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How should I go about disproving to myself that my memory is accurate and I am in conscious control of my actions? I hear it said, but every time I call upon m

How should I go about disproving to myself that my memory is accurate and I am in conscious control of my actions? I hear it said, but every time I call upon my memory of something long ago that is externally verifiable, I am pretty much always accurate (either I get it right, or realize I don't know).

Jensson 4y ago
These psychological results are only true for average people, note how in every experiment there are always many people who does the rationally correct thing to do. So there is no reason to believe based on those studies that people who have much higher levels of rationality doesn't exist. Its just, many will believe they are rational when they aren't, since their lack of rationality makes them unable to see all the ways they are irrational. But people who notice their own irrationality can just stop doing those things and change their views and therefore becomes much more rational than average. So we have several layers, we have those who don't see their own irrationality and call themselves rational, we have those who see their own irrationality and call themselves irrational since they are, and then we have the ones who see their own irrationality and takes measures to fix it and therefore call themselves rational. The last group would be the most rational ones, but is still often mistaken for the first group.
vorpalhex 4y ago
Pick a room of your home growing up. Draw a picture of it, as best you can, from memory. Go ask your siblings or parents if you're right. Memory is a fluid thing.
- Jensson 4y ago
  You assume the person has a clear picture of their childhood home. At least for me I only have very fuzzy mental pictures of my childhood homes, I'd have to try to piece them together to draw anything so I know I'd get many tings wrong. I don't think that everyone adds a lot of fake information to their memory unconsciously, I know some does based on those studies but no study found that everyone did that. Instead I do know that my memory is very rarely wrong, when I answer test questions and I remember something from long ago I am almost always correct when answering for example so I got good grades without studying much at all.
  - vorpalhex 4y ago
    Do you ever sometimes have mistaken beliefs? Could you have a mistaken belief about your memory and it's veracity?
    - Jensson 4y ago
      I barely studied for tests and still remembered the questions, the grades I got from them are still there. It is very hard to fake that sort of thing for yourself, everyone knows roughly how well their memory serves them during tests in school. If you had to study a lot then you know your memory is shit, so rationally you shouldn't believe anything you recall. Edit: > Do you ever sometimes have mistaken beliefs? I remember the sources of my beliefs. Sometimes I have mistaken beliefs since the sources were wrong or fuzzy, like my parents told me something that I then believed, but then I learned that my parents were wrong. This makes it very easy to correct mistaken beliefs, since you just go back to the sources and verify and re evaluate the information against the new disagreeing information. Remembering the sources of what you know isn't that much extra information, so it isn't particularly hard to do, but it helps a lot keeping yourself more rational.
- googlryas 4y ago
  Unfortunately I built a memory palace out of my childhood home, so that is an area I'm very confident in (and yes, I've double checked my palace with pictures and it all lines up).
  - SyzygistSix 4y ago
    Why unfortunately? Constructing a memory palace seems beneficial.
feanaro 4y ago
You can prove the limitations of your memory quite easily to yourself -- but don't cheat! Find a so-called DRM word list (acronym originating from the researchers' names Deese, Roediger and McDermott) and have someone test you: They present you with the word list for a predetermined amount of time during which you attempt to memorize it. Then they ask you to recall which words were present. Along with recalling (some of the) actual words, you are in addition likely to recall a so-called critical word which was not actually present in the list. A collection of such word lists can be found at https://www3.nd.edu/~memory/OLD/Materials/DRM.pdf https://www3.nd.edu/~memory/OLD/Materials/DRM.pdf
- Jensson 4y ago
  I've done that test in a real study, I scored perfectly. As long as you have reasonable understanding of the limitations of your own memory then you wont over or under estimate the accuracy of it, this isn't particularly hard to do for some people. Just because many people makes that mistake doesn't mean that such mistakes are common in everyone.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - feanaro 4y ago
    See my [other response](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31913649 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31913649). The claim is certainly you cannot get a DRM-style test "right". Just because someone somewhere gets it right, that doesn't mean you can rely on your memory to be infallible.
- googlryas 4y ago
  I actually did one of these in college (like 20 years ago), and got it perfect. Not sure if it was a DRM word list specifically, since it was just a psych major room mate testing me, but it seemed very similar. But even if I didn't, that's not really the kind of thing I would ever call upon my memory for. Usually it is something like (real, recent examples from my life): "Who said what, when, how, and to whom", "who was here and who left first", "did this scene happen before or after this other scene in the movie", "who threw the first punch", etc.

Jensson 4y ago

These psychological results are only true for average people, note how in every experiment there are always many people who does the rationally correct thing to do. So there is no reason to believe based on those studies that people who have much higher levels of rationality doesn't exist. Its just, many will believe they are rational when they aren't, since their lack of rationality makes them unable to see all the ways they are irrational. But people who notice their own irrationality can just stop doing those things and change their views and therefore becomes much more rational than average. So we have several layers, we have those who don't see their own irrationality and call themselves rational, we have those who see their own irrationality and call themselves irrational since they are, and then we have the ones who see their own irrationality and takes measures to fix it and therefore call themselves rational. The last group would be the most rational ones, but is still often mistaken for the first group.

vorpalhex 4y ago

Pick a room of your home growing up. Draw a picture of it, as best you can, from memory. Go ask your siblings or parents if you're right. Memory is a fluid thing.

Jensson 4y ago
You assume the person has a clear picture of their childhood home. At least for me I only have very fuzzy mental pictures of my childhood homes, I'd have to try to piece them together to draw anything so I know I'd get many tings wrong. I don't think that everyone adds a lot of fake information to their memory unconsciously, I know some does based on those studies but no study found that everyone did that. Instead I do know that my memory is very rarely wrong, when I answer test questions and I remember something from long ago I am almost always correct when answering for example so I got good grades without studying much at all.
- vorpalhex 4y ago
  Do you ever sometimes have mistaken beliefs? Could you have a mistaken belief about your memory and it's veracity?
  - Jensson 4y ago
    I barely studied for tests and still remembered the questions, the grades I got from them are still there. It is very hard to fake that sort of thing for yourself, everyone knows roughly how well their memory serves them during tests in school. If you had to study a lot then you know your memory is shit, so rationally you shouldn't believe anything you recall. Edit: > Do you ever sometimes have mistaken beliefs? I remember the sources of my beliefs. Sometimes I have mistaken beliefs since the sources were wrong or fuzzy, like my parents told me something that I then believed, but then I learned that my parents were wrong. This makes it very easy to correct mistaken beliefs, since you just go back to the sources and verify and re evaluate the information against the new disagreeing information. Remembering the sources of what you know isn't that much extra information, so it isn't particularly hard to do, but it helps a lot keeping yourself more rational.
googlryas 4y ago
Unfortunately I built a memory palace out of my childhood home, so that is an area I'm very confident in (and yes, I've double checked my palace with pictures and it all lines up).
- SyzygistSix 4y ago
  Why unfortunately? Constructing a memory palace seems beneficial.

feanaro 4y ago

You can prove the limitations of your memory quite easily to yourself -- but don't cheat! Find a so-called DRM word list (acronym originating from the researchers' names Deese, Roediger and McDermott) and have someone test you: They present you with the word list for a predetermined amount of time during which you attempt to memorize it. Then they ask you to recall which words were present. Along with recalling (some of the) actual words, you are in addition likely to recall a so-called critical word which was not actually present in the list. A collection of such word lists can be found at https://www3.nd.edu/~memory/OLD/Materials/DRM.pdf https://www3.nd.edu/~memory/OLD/Materials/DRM.pdf

Jensson 4y ago
I've done that test in a real study, I scored perfectly. As long as you have reasonable understanding of the limitations of your own memory then you wont over or under estimate the accuracy of it, this isn't particularly hard to do for some people. Just because many people makes that mistake doesn't mean that such mistakes are common in everyone.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- feanaro 4y ago
  See my [other response](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31913649 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31913649). The claim is certainly you cannot get a DRM-style test "right". Just because someone somewhere gets it right, that doesn't mean you can rely on your memory to be infallible.
googlryas 4y ago
I actually did one of these in college (like 20 years ago), and got it perfect. Not sure if it was a DRM word list specifically, since it was just a psych major room mate testing me, but it seemed very similar. But even if I didn't, that's not really the kind of thing I would ever call upon my memory for. Usually it is something like (real, recent examples from my life): "Who said what, when, how, and to whom", "who was here and who left first", "did this scene happen before or after this other scene in the movie", "who threw the first punch", etc.