This logic has become the backbone of discrediting all those exposes of child alteration, political intrigue and conspiracy because no one can confirm what happened. The greatest protection for perpetrators is that no one else saw what happened. Spin. Information is managed. News is managed. To induce chloroform. Memory is managed. The recollections of this war are mostly retrieved in old age when reflection produces glimmers. That's when the POWs write down their memoirs or victims of pedophiles reveal their horror, as if a tightening of reality around their consciousness squeezes out these leavings. There is a real question whether all this would be better unremembered, but it is answered by that fatal flaw of a search for truth, no matter what. Oedipus blinds himself. The effect of this anesthetizing thoughout their life is that they feel no danger, but danger is the sign, the essence of life.
Memory is malleable, full of holes, easily contaminated and susceptible to suggestion.
"When the real perpetrator is not in the set, is in none of them, witnesses have a very difficult time being able to recognize that," explained Gary Wells, a professor of psychology at Iowa State University. Wells walked Stahl through what went wrong, some of it counterintuitive. When Thompson spent five minutes studying the photographs, she and Detective Gauldin thought she was being careful. "I didn't want to come across as somebody who's like, 'That's the one.' I really wanted to be sure," Thompson said.
Wells says that's no good. "Recognition memory is actually quite rapid. So we find in our studies, for example, that if somebody's taking longer than ten, 15 seconds, it's quite likely that they're doing something other than just using reliable recognition memory." Wells studied what that reinforcement does. After half his subjects did what Stahl did - picking an innocent person from his lineup - he told them nothing, then asked them questions about what they'd seen. Very few felt highly confident about their choice.
"Only about four percent are saying they had a great view, which is good, 'cause we gave them a lousy view," Wells explained. "Only about three percent are saying they could make out details of the face. That also is good because they really couldn't." But he told a second group of subjects, after they made the same incorrect choices, "Good, you picked the suspect."
"Now what happens is…40, almost 45 percent of witnesses now report that they were positive or nearly positive. Notice that over one fourth of them now say they had a great view and…it is what happened with Jennifer," Wells said. "What this seems to be saying is that a reinforcement alters memory," Stahl remarked.
Wells says that's no good. "Recognition memory is actually quite rapid. So we find in our studies, for example, that if somebody's taking longer than ten, 15 seconds, it's quite likely that they're doing something other than just using reliable recognition memory." Wells studied what that reinforcement does. After half his subjects did what Stahl did - picking an innocent person from his lineup - he told them nothing, then asked them questions about what they'd seen. Very few felt highly confident about their choice.
"Only about four percent are saying they had a great view, which is good, 'cause we gave them a lousy view," Wells explained. "Only about three percent are saying they could make out details of the face. That also is good because they really couldn't." But he told a second group of subjects, after they made the same incorrect choices, "Good, you picked the suspect."
"Now what happens is…40, almost 45 percent of witnesses now report that they were positive or nearly positive. Notice that over one fourth of them now say they had a great view and…it is what happened with Jennifer," Wells said. "What this seems to be saying is that a reinforcement alters memory," Stahl remarked.
Stahl was shown the face from the original memory test on the right side of the screen, and the altered version of that face - the one she had just picked in the previous test - on the left. "Well, I'll tell you why I'm stymied," Stahl acknowledged. "Because I just picked this one, on the left, two seconds ago. But now I'm not sure, 'cause those two look very much alike to me. But I'm gonna tell you the left."
But Stahl was wrong. It was the one on the right. And that's the whole point of the study.
Loftus explained how, like the study subjects, Stahl had been duped. "So you saw this face. Then I gave you a test, where I presented you with an altered face…along with another one. So I pretty much induce you to pick a wrong face. Because I don't even have the real guy there. It's an altered version. And later on, when you now have a choice between the altered one and the real one, you stuck with your altered left…choice," she explained.
But Stahl was wrong. It was the one on the right. And that's the whole point of the study.
Loftus explained how, like the study subjects, Stahl had been duped. "So you saw this face. Then I gave you a test, where I presented you with an altered face…along with another one. So I pretty much induce you to pick a wrong face. Because I don't even have the real guy there. It's an altered version. And later on, when you now have a choice between the altered one and the real one, you stuck with your altered left…choice," she explained.
Only corroboration by those present can determine whether your memory of the event is accurate.
Jean Piaget, the great child psychologist, claimed that his earliest memory was of nearly being kidnapped at the age of 2. He remembered details such as sitting in his baby carriage, watching the nurse defend herself against the kidnapper, scratches on the nurse's face, and a police officer with a short cloak and a white baton chasing the kidnapper away. The story was reinforced by the nurse and the family and others who had heard the story. Piaget was convinced that he remembered the event. However, it never happened. Thirteen years after the alleged kidnapping attempt, Piaget's former nurse wrote to his parents to confess that she had made up the entire story. Piaget later wrote: "I therefore must have heard, as a child, the account of this story...and projected it into the past in the form of a visual memory, which was a memory of a memory, but false" (Tavris).
II. But memory is more than algorithm which is a shadow of its whole, an external trace which machines take from every extraction on media and pirated mail. Out of that the machine seeks to build a predictive device for the next thought, act. If people are reduced to this algo they have become machines. What is memory that Plato says nothing is every forgotten/
Note: see also, Mirrors of AEI, NLP, Physics
see also inheritable memory, epigenetics, of small rna from disease privation.
broken symmetries are a kind of perversion of memory
