Stories
Slash Boxes
Comments

SoylentNews is people

posted by martyb on Sunday February 08 2015, @04:55AM   Printer-friendly
from the DRAM-is-to-SRAM-as-Human-Memory-is-to-??? dept.

Brittny Mejia writes at the Los Angeles Times that while some are accusing Brian Williams of deliberately lying about his account of being on a helicopter under attack in Iraq, researchers have long said that memory is not as straightforward as we tend to think. Elizabeth Loftus, a professor of psychology and social behavior at UC Irvine, has been conducting research into planting false memories of events in people's minds and found that people can be convinced of these made-up memories through the power of suggestion. "Memory is susceptible to contamination and distortion and supplementation. It happens to virtually all of us," says Loftus. "This could easily be the development of a false memory." According to Daniel Schacter we create these false memories because our brains are designed to tell stories about the future. “Memory’s flexibility is useful to us, but it creates distortions and illusions,” says Schacter. “If memory is set up to use the past to imagine the future, its flexibility creates a vulnerability — a risk of confusing imagination with reality.”

Williams isn't the only one involved in the incident who recanted claims and blamed his memory. Pilot Richard Krell originally said that he was at the command of the "second bird" in a formation of three Chinooks, with Williams riding in the back of the "second bird." Krell said all three of the helicopters came under "small arms fire," lending support to the stories Williams told over the years about being "under fire" in Iraq. However Krell later recanted after the newspaper Stars and Stripes published a story contradicting his account. "The information I gave you was true based on my memories, but at this point I am questioning my memories," Krell said. "For the past 12 years I have been trying to forget everything that happened in Iraq and Afghanistan; now that I let it back, the nightmares come back with it, so I want to forget again."

 
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.
Display Options Threshold/Breakthrough Mark All as Read Mark All as Unread
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
  • (Score: 5, Insightful) by frojack on Sunday February 08 2015, @08:51AM

    by frojack (1554) on Sunday February 08 2015, @08:51AM (#142396) Journal

    No, that's not what happened.

    He got away with a small lie. Nobody caught it.
    Years later the lie grew. Still he got away with it. Maybe nobody else remembers, maybe everybody there thinks he was talking about a different mission.

    The lie grew, people applauded.

    He knew all along he was lying. But nobody contradicted him.
    He ran with it. He never expected to get caught.

    Don't look for excuses for him. Don't try to make scientific theories to forgive him. This isn't a game of telephone. It was simple self aggrandizement.

    He just lied.

    --
    No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
    Starting Score:    1  point
    Moderation   +3  
       Troll=1, Insightful=2, Interesting=1, Informative=1, Total=5
    Extra 'Insightful' Modifier   0  
    Karma-Bonus Modifier   +1  

    Total Score:   5  
  • (Score: 0, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 08 2015, @01:38PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 08 2015, @01:38PM (#142437)

    > The lie grew, people applauded.

    You are encouraged to cite one case of people 'applauding' any of the versions

    > He ran with it. He never expected to get caught.

    He is at the very top of a profession that is all about being on the record and yet deliberately told conflicting stories while on the record expecting that no one would look at the record.

    Your version of events requires that Williams be simultaneously highly skilled and completely incompetent in exactly the same same area of expertise. You might find that plausible, I do not.

    • (Score: 4, Informative) by frojack on Sunday February 08 2015, @09:39PM

      by frojack (1554) on Sunday February 08 2015, @09:39PM (#142543) Journal

      The lie grew, people applauded.

      You are encouraged to cite one case of people 'applauding' any of the versions

      See here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GwtxVjNVDBU [youtube.com]

      He is at the very top of a profession that is all about being on the record and yet deliberately told conflicting stories while on the record expecting that no one would look at the record.

      Yup. Exactly so. Grandiosity knows no bounds.

      You still seem to be laboring under the delusion of his sainthood.

      --
      No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 08 2015, @11:07PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 08 2015, @11:07PM (#142556)

        > See here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GwtxVjNVDBU [youtube.com]

        Just watched it and I don't see applause or really any comment at all about him being shot down. It was a tiny part of the story that passed quickly without comment.

        > You still seem to be laboring under the delusion of his sainthood.

        You seem to be laboring under the delusion that if he's not a saint he's shit.
        I am laboring under the belief that he is human.

        • (Score: 2) by frojack on Monday February 09 2015, @02:35AM

          by frojack (1554) on Monday February 09 2015, @02:35AM (#142588) Journal

          Just watched it and I don't see applause

          Turn up the volume. You don't SEE applause, you HEAR it, several times during the interview.

          The story he gives is FALSE. He wasn't there. His chopper was going in the opposite direction, he heard everything on the radio.

          --
          No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
          • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 09 2015, @04:20AM

            by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 09 2015, @04:20AM (#142601)

            >> I don't see applause or really any comment at all about him being shot down.
            >> It was a tiny part of the story that passed quickly without comment.
            >
            > Turn up the volume. You don't SEE applause, you HEAR it, several times during the interview.

            I have helpfully re-quoted the part of my post where that was addressed.

            > The story he gives is FALSE. He wasn't there. His chopper was going in the opposite direction, he heard everything on the radio.

            No, one detail was false. Everything else he said was close enough. He was in a different mission that was 30 minutes behind the first, ended up landing with the helicopters from the first mission, etc.

            I see that you are convinced of the saint or shit narrative so I won't be responding any further.

            Bu tyo

  • (Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 08 2015, @03:01PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 08 2015, @03:01PM (#142459)

    Don't look for excuses for him. Don't try to make scientific theories to forgive him.

    It is interesting that you think this is about forgiving him rather than understanding the situation.

    I think that's a great example of the theory that conservatives prefer mythos while liberals prefer logos. You want it to be about him violating social norms, the scientists want to understand the mechanism at work. Your approach offers no solutions other than "hire people of higher morals" which was state-of-the-art a couple of thousand years ago. A scientific analysis leads to other options. Maybe you believe science is useless.

    • (Score: 1) by khallow on Monday February 09 2015, @02:20PM

      by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Monday February 09 2015, @02:20PM (#142703) Journal

      Don't look for excuses for him. Don't try to make scientific theories to forgive him.

      I think that's a great example of the theory that conservatives prefer mythos while liberals prefer logos. You want it to be about him violating social norms, the scientists want to understand the mechanism at work.

      The problem here is twofold. First, the only reason we care is because there is real and perceived harm caused by the behavior. "Violating social norms" is only part of that (more or less the "perceived" part). There's also the matter of a journalist saying a significant falsehood in his capacity as a journalist. That indicates at the least poor judgment on his part, even if it is due to the psychological mechanisms at play (how many times has he heard the big fish story?) and it harms his employer's reputation as well.

      Second, we can't know the motivations, but in this case outright lying is indistinguishable from having this sort of psychological issues. I'm willing to give the benefit of the doubt when the behavior doesn't work to the advantage of the supposed sufferer. That doesn't hold here. When there are significant conflicts of interest which can drive bad behavior, I go with those as the likely cause.

      Your approach offers no solutions other than "hire people of higher morals" which was state-of-the-art a couple of thousand years ago. A scientific analysis leads to other options. Maybe you believe science is useless.

      Finally, the point of this exercise is not to "forgive" bad behavior, but to mitigate the harm from it. Knowledge of the psychological problems of the human mind can help, but really it's been a solved problem for a long time now. And who said "hire people of higher morals" aside from you? Oddly enough for a quote, I can't find it anywhere, either on Soylentnews or the linked stories. I guess it must be another false memory.

  • (Score: 2) by tathra on Monday February 09 2015, @02:45AM

    by tathra (3367) on Monday February 09 2015, @02:45AM (#142590)

    No, that's not what happened.

    He got away with a small lie. Nobody caught it. ... This isn't a game of telephone.

    no, memory really does work like that. [redorbit.com] that the very act of recalling memories changes them has been known for quite a long time now. people remember things that never happened all the time. [time.com] you can even implant fake memories in people [scientificamerican.com] with little effort. memory is not just some hard drive or video camera [livescience.com] that allows you to perfectly recall things all the time throughout your whole life - it just doesn't work that way.

    in the face of this, i think saying that he intentionally lied is a pretty extraordinary claim that needs to be backed up with some kind of evidence. he probably really, honestly does remember it happening the way he describes, even though its not what actually happened. it happens to people all the time; eyewitness accounts are often wrong. [livescience.com]

    • (Score: 2) by frojack on Monday February 09 2015, @04:37AM

      by frojack (1554) on Monday February 09 2015, @04:37AM (#142605) Journal

      I'm beginning to wonder how many of you would rushing to the defense of a a Fox New Anchor, or even a Fox reporter.

      --
      No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
      • (Score: 2) by tathra on Monday February 09 2015, @05:09AM

        by tathra (3367) on Monday February 09 2015, @05:09AM (#142609)

        the fallibility of memory has nothing to do with one's political leaning, its just an ordinary, well-established, well-demonstrated fact. pointing it out to somebody who believes that memory is perfect despite lots of evidence to the contrary is not "rushing to the defense" of anyone.

    • (Score: 2) by Reziac on Monday February 09 2015, @04:38AM

      by Reziac (2489) on Monday February 09 2015, @04:38AM (#142606) Homepage

      In other words, memory suffers from data creep.

      --
      And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.