Comment on Doublethink (Choosing to be Biased)

Wed, 19 Jan 2011 09:01:12 GMT

False memories are horrifyingly easy to induce. Here is a Scientific American story on the subject from 1997, and here is a scary story from an ex-Scientologist about how to induce false memories using Scientology auditing. "Up to this day, I intellectually know that this story was a fiction written by a friend of mine, but still I have it in vivid memory, as if I was the very person that had experienced it. I actually can't differentiate this memory from any other of my real memories, it still is as valid in my mind as any other memory I have."

Human memories are untrustworthy. This leads to a philosophical dilemma about whether or not to trust your memory, and how much, and what you're supposed to use if you can't trust your memory.

Discuss