“The fact that memory involves a constructive process of piecing together fragmentary information (rather than something more akin to a direct replay of the past) raises the hypothesis that a veridical representation of the past is not the optimal functioning of human memory system. This raises further questions about whether memory may have other roles as well. Does memory’s flexibility give us benefits at the expense of accuracy and trustfulness? What is the function of memory if it does not store and retrieve exact experiential replicas? Accuracy is far from the only functional goal of memory. Recollecting meets other needs, such as reconstructing the past in a desirable way, fostering self-consistency, and remembering information so as to give a good impression in social settings. The reconstructive mechanism of episodic memory fulfills such needs.” – Tzofit Ofengenden, “Memory Formation and Belief”
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