I've Got Some Bad News About Your Memory

Unlike English, the past in Mandarin Chinese is referred to as being in front of you, and the future behind. The day before yesterday, for example, is referred to as "front day (前天)." There is a certain logic to this, as you can see the past more clearly than the future. But it's still not as clear as you might think.

In 1984, a stranger broke into the North Carolina apartment of Jennifer Thompson and raped her. When given photos of suspects, she took her time before saying, "I think that's him" and identifying Ronald Cotton. By the time she saw him in a line-out, she was sure. And she was wrong. A decade after Cotton was sentenced to life plus 54 years in prison, he was exonerated as a result of DNA evidence that incriminated another man.?

Unfortunately, Cotton isn't the only one. The Innocence Project has helped free 240 people wrongly convicted of crimes, many based on the erroneous memories of eyewitnesses.

So how, even when so much is on the line, can our memories fail us?

There is a tendency to view human memories like those of a computer, faithful records of what happened. There may be errors, but on the whole it's believed our memories of the past reflect the reality of what was happening at the time. We conveniently ignore what we can't remember, which is most things. Can you remember, for example, what you had for lunch on this day last week?

Psychologists have turned up numerous other problems. In one classic experiment, participants were shown a video of a car crash and then asked either if they had seen "a broken headlight" or "the broken headlight." Simply adding the assumption that the broken headlight was there increased recollection of it, even when no broken headlight was shown. Numerous other experiments have shown how memories can be implanted, for example of childhood events such as getting lost in a shopping complex. Yet those memories are as credible to those remembering them as any other.

We are, as Malcolm Gladwell puts it, memory fundamentalists. We have total faith in our memories. To some extent, we need to. If we can't trust our memories, what do we really know about the world, or even ourselves?

Yet it's more helpful to consider the purpose of memory, which is to help us survive.??

Rather than being a record of the past, memory is an interpretation of your experience.

It works a bit like this:

1. For a memory to be formed, you have to be paying attention to something and subconsciously regard it as somewhat remarkable. How that memory is formed will depend on all kinds of contextual cues, including how you felt at the time.
2. The memory needs to be soon recalled, otherwise it is lost. If the memory is useful, its relevance will become quickly apparent. Memories work on a strict "use it or lose it" basis.
3. When the memory is recalled, it is also done so in a certain context and compared with new information so that it becomes more useful, even at the cost of accuracy. It is then suitably reinterpreted and re-stored.
4. Every time the memory is recalled, it is reinterpreted based on updated understandings of the world.?

Perhaps it is easier now to see how memories are only really useful in the way they inform you decisions about the future.

What does this mean for your futurist mindset? Two things.

First, if the future you're interested in is relatively short-term and can be based on models, don't rely on your memory. You need relevant data to make useful forecasts.

Second, if the future you're looking at is long-term and requires imagination, your memory can provide excellent fuel to explore the possibilities. Memory is the basis of intuition, and that is what will guide you to a deeper understanding of what the future might hold.?

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