How would you know if the memories are real or fake?
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Without corroborating external evidence, you can’t really be a 100% sure. In fact, our brains are very good at fabricating memories to make up for details we’ve missed or forgotten. It’s why eyewitness testimonies’ reliability is often in question and some studies suggest false eyewitness accounts are the cause of around half of the wrongful convictions in the US..
I’m sure there are some serious philosophical responses to this, but I’m not a philosopher.
I am a movie buff.
The best example in how to consider this I can think of is Bladerunner. “Replicants” are given fake lives they can believe are real. There’s a scene late in the movie that essentially asks “If we gave you memories of an entire life up until this moment, how would you know the difference?”
The answer is, you wouldn’t. Not for sure, anyway.
Then you start reading about phenomena like the Mandela effect, in which a significant number of people remember a specific thing that never happened. In the named case, thar Nelson Mandela had died many years before he actually did die. How could SO MANY people remember something that didn’t happen?
Or that Stouffers never made Stove Top Stuffing (they are separate brands). Or think about the Friends theme song ( “I’ll be there for you” by the Rembrandts). “So no one told you life was gonna be this way….”
How many claps are there?
>!4, not 5!<
Memory is messy, and you can’t always believe it.
The only way I can think of is to double-check the memories with other stuff. Photos taken at the time, physical objects, other people’s memories. If you can’t do that, you have no way of knowing for sure.
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