[LINK] "The Tyranny of Memory"

[rfmcdonald]

Clifford at Love and Fiction has a nice essay up on how human memory doesn't necessarily accurately represent actual lived experiences, informed by Daniel Kahneman's writings on bias in memory. He starts his essay by noting how, even though he was reluctant to make a particular trip to Morocco, his memories of it--aided, guided, defined by photos--are more solidly positive than his actual lived experiences were.

[Y]ou could say that the decision to go to Morocco was the correct one, in the long term, and I think you’d be partially correct. But you have to be careful about putting memory on a pedestal. Because you’re basically saying that because I remember the experience of being in Morocco as a pleasant one, so it was. But it wasn’t. Right? Remember? It wasn’t.

Maybe what happened with the trip to Morocco was a case of “no pain no gain.” But it could also be a process called by Daniel Kahneman “the tyranny of memory.” He described an experiment when test subjects were made to chose between two procedures, both of which they had already experienced. In the first one, they had to keep their hands in cold water for 60 second. In the second, they had to keep their hands in cold water for ninety seconds, but the water started to warm up towards the end. The test subjects overwhelmingly (80%) chose the second experience, even though (and this is important) it was objectively worse than the first, because the happy ending colored their memory.

[. . .]

Confusing experience with the memory of it is a compelling cognitive illusion – and it is the substitution that makes us believe a past experience can be ruined. The experiencing self does not have a voice. The remembering self is sometimes wrong, but it is the one that keeps score and governs what we learn from living, and it is the one that makes decision. What we learn from the past is to maximize the qualities of our future memories, not necessarily of our future experience.

[. . . T]he tyranny of memory is very real. It is quite possible to live your life misguided by your own memory, like the students leaving their hands in the cold water for longer than they need to, because you do not remember what exactly happened. I’m glad I went to Morocco – but can I trust that gladness?

Ultimately the present moment is all we have. The past is gone, and the future may never come. Funny that the people who most stridently talk about the need to travel are urging you to live for the moment! But they might actually be doing the exact opposite. Because once the moment is gone, memory is all we have.