“…that’s what I remember…”
 
Image by Michelle Raponi from Pixabay

Introduction

In the recent article on the challenges facing Generative AI and how they can be overcome, I listed a number of Quora contributors whose work I will always read. One of them is Franklin Veaux.

Today I am presenting one of his Quora answers in full, with his permission. I was going to follow it with analysis and how it relates to gaming, but my notes on the subject grew to the point of overwhelming the original article, so they have been offloaded into a Part II to follow next week.

How can two people have two different memories of the same event?

A guest article by Franklin Veaux

Originally published Feb 2, 2024 on Quora, by the author

That’s really easy: Memory doesn’t work the way you think it does.

A lot of folks think memory is a recording of events that happened around you, like a videotape from a camera.

Nope. Huh-uh. Not even close.

Memory is whack, y’all. Like seriously. Your own eyes don’t even tell your brain what’s going on (look up “saccadic masking,” if you want to go down a trippy rabbit hole, that shit is wild), but more to the point, memory is a jumbled, non-linear series of subjective impressions and emotions, all mixed together.

And it gets weirder.

Memory recall is destructive. That means every time you remember something, that memory is basically (simplifying a bit and handwaving over the mechanics of how it works) erased and rewritten.

And that’s not all! Memory is state-dependent, too. Mediation of emotional memory is handled (mainly) by a structure in the brain called the amygdala, and it recalls things most easily that have an emotional resonance similar to whatever emotion you’re feeling right now.

Put simply, it’s easier to remember things that make you sad when you’re sad. It’s easier to remember things that make you angry when you’re angry. It’s easier to remember things that make you happy when you’re happy. That’s why when you’re in love it’s easy to recall all the things that delight you about the person you love, but after you break up it’s easier to remember the things that annoy you about them.

When you recall something, your recollection can be filtered through and distorted by your current emotional state, which means when the memory is rewritten your current emotional state gets rewritten with it. So after you break up with someone, even your happy memories can shift to anger or sadness.

But wait, there’s more!

You don’t remember everything about a situation, only what’s relevant. Which means what’s relevant to you at that particular time.

Back in my old cognitive science class in university, we talked about how fake “psychics” can con people during cold readings by exploiting the fact that you only remember what’s relevant.

A group of college kids was told they were going to receive a psychic reading, and videoed during the reading without their knowledge. The “psychic” (actually one of the researchers) would spit out a bunch of rapid-fire statements about them all in a row, responding to the ones that got a positive response.

Afterward, the college kids were interviewed about how accurate the “psychic readings” were. They were all amazed: “oh my god, this complete stranger made 5 predictions about me and they were all true!”

Then they were shown the tapes, and they were amazed. The “psychic” made 90 or 100 predictions. By pure random chance, 5 were true, the rest weren’t. But the college kids literally didn’t remember the incorrect predictions! Not until they saw the video did they realize how many there were. Their brains discarded them as irrelevant.

So why do people remember things differently? You only store what’s relevant to you. What you store isn’t a recording of events, it’s a twisted wibbly-wobbly mass of subjective impressions and emotions. You modify your memory every time you recall it. Your emotional state influences how you recall (and rewrite!) it.

It’s a bloody miracle we manage to remember anything at all, really.

About Franklin:

Franklin is a Professional Writer who lives in Portland, Oregon. His Quora content has amassed 1,075.6 Million views since June 2012, and his writing has appeared in Huffington Post, State, and Forbes magazine.

He has admitted to GMing D&D on at least one occasion.

He has written or co-written a number of novels, including:

• Black Iron (part of The Impious Empires series): (only one paperback copy)
• Divine Burdens (Pt 1 of the Passionate Pantheon): (Paperback & Kindle)
• The Hallowed Covenant (Pt 2 of the Passionate Pantheon): (Paperback, Kindle, Audiobook)
• Ecstatic Communion: Stories from the Passionate Pantheon: (Kindle)

  (I may get a small commission on any purchases). Warning: Not suitable for children.

Next week: how this affects RPGs, how to counter it, and how to use it to your advantage as a GM. Until then, if you want to read more about memory and RPGs, try The failure of …urmmmm… Memory…