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Comment by sysbin | Hacker News Reader

I'm not sure if I agree with the reshaping idea. I do share the opinion that a person gains more self awareness for how others see them when examining the self from third person. Although, I don't assume the past first-person memories would be modified or altered and if they were ingrained moments. The brain doesn't know to overlap memories by some hidden timestamp of oh these both happened at the same time! Another way of looking at it is if I hated some type of vegetable young and enjoy it now. I still remember how I used to hate it when I was young. Furthermore, I think kids have an advantage nowadays if they want to master some type of choreography by examining how people view them on stage.

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> The brain doesn't know to overlap memories by some hidden timestamp of oh these both happened at the same time!

It kind of does. Each time you recollect something you change the memory of the event (this is also mentioned in the article). Repeated recollection can have varied effects from (simplified) "I don't recall the original event, I recall the last time I thought of it" all the way up to creating false memories. I think there's been quite a bit of research on how this relates to interrogation techniques and the reliability of eyewitness testimony.

I caused a car accident 25 years ago when I drove through a stop sign and was hit in the side by another car. Other than being rattled quite hard I suffered no ill effects although it totalled both my car and the car that hit me. I'd driven that same route several times over the past year, I had just been in a daze or something on that occassion.

I spent a few days recuperating at home, sore as hell. During that time I replayed the incident several times in my head, and thought I had a clear idea of the stop sign I missed and what it looked like. I went back later, and the intersection was nothing like I had convinced myself I had remembered it being. Specifically I'd convinced myself the stop sign was partially obscured, and it wasn't.

This experience shook me for a long time, and gave me a deep distrust of my own memories. There's a reason why eye witness aren't entirely reliable, I'd experienced it myself.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automaticity

I think this is because our memories are not videos, we do not store them pixel by pixel, because that would require huge amount of storage space our brains do not have. Instead we use the approach similar to 3d games: remember rough shape of an object as one piece of information, location as second piece, and color or texture as a third. When recalling a memory your brain renders the whole scene, and if some piece of infomation is missing it makes it up on the fly to fill the gap. Then you overwrite your original memory with memory of this most recent rendering.

I'm just a layperson, but from what I understand, the prevailing theory about memories in psychology is that they have active and dormant states. These correlate roughly with short-term and long-term memory and are even related to different regions of the brain.

Memories in an active state are malleable--things that happen, emotions you experience etc. are prone to influencing the content of the memory. Eventually it gets "filed away" in a dormant state and doesn't change much unless it's reactivated, which can be triggered by vivid, related experiences. (Interestingly, there's research which shows that a reactivated memory becomes malleable again for as long as it is active, so current events can influence how you remember past ones.)

The theory in the article seems to line up with this, if you immediately view a video of something you just did, the memory is still malleable and you're more likely to remember it in a third person rather than first person context. If you view the video a few days or a week later, the memory may not be as malleable as it was at the time of creation. Curious as to why you disagree with this, do you disagree with the underlying theory?

I don’t necessarily disagree with the theory you outlined. My disagreement is towards the wording of the part where one may assume a memory is being forever altered or modified and I don’t think that’s how our brains handles storage.

The theory of events being encompassed by a structure similar to many mesh networks of memories and where order of hierarchy rearranges but the previous order may be recalled is what I assume to be more realistic. Basically the sectors may either have more or less frequency of being recalled; by whatever may increase or decrease the likelihood.

> My disagreement is towards the wording of the part where one may assume a memory is being forever altered or modified and I don’t think that’s how our brains handles storage.

The majority of cognitive neuroscience disagrees with you. Doesn't mean that you're necessarily wrong but you'll need to make some really good points for your argument to be taken seriously.

Instant replay is definitely an advantage for any kid interested in showbiz.

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