5 Mind Blowing Ways Your Memory Plays Tricks on You

by poopsiecakes 7 Replies latest jw friends

  • poopsiecakes
    poopsiecakes

    http://www.cracked.com/article_18704_5-mind-blowing-ways-your-memory-plays-tricks-you.html

    Really interesting read - I would copy/paste the whole thing but there are a lot of pictures and a video.

    A couple of things that stood out to me:

    "We judge things to be true based on how often we hear them. We like familiarity, and repeating a lie often enough makes it familiar to us, the repetition making it fall right in with all of the things our memory tells us are true about the world. Every advertiser or propagandist knows this. Humans are social animals, and there is a primal part of us that still says, "If other members of the tribe who I feel close to believe this, there must be something to it ."

    " The biases in your system cripple even your ability to examine your own biases. So just now, when you thought to yourself, "Ha, I've caught myself doing that! But at least I'm not as nutty as those 'Obama is a Muslim' nutjobs!", you just saw your own bias at work. You're trying to examine a broken mechanism with a broken mechanism. It's like trying to perform surgery on your own ass, with a scalpel that is itself clenched in your ass."

    "...experiments show that if you run into someone who knew you as a child and they tell you about an event you don't personally remember, you'll construct a memory to match it--even if it didn't actually happen. It's like we have evolved to be able to lie, but still haven't gotten to the point where we can get our minds around the fact that other people do it. As with the first entry, we find our memories are putty in the hands of people who know how to manipulate them."

    Basically, our brains all suck.

  • flipper
    flipper

    POOPSIECAKES- Interesting thread ! Good subject . Basically yes, humans are like " herd animals " who can easily be swayed by group thinking , however after exiting the JW's back in 2003, I found that I was always more independent in my thinking, kind of a rogue individualist who was more liberal in his thinking and hated being controlled. So the last 8 years I'm proud to say - I'm not as easily manipulated as I was as a JW back in the day ! I use my OWN mind, not somebody elses. Peace out, Mr. Flipped

  • simon17
    simon17

    Pretty neat. I remember doing the Gorilla thing and I certainly missed it. I definitely knew that the picture with the crowds in Tieneman square was wrong. There' s a picture on there with Abe Lincoln saying photos have been faked to convince people he had a beard... hmm, I'm pretty sure he DID have a beard, no?

  • FreeGirl2006
    FreeGirl2006

    Read the book, You Are Not So Smart.

    It is a real eye opener and it does a good job of explaining why we turn to religion (among other things). The author covers some of the things mentioned on cracked.com. Totally cool book!!!!

  • SixofNine
    SixofNine

    I get a kick out of the delicious irony that " Basically, our brains all suck" is one of the most important scientific discoveries a person can understand.

  • transhuman68
    transhuman68

    It is an interesting page. I wonder how conscious our ‘conscious class’ posters really are…. when they have to sit through the endless repetition of the Watchtower week after week…. scary thought, really.

  • poopsiecakes
    poopsiecakes

    Thanks for the comments :)

    Like Flipperkins, I know that since leaving the Borg I've become a LOT less inclined to believe things because it's what I've been told and question a lot things I never would have questioned before. However, what this article taught me is that I still have a long way to go and I need to say 'I just don't know' more often instead of working off of pre-conceived ideas.

    FreeGirl, I'll look into that book - sounds cool!

  • cofty
    cofty

    Thanks for the link, marking for later.

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