kahawa's review
5.0
Amazing.... and terrifying! Julia Shaw successfully destroys our confidence in our memories. There is so much poignant and practical information in here, especially for anyone in sociology or criminology fields, or just anyone who interacts with humans. If you think you have a good memory, or that people who make up stories must be lying, or you think that eye-witness accounts are the most reliable form of evidence, this book will change your perspective. Fortunately I never had a great memory anyway.
My only gripe is that some of the studies cited seemed less than comprehensive or conclusive, but the overall message of the book was clearly supported by her supporting research.
My only gripe is that some of the studies cited seemed less than comprehensive or conclusive, but the overall message of the book was clearly supported by her supporting research.
michaelbriggs's review
3.0
From what I remember this book was easy to read and easy to understand despite the complex topic. I leave it concerned that my childhood memories may well be false but certainly feel that the findings described ring true to my personal experiences throughout life. It asks some very important questions about how memories can be used to seek legal justice.
hectorip's review
5.0
Este es uno de esos libros que cambian tu visión del mundo, de tu personalidad y también de tus amigos y conocidos.
La idea principal es que nuestra memoria es menos confiable de lo que creemos (y ya sabemos que es bastante mala), pero no en el sentido de que olvida cosas, sino en el sentido de que INVENTA cosas y puede ser que gran parte de lo que juramos recordar en realidad son recuerdos falsos.
El libro te da un viaje por los mecanismos de la memoria y fisiología del cerebro que permiten que guardemos memorias y además de hacerte entender cómo funciona básicamente, da ejemplos de la vida real que demuestran que incluso se puede aprovechar este conocimiento para crear memorias falsas.
Me quedo con varias ideas importantes del libro, que me ayudan a reevaluar lo que pienso de mi memoria:
- Aunque tu cerebro te jure que algo pasó, no puedes confiar al 100 por 100 en eso a menos que tengas pruebas externas.
- A veces, lo que parece una mentira por parte de alguien en realidad es un memoria falsa, es decir, una hecho que no sucedió pero que la persona misma se cree.
- Existen formas de crear o guiar a las personas a que tengan memorias falsas, y hay que ser muy cuidadosos cuando se habla con víctimas de eventos traumáticos
- Los eventos traumáticos no son especiales en nuestra memoria en cuanto la sensibilidad a tener fallas
- Las cosas que escuchamos de otras personas pueden modificar nuestra memoria de un evento
- Verbalizar algo hace que se pierda información que viene de otros sentidos
- Puedes aprender técnicas como el método loci para mejorar tu memoria
Todo este conocimiento te tiene que llevar a cambiar la forma en la que piensas de tu propia personalidad y vida, sabiendo que muchas cosas que recuerdas pueden ser una ficción, causada por la percepción, por alteraciones de cosas que escuchamos o por degradación natural.
Recomiendo mucho este libro a todos aquellos que quieran aprender más sobre la memoria, cómo funciona y les guste en general conocer sobre el funcionamiento del cerebro.
La idea principal es que nuestra memoria es menos confiable de lo que creemos (y ya sabemos que es bastante mala), pero no en el sentido de que olvida cosas, sino en el sentido de que INVENTA cosas y puede ser que gran parte de lo que juramos recordar en realidad son recuerdos falsos.
El libro te da un viaje por los mecanismos de la memoria y fisiología del cerebro que permiten que guardemos memorias y además de hacerte entender cómo funciona básicamente, da ejemplos de la vida real que demuestran que incluso se puede aprovechar este conocimiento para crear memorias falsas.
Me quedo con varias ideas importantes del libro, que me ayudan a reevaluar lo que pienso de mi memoria:
- Aunque tu cerebro te jure que algo pasó, no puedes confiar al 100 por 100 en eso a menos que tengas pruebas externas.
- A veces, lo que parece una mentira por parte de alguien en realidad es un memoria falsa, es decir, una hecho que no sucedió pero que la persona misma se cree.
- Existen formas de crear o guiar a las personas a que tengan memorias falsas, y hay que ser muy cuidadosos cuando se habla con víctimas de eventos traumáticos
- Los eventos traumáticos no son especiales en nuestra memoria en cuanto la sensibilidad a tener fallas
- Las cosas que escuchamos de otras personas pueden modificar nuestra memoria de un evento
- Verbalizar algo hace que se pierda información que viene de otros sentidos
- Puedes aprender técnicas como el método loci para mejorar tu memoria
Todo este conocimiento te tiene que llevar a cambiar la forma en la que piensas de tu propia personalidad y vida, sabiendo que muchas cosas que recuerdas pueden ser una ficción, causada por la percepción, por alteraciones de cosas que escuchamos o por degradación natural.
Recomiendo mucho este libro a todos aquellos que quieran aprender más sobre la memoria, cómo funciona y les guste en general conocer sobre el funcionamiento del cerebro.
pklipp's review
3.0
I regret that I found this book very disappointing. In its structure (chapter - interesting fact, experiment(s), implications) it seemed to be attempting to follow on the success of Predictably Irrational, but in this case, there is no effective common thread linking the chapters. One could read this book in any order, skipping any chapters at random, and miss nothing of import. There’s no flow at all. It’s a random collection of lectures by a professor of psychology loosely related to the topic of memory. I say loosely because one is simply on the fact that people mostly think they’re more attractive than average.
The author even acknowledges this in two ways. One is by calling out chapters that can be skipped if one doesn’t want to get too technical. The trouble is, that chapter isn’t the least bit technical. It was all really dumbed-down, like intro lectures for a 101 class. The other example is that she refers several times to future chapters in the past tense. It was frustrating at first until I realized that it didn’t matter that when she writes “as I explained in chapter four” in the middle of chapter one, that it doesn’t really matter because the explanation in chapter four adds nothing to the point she’s making anyway. Her editor should be ashamed.
I keep calling these chapters lectures, because of the informal nature of the writing. Annoyingly informal. It might play well to a bored class of students, but reading all the forced attempts at titillation or weak humor and the many expressions of “AMAZING!” simply felt awkward to me.
But for all my criticism, I found a few nuggets of fact lurking in the pages which interested me and which made the book worth reading. I won’t share them in this review, so as not to spoil the book for anyone, but if I wanted to I could write a paragraph half the length of this review which contained everything interesting in the book. It was a good vacation read because I had the time to waste, but if I met someone generally interested in the topic, I’d put in some effort to find a better book to recommend. Perhaps just a few of the studies cited in The Memory Illusion would suffice to cover the useful material in a much more compelling way.
In the end, though, I blame the editor for all of the faults that made it to press. The author has good material at her fingertips and she knows her subject. She just really needed more critical help in organizing it for the general public.
The author even acknowledges this in two ways. One is by calling out chapters that can be skipped if one doesn’t want to get too technical. The trouble is, that chapter isn’t the least bit technical. It was all really dumbed-down, like intro lectures for a 101 class. The other example is that she refers several times to future chapters in the past tense. It was frustrating at first until I realized that it didn’t matter that when she writes “as I explained in chapter four” in the middle of chapter one, that it doesn’t really matter because the explanation in chapter four adds nothing to the point she’s making anyway. Her editor should be ashamed.
I keep calling these chapters lectures, because of the informal nature of the writing. Annoyingly informal. It might play well to a bored class of students, but reading all the forced attempts at titillation or weak humor and the many expressions of “AMAZING!” simply felt awkward to me.
But for all my criticism, I found a few nuggets of fact lurking in the pages which interested me and which made the book worth reading. I won’t share them in this review, so as not to spoil the book for anyone, but if I wanted to I could write a paragraph half the length of this review which contained everything interesting in the book. It was a good vacation read because I had the time to waste, but if I met someone generally interested in the topic, I’d put in some effort to find a better book to recommend. Perhaps just a few of the studies cited in The Memory Illusion would suffice to cover the useful material in a much more compelling way.
In the end, though, I blame the editor for all of the faults that made it to press. The author has good material at her fingertips and she knows her subject. She just really needed more critical help in organizing it for the general public.