I prefer the term “confabulation” to “lying”, both because it’s more accurate and it’s more fun to say. Confabulation is when you don’t know that you’re lying, it’s just your dumb brain coming up with stuff that turns out not to be real. Like if you’re asked “are there any red cars parked on the street in the neighborhood where you live?” Your brain hears “I want a memory of a red car parked on the street” and it helpfully delivers exactly that.
I confabulate way too much. Hear something, remember thing; but thing I remember isn’t from thing I remember it being from. Now I am “spreading misinformation.” No… I just suffer from the dumb. 😩
It turns out that it’s super easy to provoke the human brain to generate false memories about stuff. I’ve read about some of the research that Elizabeth Loftus has done and it’s eerie.
I prefer the term “confabulation” to “lying”, both because it’s more accurate and it’s more fun to say. Confabulation is when you don’t know that you’re lying, it’s just your dumb brain coming up with stuff that turns out not to be real. Like if you’re asked “are there any red cars parked on the street in the neighborhood where you live?” Your brain hears “I want a memory of a red car parked on the street” and it helpfully delivers exactly that.
I confabulate way too much. Hear something, remember thing; but thing I remember isn’t from thing I remember it being from. Now I am “spreading misinformation.” No… I just suffer from the dumb. 😩
It turns out that it’s super easy to provoke the human brain to generate false memories about stuff. I’ve read about some of the research that Elizabeth Loftus has done and it’s eerie.