New Study Finds People Remember More Than They Think

An anonymous reader writes "A new study has shown that people subconsciously retain information about things they've seen even if they can't consciously remember. From the article: 'Luis Martinez of CSIC- Miguel Hernandez University in Spain and his team "read minds" with the Princess Card Trick, an act invented by magician Henry Hardin in 1905. Participants in the study mentally picked out a playing card from a group of six cards, which then disappeared. When a second group of cards appeared, the researchers had amazingly figured out which card a person had in mind and removed it. Very few people caught the trick: All of the cards in the second set were different, not just the card that people had chosen. This trick is well-known to confuse the masses, even via the Internet a magician's sleight of hand can make it seem as though he/she legitimately "read your mind" A few moments after viewing the two panels of cards, volunteers were asked which of two new cards was present in the first set of cards. None of the volunteers could actually recall which card was present. Despite claiming that they had no idea, when they were forced to choose, people got the right answer around 80 percent of the time. “People say they don’t know, but they do,” Martinez said. “The information is still there, and we can use it unconsciously if we are forced to.”'"

Comments

"Selective" Memory

[Pastor Jake]

This doesn't surprise me at all. God chooses for us what we can and can't remember, and it is through His will that our memories come to us in the time we need them most. Yours in Christ, Jake

Re:"Selective" Memory

[Anonymous Coward]

I thought I thaw a putty tat!

Re:"Selective" Memory

[enrgeeman]

The new Doctor Bob?

Re:"Selective" Memory

[Cryacin]

And here I spent all that money on alcohol.

Re:"Selective" Memory

[oztiks]

I'm trying to wrap my head around the fact we remember more than we think ... Isn't memories a form of thinking ... Therefore you can't remember more than you think because thinking is the act of recalling the memory you've thought of?

Re:"Selective" Memory

[skids]

Put it this way: you remember some things by thinking. Other things you remember by intuition/instinct. You remember summarized results, rather than the all the individual addends. Sort of like a bloom filter.

Learning to trust your instincts can definitely improve your ability to do things speedily without having to look up all the details about how to do it, and some people don't use enough of this capacity. It's a double-edged sword though -- the trouble comes when you get too comfortable with your instincts and start following spurious random background noise.

Re:"Selective" Memory

[hldn]

obviously the same guy.

Re:"Selective" Memory

[Narcocide]

Guys, I think he's being serious.

Re:"Selective" Memory

[Anonymous Coward]

He's serious.

He's also an idiot.

Re:"Selective" Memory

[Anonymous Coward]

This doesn't surprise me at all. God chooses for us what we can and can't remember, and it is through His will that our memories come to us in the time we need them most.

Yours in Christ,
Jake

Leave them kids alone pastor-pedo.

Re:"Selective" Memory

[Ihmhi]

That might explain part of PTSD. Soldiers learn to avoid "dangerous" situations which make sense in a occupation or combat context - a large area full of civilians with lots of cover for a potential attacker, for instance. They see people get killed because they weren't paying attention in a marketplace in the Middle East. Then, they get home to a what we could all call a vastly safer place but they still have their internal warning bells going off.

Re:"Selective" Memory

[Anonymous Coward]

And here I thought he selected us for our inability to think...

Re:"Selective" Memory

[Anonymous Coward]

Mod Parent up as Insightful. It's not "Funny" to make fun of someone's heart felt believes.

Re:"Selective" Memory

[Anonymous Coward]

This doesn't surprise me at all. God chooses for us what we can and can't remember, and it is through His will that our memories come to us in the time we need them most.

...Except during final exams and court appearances.

Yours in the Real World,

AC

Re:"Selective" Memory

[Anonymous Coward]

How is this selective? It seems skewed. They claim they don't remember, yet only two cards are added, and they got it right 80% of the time, seems like it's a 50/50 shot to guess right.

Re:"Selective" Memory

[Lord Balto]

God, I hope not.

Re:"Selective" Memory

[Anonymous Coward]

stfu & gtfo

Re:"Selective" Memory

[oztiks]

Being a martial arts teacher, this is the basis to our training. Repetitive training of movement is retraining the autonomic nervous system, stimulus (aggressive postures from an opponent) triggers an instinctive response (defense).

The concept behind this is that the delay made by conscious thinking becomes a problem / liability to your capability to defend yourself, your unconscious self circumvents the delay, sort of like UDMA between your HDD and RAM, if you have to pass the data via the CPU it causes a delay ....

The trick is to rely on prereferral vision, seeing movement via prereferral vision triggers the autonomic movement and therefore faster then thinking 'block, block, parry, counter'
   

Re:"Selective" Memory

[Anonymous Coward]

Not sure if trolling or just incredibly dumb.

nanoseconds

[Anonymous Coward]

Brain operatdes at 10 Hz. My program operates at 14 Mhz or better.

Re:nanoseconds

[jd]

Even if that were true, 10 Hz over a super-cluster of 120 billion neurons is an effective speed of 1.2 THz.

Re:nanoseconds

[jd]

Ok, found it. Neurons operate at 200 Hz, not 10. That gives a brain speed of 24 THz.

Re:nanoseconds

[Samantha Wright]

Unfortunately, such a direct comparison is reductionist to the point of being meaningless. You may like this related article: When will computer hardware match the human brain?

Re:nanoseconds

[hedwards]

Yes, the brain is analogous to a multicore processor, except that it's more complicated. You can think multiple things at once providing they don't need to make simultaneous use of the same structures. Where the brain really shines is that it has structures that have evolved to very efficiently handle certain types of information.

Also, the brain doesn't have to route a message across the entire brain the way that a processor generally does a signal across the chip, and so some things can and do happen more quickly than others.

Re:nanoseconds

[jd]

The brain is a machine, so reductionism works just fine. What I did not say, and needs to be taken into account, is that you cannot parallelize a process further than it can be reduced into wholly independent steps. (Interdependent steps should be split into the dependent and independent components, with suitable barrier operations to synchronize them.) Further, any parallel architecture, brain included, is subject to Amdahl's Law.

Computer hardware is capable of matching the human brain today, at least at the level of computation power. You can build a cluster of the required number of nodes, linked together via a hypercube network topology. You'd be bankrupt if you did, but you can do it. Nobody would have the faintest idea of how to program a supercomputer on that scale - you might not have noticed, but parallel programming is a highly arcane art. SIMD is about the only design anyone knows how to program on these proto-Deep Thoughts, but the brain isn't SIMD. It's MIMD. The total number of MIMD engineers out there is less than the total number of Perl 6 gurus. Put them in front of a machine with a few billion nodes and their brains will explode. It'd make a great Halloween video, but it's useless for Strong AI.

Lets say you could find a MIMD guru with the wizardry and dark arts expertise to program where angels fear to tread. Would that match the human brain? Well, still no. We don't have a specification for intelligence and you can't program Strong AI by guesswork alone. Strong AI proponents have tried and it doesn't work.

Ok, let's conjure up a specification. NOW can we match the human brain? Alan Turing proved the answer to that is yes. The brain is a Turing Complete machine, the computer is a Turing Complete machine, either can do the work of the other. You have to allow for the fact that brain cell DNA is self-modifying and that brain wiring is also self-modifying, producing an amazingly powerful and flexible system. You also have to allow for the fact that inter-neuron communication uses analogue or discrete signals, whereas computers are limited to binary, and the brain is incredibly small (reduced distances for signals). A computer with this many nodes would be multiple football stadia in size.

But, yeah, if we could solve the problem of not knowing what the hell intelligence even was, we could build an artificial brain equal to (but slower than) the human brain.

Re:nanoseconds

[pclminion]

You can think multiple things at once providing they don't need to make simultaneous use of the same structures.

That's seems like an assumption to me. Why couldn't two patterns of neural activity coexist in the same neurons (like superpositions of waves, and no I don't mean quantum mechanics)?

Re:nanoseconds

[Prune]

Moravec's estimate on the computational power of the human neural system is too low by about an order of magnitude since he considers the basic building block to the the synapse, whereas it is actually the synaptic vesicles, which do not act in unison and are significantly differentiated. Synapses have complex state.

Re:nanoseconds

[1s44c]

Yes, the brain is analogous to a multicore processor

No. It's so different you can't even draw an analogy between them. Animal brains are neural sub-symbolic systems with nothing in common with von neumann architecture.

Any comparison is utterly meaningless.

Re:nanoseconds

[1s44c]

Err what? You have this very wrong.

Maybe your 'self-modifying DNA' is malfunctioning.

Re:nanoseconds

[hedwards]

That's been pretty thoroughly established. It's probably something that you've been observed yourself. Sort of like if you're trying to count and somebody starts yelling out random numbers. Likewise, it's doubtful that you can read a book while listening to somebody without losing comprehension of one or the other.

Any supersitioning of waves in that respect would require an amazing amount of error correction and for the reasons I've already pointed out that's not the case. We can do one thing with a structure at a time, trying to do any more than that at once leads to the same sort of scheduling problems that you generally see in computers.

Re:nanoseconds

[hedwards]

Right and my post is where it all breaks down, right? If you're going to post something like that you really ought to address it to the person that's trying to compare the two in the first place.

And no, claiming that they have nothing in common is bullshit. Just like the brain you can't use a portion of the processor to do more than one thing at the same time. Whether that includes the entire chip, unit or core is going to depend greatly on the architecture, but you're not going to be using the same gates at the same time.

Also, it's a perfectly valid comparison to make they both serve the same purpose, you make it sound like I'm comparing bats to the 1937 Yankees which have essentially nothing in common.

Re:nanoseconds

[Georules]

The brain is a Turing Complete machine, the computer is a Turing Complete machine, either can do the work of the other.

This assumes that the brain is a turing complete machine and nothing else. It is yet to be shown that the brain does not have any other functionality which another turing complete computer could not perform.

Re:nanoseconds

[Anonymous Coward]

Wrong again.

Wooden bats were used by the 1937 New York Yankees in order to win every one of their games. They really do have a lot in common.

Re:nanoseconds

[1s44c]

Also, it's a perfectly valid comparison to make they both serve the same purpose, you make it sound like I'm comparing bats to the 1937 Yankees which have essentially nothing in common.

No, So much no that the word 'No' doesn't even start to cover it. The only thing they have in common is that they are both made out of matter and at a very low level follow the laws of physics of this universe.

Don't get me wrong here, I'm not saying you are an idiot. I'm just that that you have a commonly held but very wrong idea.

Re:nanoseconds

[Samantha Wright]

Turing-complete computers can perform anything. You might get further if you attack the claim that the brain is Turing-complete. Neurons can be configured into a Turing-complete arrangement (in fact it only takes a few layers of neurons to do so), but it's not necessarily as clear that we're configured that way. People just assume it is.

Re:nanoseconds

[Samantha Wright]

Your point is correct in general, but you greatly over-estimate the computational power of an individual neuron. They only compute one function: sum inputs, multiply by adjustable weights, emit signal if adjustable threshold is exceeded. A neuron is more like a fuzzy and transistor than a processor. (Also, as 1s44c said, neurons are not capable of modifying their genomes.)

Re:nanoseconds

[jd]

I have a copy of the research paper that claims each brain cell modifies its own genetic code independently of any other cell up to 3000 times in a lifetime. This is now established science. Each cell in your brain has a unique genome.

Re:nanoseconds

[jd]

That turns out not to be correct even in general.
Specifically for humans, retrotransposition turns out to be commonplace.
About 3,000 times over a lifetime commonplace.

Re:nanoseconds

[Samantha Wright]

Methylation is an epigenetic form of regulation. While it involves the modification of the chromosomes, calling it modification of DNA is generally considered underhanded.

Transposons are independent parasites that manipulate DNA on their own. We don't really have evidence that the cell does anything more than tolerate them.

The Nature blog article, however, is quite something, and I'll concede the point based on it.

Re:nanoseconds

[jackbird]

If you have a copy, then a citation would be most useful for your interlocutors.

Re:nanoseconds

[jd]

If you're interested in the original paper, the authors sent me a copy. E-mail me your e-mail address and I'll forward it to you.

Re:nanoseconds

[jd]

"Somatic retrotransposition alters the genetic landscape of the human brain", Nature (2011), 30/10/2011, Baille, J. K., Barnet, M. W., et al

E-mail me your e-mail address and I'll forward it to you.

Re:nanoseconds

[Samantha Wright]

That's quite okay; I've got university access to most publications. :)

Re:nanoseconds

[Georules]

Turing-complete computers can perform anything.

that is algorithmic.

What I said as a possibility: the brain is Turing complete and possibly something else undefined outside of that (e.g. something not algorithmic) . This results in another Turing Complete machine being only able to simulate a part of the brain's function.

Or, as you suggest: that the brain is not Turing Complete at all shows that claiming a Turing Complete machine could simulate it would lead to a false assumption.

I think both angles have to be demonstrated. Of course, we may eventually find that a Turing Complete machine is exactly what the brain is.

Re:nanoseconds

[Samantha Wright]

Molecular dynamics is algorithmic. The brain is implemented in molecular dynamics. Hence, a Turing machine can simulate the brain, even if only very inefficiently. The brain can only either be Turing complete or less than Turing complete. Most (if not all) of the non-Turing-compatible problems we know of are either uncomputable tautologies or rapidly approach infinite complexity.

Re:nanoseconds

[Georules]

I suppose the brain itself is implemented with molecular dynamics, my mistake. What I should have said was the mind; there are still philosophers that are not sure that everything associated with our "will" derives only from molecular dynamics in the brain..

Re:nanoseconds

[Samantha Wright]

The credibility of those philosophies went out the window when we clearly established that humans haven't been around since the dawn of time. Occam's razor doesn't like the idea that we evolved to hook into a magic API in the fabric of the universe that lets us think, especially when we now have all these other species (chimps, ravens, parrots, babies...) that appear to have intermediate levels of intelligence and self-awareness.

Re:nanoseconds

[Georules]

Point taken, however, I'm not necessarily subscribing to the idea of a god-given free will. I'm also not saying mindful intelligence is only for humans. There are still those who are not convinced that the mind is subject to only what could be computed or simulated; for example, qualia is a concept yet to modeled by computation. While it seems more people are leaning towards arguments that a sufficiently complex computer could simulate qualia these days, this is not a topic that we have just tossed out the window like "flat vs. spherical Earth".

Re:nanoseconds

[Samantha Wright]

Admittedly, that one looks like it'll take a while to sort out. If you haven't done so already, I might recommend stumbling aimlessly through this sprawling beast of a Wikipedia article, which is really more of a review of the relevant literature.

Re:nanoseconds

[Georules]

Oh, I have. I've read a number of books on the topic because I find it fascinating! I still don't have a conclusion for myself. Everything could very well be a Turing complete molecular dynamics machine. Or, we may have the false assumption you posed. Or, there may be other functions out there that we simply have not figured out how to describe accurately.

Thank you for your comments, this has been the best conversation I've ever had on slashdot.

Re:nanoseconds

[Georules]

Philosophy of Mind by Jaegwon Kim at Brown University is a good introduction book; although I can't say I necessarily understood all of it!

Re:nanoseconds

[AK Marc]

The human brain is a processor. It can process multiple things at the same time, so thinking of it as "multithreaded" is reasonable. However, it's a dynamic number of cores, with the cores distributed on the motherboard. Sometimes the cores are at the visual cortex other times, they are in long-term memory, depending on the task. When computers have 20 smaller general purpose CPUs distributed around the motherboard (what does the northbridge and southbridge matter when there are CPUs on both sides of the chipset?) then we'll have computing approaching the flexibility and complexity of the human brain. All we need then if dynamic traces that can connect any pin on any chip to any other dynamically, based on usage.

My friends have selective memory

[Average_Joe_Sixpack]

They remember me when they need a ride to and from the airport, but they can't remember to pay me back the money they've borrowed.

Re:My friends have selective memory

[roman_mir]

Well, now with this study, now you can be certain - these 'friends' are just assholes :)

What you do is, next time they call you from the airport, tell them you are coming, but don't. When they call you later all worked up, say: oh, I forgot. Will be right there.

Don't show up again.

That solves both of your problems.

The 'friend' and money problem and whatever else, I forgot.

Re:My friends have selective memory

[Anonymous Coward]

better yet, pick them up start driving and then say your gas tank is empty.
And say you have no money. (you have money)

Re:My friends have selective memory

[saleenS281]

I think what you meant to say was that this solves all three problems. The friend, the money, and uh... uh... the EPA?

Re:My friends have selective memory

[hpoul]

If you want to remind your friends try out http://tabsplit.net/ :-P sorry for this spam, but i couldn't resist, sorry ;-) i will never do it again, it just came over me
(Just to give a bit more than self advertisement you could certainly also use other tools like billmonk, ioweyou, or hundred others)

should be

[fisted]

from the new-study-finds-already-known-stuff dept.
or is this really news to anyone?

Re:should be

[flaming error]

Yes, it's news to me.

In my studies I've read that people often remember more than what actually happened. And the further away in time from the event, the less accurate their memory gets, and the greater their confidence in the memory grows.

This jives with my personal experience. If I recall correctly.

Re:should be

[ackthpt]

Yes, it's news to me.

In my studies I've read that people often remember more than what actually happened. And the further away in time from the event, the less accurate their memory gets, and the greater their confidence in the memory grows.

This jives with my personal experience. If I recall correctly.

It's probably at some peak in confidence that they then try running for public office, on the belief enough other people think like they do.

Re:should be

[PopeRatzo]

from the new-study-finds-already-known-stuff dept.

I'm still trying to figure out how they do the trick.

How do they pick the right card again?

I wish they would do a study on what a vodka and grapefruit juice after a long day does to my cognitive abilities.

Can someone please explain the trick to me? Is he picking the right card, or a card that looks like the right card? I mean, if you showed me six cards and I pick one and then you show me a different six cards, I'm going to remember what my card looked like, unless all twelve cards are very similar.

Oh crap, now I'm going to have to either go read the article or just call it a day and go to sleep. The wife's already in bed reading and it's 28 degrees here in Chicago, and the bed and wife are more beckoning than the article. Add this to the list of things I will probably never know.

Re:should be

[_0xd0ad]

Can someone please explain the trick to me? Is he picking the right card, or a card that looks like the right card? I mean, if you showed me six cards and I pick one and then you show me a different six cards, I'm going to remember what my card looked like, unless all twelve cards are very similar.

The trick is that the magician, without ever knowing which card you picked, seems to have "magically" taken it out and replaced it with a different card. It relies on the fact that you won't remember the 5 cards you didn't pick, or else you'd notice that all of them were replaced.

However, the point of this study was determining whether you unconsciously did remember which cards were in the first set, even though you could only consciously remember the one you had chosen.

Re:should be

[PopeRatzo]

The trick is that the magician, without ever knowing which card you picked, seems to have "magically" taken it out and replaced it with a different card. It relies on the fact that you won't remember the 5 cards you didn't pick, or else you'd notice that all of them were replaced.

So, you mean instead of the magician picking out the single card that the sucker picked, he shows him all six cards and the mark just thinks his card is in there?

If I pick one out of 5 cards, and the magician pulls out the same card later and says "is this your card?" I don't care if it's a completely different deck, as long as the card he picks at the end is the same one I picked at the beginning. What do I care if it's a different deck? If I pick a 9 of hearts and at the end he shows me a 9 of hearts, it's a good trick whether or not the rest of the cards are the same.

See my problem here? What part of the mechanics am I missing? I'm not so interested in "the point" of the whole thing because it's something we already know. I just want to know how changing the deck lets the magician pick out the right card at the end!

Re:should be

[KTheorem]

The magician never picks the right card. The idea is that the way the magician shows the mark that he knows which card was picked is by removing that card from the group. Since the magician in fact does not know which card it is, he just removes all of the cards and puts back a group of cards, one less than the first group, that look similar to but are in fact not any of the cards from the first group.

Re:should be

[Anonymous Coward]

Are you just trolling or what? The point of the trick is that the magician *doesn't* pull out your chosen card and show it to you, he shows you cards again, minus one (or with one replaced), and *your* card isn't in the set of cards the second time around. You notice that your card is now missing, so you perceive that the magician has accurately guessed your card and removed it. In reality, he's replaced *all* the cards and you just don't notice that the ones you *didn't* pick have changed also (reasonably likely if there's, e.g., a selection of face cards, and only the suits have changed).

Re:should be

[c 0xFF]

I can't decide if you should be modded informative or troll for revealing how the trick works. If I had mod points, I think I'd go for insightful, for pointing out how this whole thing applies to the study in question.

Re:should be

[quadrox]

I too found the description confusing as hell, and your attempts at clarifying it were hardly better (no offense). Let me try and see if I got this right:

1) magician shows 6 cards, you pick one
2) magician replaces his 5 cards in the hand with 5 different ones, all of which he knows what they are
3) you put the card back
4) since the magician knows the new 5 cards, he can easily see which one is not one of the ones he replaced.

I'm guessing this must be it, but why someone wouldn't just outright say so and instead hide the truth in some convoluted sentences I'll never know.

Re:should be

[space_in_your_face]

Your explanation is almost correct. You can see a video of the trick here.

Re:should be

[Anonymous Coward]

No. Read the summary: the mark "mentally" picks out one of the cards, I.e, makes note of it in their head. The magician then shows a second set of cards, in which the marks chosen card is missing (because, all the cards are actually different).

The confusion here arises because in practice, if you were playing this trick on someone, you usually wouldn't let them know that it's a second set of cards -- you would want the mark to believe it's the same set of cards; i.e, you would have to use some sleight of hand (or "custom" cards... search for princess card trick on youtube and you'll see what I mean).

Re:should be

[Anonymous Coward]

Given that he's just repeating the explanation in the summary, neither +1 Information nor -1 Troll seems appropriate. However, given that some people apparently need it to be repeated in order to understand, -1 Redundant seems a bit harsh too.

Re:should be

[quadrox]

Thank you, now I understand. And I could of course have googled the answer myself, if I'd have thought of that.

In any case, let me say that that tricks is extremely lame. Oh well.

Re:should be

[ArsenneLupin]

I just want to know how changing the deck lets the magician pick out the right card at the end

The magician never shows you the card you picked. He shows you the 4 cards you didn't pick.

So the trick works as follows:

1. The magician shows you: queen of hearts, jack of spades, king of diamond, jack of hearts and queen of clubs
2. You pick one card (say, jack of spades)
3. The magician collects the cards, does a lot of handwaving etc.
4. He shows you the cards, only 4 are left: queen of diamonds, jack of clubs, king of heats, jack of diamonds
5. You look at the cards, notice that the jack of spades is gone, and believe that the magician removed the "correct" card
6. But in reality, all cards were switched...

The trick works because all cards will be replaced with cards that are very close to the original ones (you'll have "heads" in both sets, and a comparable number of red and black cards). People pay most attention to the card they picked, and not so much to the card they didn't pick. If they look the same "from a distance", they are fooled.

Re:should be

[ArsenneLupin]

The trick is already well known. There's even a flash app being sent around by mail that does the trick (and baffles quite a number of people...). But as you can execute it as many times you want, in slow motion, and carefully pay attention, eventually many figure it out.

Re:should be

[PopeRatzo]

So the trick works as follows:

Thank you, friend.

I was reduced to tears last night trying to figure this out.

I should never try to think when I'm really tired.

Re:should be

[Quirkz]

I saw this in plain HTML back in '97. Look at one page, pick a card, click, look at the next page. I had to go back and forth about five times before I realized what was going on, and that "jack of clubs, queen of diamonds" had been replaced by "queen of clubs, jack of diamonds," etc., so there couldn't be a match.

Re:should be

[Pope]

Flash? Hell, there was a static HTML version that got sent out years ago.

Re:should be

[Dripdry]

Hell, I had a white russian and the same problem with this damn city weather last night! We should compare notes!

Re:should be

[dontclapthrowmoney]

After all of that, they show you two cards - one of which is from the first deck, and 80 percent of people manage to chose which of the cards was from the first deck even though they aren't confident that they know the answer.

I want to know if the incorrect of the two cards is from the second deck, or a completely new card.

And if it's a totally new card, then it would be a totally new face, so I don't get how this study replicating this trick with people's faces is such a big deal unless they use face pictures that were all very similar. If you quickly showed me two sets of faces, then showed me two images where one was from the original sets, and the other face shot was a new image I had not already seen, I'd feel a little confident that I could pick out the one that was newly introduced.

To me that means the trick with cards and the 80% getting the right answer at the end is more of a big deal than the one with faces because the cards are more like each other, and we're better tuned to deal with facial recognition than with something as basic as a playing card. (I have no data to back up this claim other than it feels intuitive that we're tuned to recognise people, but this is slashdot so I don't mind posting with zero proof on hand). ;-)

If the original trick is that the participants are shown two final images, one from the first set and one from the second, and they correctly select the image from the first group 80% of the time, then this is pretty cool no matter what images you use.

Re:should be

[sjames]

It may seem lame, but it's been fooling people for a century now.

Pretty useless

[Anonymous Coward]

While the human brain has many advantages over computers (at least right now), memory is not one of them. The human brain is pathetic in that regard. Why doesn't the god of evolution make us evolve to fix this?

Re:Pretty useless

[iggymanz]

He did, He evolved some of us into computer makers, administrators, and software writers. the rest that didn't evolve we call users, sucks to be them.

Re:Pretty useless

[Ethanol-fueled]

It's possible that you have much more stored in your brain than you realize. Could you imagine the chaos in your head if it were to provide you with all of your brain's knowledge and wisdom on-demand? The Hollywood version would be cool because you'd be like a genius, but the downfalls to that ability are described in the Star Trek: TNG episode Tin Man. That guy who was born "gifted" was miserable, barely functional, and unstable because his telepathic mind had a low signal-noise ratio.

Take into account your dreams. How many of your dreams feature the most mundane, forgettable events you experienced that day? Do you believe that your psyche would delve into chaos if every little ass-wiping thoughout your life were constantly percolating to the surface of your conscious mind?

Re:Pretty useless

[flaming error]

It's possible that you have much more stored in your brain than you realize. Could you imagine the chaos in your head if it were to provide you with all of your brain's knowledge and wisdom on-demand?

If you can't retrieve it, what exactly does "stored" mean?

Re:Pretty useless

[chromas]

It gets hashed and stored in a table. When there's a collision, a DejaVu exception is raised.

Re:Pretty useless

[Runaway1956]

Basically, you're running a FAT12 file system in your heads. Easily corrupted, with no maintenance, no metadata, nothing. The files are still there, but you can't access them. What they are saying is, people should upgrade to a modern file system. Ext4, Reiser4, LTFS, or maybe HAMMER.

Re:Pretty useless

[ackthpt]

While the human brain has many advantages over computers (at least right now), memory is not one of them. The human brain is pathetic in that regard. Why doesn't the god of evolution make us evolve to fix this?

Perhaps it is in the not suddenly remembering everything connected at once, rating it in relevance/importance which prevents us being paralyzed constantly and allowed to make decisions as simple as turning left, right or going straight. Make choices on little to no information is likely an important asset.

When I was in college I thought I was doing poorly in a chemistry class and considered dropping it so I could focus on other classes. I gave chemistry one last chance, sat down and decided to write down everything I knew. Turned out I knew a lot more than I didn't know, so stayed in the class, finishing with top marks. We're pretty good at telling ourselves we can't do something or, like Barbie, some subject is hard and then being so stupid as to believe it.

Re:Pretty useless

[hedwards]

Some people do upgrade to a modern filesystem, what do you think gets people on death row?

Re:Pretty useless

[hedwards]

I see that all the time at work. The problem is that unlike a computer our memory isn't a binary affair, we can half or quarter know things whereas a computer will either have a file or not. There will occasionally be semi-corrupted files, but those are basically junk. The human brain can make use of those half correct memories to reconstruct ones that are reasonable within some degree of accuracy.

Which isn't really surprising as we can't just assert whenever our memory doesn't agree with the memory of an associate or with the other two people who witnessed an event.

Re:Pretty useless

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd mod the parent up if they weren't already at +5. Anyway, posting anon for obvious reasons.

I have the problem described by the parent. Not the telepathy, mind you, but the constant recollection of events throughout my life all the time, on demand, with a tiny signal to noise ratio. I am considered *extremely* gifted, and I am in my mid 20's.

Usually, when something like that happens, you are afflicted with a mental illness, as in my case. You are extremely miserable. Extremely. I take a handful of pills every morning and every night, and that gets the thoughts to quiet down. The pills make you sleepy, unable to think, unable to speak well, they dampen your critical thinking skills, etc. I lost almost all of my extemporaneous speaking ability when I got sick.

I had a professor who said to me, "Perfect is the enemy of good enough." He was applying those words to the semiconductor lithography process–but really, they hold true for humans as well.

I'd rather be more "normal" (IQ in the 120-140 range) than have to deal with all the crap I have to deal with day in and day out. I don't really want an IQ of 160+ because all that comes with it makes me miserable.

(I'm just using the IQ an arbitrary test of intelligence, you could replace it with ability to read and play music or ability to make beautiful art. Most people on slashdot know what an IQ is, so I used it as my toy case.)

Re:Pretty useless

[RobbieThe1st]

On the other hand, fat12 has /far/ better undelete capibilities than, say, EXT4. So it's not a total loss...

Re:Pretty useless

[alexrudd]

Could you imagine the chaos in your head if it were to provide you with all of your brain's knowledge and wisdom on-demand? Do you believe that your psyche would delve into chaos if every little ass-wiping thoughout your life were constantly percolating to the surface of your conscious mind?

Interestingly enough I just read a book dealing with this very premise, except it concerned itself more with sensations than memories. Basically, someone's system of nerves was acutely enhanced, but the brain was quickly overwhelmed by the new information since the nervous system wasn't filtering it for him. The sensations involved in a drop of water on skin led to a headache; multiple drops would lead to a coma. The solution? Implanting extra processors to offload thinking, of course!

I have met the author but it's a self-published affair and he didn't ask me to promote it.

Re:Pretty useless

[cheekyjohnson]

Do you believe that your psyche would delve into chaos if every little ass-wiping thoughout your life were constantly percolating to the surface of your conscious mind?

Me? No.

Re:Pretty useless

[cheekyjohnson]

not suddenly remembering everything connected at once

Why remember everything at once rather than what you choose to remember?

rating it in relevance/importance

How does that work?

Re:Pretty useless

[Quirkz]

I talked to a girl once who described her photographic memory to me, and some of the problems it had caused. Especially when she ever head to repeat something, like rereading a book. She'd remember the original reading, plus the new reading, plus layer upon layer of thinking about each reading, plus other times when she'd remembered the readings, or thought about remembering, or remembered thinking about it, etc. Said it gave her serious headaches for a while before she learned how to deal with it.

Re:Pretty useless

[operagost]

I tried upgrading my brain to Reiser4, but then my wife disappeared.

Re:Pretty useless

[marcosdumay]

It can be retrieved, you just need the right input senquence.

Opposite for me

[Ossifer]

I think more than I remember...

Re:Opposite for me

[sneilan]

Think about what?

Re:Opposite for me

[Anonymous Coward]

Obviously not about the real meaning of the headline.

Re:Opposite for me

[goose-incarnated]

I forget

oh snap

[alphatel]

I thought I forgot something but now I know I won't remember it.

So basically...

[TheInternetGuy]

..what they are saying is that we remember more than we remember that we remember?

Or in other words, we have memories that we forgot we had?
Or is more like, we have the memories, but we forgot where we put them?

Re:So basically...

[TheInternetGuy]

And also,

That summary was way too long, when I got to the end I had already forgotten what it was all about.

Re:So basically...

[Anonymous Coward]

Exactly. Rick Perry is living proof.

Re:So basically...

[john.r.strohm]

Claimer (opposite of disclaimer): I am a trained hypnotist, with a grounding in hypnotherapy.

Hypnosis 102: Barring severe brain injuries (temporary or permanent), EVERYTHING that you have ever seen, heard, tasted, smelled, felt, thought, read, ... is in there. ALL of it. Forever. Perfectly stored, ready for recall at a moment's notice.

The trick is recalling it. The subconscious mind manages recall, and, if, for whatever reason, he doesn't want to serve that memory up, he won't. He may believe/know that remembering this would cause you extreme pain. Or he may be ticked off at you for some reason, sulking because you've been ignoring his best efforts to help you. (That's his job, that and to protect you, he takes it seriously and he does the very best he knows how at it.)

Hypnosis can help. So can making friends with your subconscious.

Re:So basically...

[Kjella]

Hypnosis 102: Barring severe brain injuries (temporary or permanent), EVERYTHING that you have ever seen, heard, tasted, smelled, felt, thought, read, ... is in there. ALL of it. Forever. Perfectly stored, ready for recall at a moment's notice.

I doubt that, just taking the massive raw amount of data we process from the nervous system it'd be completely absurd to store it all, even for the brain. We're doing a massive amount of fuzzy deduplication, like if you tell a person under hypnosis to say how that apple pie tasted like I think you're getting a generic memory of apple pies, not really that unique pie. Unless there was something particularly good/bad amount it, in which case it could have modifiers. Just because the brain doesn't throw a NullPointerException it's not that accurate.

The trick is recalling it. The subconscious mind manages recall, and, if, for whatever reason, he doesn't want to serve that memory up, he won't. He may believe/know that remembering this would cause you extreme pain. Or he may be ticked off at you for some reason, sulking because you've been ignoring his best efforts to help you. (That's his job, that and to protect you, he takes it seriously and he does the very best he knows how at it.)

I think you over-anthropomorphize the subconscious, I think the brain is more of a parallel search algorithm and each thread is actually rather unreliable. It's just that most of the time you've got plenty of associations so that one or more of them get there anyway. Like if you're trying to recall face -> name, you might trigger face -> nickname -> name, face -> person with same first name -> name or face -> event where he was present -> introduction -> name. Too few links and you have a real chance of failing, without any "need" to protect you - even things you know really well.

That's one part, the other is when everything gets flooded. Like when you forget something that'll be embarrassing you start like a flash flood of thoughts and a wild search for any clue you can find. The result is usually just noise, your brain can't process the searches that makes sense because it's flooded with junk and "no match" returns. People in a panic can't remember shit, they need to be led by the nose to an emergency exit. Too bad you don't have one in conversations.

As for hidden/repressed memories, I think it's part of the brain's natural learning/self defense mechanisms. There's a Norwegian idiom that translated means "A burnt child fears the fire." which relates to physical injury and I think the logic is the same for painful memories, just like you no longer want to touch the fire you no longer want to touch those memories, before it reaches actual pain. That matches well to how some "trigger" memories, like they found an association that wasn't blocked off and so through it all the other memories came back.

Re:So basically...

[Quirkz]

Or in other words, we have memories that we forgot we had? Or is more like, we have the memories, but we forgot where we put them?

This is no surprise to me at all. Can't tell you how many times I've started out a conversation with "it's really fuzzy but here's this little thing I remember" and by the end of the discussion the whole thing has come back to me. In some cases it might be my brain filling in gaps by making things up, as people are definitely inclined to do, but I know there are plenty of cases where I can verify it's proper recall of real events/facts.

Re:So basically...

[Anonymous Coward]

Hypnosis 102: Barring severe brain injuries (temporary or permanent), EVERYTHING that you have ever seen, heard, tasted, smelled, felt, thought, read, ... is in there. ALL of it. Forever. Perfectly stored, ready for recall at a moment's notice.

Pure quackery in my opinion.

Wasn't this done before...

[Jetsurf]

Pretty sure the Mythbusters did this years ago... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=drVpJtdk-zo

....people remember more than they think.

[Anonymous Coward]

This is not NEW news, ya'll. Did you just forget ?

Yeah yeah yeah

[Afell001]

They say the first thing to go is your memory and the second...well, dammit, I keep forgetting the second...

Re:Yeah yeah yeah

[XiaoMing]

The EPA? ;)

Re:Yeah yeah yeah

[Anonymous Coward]

Ha ha that's +5 funny x 2!

"x2" because the funny (i.e. peculiar) thing is I had to read you comment in two separate places before I remembered what it made a reference to! X)

In my defense it didn't take me as long to remember as it did a certain governor :D

Lessons drawn from this are:
1. Brain-farts suck.
2. I should be the POTUS (please write-in Anonymous Coward) or if not POTUS then at least governor of Texas.

Well no shit...

[mr_bigmouth_502]

I've actually noticed this myself before.

Are they really remembering?

[poor_boi]

Are they really remembering?
Or are they just making the same choice twice?

Re:Are they really remembering?

[wvmarle]

Memory is a field that can do with a lot more research, obviously.

There is also this controversial issue of recalling memories under hypnosis. There is a lot of anecdotal evidence that it is possible to recall memories while hypnotised, but there is also the risk of implanting memories.

The Mythbusters tackled this issue some time ago, and in their test (which afaict was done pretty soundly - at least they always try to do this type of experiments in a scientifically sound manner and with the help of experts in the field) found that when hypnotised they could recall more from something they just learned. Yet rightfully they were skeptical about their result and ended it with "this is an interesting results, and definitely needs more research to call it". But the fact remains that their test results went up a lot when under hypnosis, and that in itself is interesting.

Then there is also this short term vs long term memory. People don't appear to remember anything from their early childhood, the first five years of age mainly. Yet in that time we learn many skills like language that stay with us for our whole life.

Also traumatic experiences during early childhood are known to affect the lives of those affected well into adulthood, or even their whole life. The details of the experience itself are completely forgotten, but the results are still there. A fairly common example are children that lost their parents (or were dumped by the parents) shortly after birth, ended up in an orphanage, and were adopted by the time they were 1 yo. Most if not all of them suffer for many years, sometimes for life, from separation anxiety. While all they can remember are their adopted parents, who generally are fully accepted by the child as if it were their biological parents. They have no conscious memories of life before being adopted.

Re:Are they really remembering?

[hedwards]

Repressed or hidden memories are a physical impossibility based on the understanding we presently have of memory. In order for such memories to exist they would have to be disconnected from the network of neurons that encompass our entire life's memory. Which would require a completely knew mechanism for memory that hasn't yet been discovered. The current understanding is that the more connections a memory has the stronger it is and the more likely it is to be recalled. In order for something to be repressed it would have to have virtually no connections to other memories making it susceptible to being repurposed.

Then there's the issue of things important enough for somebody to want to forget being especially hard to forget. In large part due to the amount of time and energy spent thinking about it.

That's just a highly informal explanation, the actual mechanics are somewhat more complex and the specific details aren't completely established. Forgetting something is really hard to do once something has made its way into long term memory.

Re:Are they really remembering?

[wvmarle]

Repressed or hidden memories are a physical impossibility based on the understanding we presently have of memory.

Yet many people tend to completely forget things, only to recall it later.

Recent example, of one of the US president hopefuls: "the government departments that I want to close are a, b, and euhm..." and a while later he remembered it again.

The memory was obviously still there, yet for a while couldn't be recovered. I have similar experiences myself, you surely have too. Like standing in front of an ATM and drawing a blank on your decade-old PIN code... try an hour later and it's back no problem. Why was that memory suddenly gone? How come later it's back again?

This sounds to me like "hidden memories" that need some kind of trigger to recover. And as you rightfully remark, impossible based on our current understanding of the workings of the brain. It's so mighty complex, our understanding of how it works is probably just the very beginning.

Re:Are they really remembering?

[Anonymous Coward]

I've always hated this when taking tests. I wouldn't be able to recall formulas needed to solve certain problems worth a damn and be frustrated as hell because of it. I suppose it was some form of stress-related thing.

Then about 2 hours after the test is over, what suddenly pops into mind? Oh those damn formulas I needed in order to correctly solve half the questions. Does me a whole lot of good when I know I didn't pass because of it.

I suppose the feeling at the time could best be described by the "FFFFUUUuuuuu!" rage-face internet meme.

Re:Are they really remembering?

[john.r.strohm]

Sometimes, when something like that happens, it is your subconscious mind trying to get your attention, and tell you that whatever it is that you are trying to do that requires that particular memory right then is, from his point of view, a really, really bad idea.

Re:Are they really remembering?

[Anonymous Coward]

To be fair, I'm pretty sure that I learned recently on /. that the "brain farts" to which you refer are actually a result of being in situations where the brain determines that it is performing a "regular" task to which it is accustomed, and therefore does not require its usual attention At this point it jumps into an S3 state to conserve power.

My point is that while I can't contribute much to the topic at hand, I can tell you that memory is extremely complex and the case you cite doesn't really apply.

Re:Are they really remembering?

[Carewolf]

Brain farts are not the same as repressed memories. What you describe is very shortly forgotten knowledge, and you still know you know it. A repressed memory is something you can not even remember ever knowing at any point.

Re:Are they really remembering?

[Quirkz]

One of my favorite moments of this was when my brother actually forgot my name. He chewed on it for a while, then finally decided he should give up and just ask. So he turned to me and said, "Ross, what's your name?" because even though he couldn't *think* of it, somehow reflexively he could just interject it into a sentence. It's a priceless memory we still joke about on occasion.

I can also think of several other really spectacular incidents that seemed life-altering in the moment, but which I'd soon forget for years, only to remember them out of the blue one day, or find them in an old journal entry, and wonder how it was possible to have gone that long without keeping that important experience in mind.

Or they think more than they can remember.

[darkjohnson]

I'll bet that's more the reality, you think?

I completely Agree

[Nerdfest]

People do almost everything more than they think.

Radiolab - Falling

[dbIII]

The Radiolab show on "Falling" had a bit on this. The "time stands still" experience you get from near death experiences is because later you can consciously remember far more than normal.

Re:Radiolab - Falling

[pclminion]

The "time stands still" experience you get from near death experiences is because later you can consciously remember far more than normal.

So, what makes your brain kick into that mode? Just adrenaline? Can we reduce this to pill form, so I can take it during meetings to help pay attention?

Re:Radiolab - Falling

[Anonymous Coward]

Please don't make meetings take longer, they are boring enough already. Let alone when everyone talks like a broken memo recorder.

Re:Radiolab - Falling

[Anonymous Coward]

I think for some people, time already stands still during meetings.

Re:Radiolab - Falling

[Thing 1]

NZT FTW

Re:Radiolab - Falling

[Anonymous Coward]

At least, you think you can remember more than normal. Many studies suggest that your factual recall is not necessarily any better when it comes to the details of those highly charged memories. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flashbulb_memory#Accuracy

That's not saying much...

[SlithyMagister]

"Remember more than they think" implies that they think.

Re:That's not saying much...

[Anonymous Coward]

"Remember more than they think" implies that they think.

... therefore they are!

Dupe

[Anonymous Coward]

Huh... I mean I think I've already read this before...

Get it right

[hareball101]

“The information is still there, and we can use it unconsciously if we are forced to.” -- Educated people should know the difference between unconscious and subconscious.

Re:Get it right

[voidphoenix]

The opposite, in fact, is true. Unconscious is actually the correct term, and would be used by educated (at least in psychology) people. Subconscious is imprecise and academically useless, and generally only used in casual conversation, or by pop-psychologists and New Agers.

Saying I don't remember != not remembering

[Anonymous Coward]

Just because they say they don't remember doesn't make it so. Maybe people don't like being wrong. Maybe they were merely unsure. Perhaps the participants were all politicians; they've got that whole "I have no recollection of that" thing down cold.

Memory continues to amaze

[Anonymous Coward]

Anecdotal, sure, but I'm amazed by the recall of memories from decades ago, especially those of inconsequential events I little noticed when they happened.

Implanted brain-modems make this fun and easy

[Roark Meets Dent]

UC Berkeley has already demonstrated that they can read your mind and see what you see by hooking up electrodes to your brain.

Hypnotherapist WARNING!!!!!

[TheInternetGuy]

If you read his message three times backwards. ALL YOUR BASES ARE BELONG TO HIM.

Nothing surprising

[trojjan]

Don't we all have moments where we say 'Oh I know that but can't remember'. But some time later we recall that. What I'm interested in is some research on how we recall things and how it is related to stress/age/sex/sleep etc.

Re:Nothing surprising

[Anonymous Coward]

The way I believe that that occurs is that we tend to recall memories by association. Say, to recall the trip to the apple orchards that you went on in year 1, you would probably start with people that you knew back then, then you would go onto maybe the bus trip there (if there was anything memorable about it) or perhaps the apples on the trees or whatever.

This is the same reason why a particular smell, sight or sound can bring up stuff that you don't remember at all (consciously). For example, a cold breeze on a warm day often dredges up memories of visits to my mum's mum's house from 25 years ago.

Also, I would hypothesise that being stressed or a lack of sleep can change your thought patterns enough so that the association with a particular memory or fact no longer occurs correctly and requires sleep or relaxation to restore it.

Re:Nothing surprising

[rohan972]

I say "I'll think of it in a minute" and I usually do. If I say "I can't remember" then I don't for ages, but think of it later while driving or something.

It's as if once I try to remember the process starts, then my brain follows the instruction I give "think of it in a minute" or "can't remember". Either instruction has a limited but noticeable affect.

Useless

[Anonymous Coward]

A percentage of a basic guessing game doesn't prove the subconcious remembers anything they can't conciously remember or learn.

An unfortunate fact of memory

[symbolset]

Sometimes we remember things that didn't happen.

Peer review

[Anonymous Coward]

Who did the peer review on this research?

sale jerseys

[jersey123456]

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Recent examples contrary to TFA

[caywen]

Three recent examplea to the contrary come to mind. Perry fumbled with the third department he'd shut down, correct? I just want to make sure we are talking about the same thing before I say yes or no. Herman Cain had a memory lapse on Libya, and definitely didn't remember more than we thought. The third case, no that was a different one. Sorry, got all this stuff twirling in my head. What was TFA about again?

If only Donald Rumsfeld could have written TFS

[UnoriginalBoringNick]

http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/low_concept/2003/04/the_poetry_of_dh_rumsfeld.single.html

The Unknown
As we know,
There are known knowns.
There are things we know we know.
We also know
There are known unknowns.
That is to say
We know there are some things
We do not know.
But there are also unknown unknowns,
The ones we don't know
We don't know.

—Feb. 12, 2002, Department of Defense news briefing

Hmm...

[methamorph]

I read about this somewhere but I can't seem to remember where...

New???

[Anonymous Coward]

It's a fundamental fact in psychology that your conscious mind doesn't pay attention to absolutely everything while your unconscious side does so more, so I'm really not seeing how this study has found anything new.

Good thing too

[Grismar]

If my brain is only 80% sure that a remembered fact is accurate, I'm glad the result is "I don't know" when I try to remember it. People don't "remember more than they think", but the brain apparently stores a lot of junk that doesn't meet it's built-in (or trained) criteria for proper remembrance. Big surprise there...

What would be interesting is to see how the level of certainty needed to remember something changes over time and whether it is actually something that is taught or inherently built into the brain's structure.

People should think more, probably...

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't you think?

Spanish proverb

[srussia]

They remember me when they need a ride to and from the airport, but they can't remember to pay me back the money they've borrowed.

"Ante el vicio de pedir, la virtud de no dar."

My English try: "When asking becomes a vice, not giving becomes a virtue."

Re:Spanish proverb

[marcosdumay]

There is more than one way to translate it. Yours is correct, but it can also imply that asking is always a vice, and not giving always a virtue.

is it?

[johnsnails]

Is it possible to remember more than you think? Put differently can you recall something you haven't previously thought about?

Donald Rumsfeld already said

[qualityassurancedept]

there are known knowns, unknown knowns, known unknowns and unknown unknowns.

Like guessing on test answers

[Anonymous Coward]

I found that sometimes when I have studied for a test, but still don't know the answer, a guess is often right. Maybe I actually remember it?

olde news

[Anonymous Coward]

I remember reading about this in my last life...

New study repeats result of old study.

[Anonymous Coward]

FTFY>

The problem is...

[barfy]

They say more than they remember...

I don't get the exercise

[JTsyo]

Couldn't read the article, was the right answer none of them that 80% got right?

Unsurprising result...

[frank_adrian314159]

Most people do many other things more than they think. In fact, thinking is probably one of those activities people do least.

Recall vs. Recognition

[UniAce]

I am a scientist (i.e., experimental psychologist) who studies human memory. What is described here is simply the difference between a recall task and a recognition task. Roughly: in a recall task, you have to produce information from memory given some cue; in a recognition task, you are given the information and you have to judge whether it was previously encountered. It is extremely well-know and well-documented in the scientific literature that recognition performance is almost always better than recall performance. In everyday terms, you may not be able to recall the name of a childhood friend, but you may be able to recognize that name among a list of alternatives. The difference between recall and recognition performance is just one kind of demonstration that the entirety of information stored in human memory is indeed much greater than what can be accessed at any given time.

Re:Recall vs. Recognition

[Anonymous Coward]

You aren't a scientist. Psychology =/= science.

A good book on the topic...

[LibRT]

I read a fascinating book on the topic, called "Sleights of Mind: What the Neuroscience of Magic Reveals about Our Everyday Deceptions" - highly recommend it - the authors investigate what happens from a neurological perspective when magicians perform tricks, and also how we routinely deceive ourselves about the "reality" we think we perceive (deceptions which magicians routinely rely upon).

Re:A good book on the topic...

[DZign]

Thanks for the suggestion.

Another interesting book is Buyology by Martin Lindstrom.
He's in advertising and researched the influence of ads whilst taking brainscans of people..
Very interesting book. Seems most of the time our decision to buy/not buy/do/.. and all our actions are made almost intantly, but only later our conscious has to 'explain' it to ourselves..

Re:A good book on the topic...

[LibRT]

Thanks - I'll check that out!

The book I mentioned touches a bit on that, ie "...if you've ever bought an expensive item you'd sworn you'd never buy, the salesperson was probably a master at creating the "illusion of choice," a core technique of magic."

It's all very fascinating stuff (at least to me), and as you mention, for the most part, we really don't know what the hell is going on in a lot of our day-to-day decision making/observations, and fill in our "reasons" after the fact.

card trick

[Anonymous Coward]

i used to do a trick where i would pick out the ace of spades and shuffle it into the deck until i didn't know where it was. then i would rifle through the deck and pick one out intuitively. i got the ace of spades on the first try about 3/4 of the time. the rest of the time i would get the other aces first. I guess my unconscious didn't know the difference.

Who actually believes this hogwash?

[Anonymous Coward]

This isn't science. Psychology is pure voodoo, plain and simple. The mind and brain cannot be explained by the scientific method.

Stick to rigid, respectable fields like physics.

Re:Who actually believes this hogwash?

[Anonymous Coward]

tell that to ramachandran

Been there

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, this has already been studied. If you give an Alzheimer's patient a puzzle everyday, they will consistently get faster and faster at solving the puzzle despite not being able to recall ever seeing the puzzle in the first place, let alone multiple times.