Review 17: The Memory Illusion: Remembering, Forgetting, and the Science of False Memory by Dr. Julia Shaw

You meet a lot of people with tremendous faith in their memories. I remember it like it was yesterday, or sure, I have a photographic memory, they’ll say, confidence rolling off them like arrogant petrol fumes. So for me, as someone who is constantly in a state of confusion and anti-clarity, it’s something of a relief to read Dr. Julia Shaw’s The Memory Illusion and see that they’re full of it. And by it, I don’t mean objectively accurate memories. I mean the other it.

Most of us are fairly comfortable with the idea that our memories are often imperfect. Or rather, we tend to be fairly comfortable with the idea that other people’s memories are imperfect, while rarely doubting our own. This is why, as part of Shaw’s whirlwind tour of memory and its flaws, she introduces the concept of asymmetric insight: the fact that we think that we understand other people better than they could possibly understand us. It ties into something of a superiority complex that we have – we implicitly trust our own experiences far more than we ought to. In fact, if you care to study my favourite ever diagram, you’ll see that our pink brainmeat is absolutely loaded with cognitive biases – and memory is no exception.

In fact, it seems that memory is faulty at pretty much every opportunity. From the point when we first create them – since our attentions are distracted from capturing accurate details – to remembering them, when we essentially rebuild the memories afresh and, in doing so, imbue them with extra layers of inaccuracy depending on our feelings at the time, we are building in flaws whenever we can. The takeaway from the book is really this: almost no memory anyone has ever had has been completely accurate.

Shaw’s writing is zippy and fun, particularly if you have a leaning towards scientific writing. Where it threatens to get a little dry, she breaks it up into handy sub-sections so that you’re not overloaded all in one go. That’s helpful, because this is the sort of book that you want to put down for a bit to consider the ramifications it has for your approach to your own memory.

I feel like the book could actually stand to be longer, and go more in-depth into some areas. But this is a popular science book, not a textbook, so it’s understandable that she’s kept it light.

There is one other key takeaway from the book: your memory isn’t perfect. Don’t rely on it. If in doubt – write it down. And that excellent advice, if nothing else, is something I absolutely will remember.

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