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60 reviews for:
The Memory Illusion: Remembering, Forgetting, and the Science of False Memory
Julia Shaw
3.97 AVERAGE
60 reviews for:
The Memory Illusion: Remembering, Forgetting, and the Science of False Memory
Julia Shaw
3.97 AVERAGE
informative
reflective
medium-paced
In 2012, Andrew Pulltab did a study of sameness in pop science writing. Looking at a sample of 1200 books, he identified 4 elements that contribute to a "wait have I read this book before?" sensation:
1. The consistent insinuation that the audience has zero interest in reading academic literature, or that jargon is somehow inherently confusing and not just a shorthand for complex but familiar ideas.
2. Some form of analogy for every other sentence, either because the word count isn't high enough, or because the reader is apparently incapable of using more abstract thought processes. This is kind of like when you wrote an essay in high school and needed it to be 5 pages even thought you expressed everything you wanted to in 3.
3. Speaking of high school, at that age, I remember being told to write emotional anecdotes and stories, which would be more viscerally convincing than a series of data points. I remember thinking "who the hell cares," but I have since learned my lesson. It pads word count.
4. Lists
No, but for real: This book has a very boring writing style. I wouldn't call it dry... It's more like re-hydrated food. Like... I guess your editor fixed it.
Ironically, some of that feeling might also come from the fact that a lot of this does feel like it's retreading old ground. I already know how prevalent false memories are. I'm already familiar with temporal telescoping (granted, through the lens of behavioral economics). You don't have to tell me about identity-protective cognition.
Except that's not true at all.
Realistically, I know that my actual familiarity with these ideas was really vague before I read this book. I undoubtedly learned in more detail about the mechanisms that cause memory formation. That whole thing about how we re-create our memories every time we access them? That's crazy! But, upon finishing the book, I felt like all the information in it was already familiar to me, because memory sucks and I now have the Curse of Knowledge. I have a cognitive difficulty imagining not knowing something. That's normal. But ARGH! y'know?
So, perhaps, the fact that I had some familiarity with the ideas, combined with that post-hoc rationalization, that led me to think this book is more boring than it actually is. NONETHELESS, I feel like it could've had so much more.
I feel like Julia Shaw takes the fact that what she's studying is interesting for granted. There's so many more questions she could've probed and investigated throughout the book. If so many of our memories are false, how much is our past forming our identity, vs our present selves rationalizing an existing identity? She kind of hints at this question at the start but doesn't go far with it. If we share some collective memory of an event, is that somehow more "real?" Julia will gladly talk about how we'll change our memories to fit a collective re-telling, but doesn't follow through on asking "what are the implications of this?" Which is the fun part.
I understand why she might be hesitant to do this. She's a scientist, not a philosopher. But I think that's silly. All scientific findings have some philosophic basis. Some sets of assumptions about the world, and the subject being studied, that actually make the science possible. Being shy about those assumptions makes it more difficult to question the science and its conclusions.
The closest we get is a wishy-washy "it's okay not to have a shared conception of reality" at the end. Which, sure, I agree with that. But there's so much more that could be said about that.
Related reading:
The chapter on forgotten books in How To Talk About Books You Haven't Read by Pierre Bayard, which kind of reflects on how impressions last after memories fade.
Robert Sapolsky's course on Human Behavioral Biology, which has more of the Philosophy Stuff I Like
The Hunt by Thomas Vinterberg portrays a similar example of a false child sex abuse scandal.
1. The consistent insinuation that the audience has zero interest in reading academic literature, or that jargon is somehow inherently confusing and not just a shorthand for complex but familiar ideas.
2. Some form of analogy for every other sentence, either because the word count isn't high enough, or because the reader is apparently incapable of using more abstract thought processes. This is kind of like when you wrote an essay in high school and needed it to be 5 pages even thought you expressed everything you wanted to in 3.
3. Speaking of high school, at that age, I remember being told to write emotional anecdotes and stories, which would be more viscerally convincing than a series of data points. I remember thinking "who the hell cares," but I have since learned my lesson. It pads word count.
4. Lists
No, but for real: This book has a very boring writing style. I wouldn't call it dry... It's more like re-hydrated food. Like... I guess your editor fixed it.
Ironically, some of that feeling might also come from the fact that a lot of this does feel like it's retreading old ground. I already know how prevalent false memories are. I'm already familiar with temporal telescoping (granted, through the lens of behavioral economics). You don't have to tell me about identity-protective cognition.
Except that's not true at all.
Realistically, I know that my actual familiarity with these ideas was really vague before I read this book. I undoubtedly learned in more detail about the mechanisms that cause memory formation. That whole thing about how we re-create our memories every time we access them? That's crazy! But, upon finishing the book, I felt like all the information in it was already familiar to me, because memory sucks and I now have the Curse of Knowledge. I have a cognitive difficulty imagining not knowing something. That's normal. But ARGH! y'know?
So, perhaps, the fact that I had some familiarity with the ideas, combined with that post-hoc rationalization, that led me to think this book is more boring than it actually is. NONETHELESS, I feel like it could've had so much more.
I feel like Julia Shaw takes the fact that what she's studying is interesting for granted. There's so many more questions she could've probed and investigated throughout the book. If so many of our memories are false, how much is our past forming our identity, vs our present selves rationalizing an existing identity? She kind of hints at this question at the start but doesn't go far with it. If we share some collective memory of an event, is that somehow more "real?" Julia will gladly talk about how we'll change our memories to fit a collective re-telling, but doesn't follow through on asking "what are the implications of this?" Which is the fun part.
I understand why she might be hesitant to do this. She's a scientist, not a philosopher. But I think that's silly. All scientific findings have some philosophic basis. Some sets of assumptions about the world, and the subject being studied, that actually make the science possible. Being shy about those assumptions makes it more difficult to question the science and its conclusions.
The closest we get is a wishy-washy "it's okay not to have a shared conception of reality" at the end. Which, sure, I agree with that. But there's so much more that could be said about that.
Related reading:
The chapter on forgotten books in How To Talk About Books You Haven't Read by Pierre Bayard, which kind of reflects on how impressions last after memories fade.
Robert Sapolsky's course on Human Behavioral Biology, which has more of the Philosophy Stuff I Like
The Hunt by Thomas Vinterberg portrays a similar example of a false child sex abuse scandal.
funny
informative
slow-paced
As a psychology minor, most of what was covered in this book was not new to me (memory: completely unreliable and you should probably never trust it!) but I still found it interesting to hear more of the details and more about the new research that's been done since I was in college. If you're into nonfiction psychology/cognitive science aimed at the casual reader, you'll probably enjoy it.
The book goes for breadth where I wish it would have gone for depth, but the material is very interesting anyhow.
Interesting look at memory and how fallible it is.
This was fantastic! I finished it last night and am still thinking about it now. The psychology nerd/bad memory-haver in me loved it!
informative
medium-paced
"The Memory Illusion" is a good book, except the second half about neurology where suddenly correlation = causation and good research is turned into circular arguments D:
I know book writing is hard, and being criticized is not pleasant, but I came believing in the research and after reading the book I don't anymore, that's not good.
Still well worth a read for the very good first half.
I know book writing is hard, and being criticized is not pleasant, but I came believing in the research and after reading the book I don't anymore, that's not good.
Still well worth a read for the very good first half.
A fascinating and accessible exploration of the fallibility of memory.