[anbende]

I think the article is sending a pretty problematic overall message.

The underlying story is somewhat interesting. The author went through life with a lot of unnecessary guilt and suffering because he was carrying around a false narrative, and it is true that false narratives happen. But the larger conclusion he tries to draw from it seems really problematic:

>History is not true. You can change history. The actual factual events are such a small part of the story. Everything else is interpretation.

But this is NOT the moral of the story in my view. The moral is that one can have an erroneous belief about what happened, and THAT can cause a lot of problems. The author even experienced feeling better when he learned what ACTUALLY happened, not when he decided on a new interpretation of events. Because his original belief about the event was NOT an interpretation of events, it was an erroneous belief about what the events were.

And in fact, in the anecdote, learning the "factual events" was everything.

In general, I struggle with the idea that calling something that's just factually wrong "an interpretation". That seems to stretch the word "interpretation" to the point where it stops being useful. If I am convinced that Napoleon was, in fact, a black man, do we really want to call that an "interpretation of events". What events am I interpreting? None, I would argue. I'm just making things up. Just like someone made up that the woman in the story broke her spine. It just never happened. It's not an interpretation of anything.

[mmusson]

I think the point is that interpretation is all we really have. We believe that memories are these absolute things, but rigorous studies show that no human being remembers things perfectly, even when they believe they do.

For many years as a kid, I knew Santa Claus was real because I had seen him come to my house. My faith was unshakable, because I had observed it with my own eyes. Years later, I found out that on Christmas morning. My dad had left the room changed into the Santa outfit, snuck outside and came to the back door to surprise me with my mom. I was too young to realize that my dad had snuck away and wasn’t there at the same time as Santa.

If we could look back in time and see things just as they were I think it would be disconcerting how many little details we remember wrong that our mind fills in, without us realizing it.

[anbende]

Yes, I agree that “interpretation is all we have” is the point they are trying to make. I also agree that there is an important point there. Memories are often not what we think they are.

However, in the story, the author did NOT have a memory of breaking a woman’s back. He had a memory of getting in an accident. He interpreted it as his fault. He was told that he broke her back. Not his interpretation. It was a belief about events that he wasn’t present to (what happened in the woman’s car and inside the woman’s body) not really any different than anything else we’re told but don’t witness firsthand. It sounds like it may even have been a lie the police told him to scare him.

Your story is different because you did have an actual experience and misinterpreted it’s meaning (man in red suit = real Santa Claus).

[PaulDavisThe1st]

I am not sure that differentiating between "that which I physically sensed with my own body" and "information I received from others" leads to particularly good place. Yes, we should probably put a little more weight on things we experienced, but even they are subject to massive differences of interpretation based on prior experience and knowledge. Humanity has made enormous strides by being able to believe in information we obtained from others, and discarding that is something I am convinced does not lead to positive outcomes.

I acknowledge that not discarding it can also lead to negative outcomes, as in TFA.

[anbende]

I agree with this point. I hadn't meant to suggest that we should discard information received from others.

But I think it would be crazy to not to differentiate between immediate experience and what we've been told. Not even because immediate experience is always more accurate. Sometimes it is NOT, but it's a different source of information subject to different problems. Often more trustworthy but not always, though the "not always" can be ameliorated a bit by understanding some of the limits of personal experience.

I was really only taking issue with "interpretation is all we have" applying in the original story - that there is a difference between "my interpretation about something I experienced" and "my beliefs about a thing I did not experience".

Yes the author's story changed, but it changed because he found out that he was lied to by the police (or perhaps, if we want to be generous, "unintentionally misled") not because his memory was fallible.

To get back to the point I took issue with, in the story "the facts" mattered an awful lot. It was a lack of access to the facts that caused the problem not "an incorrect interpretation" of what the author experienced. The latter happens all the time, but interpreting our experience differently (e.g., reprocessing a traumatic memory with self-compassion and seeing it as unfortunate and something to learn from) is a different thing than finding out what we were told was a lie. Both change our story, but one is indeed a reinterpretation and the other is a change in belief or knowledge.

I think it's important to separate those two things. I think some want to treat them as the same. I think that can cause problems.

[javert]

I am impressed with the clarity of your thinking on this. Since you value epistemological hygiene, you might like Ayn Rand's work in metaphysics and epistemology.

[denton-scratch]

As a parent-governor, the headmaster shanghai'ed me into performing as Father Christmas; I had to put on the costume, and go round all the classrooms going "ho ho ho".

When I got to my daughter's classroom, she didn't recognize me. But some other kids did; they told her "That's your Dad!". She was mortified, and burst into tears.

I always despised the Father Christmas lie, and I should have refused; but the headmaster was very dominant and manipulative.

[simonh]

I did that once. After I snuck back into the house I heard our 3 year old say to my wife "Mummy, did you know that Santa Clause looks like my Daddy?"

[travisjungroth]

This story made me realize a common pattern. A story in your life may lead to an insight. This does not mean the series of events make a good argument, like the conclusion is supported by the events that lead up to it.

I think that’s what happened here. Author carries guilt about an event. Finds out the guilt was unfounded. This makes them realize a story can change at any moment. So you can change a story at any moment, change the narrative around a situation.

Is this conclusion supported by the story? To your point, no, not really. That doesn’t mean it’s wrong or absurd, either. There may have been a ton of other information in the author’s head and this event unlocked it. Maybe it will for some readers, to. But it’s not something that will stand up to scrutiny.