Quantum Memory

In my most recent little essay I talked about how physics and cosmology are on the verge of explaining “everything.” A lesson we learn from studying quantum physics is that we have to adjust our way of looking at history if we are to make sense of it all. Rather than starting from some sort of primal event and following the chain of cause and effect until we get to the present, we must start at the present and work our way back. This has an enormous consequence. Our traditional way of viewing history begs for a prime mover, god, or a guiding intelligence to explain how events that happened 13.7 billion years ago led to us being here and now. Looking at things from the point of view of the present and adopting a quantum attitude the requirement of a prime mover, god, or guiding intelligence disappears. Our presence in the universe here and now is nothing more than one of an infinite number of possibilities. The fact that we are here “proves” that events in our universe have led to our existence.

So, besides chucking out the idea of a god in order to make sense of our existence in the universe, this has consequences for all histories, including our personal histories. It is fairly well established that traumas in childhood can have a negative effect on thinking and behaviour later in life. But I pose this question: what if those traumatic events never happened? Or happened in a different way than what we remember? The problems with human memory are enormous as our brains are constantly rearranging our experiences so that they “make sense.” If I am an unhappy neurotic adult then something must have happened in my past in order to make me this way. Right? Isn’t that how we think? The brain needs to find a “reason” for our present state.

So, there we are in the psychiatrist’s office and he (or she) says, Tell me why you think that you are unhappy? Your brain immediately starts looking for reasonable-sounding explanations.  The psychiatrist, because his brain works the same way, is also programmed to look for events that can be linked together. Well, you answer—your brain finally finding something to latch on to—I never played games when I was a kid. And why is that? Come on, brain, find something. Ah, well, I wasn’t very popular with the other kids. I didn’t get along with them. And so the session goes until you are recalling something nasty that your parents did that made you withdrawn as a child, which led to your alienation from other children and your life-long unhappiness.

Again: what if that nasty event never happened?

Our brains, to repeat a point, are constantly rearranging our experiences and memories so that they form a pattern that we can be comfortable with. Courts of law are learning that the most unreliable evidence being presented in trials is often from eye-witnesses. Suppose you saw someone walking away from a bank and that person seemed to be in a hurry and distressed. You later hear that there was a robbery at that bank around the time that you saw this individual.  Your brain starts to piece together a narrative linking what you remember seeing with what you later learned happened around the same time. Before you know it, you have become a witness to a crime and everything you experienced around that event fits together to link the robbery and the person you remember seeing. But, memory is unreliable and our brains will fill in details in order to make a more complete picture. If the police say they are looking for a male in his twenties wearing a red jacket, by golly, that is exactly what you remember seeing. It must be so, because you witnessed the event and your brain tells you that you “remember” such details.

Same thing with traumatic childhood events. Children often cannot comprehend events, motivations, and consequences. Their brains record the events and start to rearrange things so that they fit together from the child’s perspective. As the child gets older and learns more about how people function that knowledge gets “plastered” over the memory and becomes a part of it. Friends and family have told me about events that I was involved with that I have absolutely no memory of—even events that happened in middle-age. Similarly, I have vivid memories of events that they cannot recall when I relate them. Whose memory is more reliable? Theirs or mine? The answer: both and neither. It really doesn’t matter whether or not a past event really occurred, because what matters is what your brain tells you that you remember.

Try looking at things this way: I am here and now and this is my state. What happened or did not happen in the past is irrelevant. I should focus on how to improve my present state of being. The memories will change and evolve over time, so why look for rational explanations there? Your brain will lead you to believe your memories are accurate, but, they are not. Memories are phantoms pieced together from many different sources and influences and they—even the fact of whether or not you recall them—are a consequence of your present state, constructed by an organ that is obsessed with creating order and “logic” out of the sensory input it receives.

Just something to consider….