False memory. An insidious plot to make you think you experienced things you never did or something else more sinister than that?

Neither.

Double-blind experiments in psychology have proved that people can easily and unknowingly alter their memories in numerous ways.
The simplest and most common is forgetting painful memories - which leaves an idealised perception of the past - and prevents learning from the experiences.
Other distortions can occur through neural quirks:
remembering a blue painting as predominantly orange because the after image on the retina is orange.
remembering something as fast/slow, loud/soft etc relative to the environment in which it is experienced - or relative to one's like or dislike of the stimulus.
Seeing a normally healthy person as thin because one is obese and has internally normalised the perception of one's own relative weight.

One of the most frequent ways of distorting a memory is to put an interpretation on something one experienced it - and then in later recall, imagining it according to one's interpretation - not according to the original sensory perceptions.

It actually takes practise and a commitment to reality as it is to have an accurate memory.

It's only an insidious plot if you think human brains were specifically designed with the propensity to create false memories. Otherwise, it's as normal as breathing, vision, hearing, etc.


https://www.amazon.com/Seven-Sins-Memory-Forgets-Remembers-ebook/dp/B003ZSISSA


Now, if you wish to assert there are special interests (economic or political) who wish to exploit the human capacity for false memories in
insidious plots designed for their gain, then you have much evidence to support the notion.


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_lie
This post was edited by SaltyPebble at December 5, 2019 2:47 AM MST