their spouse or they'll lose whatever. And that's not because of some like reconstructive process where they're just like getting rid of you know debris that they don't need to... like um Yeah. I don't know if that makes any sense. but Yeah. i mean i like I like that way of thinking about it because it frames it as why are we remembering this in the first place? Like you're remembering something for some reason. Maybe you're you're telling someone a story.
01:03:49
Speaker
ah You're telling them the story for a reason. And then the memory succeeds insofar as it it helps you achieve your goal in that context. And if like leaving out some details or fudging some details doesn't kind of like doesn't get in the way of you achieving your aims, then maybe that's okay. Maybe memory's still doing its job then. So should we try to make ourselves remember better?
01:04:10
Speaker
i try to do that. There are things that I do to try to make myself remember things better. Because as as you know, I actually have a really unreliable episodic memory. My semantic memory is fine, my episodic memory is...
01:04:24
Speaker
It's not that i lack them, but it's more that I don't have a lot of control over their recall. um So I do things to try to help myself like retain episodic memories that are like within my control better.
01:04:37
Speaker
But maybe I mean, should I do that? Yeah, I think we live in kind of a ah ah culture where we we we we want to remember a lot. like People are taking pictures of everything, right? like They want to remember things. all look like As I mentioned already, all the commercials we're seeing about Christmas, it's all about the memories.
01:04:55
Speaker
But, you know, as the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche once wrote, there is some virtue to forgetfulness. So here's ah a nice quote from, i think it was a genealogy of morals. so He says the following.
01:05:06
Speaker
Quote, to shut the doors and windows of consciousness for a while not to be bothered by the noise and battle with which our underworld of servici organs work with and against each other a little piece a little tabbula rasa of consciousness to make room for something new above all for the nobler functions and functionaries for ruling predicting predetermining That, as I said, is the benefit of active forgetfulness, like a doorkeeper or guardian of mental order, rest, and etiquette, from which we can immediately see how there could be no happiness, cheerfulness, hope, pride, immediacy, without forgetfulness. Wow. So Nietzsche's like, Jill Price is screwed. Yeah, definitely.
01:05:48
Speaker
Yeah. She's completely hopeless. Yeah, she's trapped in the past. You know, theres I think there's some real wisdom to this quote. I do too. yeah I have a hard time. i I don't know that I have a formed view on this because I do. I i totally understand the merit of that view and I find it compelling. But I also...
01:06:04
Speaker
I don't know. i want i do i want to remember everything. And that's you know maybe that's a vice of the age I live in. And maybe that's why there's not a lot of Mandela effects of like contemporary things. These are all like 20 to 30 years old.
01:06:18
Speaker
Yeah. Predates the smartphone. Yeah. Notably. Right. Notably. Exactly. So, Frank, have you ever had the experience of having a false episodic memory? I guess it would have to be something that you found out was false later on.
01:06:33
Speaker
Well, I was thinking about this um today. i was thinking about um when I was five years old, i like i really liked Shaquille O'Neal, right? Orlando Magic, I mentioned that already. And I i i thought to myself, oh yeah, I i had Shaquille O'Neal basketball card. I remember that. But then I stopped myself. I was like, hold on a second. Like,
01:06:53
Speaker
I was five years old. I remember having basketball cards. I remember liking Shaquille O'Neal. But do I really remember having a Shaquille O'Neal basketball card? Can I really honestly say that of myself? And i i stopped myself and said, no, I don't.
01:07:09
Speaker
I'm not sure. And I thought to myself in that moment, it's very easy to have false memories, right? like It seemed plausible. We we go from this like quick succession of it seeming plausible to the memory. And then we think, oh yeah, I have the memory. But I i don't actually have the memory. What I have the memory of is I like Shaquille O'Neal. I had basketball cards. Maybe there was a Shaquille O'Neal basketball card in there somewhere, but I don't remember that. But but that really that was really a real moment of clarity for me because I really did see how easy it is to slip into having this false memory and assenting to it and I didn't assent to it I don't know maybe I did maybe I didn't yeah yeah there you go that's my that's my that's my answer what about you
01:07:50
Speaker
Kind of. Well, I'll start with one story because it was a time when I thought I had a false memory, but then found out it wasn't false, which was a real trip. Oh, yeah. So this was like this was like maybe 10 years ago. It was like a long time ago, but I but but still when I was an adult and I had this memory of watching this particular movie as a kid, like almost every day one summer. And I'd always watch it in the mornings before we went out to go swimming.
01:08:16
Speaker
and This was a super strong memory, but I searched and searched and searched for this movie based on the details I remembered about it, and I could not find anything. And I was like, it must have just been a different movie. Like, i must this must be a false memory. It must have not been this movie. But years later, I ended up figuring out which movie it was. It was just like, it it it just, I mean, I think probably I was one of the only people who ever watched it.
01:08:43
Speaker
It's called Once Upon a Forest.
Exploring Personal Memory Experiences
01:08:44
Speaker
It's an animated movie. And I think the upshot of it was don't pollute the forest. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. yeah yeah So there was that. It ended up not being a false memory. I guess this is sort of like kind of an intimate detail about me. But but, you know, this ill I will have like flashes of things that feel like memories.
01:09:04
Speaker
But they're not of me, really. It's like of a scene. And it does feel like I was there. Like I've seen it. It's just ah a very small set of scenes.
01:09:14
Speaker
And and it's yeah I guess it's an episodic memory of having been there at that scene, seen it. um But I wasn't an episodic imagining.
01:09:26
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. Because it's like it's like it feels as though I remember seeing that. And they're really random things. Like one of them's just like a corner of a back stoop with some broken red clay pots.
01:09:40
Speaker
Like really random stuff. But like they're not mine. And I kind of can tell they're not mine even though they feel like they are. So there's that. Which is also sort of weird. But I can't think of any just like, oh, yeah, I remember doing this, but then I found out I didn't.
01:09:55
Speaker
I don't know. Memory is a weird thing. I find it really interesting. But yeah, I guess I don't have that much more to say about this topic.
Imagining Mandela's Reaction and Episode Conclusion
01:10:03
Speaker
When Frank and I were discussing this a while ago, I mentioned that I thought if Nelson Mandela were still with us or came back you know came back to life for a brief moment and someone says, hey,
01:10:16
Speaker
man, you have an effect named after you. yeah The Nelson Mandela effect. He'd probably be like, you know, so excited. Like, oh this is great. You know, it's it's the effect of like liberating a country from, you know, ah oppressive rule, right? Like something something like that. yeah And it'd be like, unfortunately, no it's it is actually misremi it's when people misremember where Pikachu's tail swipe was.
01:10:42
Speaker
I'm sorry to tell you this. Yeah, man. You can't control what you're remembered for. That's another lesson here. I just feel like the Nelson Mandela effect should be it should be a name that like stands for something a lot more cool and noble.
01:10:57
Speaker
But yeah, but no, it's not, unfortunately. But I hope you guys have enjoyed this episode. We had, i had fun with it. Frank, did do you end up, are you, are you happy we did this topic? Yeah, it was a great time.
01:11:08
Speaker
Yeah. So I guess join us in the new year for episode one of what will be season four.