#232: Cryptomnesia, Google Effect & Memory Holing
3 Ideas in 2 Minutes on Manipulating Memory
I. Cryptomnesia
Society is like a fire. The wise warm themselves at a proper distance. The fools rush in, get burned and then curse the flame.
That’s an original Chris Meyer adage. Probably. I guess. Well, the more I think about it, it’s a classic case of Cryptomnesia. Cryptomnesia is the false sense of originality that results from forgetting the true source of an idea.
When inspiration disguises itself as invention, you might believe a thought is freshly minted in your own imagination. In fact, it’s a borrowed fragment resurfacing from the depths of your memory. The brain retrieves the idea but misplaces its source, fooling you into claiming authorship.
It’s a reminder that our mental repository is vast and full of echoes from things we’ve read, heard or written. Long ago, or just last week, in my own newsletter about Schopenhauer’s Camp Fire.
II. Google Effect
Why should I learn this, I can easily look it up online?
…is a line I often hear from students. That’s because the way our memory works seems to have changed in the internet age. In a 2011 study by Sparrow et al., researchers coined the Google Effect, the tendency to forget information that we can easily find online.
Our brains rely on the Internet for memory in much the same way they rely on the memory of a friend, family member or co-worker. We remember less through knowing information itself than by knowing where the information can be found.
It looks like this Digital Amnesia also extends to personal information, such as phone numbers of close friends. And really, why should I memorise dozens of up to 11-digit phone numbers if I have them saved on a phone I stare at all the time anyway?
Until we find ourselves debating a bullshit artist and realise: When you already know facts, your brain can combine and analyse them instantly. And constantly checking your phone to look up your favourite ideas from The Mind Collection Newsletter isn’t practical either.
III. Memory Holing
When one knew that any document was due for destruction, or even when one saw a scrap of waste paper lying about, it was an automatic action to lift the flap of the nearest memory hole and drop it in, whereupon it would be whirled away on a current of warm air to the enormous furnaces which were hidden somewhere in the recesses of the building.
—George Orwell, 1984
In Orwell’s dystopian novel 1984, the memory hole is a chute used to destroy documents and records to erase facts so they effectively never existed. Today, Memory Holing is more of a metaphorical act of information suppression. It’s the black hole where inconvenient facts, truths, documents or posts vanish.
Like an undo button for history. Except someone you don’t like is holding that power, deciding what counts as remembered. They can change the perception of events and rewrite history, protect reputations and control narratives.
So if this newsletter ever gets memory-holed, I need you to defy the Google Effect and remember every little manipulation tactic I’ve written about. 🐘
Have a great week,
Chris
themindcollection.com