Re: Early Memories

Kurt Busiek <kurt@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in
200711041138358930-kurt@busiekcomics:">news:200711041138358930-kurt@busiekcomics:

On 2007-11-04 11:08:28 -0800, Peter Bruells <usernet@xxxxxxxx> said:

Kurt Busiek <kurt@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> writes:

On 2007-11-04 10:38:16 -0800, Peter Bruells <usernet@xxxxxxxx> said:

Kurt Busiek <kurt@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> writes:

On 2007-11-04 09:11:09 -0800, "Brion K. Lienhart"
<brionl@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> said:

I'm arguing *against* those people who think that they have
memories from before they were two, or of being born or whatever.
They are basically making stuff up, and convincing themselves its
true.
Someone who's never met me claiming better knowledge of my
memories than I have myself doesn't hold a lot of water.
Claiming to have real memories from before the age of two is a
quite extraordinary claim, though.

Not to me, since I have them.

It was unprompted -- it's not a case of me remembering a story
someone told me, but me describing a memory specific enough for the
time and place to be identified by others who were there, but fuzzy
enough to be credibly (at least, to me) the perceptions of an
infant. Nobody prompted me, none of the "added details" have gotten
attached to the memory, and there's nobody I have any reason to want
to please by remembering it. It was a memory I was aware of for
years before I described it to anyone.

The argument against it seems to be circular -- nobody remembers
anything before that age, so anyone who says they do is dishonest or
deluded, and the proof of that is...nobody remembers anything before
that age. It's an assertion used to "prove" itself.

The problem is, that it's blindingly easy to place false memories
into the human memory. It's also blindingly easy for humans to agree
with something or rationalize something if they see it fit.

This is a restatement of the assertion. That it's true is not enough
to prove all cases of early memories evidence of it. Nobody placed
that memory in my head -- no one had reason to, or desire to, and
weren't aware that I remembered it until I brought it up.

Perhaps they conspired to do it and to lie to me about it, but that
fails Occam's Razor.

You presume that false memories can only be placed _on purpose_. This is
patently not true.

Try again.

One of the foci of current research is how police _untintentionally_
coerse false confessions out of suspects with sloppy interrogation
techniques.

http://www.justicedenied.org/false.htm has some examples.

http://faculty.washington.edu/eloftus/Articles/sciam.htm

http://www.relentlessdefense.com/false.confessions.html has links to
addtional research.

It took me about 30 seconds, 15 of which was waiting for Internet
Explorer to fire up, to do a search at Google.


I find it easier to assume that very few people have memories that
early, which is borne out by the large number of people that don't,
and the small number of people that do. It has the advantages of
including my own experience, and of being flexible in regard to the
idea of "impossibility."

The argument that memories can be falsified applies to people older
than two, but we don't assume therefore that because six year olds
can be made to "remember" untrue things, that all memories reported
by six year olds must be untrue. Just that it's possible for them
to be.

That seems far more sensible than declaring that no one can possibly
remember anything before the age of two. That it's rare seems
credible. That it's impossible, so throw out any evidence to the
contrary, is a circular argument.

This kind of assumes that there is no real difference between the
years 0 to 2 and 2 to 6 and so on.

No, it doesn't.

Yes, actually, it does.

It illustrates that the circular argument is
circular, and that applying it selectively doesn't make it less
circular. I make no claim that a two year old's thought processes are
the same as a six year old's.

You make the claim that memory in an infant works the same as in an older
child or an adult. Now you're trying to change the subject to thought
processes instead of memory. That dishonesty suggests to me that you know
full well you're full of ***.

However, we do know that the human
brain and mine undergoes severe change during the early age, creating
the perception of "I", for example.

Accepted. And I'll gladly accept that that change is part of the
reason why so few people have early memories. In the absence of some
sort of rationale for my early memory that doesn't amount to a
circular argument, though, I'll continue to believe that it's a matter
of few memories, not no memories.

The rationale has been provided, multiple times, and you pretend it
hasn't. It is far more plausible that your memory is false. Not in the
senes that it is of an event that never happened, but in the sense that
it's not a real memory. It is far more plausible that you heard someone
else describing the event at some point early in your life, and have
forgotten *that* experience, and developed a false memory of a real
event. Go read the links above on how easy that is to have happen.

Or not. If you're not interested in facts.

--
Terry Austin
Beware the other head of science. It bites.
.