> I've been thinking about the reliability of memories a lot lately, and I realized that if we look at someone, we think that they've always looked like that, because we remember them looking like that.
>
> But how do we know if the memories are true? The other person may never have looked like that, until now.
>

Perhaps the question is not so much, "Are memories true?" I'm not sure how anyone could answer that question. A better question might be "Are memories ACCURATE?" (meaning: do they consistently give dependable results from moment to moment?"). My answer is that there's a certain persistence to memory which past experience forces us to rely upon; however, as to whether memories are reliably dependable, well No, they aren't that reliable.

If I recall correctly (heh), there has been at least one psychologist who audiotaped himself over a prolonged period of time, while keeping a journal of what he'd *thought* he'd said. He'd tape what he'd say to passengers while driving, while talking on the phone, etc. At the end of each day he wrote down what he remembered. When the experimental trial was over, he compared the tapes against the journal, and reported experiencing 'shock' at the degree of difference between what he'd remembered (and had recorded in the book) when compared to what he'd actually said. This small trial upon the accuracy of memory, crude as it was, was enough to make him question one of the cornerstones of the legal justice system -- the authenticity of eyewitness reports in courtroom testimony. The latter is a separate and very complex issue. It was one of the things I was thinking about, when I once mentioned that human memory can be frighteningly malleable and manipulable.


> I just looked at the keyboard and thought "I think I remember typing some of a message, but maybe I didn't."
>
> I might not have typed any of this message so far, but I remember typing it, so I assume I did.
>

That's a bit different (if you don't mind me taking your statement more earnestly than you intended :-) For example, it's interesting how you can remember having written a longish message or letter, but if you expend serious effort in trying to recall *exactly* what you wrote, it's extremely difficult -- even though it was YOU who just wrote it a few minutes ago. If we had the ability to recall everything we said or saw perfectly, with eidetic accuracy, then the question of whether "memory is true" would never come up.

Wolfspirit