I had never heard of the term mind bug before, but I’ve been exposed to these types of illusions before. On the first day of my 7th grade woodshop class, my teacher spent the whole period showing us illusions and assigning each one a deeper meaning of why we got it wrong in the first place. I hope he reads this someday because the metaphorical reasons he came up with are not true the reasons our minds trick us. It is interesting to me that mindbugs are a product of evolution. Our brain does this because it helps of survive in the world. However, there are times that this automatic evaluation hurts us and there is no way to turn it off.
The idea of false memories is especially frightening. When it comes to remembering things, I think it is safe to say that a person is going to trust their own memory compared to someone else’s most of the time. But this specific mindbug seems to say that this instinct is wrong. In fact, both people are probably remembering wrong. Differing memories are usually pretty harmless. For example, when two people are arguing over who found a song first or which person agreed to take out the trash the correct answer is not going to have an important effect. However, Blindspot shows that there are very real consequences to faulty memory, like when a person is a witness for a trial. Mistakes are bound to be made when a person’s memory is the only thing to rely on. It makes me happy that we are living in a world of constant videotaping and surveillance because, if nothing else, at least there is a tape to fact check ourselves with some of the time.
Elizabeth Loftus’ work really shows that eyewitnesses accounts cannot always be trusted. The experiments showing that those interrogated believe a different memory depending on the way they are asked about the scene is scary. Memories have the power to prosecute a person or make the jury believe they are innocent.
I agree, I think that false memories and the mind bugs that we experience are very frightening because you never want to think that your mind is playing tricks on you, or remembering something wrong because of the way a question is posed to you. I think that the example of the mock trial was so disheartening because how many times have people been asked questions to get a response that the interviewer wanted? I know that many falsely imprisoned people have been released but there are still probably many more due to someone’s mind not working the way they thought it was.
I’m usually someone who hates the fact that everything is videotaped and recorded, but I’ve never thought about how it could actually be so useful as you said in terms of evidence in a trial. On such a smaller scale, I don’t love that my most embarrassing moments are caught on film sometimes, but in the grand scheme of things, this is an invaluable asset to cleaning up our justice system and avoiding wrongful convictions especially in cases that rely solely on eyewitness testimonies.
When an incident occurs and someone chooses to involve the authorities, one of the first questions they ask you is, “After this happened, who did you talk to?” I was always so confused by why that was so important, but in the long-run, people’s memories can change and investigators want to ensure nobody is changing their story and if they are, why? Was it something they remembered immediately after and not later? Did someone else who was there remind them of a detail a week later? I feel like we need to have a better system of both interviewing and presenting information that improves accuracy.
I agree that the idea of false memories and the misinformation effect is terrifying. I know I’ve had countless (pointless) arguments with family members and friends over small details in a story, but when you apply that same idea to something so large (like witness testimonies) the stakes are raised so much more. You made such an interesting point about how everything is now recorded, I never thought of surveillance that way and realize now how important it really is.