Our memory is not like a video recorder that captures details. Instead of focusing on details, it tries to gather the gist of events and we (sometimes creatively) fill in the gaps with details.

But there are people with true photographic memories who faithfully remember exact details. I think it was the book Subliminal where the author discusses how these people often struggle to put those details into a larger contextual understanding. They get the details but miss the gist.

There are also those with near-perfect memory that use those memories to create elaborate, poetic, and hilariously long YouTube videos about nostalgia: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=779coR-XPTw

> But there are people with true photographic memories who faithfully remember exact details.

The traditional notion of photographic memory is being able to recall any and every aspect of a scene upon a single viewing. But in countless experiments where a researcher asks the subject about some obscure detail, nobody has ever been able to demonstrate this--i.e. they may have happened to spot a particular detail, but keep iterating the experiment and they regress to the mean.

To memorize something, a person has to focus their attention on the object such that they can draw associations--inside the scene, outside the scene, etc. Perhaps this can indeed be subconscious. "Conscious" and "subconscious" are such nebulous words, and people's experiences of them so varying, that disputing that it could be done subconsciously requires a degree of certitude I don't think anybody (scientist or otherwise) could rightly possess.

There are indeed people with ridiculously amazing memories, including astounding visual fidelity. But it's misleading to say that it's "photographic". These people aren't glancing at a scene, blinking their eyes, and committing the whole thing to memory like a camera. Rather, their brains seem to be adept at scanning and drawing an incredible number of associations between visual elements and objects within the scene, but never the entirety of a sufficiently complex scene unless given a commensurate amount of time. And in fact, it turns out that with sufficient effort and practice many if not most people can begin to exhibit such astounding feats of memory.

> I think it was the book Subliminal where the author discusses how these people often struggle to put those details into a larger contextual understanding. They get the details but miss the gist.

Perhaps you're referring to the fact that people who exhibit extraordinary episodic memory (i.e. like the stereotypical autistic savant who can remember what they ate on any prior date, though most aren't autistic, AFAIU) usually have normal or sometimes deficient semantic memory. Note that episodic memory isn't the same thing as visual memory. Visual memory can be both episodic and semantic--e.g. if you're a visual-spatial thinker.

>Perhaps you're referring to the fact that people who exhibit extraordinary episodic memory

This is exactly it. Thanks for clarifying and explaining the distinction. I won't use "photographic memory" in the colloquial sense anymore :)

This is somewhat related to eidetic memory (which the article points out is sometimes used interchangeably), you might find it a curious read: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eidetic_memory

The root cause is impressionable subjects accepting priors from questions into the set of priors used to reconstruct memories. Formulating good questions that contain as few priors as possible is difficult, and the reaction of the interrogator to the subject's response will reveal additional priors. Most interrogators are probably not really all that invested into getting as close to the subject's ground truth anyway and are simply looking to by-and-large confirm a pre-established narrative.

In interrogation school, you learn how NOT lead a subject to the answer you want to hear, but to try to get at what they believe is the truth (what did you do? Who did you do it with? Who else did it with you? When did you do it? When else did you do it? Where did you do it? Where else did you do it? How did you do it? What else did you do… and repeat). If you can ask these questions without asking any yes/no questions, congrats, you’ve got the basics of interrogation. Now just construct a timeline in your mind, keep track of subtle inconsistencies to come back to, and you’ve got more of the basics down.

Interrogations during school (with trained actors) we had to extract 80% of the information and write a report on it containing 90% of the information we extracted, with no notes, up to several hours after the interrogation.

Interestingly, I learned how to “tag” memories as authentic (so I could write about them later) which has had interesting implications later on in my life.

> Interestingly, I learned how to “tag” memories as authentic (so I could write about them later) which has had interesting implications later on in my life.

Do tell.

I write meeting notes after every meeting, including details on participants disposition, what was discussed, potential misunderstandings, etc. I usually don’t share these.

Anyway, occasionally someone will “bring up” a meeting detail later on and be confused by it. This isn’t malicious, but sometimes it can be so far from what was actually discussed that people question their own memories and something slightly different arises from the ashes. I used to point out what was actually discussed, but I learned that doesn’t usually come across that well (you’re now questioning a teammate’s memory and aptitude, and requires a bit more delicate politics than I care to involve myself with). These days, I just sit back and watch it play out. It’s pretty rare-ish.

This is why the post-meeting recap email can be so valuable. People quickly forget the meeting but have so many remembered that they reconstruct a meeting that never happened.

Also the simple CYA aspect to it. A post-meeting email creates a solid, legally subpoenable if need be data point that you can refer back to.

What is “CYA aspect” ?

CYA = cover your ass

once upon a time it also meant Califoria Youth Authority, lol

From experience there's *huge* power in writing the recap. Many people never read it, and of those that do most do not want to get into the hassle of engaging in a did/didn't type of conflict, regardless of whether they were right or wrong.

Not all interrogation approaches are like that. For example, the Reid Technique is nothing like you describe, and would probably be exceptionally good at implanting false memories (and is known to lead to false confessions).

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reid_technique

This isn’t an approach (that’s a specific term in interrogation), this is Direct Questioning. There are many approaches but I wasn’t talking about them here. Approaches are used to gain rapport and trust with people who would rather see you dead.

You use direct questioning once you’ve succeeded at your approach, when you lose trust, or when you’re not trained properly on approaches because you can fuck it up pretty bad.

I am genuinely curious: how do you interrogate a trained actor?

Just watch James Lipton.

Basically the actor is given information to know, some background on the character, and the rest is improv.

So you’d get a couple of paragraphs explaining what the character was picked up for, etc.

The first steps was learning how to direct question. The actors would pretty much shut down if you did something wrong like try an approach or ask leading questions. And they wouldn’t respond for the rest of the session. The goal was to force it into our head that once someone is willing to answer us, don’t stop asking the right questions. During the test though, the actors would give you wrong information instead of shutting down.

Then we started learning of approaches. The actors goals here was much the same except this time their goal was to not give you information unless they felt like you deserved it. I’ll never forget this one time, I got baited into a religious discussion. It was so obviously a trap and I fell right into it. Didn’t get a single bit of information because I pissed off the guy for not knowing enough about his religion.

Most of the time the first bit is figuring out core motivation. Is the person motivated by power or emotion?, and then giving them that as a carrot or taking it away. So you are genuinely trying to get to know the person, and that person is stuck in a room with you so they don’t have any other choice other than not saying a word (the worst!!).

If it’s done right, you end up caring for these people to some degree. Even though you don’t want to because sometimes these people have done absolutely terrible things. It’s a rough job. It wasn’t until I became a parent and realized that emotion is similar to when your kid misbehaves. You love your kid, but the child has to be punished. So while your child is sitting in the corner, tears streaming down the face in shame and betrayal, you love them but have to teach them that there are consequences. It’s nearly the same emotions as that moment except every single day, all day.

Your experience of "interrogation school" (presumably as some part of law-enforcement job training?) sounds very positive and enlightened compared with the cliché depiction of aggressive leading questions we often see in films and TV. Unfortunately an encounter I once had with a drunk, off-duty police officer in the UK, who was absolutely determined to convince me I had committed an act of petty theft, and use that as grounds to start a physical fight, did suggest to me that his regular MO was much closer to the typical media portrayal of police interrogations as forcefully pursuing a conclusion that he had already leapt to without much evidence. I would like to think charitably that he was living out some "TV cop" fantasy in his spare time because he was forced to be so thorough and thoughtful in his everyday work; but I find that very hard to believe.

It was for HUMINT in the US military.

Off-duty cops are clueless, especially the drunk ones. A drug dealer friend once got a cop room mate for a couple years. That was hilarious and he would always pick us up if we were too drunk to drive, which we always made a fake scene about why a squad car was picking us up. Sometimes I miss my 20’s… nah, I don’t.

"The Mandela Effect" was a literal psychic medium saying that some people lived in a different dimension in their earlier lives, and also the weirdest excuse for people who didn't care about South Africa or Apartheid to explain their lack of knowledge about what happened there after the got the basics in grammar school.

The Mandela effect is a form of false memory and often involves confabulation. This often happens with people discussing movies and misattributing actors or scenes to contemporary but different films or actors, etc. It also happens with real life events.

That may be how the term was coined, but that is not the common usage in my experience. Simply Googling 'Mandela Effect' will yield many examples of widespread misconceptions and false memories that you can easily verify with a few peers. Just because one explanation is implausible doesn't mean the effect isn't real. False memories are pretty common.

I've noticed that I can vividly recall experiences in other countries but my memory has altered itself to match the side of the road I'm currently used to driving on, and have confirmed this experience with others.

That last part is a really good example to use for people who have switched countries.

The Mandela effect (where people think they remember Nelson Mandela dying i prison) is likely because they confuse him with Stephen Biko, another South African anti-apartheid activist which died in prison. Biko was a cause celebre at the time, a movie was made and Peter Gabriel wrote a song about him.

The Mandela Effect is named for that false memory, yes, but it's more general. From Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_memory#Mandela_Effect):

> Other examples include memories of the title of the Berenstain Bears children's books being spelled Berenstein,[16][17] the logo of clothing brand Fruit of the Loom featuring a cornucopia,[18] and the existence of a 1990s movie titled Shazaam starring comedian Sinbad as a genie.