Unreliability Of Human Memory Essay

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Recommended: Essays on the nature of human memory

Xiuping Tan
WLD57S: Paper 2

Unreliability of Human Memory
The human brain is not a computer. A computer can store hundreds and thousands of documents and files permanently in its memory, but the human brain can not. Computer files can be stored permanently in secondary storage devices such as external hard drives and USB. On the other hand, human memory is neither transferable nor material. The human brain can not store memory permanently and accurately. Although the human brain is marvellous, human memory is highly unreliable due to memory distortion.
First of all, human memory tends to distort and bias in favor of current thoughts. That is, when we perceive new beliefs that are different from the memories in our mind, we often trust the …show more content…

For instance, I had a trip to San Francisco’s Angel Island when I was in high school. I visited the Angel Island immigration station, which is a former processing center for immigrants entering the United States. In the building, there are rooms with sets of bunk beds. I saw things that immigrants used before and read the poems that they wrote on the wall. There are yards and activity rooms inside the building for the immigrants. It is a nice building with a beautiful environment. Based on what I saw, I used to believe that Angel Island is a nice place for immigrants to stay before their immigration status was processed. Later, when I searched online about the immigration station, I found out that Angel Island was almost like a prison for the immigrants. Immigrants were not allowed to move freely in the building. There were many restrictions and harsh treatments to the immigrants. When I think about the Angel Island now, I view it as a horrible place for former immigrants despite the beautiful environment I saw. Even though the memory of the actual observation may be remembered correctly, we tend to distort our memory with the given suggested information. External factors can affect our credibility to our own memory and thus make the memory to become

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