why we need ghosts

[Magical Realist]

Studies have shown this to be false - including the one that inspired this subtopic:

"...studies show that flashbulb memories erode over time just like fading memories..."


Indeed they do. It has been demonstrated time and time again.

A classic case is having a witness watch a video of a car accident, then asking them "from which direction the blue car came".
More often than not, witnesses will inadvertently "remember" a blue car in the screen.

Read up on this. It is fascinating stuff.

Studies show only minor alterations in the details of the memory, not the entire experience itself. I mean one may be manipulated by someone to remember a blue instead of a black car, but nobody is going to be manipulated into thinking no accident occurred. The memory itself persists due to it's emotional vividness.

 

[billvon]

I think a paranormal experience would qualify as a "flashbulb" memory, more vividly imprinted in our brains than normal memories due to the intense emotion aroused by it.

Those are the most likely to be poorly remembered.

From Dr. Fiona McPherson on her book on memory:

"The memory of strongly emotional images and events may be at the expense of other information. Thus, you may be less likely to remember information if it is followed by something that is strongly emotional."

 

[DaveC426913]

Studies show only minor alterations in the details of the memory, not the entire experience itself.

I mean one may be manipulated by someone to remember a blue instead of a black car, but nobody is going to be manipulated into thinking no accident occurred. The memory itself persists due to it's emotional vividness.

And indeed your anecdote does not have them thinking no accident occurred.
It had them thinking a sound was a voice, and its direction was that direction.
Well within experimental boundaries.

 

[Magical Realist]

Those are the most likely to be poorly remembered.

From Dr. Fiona McPherson on her book on memory:

"The memory of strongly emotional images and events may be at the expense of other information. Thus, you may be less likely to remember information if it is followed by something that is strongly emotional."

Right..the scene right before the accident, but not the accident itself.

 

[DaveC426913]

"Other studies have shown that misinformation can corrupt memory even more easily when it is encountered in social situations (Gabbert, Memon, Allan, & Wright, 2004). This is a problem particularly in cases where more than one person witnesses a crime. In these cases, witnesses tend to talk to one another in the immediate aftermath of the crime, including as they wait for police to arrive. But because different witnesses are different people with different perspectives, they are likely to see or notice different things, and thus remember different things, even when they witness the same event. So when they communicate about the crime later, they not only reinforce common memories for the event, they also contaminate each other’s memories for the event (Gabbert, Memon, & Allan, 2003; Paterson & Kemp, 2006; Takarangi, Parker, & Garry, 2006)."
https://nobaproject.com/modules/eyewitness-testimony-and-memory-biases

 

[billvon]

Right..the scene right before the accident, but not the accident itself.

I was replying to your post where you said "I think a paranormal experience would qualify as a "flashbulb" memory, more vividly imprinted in our brains than normal memories due to the intense emotion aroused by it." And per McPherson, such memories tend to be less reliable (i.e. the memory of the emotion the event aroused is remembered well - what LED to the emotion is not.)

 

[Magical Realist]

And indeed your anecdote does not have them thinking no accident occurred.
It had them thinking a sound was a voice, and its direction was that direction.
Well within experimental boundaries.

You have problems with analogies I see. Now we are talking about the rescue workers? No...telling of this experience isn't going to make them remember hearing a voice when they never heard one. The strong emotions at that moment imprinted that memory vividly in their minds.

 

[DaveC426913]

Right..the scene right before the accident, but not the accident itself.

Right. no one is questioning their account that an accident happened.
But their account of 'voices from within the car' is far more plausibly explained by witness error than anything else.

 

[Magical Realist]

I was replying to your post where you said "I think a paranormal experience would qualify as a "flashbulb" memory, more vividly imprinted in our brains than normal memories due to the intense emotion aroused by it." And per McPherson, such memories tend to be less reliable (i.e. the memory of the emotion the event aroused is remembered well - what LED to the emotion is not.)

Right..the memory of the emotional event is remembered well. That's what I'm saying.

 

[DaveC426913]

No...telling of this experience is going to make them remember hearing a voice when they never heard one. The emotions at that moment imprinted that memory vividly in their minds.

Your personal view on the matter is unimportant. Studies overwhelmingly show that this is the kind of situation where memories cannot be relied upon.

 

[billvon]

Right..the memory of the emotional event is remembered well. That's what I'm saying.

Yes, I know. The doctor is saying the opposite. That the emotion is remembered well. What CAUSED the emotion is not.

 

[Magical Realist]

Yes, I know. The doctor is saying the opposite. That the emotion is remembered well. What CAUSED the emotion is not.

That's not what the studies show:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2676782/

"These authors argued that when a highly surprising event occurs, a special memory mechanism takes over, causing the moment to be recorded with picture-perfect accuracy. When they asked people, fourteen years after the assassination of J.F.K., to report details such as where they were when they learned of the assassination, how they learned the news, what they were doing at the time, and how the news impacted them, nearly everyone recalled these details confidently. Though these memory reports could not be retrospectively checked for accuracy, people’s beliefs that the information was retained vividly and accurately gave rise to the proposal that emotional memories may differ from nonemotional ones in terms of the details retained. Many studies have replicated Brown and Kulik’s (1977) original finding. People vividly recall natural disasters (Bahrick, Parker, Fivush, & Levett, 1998) or injuries that they experienced (Peterson & Bell, 1996; Peterson & Whalen, 2001), and even years later, people can remember the context in which they learned about assassinations (Christianson, 1989; Colgrove, 1889; Winograd & Killinger, 1983), terrorist attacks (Budson et al., 2004; Budson et al., 2007; Paradis et al., 2004; Pezdek, 2003; Smith et al., 2003; Wolters & Goudsmit, 2005), space shuttle explosions (Bohannon, 1988; Kensinger, Krendl, & Corkin, 2006; Neisser & Harsch, 1992), or the start of a war (Bohn & Berntsen, 2007; Tekcan, 2001)."

 

[DaveC426913]

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2676782/

Indeed. you didn't read it all the way through, did you? It addresses the subject of our contention directly:

"Despite their subjective vividness, however, even emotional memories are subject to distortion. Compelling evidence for inaccuracies within emotional memories has come from studies that measure the consistency with which people report details such as where they were, or what they were doing, when they learned that an event occurred. If these details were retained accurately, then people should report exactly the same details at each retelling. In reality, however, people’s accounts of these details change over time: Someone initially may state that he learned of the Challenger explosion from a friend but six months later may note that he learned of the explosion from a television broadcast (e.g., Neisser & Harsch, 1992). Often individuals retain high confidence in the accuracy of the reported details despite recounting different details each time. In fact, there can be little correlation between people’s confidence in their memories and the consistency with which they remember event details"

 

[Michael 345]

I mean people don't just make up memories just because they talk about them with other people

So the 1 foot fish you caught does not become 18 inches when you tell your mates later how good a day you had?

 

[Magical Realist]

So the 1 foot fish you caught does not become 18 inches when you tell your mates later how good a day you had?

The fish you did not catch does not become the fish you did catch..The voice you did not experience does not become the voice you did experience.

 

[Magical Realist]

Indeed. you didn't read it all the way through, did you? It addresses the subject of our contention directly:

"Despite their subjective vividness, however, even emotional memories are subject to distortion. Compelling evidence for inaccuracies within emotional memories has come from studies that measure the consistency with which people report details such as where they were, or what they were doing, when they learned that an event occurred. If these details were retained accurately, then people should report exactly the same details at each retelling. In reality, however, people’s accounts of these details change over time: Someone initially may state that he learned of the Challenger explosion from a friend but six months later may note that he learned of the explosion from a television broadcast (e.g., Neisser & Harsch, 1992). Often individuals retain high confidence in the accuracy of the reported details despite recounting different details each time. In fact, there can be little correlation between people’s confidence in their memories and the consistency with which they remember event details"

"Given the evidence outlined in the prior section, my colleagues and I hypothesized that negative emotion would convey a particular benefit on memory for intrinsic item details, such as the visual details of an item. This hypothesis was in keeping with the extant behavioral data, and it also was consistent with the finding that activity in sensory regions corresponded with the later “remembering” of negative items, suggesting that much of what people “remember” about those items may be the sensory details that were encoded."

Then there's this study:

https://www.businessinsider.com/emotions-improve-memory-2017-1?r=UK&IR=T

 

[Michael 345]

The fish you did not catch does not become the fish you did catch..The voice you did not experience does not become the voice you did experience.

Here in the Northern Territory Australia where I live there are a lot of crocodiles in the fishing spots
The fish you did not catch becomes the fish the crocodile ate before you could reel it in
Both the fish and the croc were whoppers

 

[Magical Realist]

Here's the audio of the voice from the car again. Clearly it is saying, "Why can't someone help me?"
And the live response of the rescue worker to that cry confirms it. This was no fake memory.

 

[Write4U]

I think the vividness of the memory overrides any alterations that may occur in talking about it. I mean people don't just make up memories just because they talk about them with other people. It's amusing how far skeptics will go to debunk the paranormal though, attacking human perception first and now memory. It's a really desperate ploy to debunk imo..

Why?

People do not decide what to remember. Imprint is a result of many other factors, completely beyond our control. To be skeptical of someone's memory of events is the entire goal of cross examination in a court of law.

But note that even corroborating testimony is not persuasive in a case where the "body" is missing. Habeas Corpus.

We do not decide to make wrong memories. Under stress we do not decide anything really, our responses are mostly intuitive from the old "fight or flight" response system and any memory is usually about what you did, not necessarily what you saw.

Check up on "herd behavior" and people's behavior without them even knowing why the herd is stampeding.

Herd behavior describes how individuals in a group can act collectively without centralized direction. The term can refer to the behavior of animals in herds, packs, bird flocks, fish schools and so on, as well as the behavior of humans in demonstrations, riotsand general strikes,[1] sporting events, religious gatherings, episodes of mob violence and everyday decision-making, judgement and opinion-forming.

Raafat, Chater and Frith proposed an integrated approach to herding, describing two key issues, the mechanisms of transmission of thoughts or behavior between individuals and the patterns of connections between them.[2] They suggested that bringing together diverse theoretical approaches of herding behavior illuminates the applicability of the concept to many domains, ranging from cognitive neuroscience to economics

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herd_behavior

 

[billvon]

The fish you did not catch does not become the fish you did catch.

Ah, but the fish you did not catch DOES become the biggest, best fish ever that BARELY got away, and that you are positive you saw and heard.

The voice you did not experience does not become the voice you did experience.

The person you did not rescue does not become the person you rescue. However, you may well decide later that you could have rescued them - and your inventive memory may well supply the missing details. Further, if your entire focus is on getting to a car and finding all the survivors, your imagination may well supply exactly what you need to motivate you to get there.

People hear what they want to hear.