This was published 8 years ago. Makes me wonder if it's replicated yet or if anyone has tried.
I certainly am no fan of the reliability of human memory. It surprises me that more people aren't skeptical just from their own experiences. So many times I've told stories of things I did or remember from when I was young, especially to my wife, only to eventually visit my parents and find out I'm wrong and that never happened.
And, of course, among my earlier memories are from kindergarten. I remember seeing the Challenger explosion happen in class and I remember missing half the year because of pneumonia. They can't possibly both be true because they'd have happened at the same time, but I remember both nonetheless. Is my memory of watching the OJ verdict live in high school history class also false? I have no idea, but I wouldn't be the least bit surprised. I have no idea how much of my remembered life actually happened without independent corroboration.
It leads to such conflicted feelings when the subject comes up of people remembering childhood abuse they'd "suppressed." No doubt many more children are abused than remember and many, if not most, abusers never come to justice. But also no doubt many of these memories, like the entirety of the Satanic Panic, never happened, and many people are in prison or registered for life unable to get a regular job, who never did anything.
It's worth remembering this as we see the development in real time of LLMs and other somewhat intelligent tools that are able to just make shit up and seem totally confident about it. They're not the only ones that hallucinate. All prediction and recall systems that are inherently probabilistic but need to tell only one story are likely to be susceptible to this kind of thing, including any and every AI we will ever develop, including ourselves. Claims need to have evidence and be independently verifiable or you shouldn't trust them. Even your own claims.
I certainly am no fan of the reliability of human memory. It surprises me that more people aren't skeptical just from their own experiences. So many times I've told stories of things I did or remember from when I was young, especially to my wife, only to eventually visit my parents and find out I'm wrong and that never happened.
And, of course, among my earlier memories are from kindergarten. I remember seeing the Challenger explosion happen in class and I remember missing half the year because of pneumonia. They can't possibly both be true because they'd have happened at the same time, but I remember both nonetheless. Is my memory of watching the OJ verdict live in high school history class also false? I have no idea, but I wouldn't be the least bit surprised. I have no idea how much of my remembered life actually happened without independent corroboration.
It leads to such conflicted feelings when the subject comes up of people remembering childhood abuse they'd "suppressed." No doubt many more children are abused than remember and many, if not most, abusers never come to justice. But also no doubt many of these memories, like the entirety of the Satanic Panic, never happened, and many people are in prison or registered for life unable to get a regular job, who never did anything.
It's worth remembering this as we see the development in real time of LLMs and other somewhat intelligent tools that are able to just make shit up and seem totally confident about it. They're not the only ones that hallucinate. All prediction and recall systems that are inherently probabilistic but need to tell only one story are likely to be susceptible to this kind of thing, including any and every AI we will ever develop, including ourselves. Claims need to have evidence and be independently verifiable or you shouldn't trust them. Even your own claims.