Name: Is Your Memory Just an Illusion?
Uploaded: 2020-01-02T16:11:58.000Z
Duration: 16 min 16 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

Translator: Hiroko Kawano Reviewer: Peter van de Ven

To-infinitive

What I want you to do is to rethink memory.

rather than as accurate recollections, permanent records of the past,

instead of that, I want you to think of your memories as stories.

Stories that you tell yourself to make sense of your life -

stories that you tell other people, part of your tribe,

But before I begin this journey into memory science

and understanding how easy it is to distort these stories,

It starts with my mom and it ends with my aunt.

On this trip to Switzerland, she went into - well, to get her car,

She gets into the passenger seat of her car.

there is a man standing at the exit, blocking their way out of this garage.

And my mom, to try to get him out of the way,

gets out of the car and says, "Sir, can you please get out of the way?"

And the man, instead of responding the way that normal people would,

Now, my dad's response to this is to drive away -

and they get out of the situation, and my mom is okay.

this kind of thing had never happened to her.

Naturally, she tells her family about it;

I said this story happened in Switzerland, and my aunt lives in Germany.

that there is no way she could have possibly been in the back of this car,

she doesn't want to let go of this memory,

So how do we find ourselves in a situation

where we confuse things that we think we've experienced -

with things that we have actually experienced?

And so if we rethink our past as a story,

and we think about writing these stories and who gets to write these stories,

It might be a little more complicated than we often think.

that just like my aunt was not actually the witness of my mom's crime -

as much as she might identify as this witness;

this may have been an important part of her personal narrative -

that there might be important moments of your life -

memories of your childhood, memories of lost loves -

And so you might not actually be the person you think you are,

certainly if you're resting your identity on your memories.

So I want you to dare to question your memories.

Just because it's emotional or complex, just because it feels real

"How do I know that this actually happened?"

Because when you do that, you dare to question yourself: "Who am I?"

And ultimately it leads you to question your reality.

So, before we even begin to talk about distorting memories,

That doesn't need to be perception of the real world,

that can be perception, that can be idea,

that can be something that we think about -

because we can also remember things we've thought about or dreams -

but often we talk about perception in real life.

And of course, here, neuroscience and people who study psychology,

Subtitles ListPlay Video

Is Your Memory Just an Illusion?

ultimately

constantly

assume

perception