This episode was brought to you by Dashlane.
Hey everyone and welcome to the second episode of Pocket Science, science experiments with
things that you can fit in your pocket!
And today, we’re doing an experiment on memory, because your brain totally fits in
your pocket… right?
[Introduction by Caro Waro & Cristina de Manuel]
Last year I posted a video with Ali from Collab Lab all about how our memories cannot be trusted,
and I thought it would be quite a lot of fun to show this precise phenomena in action by
conducting a little experiment.
Now, as you're gonna see very soon, this video is actually a little bit of a mish-mash, as
Pocket Sciences often are, because we’ve got the Inés and Ali pre-YouTube Next Up,
Inés at YouTube Next Up and of course, the current Inés from the present!
I don’t actually know why I’m referring to myself in the third person…
But anyway, the objective of today’s experiment, was I was going to read out a story to someone
at YouTube Next Up, then get them to retell the story to someone else the next day, and
to continue that chain for as long as was feasibly possible, which as you'll be able
to see was only two iterations.
But basically, I wanted to see whether people’s recollection of the story changed, and based
on the fact that false memories can very easily form, we did think that was going to be the
case - and I was also interested in seeing what Ali thought might happen.
The video we just did is all about how errors get introduced into memory and make false
memories.
And in fact, it happens all the time, like way more than we would expect.
We think that they're definitely going to change, I'm pretty sure that's going to happen.
These people are all YouTubers, they're all very creative people.
I think that they will change it more than if I were to do it with someone who is not,
you know, into that stuff.
So you think that, because you're making people imagine things, that they're going to make
it introduce some errors into their interpretation?
So essentially, if you have a very fertile imagination, then you end up incorporating
imagined events into your real memory.
So if you spend your whole time with a load of Youtube what - uh - Next What's Uppers?
NextUppers - they are going to be imagining things all the time, and the likelihood is,
I think, they will incorporate some of those imagined things into their real memory.
So without further ado - let’s start with the beginning of the story and more importantly,
how it changed, in the hands and mouths and brains of the YouTube NextUppers!
A couple of years ago, my friend John Smith and I were playing around in his room when
he jokingly slapped his friends against the wall, and he saw that a small crack appeared.
His response to this was to gently punch the wall, which created a small but prominent
hole in the plaster wall.
This was very funny and surprising at first, but because it was college property, he was
scared they might say something to him.
So, he decided to cover it up using a poster.
This was actually quite ironic as we technically aren't allowed to put posters up as the Blu-Tak
could potentially ruin the wall as well.
Then, I got Endigo to tell the story to Jon, from Soliloquy…
Alright, so, as far as I can remember, a while ago, I do not remember the time but a while
ago, Inés and her friend, as I remember, was called John Smith.
So they were sitting in a room, I believe they went to school, they were sitting in
the room doing something and I - wow.
I don't remember anything.
Okay, so, anyway.
They were basically sitting in a room, it was like a dormitory room or something, okay,
and what happened was - uh - I believe it was him who accidentally hit the wall somehow,
and this caused some kind of a crack, which was kinda awkward since this was like - they
didn't own the room.
So, like, oh sugar, we're gonna, we accidentally broke the wall, no!!!
And for some reason he punched it another time.
There was probably some context that I've forgotten to this, but he did that anyway,
causing a much larger hole, and they were like, oh god, we- we messed up.
So like they, they tried to cover it up with a poster, like, no one's gonna notice, there's
a poster in the way.
And, uh, no biggie!
And then, I got Jon to tell the story to Gabriel Sey, and this is where stuff gets really interesting...
Okay. To the best of my knowledge, and memory, the story starts in a dormitory at a university.
Two people, um, I think, in a relationship?
Boy-girl?
And they're having, um, a reasonable time I guess?
And one thing leads to another, and a foot goes through the wall.
And so the guy is like, a bit frustrated, a bit p*ssed off, and so he punches the wall.
Which puts a second hole through the wall, which the university is not gonna like.
Okay.
So what he does is he grabs a poster, puts it over the holes.
Forgets about it!
So in just two days, the beginning of the story had already changed a lot.
Now, I’m actually gonna skip the next part of the story entirely because Endigo forgot
it -
Then there's some other part of the story that I've completely forgotten-
But here is the ending:
At the end of the year, a couple of days after moving out of the room, he realised that he
had left behind a phone charger.
So, he asked the college if he could get the keys to go back into his old room again and
get it back.
And he actually discovered that some workers who had been working on his room had found
the hole and clearly had decided to try out the same thing, as there was another, larger
hole next to it.
His friends reported that a few days later, there was some heavy building work on the
wall.
And Endigo’s retelling...
And then... uh... they basically moved out a while later, because, I believe, school
ended or whatever, and he realised that he had forgotten something in there, as far as
I know, so he called up the school after having graduated and like, hey, can I go back to
the room, I forgot something in there?
Because he needed to go back, I think.
Uh, so he got to go back to the room and check, and noticed that there was a second poster
in the room as well.
And he was like, what is going on?
Looked behind it, and there was a similar hole back there, meaning that the next person
who had the room after him had done the exact same thing, which was hilarious.
And the final version...
So.
Much later, he's graduated.
He's gone, he's finished his exams, or whatever, the year's over, that kind of thing.
He remembers that he left something in the dorm.
He goes back - with permission - looks, there's a second poster and all, and behind the poster,
is a new hole!
Meaning, a second person did the same thing and used the same idea.
I was actually quite surprised the story changed this much, and unfortunately I wasn't able to
get further iterations because Next Up was quite busy, I forgot.
But still, it changed a lot in just two retellings!
It was interesting to me to see how certain embellishments were introduced, and how even
small details like the name of my friend, the object he forgot - the fact that the people
who created the second hole were workers and not tenants, were all very interesting.
Because in some cases, forgetting those details didn't really alter the overall gist of the
story, but in other ways it did.
The story became a lot more extravagant in a mere two iterations.
Endigo created a new ending, and Soliloquy a new beginning.
That being said, there are plenty of studies that show that memories, stories, events and
anecdotes change and may become more embellished as people retell them and as time goes by.
But in spite of that, seeing the process myself happen so quickly in front of me was really
spooky to me!
And you know another thing that becomes spooky when you realise you don't always remember
things the way you want?
PASSWORDS!
You know when you have a password that’s expiring and you need to create a new one,
but it can’t match any of the old passwords you've ever used because that’s just too
unsafe right?!
So you come up with…
Ines'UsualPasswordSpecialCharacter2018, but then two days later when you go to log in,
turns out you forgot it!
Surprise surprise!
So you then curse the fact that password remembering is just getting harder and harder as you desperately
click on the Forgot Your Password?
link to create InesUsualPasswordSpecialCharacter2018july…
So what can you do?
Get a Dashlane account!
That’s right!
Dashlane is a free password manager and generator that safely and easily keeps track of all
of your passwords without you ever needing to sacrifice another ounce of unreliable brain
memory - because you already know that if you want a unique, safe and hard to hack password,
then you’re just probably not going to be able to remember it.
One of the things I like the most about Dashlane is how quick and easy it is to set up.
I daresay it is quicker than setting up another blinking forgotten password form!
So if you want to save time and brain power, memorise just one password, and let Dashlane
do the rest, then head over to dashlane.com/drawcuriosity
and click on the impala for the rest of time!
Also, I wanna say special thank you to Ali from Collab Lab, Endigo, Jon from Soliloquy
and Gabriel Sey for appearing in this video and pandering to my various memory whims.
Do check out their channels, they're linked in the description, they do get up to
quite interesting content!
Thank you, of course, to my wonderful patrons on Patreon for supporting my content and as
always, thank you so much for watching me and I’ll see you in the next one.
Bye!
[Music: Thastor & Cryosleepkitten]
[Subtitled by {your name} into {language}]