Misremembering

David McRaney: What percentage would you say of a typical persons memory are fictional?

Julia Shaw: 100%! A controversial statement, but, Elizabeth Loftus who’s arguably the leading researcher in false memory research, recently had a TED Talk and she said ‘all memory is essentially false’. Again, these are the types of statements are the kind of thing we hear echoed throughout the literature right now, and it’s a good enough principle, memory is good enough, evolutionary speaking, just like everything else in our bodies from our eyes to our stomachs to our muscles, memory is good enough to survive. It’s not perfect.

David McRaney: Well, that is, uh, a little frightening….

I’m with McRaney.

From the You Are Not So Smart ‘Misremembering’ interview with Julia Shaw. Skip to the point here.