The Errors of Memory

2min Snip

00:00

Play full episode

Summary

Transcript

Episode notes

If you have a memory system that is flexible, which you can, where the various bits and pieces from memories. Can be combined and recombined in flexible ways to enable us to remember a vast multitude of previous events by using constituent elements. That's an effective way for the brain to reconstruct what has happened to it before without having to store all the specific details from every single event that has happened. Now what that's really useful for though is when you want to imagine the future, which of course, by definition, hasn't happened yet. And what the brain does seem to do is combine and recombine the elements that we've accrued in memory in order to imagine possible future events as well

One of the most powerful of all human capacities is the ability to imagine ourselves in hypothetical situations at different times. We can remember the past, but also conjure up possible futures that haven’t yet happened. This simple ability underlies our capability to organize socially and make contracts with other people. Today’s guest, psychologist Adam Bulley, argues that it’s the primary feature that makes us recognizably human, as he argues in the new book The Invention of Tomorrow: A Natural History of Foresight (with Thomas Suddendorf and Jonathan Redshaw).

Support Mindscape on Patreon.

Adam Bulley received his Ph.D. in psychology from the University of Queensland. He is currently a postdoctoral fellow at the Brain and Mind Centre and School of Psychology, The University of Sydney, and the Department of Psychology at Harvard University.

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.