Your brain is a Liar

Unless you subscribe to the the diallelus or some equivalent, you will almost certainly always believe yourself more right, more knowledgeable and more understanding than you actually are. It's not a bad thing. In fact, if anything, it helps keep you sane and (preferably) reasonably confident). That, and it's just how your brain is hardwired.

And one of the few things we do know for certain about the brain is that it is insanely difficult to defragment into its functional parts and to see how they each work. We can't see how anything works before a part 'breaks' and some mental function shuts down along with it. Only in 1954 did we find out what the hippocampus does as it was removed in an attempt to reduce the effects of epilepsy (the man lost any and all ability of storing new memories; in the surgeon's defence, he was cured of epilepsy).

One of the reasons why the brain is so difficut to comprehend is due to its complex interaction with itself. To retain information is has to periodically update itself, somewhat like the working memory of a computer, and in this process the updated memory is invariably changed.

Immediately after the explosion of the Challenger shuttle in 1986, the psychologist Ulric Neisser asked 106 students to describe in writing what happened while they heard about the incident. Two and a half years later, the same students were assembled and asked to answer the same questions in writing. When compared, they didn't match. People had changed facts about where they were, who they were with, what they felt and what they thought. When confronted with the original essays, people were so attached to their new memories they had trouble believing their old ones. In fact, most of the students refused to revise their memories to match the originals written at the time it happened. What struck Burton the most was the response of one student: "That's my handwriting, but that's not what happened."

When you think back and recall a memory, that same memory is reinforced and subsequently altered by your immediate perception, reaction and understanding of that same memory. In particular while recounting a memory out loud, it is overwritten by your memory of saying the words and declaring your actions (called verbal overshadowing if you want the fancy wording for it). Even when someone else talks about an event in your life, your memory of it is changed.

When I was five, my dad once coaxed me into tasting a tomato with a bit of salt on it. It was the most horrid thing I had ever tasted and as I remember it, I spent five minutes merely washing the taste out of my mouth. While my dad has also recalled the event at a later occasion, he remembers it with a lot less drama then I did. Only 11 years later did I dare try taste tomatoes again, and while it taste was the same as I remembered, it tasted, to my surprise, not bad.

The weird part is that I much more vividly remember the scene as I came barefoot down the stairs in my stripy pajamas when I was five.

This is because you are only left with an impression of what happened rather than the event itself. In fact, if you were to close your eyes and recall this text, you'd probably find upon re-reading it that you probably did not remember all the things mentioned in it and their order, and you certainly didn't remember the exact wording.

Considering this, I find myself rather ambivalent to the fact that I will never again be able to get into the mindset I have now as I will certainly and inevitably change as time passes. While I antipathize my inability to be who I am now at a later occasion, I relish the in the thought that as a lot of emotional memories dim somewhat over time, any memory of a bad experience can, indeed, be changed for the better. As well, the emotional and physical rush of affection, love and physical contact can be renewed and reexperienced with the same invigorating surge you had the first time (although, of course, your first kiss and the like will still probably have a larger emotional impact).

Yet, in spite of knowing this, you are always left with a  feeling. A certainty that you are right and that you know what is fiction and what is fact. This is your brain saving you from uncertainty and helping you make decisions. I might write about impulse and decision-making some time later. Enjoy it. It is a feeling separating you from insanity and passivity.

Now venture forth with your new certainty of uncertainty and recount this article as it isn't.