Inspired by [this](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/g2csg5/what_fact_is_ignored_generously/fnlesbi?utm_medium=android_app&utm_source=share) comment by u/squigs, I came here to ask you: Why we can’t remember details of things and, in most of the times, we make up things to fill the gaps on our memory.
Why does our brain do this?
In: Biology
I think that no one knows the answer, but some context may be helpful.
There exist people who can recite everything that happened to them on every day of their lives. While it’s rare, the fact that *any* such people exist proves that poor memory is not the best that evolution could do, and isn’t a necessary consequence of the way our brains work.
Additionally, it appears that [most if not all chimpanzees have eidetic/photographic short-term memory](https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn12993-chimps-outperform-humans-at-memory-task/), and possibly long-term memory too (I don’t know if that has been or could be tested). So it’s possible that lousy memory is unique to humans.
A scientist involved in that study speculates in the article that loss of photographic memory was a side effect of our acquisition of language skills, but it’s not clear to me if there’s any evidence to support that and I don’t see why it would be true.
Oliver Sacks wrote:
>We, as human beings, are landed with memory systems that have fallibilities, frailties, and imperfections — but also great flexibility and creativity. Confusion over sources or indifference to them can be a paradoxical strength: if we could tag the sources of all our knowledge, we would be overwhelmed with often irrelevant information.
>Indifference to source allows us to assimilate what we read, what we are told, what others say and think and write and paint, as intensely and richly as if they were primary experiences. It allows us to see and hear with other eyes and ears, to enter into other minds, to assimilate the art and science and religion of the whole culture, to enter into and contribute to the common mind, the general commonwealth of knowledge. This sort of sharing and participation, this communion, would not be possible if all our knowledge, our memories, were tagged and identified, seen as private, exclusively ours. Memory is dialogic and arises not only from direct experience but from the intercourse of many minds.
but, again, I don’t know if that’s a scientific hypothesis backed by data or just the musings of a writer.
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