How do you know what is true?
Hello old friends.
It’s been a little over 2 months since we last spoke. I’ve had a few ups and downs.
Through it all, I’ve thought of you often. Dare I say it, I missed you.
Someone subscribed the other day who I wanted to impress because they created this and this, that I so enjoyed and I wanted to show them that I too, create things, but with words and links. So here I am, writing to you from my friend’s living room in Oakwood, my favorite neighborhood in all of LA — the one I called home when I first escaped to this endless summer city with it’s bizarrely tall palm trees.
Ok but first, music. A lot of music.
On a flight from the east coast at 6am that lands on the west coast at 8am, you can really do whatever you want. Work doesn’t exist in that weird little time hop. Exceptional music does though.
Jeffrey Jordan’s voice comes through stupid crisp in this song.
Never g̶e̶t̶t̶i̶n̶g̶ ̶o̶v̶e̶r̶ letting go of Justin Bieber.
Dancing to this song like it’s 5am and the suns coming up.
This song is not a song, more an experience.
Find all of these and many more jams right here.
And if you’ve been following along, these jams made the playlist since we last listened together.
Ok, let’s do this.
How do you know what is true?
While in SF, my friend Ricky graciously hosted me and we made pasta with his friend Louis. Louis is studying memory. I won’t pretend that I understood much of anything he’s researching, but it kicked off a peculiar stream of unrelated conversations over the following weeks related to memory.
Louis noted that night that every single memory we create, we go from the person we were before the memory to the person we are after creating the memory. That struck me.
How does the memory of something affect who I am since the memory was created?
A few weeks after that, I was back in LA making pasta (again) at my brother’s place. An important carbohydrate trend is emerging here.. He started describing the concept of a schema reference. I couldn’t explain it to you but again, something resonated. I can’t even remember what it was but I remember that he described this thing in development where there are references, which may or may not be bits of code that reference other bits of code. The issue that though is that these references need to be refreshed often and they can easily break, causing the system to reference incorrect or simply missing information. In life (aka not in code), you have a memory that you reference but the further away you get from the memory, the less reliable that memory becomes. Not groundbreaking, but a good reminder.
Do I still try to access memories that have become stale or unavailable?
A few weeks after that, I was watching one of those ASAP-Science-esque videos where the narrator is presenting you with a bunch of random facts and one of the facts stated that memory is tricky because our brains aren’t that great at recollecting things, especially after increasing periods of time. Because of this, we’re often misremembering memories or otherwise remembering embellished versions of memories.
Have I become a (better or worse) version of myself based on misremembered and embellished memories?
And then one day last weekend, I finally decided to tackle the deep hole of newsletters that my inbox had become and happened to listen to this talk about the Rashomon effect.
The Rashomon Effect is a term related to the notorious unreliability of eyewitnesses. It describes a situation in which an event is given contradictory interpretations or descriptions by the individuals involved.
So effectively, bad but convincing memory recollection.
Then I got to wondering - what stories do I tell myself as definitively true but are in fact not true at all or only partially true? What memories have I forgotten about entirely?
Right about now I’ve noticed that I keep using the word “stories” when I meant to use “memories” and if that isn’t a metaphor for how unreliable our memories are then I don’t know what is.
Maybe, (as is often my deepest fear) I’m not saying anything novel to you, but frankly, I can’t help questioning reality and that stressed me out. If you stress tested your memories, maybe by asking friends, coworkers or family to confirm or deny the tales, and they told you a different version, how would that change your perspective of yourself? What is a deeply held personal truth about yourself that’s based on a memory of yours? What would happen if that memory was challenged by a reputable source?
The reverse of this is to ask yourself, what memories have you heard about yourself, that you’ve adopted as your own? Whether it’s positive or negative, there are truths we tell ourselves based on realities others have spun for us. On the other hand, you can’t really trust your own memories either, so we’re left here with the cold hard truth that things have in fact happened to you, but your recollection of them is probably wrong.
And then, in wrapping this up, last night at a pregame, my friend Justin (ps, happy birthday!) put on this song. It sounded off. I said, isn’t this that one song? And he said yes. And I said, but this is a remix? And he said no. And I insisted. And he laughed and said, ah the Mandela effect. Watch this if you can.
The Mandela effect occurs when a person believes that their distorted memories are, in fact, accurate recollections. They can clearly remember events that happened differently or events that never occurred at all. The bottom line is that the Mandela effect does not involve lying or deception.
It was in fact the original version of the song. I was remembering a remixed version of it, but insisting that the remix was the original, passionately.
Look, the point is, I’m simply suggesting that you don’t put too much stake in memories that define who you are today. There’s a really good chance they’re not accurate. Be whoever you want to be, regardless. Also, fact check your memories too if you’re curious, the results are funny and terrifying.
For making it this far, here’s a weird photo I liked.