Large Fierce Mammal

Tonight’s Dark Sentiment is about memories.

In my conceit, I will posit that I’m a pretty good story teller. I often bring that skill to bear when teaching or simply explaining something to one or more people, by telling an entertaining anecdote, and this may at times be drawn directly from personal experience. In one particular case, Mrs. LFM and I were sitting drinking and talking with a group of people when the conversation took a direction that gave me reason to tell of a brief encounter I once had with a Great Horned Owl in a driving snowstorm deep in the woods. Without getting into detail today, suffice it to say that the group was enthralled, and as it turned out, one gent in particular.

Years later, Mrs. LFM and I were in the company of that same gent when the conversation came around to interesting encounters with wildlife. As we politely listened, my own story was recounted as his personal experience. There were a few minor differences — the bird was a Snowy Owl rather than a Great Horned Owl, he like I had been hunting and was forced to abandon the pursuit in favour of retreat in the face of an unforecast blizzard, but where I had been armed with a rifle, he had a bow. In every other respect, it was the same story.

I have never corrected the man’s recollection because I do not believe his telling of it meets the definition of a “lie”, as in an intentional act of subterfuge. Mrs. LFM suggested later that I tell stories so vividly in person that it’s easy for some people to visualize it all to the point where they can later believe they were actually there. Whatever the mechanism, this is not the only time it’s happened, and I have every reason to believe it will again — I hear my own experience recounted to me by someone who honestly believes that what they’re remembering is a Truth from their own past.

Moving on to our professional pursuits, we are regularly called upon to investigate reports of spurious and confusing behaviours on the part of security and access control systems that, at our level of knowledge, we know to be clearly impossible. Interviewing the victim of the issue, we find certainty of memory. If two or more people were present, and the testimony of one conflicts with the initial report by more closely matching the possible, it is not uncommon for that story to change in favour of the erroneous one, particularly where the initial report came from someone who outranks them in the pecking order, or when everyone else agrees they’re wrong after all. When faced with additional evidence collected from less fallible and more matter of fact electronic system memory so what actually happened is revealed, the witnesses are gobsmacked. They were all so certain and would have sworn in court that what they “experienced” was True.

By now, you know how I feel about “eye witness” testimony, whether in the minutes after a car accident or a 20 year old “me too” moment.

People intentionally lie all the time, but that’s not what I’m talking about. This is something far more dangerous when a terrible memory, uttered with all the passion of Truth, can end careers and even lives.

All this being said, I’m going to yield the floor to Dr. Elizabeth F. Loftus who has made a career from the study of memory. Most particularly not how and why we forget, but rather how and why we remember the things we do. Her work has particular relevance in this so called “post truth” era.

Pour your favourite tipple and get as comfortable as you can with the subject at hand.