I think about the fact that these memories can be fictions and then other people can't tell whether or not they're fictions. And so this just simply becomes the story of who we are to ourselves and others. In terms of understanding it, I think it can be really good for empathy to also understand why you might have a different story about an important event than somebody else. So let's say someone you love has a completely different version of something that you experienced with them. Now one thing you can do is accuse them of lying, which probably isn't very good for the relationship. But in some cultures, that's accepted. Understood accepted and incorporated as a value.
Our guest on this episode of the You Are Not So Smart Podcast is Dr. Julia Shaw, the author of The Memory Illusion, Julia is famous among psychologists because she was able to implant false memories into a group of subjects and convince 70 percent of them that they were guilty of a crime they did not commit, and she did so by using the sort of sloppy interrogation techniques that some police departments have been truly been guilty of using in the past.
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