Tuesday, October 17, 2006

Catapulting the Propaganda revisited

Scott Adams posts about affirmations. Pretty interesting. In speculating on why he thinks it works, he says:
My favorite explanation for the power of affirmations also has the least evidence to support it, i.e. none. The idea behind this explanation is that human brains don?t have the capacity to understand all the complexities of reality, and so our brains present us with highly simplified illusions that we treat as facts. In this model, affirmations are a lever on some entirely natural chain of cause and effect, but not a chain that our brains are capable of comprehending. While this view is unlikely to be correct, it has the advantage of being totally cool to think about.
I like the part where he says "our brains present us with highly simplified illusions that we treat as facts". Because I am more and more sure that when it comes to memory, our brains just make all kinds of stuff up and present it to the consciousness as "what happened". Since our brains are already screwing with us in the memory department, who's to say they're not dicking with other stuff?

And Adams ought not to call his blog 'The Dilbert Blog', since it's never about Dilbert and always about Adams.

5 comments:

Michael Turton said...

Elizabth Loftus.

Michael

Chaon said...

Pardon me?

Anonymous said...

confabulate:
To fill in gaps in one's memory with fabrications that one believes to be facts.

http://www.answers.com/confabulate&r=67

Chaon said...

That's a damn good word to know. Thanks Peter.

Red A said...

Confabulation is why eyewitnesses to crimes are not very reliable.