Comment by rectang
10 hours ago
The concept of memories blending together resonates after watching a recent Kurzgezadt video entitled "How Are Memories Stored Inside Your Brain?". It makes the point that the very act of recalling a memory changes it:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PqtggjVAi8M
> But memories are not static like photos. Like dioramas made from wax, each time they’re under the spotlight of your attention they can melt and change a tiny bit.
I suspect my oldest memory, of me getting into a booster car seat as a child, is no longer the actual memory, but the accumulated imaginings of me trying to remember that specific memory, masquerading as a memory.
Comet Hale-Bopp is definitely a case of this for me. Although I remember a few interesting things about the process of seeing it, I have no idea of what it looked like to me.
I can remember the neighbors standing slightly in our yard and then explaining to my parents the comet and pointing it out to us. I can remember at some points that followed being aware of the parallax effect as it seemed to appear on either side of my other neighbors’ house as I walked up and down the driveway.
But just a year or so later, I knew that the picture in my memory was more like an illustration of a comet. The accurate image was completely gone even though the memories surrounding it remained, and in the place of that image was something that I had imagined.
My earliest memory… turned out to be a videoclip I discovered 20 years later… I really thought I experienced this!
Very poetic metaphor!