Cognitive Scientists much easier on Clinton RE: snipergate

[Texas Hill Country]

Science research proves that Hillary was probably not lying, but remembers the situation as she told it.


http://scienceblogs.com/mixingmemory/

Defending Hillary Clinton From a Memory Researcher's Perspective
Category: Politics

It would be a horrible cliché to begin a post about the reconstructive nature of autobiographical memory with a Proust quote, so instead I'll begin with something only slightly less cliché: beginning something about memory by talking about my own experience. You see, I'm southern, as anyone who's ever heard me pronounce the words "pen" and "pin" exactly the same, or refer to any soft drink as a "coke," can attest. In the south, it's not uncommon to find people sitting around a grill, or a kitchen table, or pretty much anything you can sit around, participating in what might be described as story contests. These are basically pissing contests, but with words instead of, well, other stuff. The contest usually begins with someone telling a crazy story (usually from their youth), which is followed by someone else telling an even crazier story, and so on, back and forth, until someone tells a story so crazy that nothing believable could ever top it. Now, it goes without saying that these contests involve a great deal of, shall we say, creative interpretation of the events being described. And of course, everyone involved is well aware of this. In fact, because the same people often participate in these contests with each other over the years, you can actually watch the stories change: what started as a mildly dangerous activity changes to an extremely dangerous one, then a deadly one, and ultimately, in the "same" story, the story-teller barely cheated Death. The fish you caught became bigger, and the struggle with the one that got away longer and more grueling.


"It was 5, no, no... 6, no... 15 feet, yeah, it was 15 feet if it was an inch!"

I've participated in many of these contests over the years, and generally do pretty well, because I've done a lot of stupid things that really did involve an uncomfortable proximity to death, and as anyone who knows me will readily tell you, I have an uncanny ability to hurt myself in bizarre ways (like the time I got a pencil stuck deep between two toes when I tripped on an Afghan blanket). As I've told my stories over the years (I have a long list of them ready to be told at a moment's notice), and... umm... creatively interpreted them to make them more exciting (than the other person's), I've added a detail here, or increased a measurement (by an order of magnitude) there. That's just the way the game works.

But here's the thing: in many cases, I don't remember which parts really happened and which parts I added for effect in the course of one of those contests. This is a simple case of source monitoring failure. I can't tell whether I'm remembering the event itself or one of the times I told the story of the event. And what's worse, the vividness of the memory, or how much I can picture it in my head, doesn't help, because my brain is just as good at coming up with images of things I made up creatively interpreted as it is at coming up with images of things that actually happened. The reason for this, of course that when my brain is remembering something, it's just putting it together on the fly from bits and associated pieces. And every time I recall an episode, that recall becomes another associated episode, and the memory for the original episode is therefore altered, making it really easily to mistakenly recall things you thought or said about the episode long after it happened as part of the original episode. In other words, memory is just a form of makin' shit up.


More at the link.

[dkf]

1. Not reality based...very bad in a CIC.

[donkeyotay]

5. All humans have fallible memories, and that's why eyewitnesses often get it wrong.

Now if only we had Obama 17 years with Rezko on tape, we might find out he'd misremembered a few things, too. This is why I can't move into the Obama camp. It looks too much like the old republican one.

[dchill]

10. Oh yeah, of course it's all because of Obama...

Not. I've known people who told tall tales and people who never did. Face it, both kinds exist, and your candidate is one of the former, and Obama is not. I love all the new terminologies for lying - misremember, misspoke, misstated ... How about she bullshat?

[dkf]

13. How many people misremember getting shot at?

I don't ever remember getting shot at.

How's about you?

[stillcool]

48. I would think that would be a memory...

not easily confused with flowers.

[Texas Hill Country]

15. eye witness testimony is the least reliable evidence in a courtroom.

[Pawel K]

41. The obama camp looks like the republican camp?

You're an idiot, piss off.

What do you think the Joe Lieberman camp looks like? because Clinton's camp looks identical to theirs.

[Tellurian]

7. Please, she probably remembers hearing gunfire in the distance..

and free associated the proximity closer to her..

[Window]

:rofl:

[dkf]

14. She also remembers running with her head ducked down.

Either she is a liar or she is delusional.

I think this is more than a memory problem.

[goclark]

18. There is no way that my Mom would have me with her

smiling and grinning and kissing the adorable child and not say in her Best Seller how afraid she was for me.

No way ~ and Chelsea was old enough to have a memory and to have been told about all the "danger" in the area.

On Air America they were saying that Chelsea was at home on 9 11 and they said they could not find her?

[dkf]

19. And look how protective Hillary has always been of Chelsea.

We were supposed to have believed she would take Chelsea to be shot at?

Has she ever taken Chelsea to Israel? I'm curious.

[Tellurian]

28. When your long term memory recalls gunfire whether overhead or in the distance..

it's still a scarry thing to recall. For all intents and purposes this is a BIG NON-ISSUE!

[txaslftist]

20. Except there wasn't any gunfire. In the distance or otherwise.

Maybe she saw a movie with gunfire in it...

There sure were a lot of those going around. Like maybe "Terminator"...

[Tellurian]

30. You weren't there... so, if she doesn't remember correctly, you have no room to speak..

unless you like reading your own words.

[VolcanoJen]

31. Thanks to news footage and YouTube, you don't have to "be there"

Honestly, if the next attempt at explaining herself involves, "I remember hearing gunfire in the distance," then I imagine we'll go through another round of YouTube videos clearly showing that she's lying again.

Tellurian, I know you don't think it's a big deal, and it didn't have to be, but she's now on her second attempt to spin her exagerration and it's worse than the first attempt. "I misspoke" and "I was sleep-deprived" aren't going to cut it, especially when she recounted the tale on at least four seperate occassions.

I'll tell you one thing she's decidedly not ready for on Day One: Damage Control. Her campaign staff is letting her down once again... they should have never let her go to that podium on St. Patrick's Day with those prepared remarks in the first place, and now they're hanging an albatross of bad spin around her neck. If she doesn't gain control of this situation now, it's going to get a whole helluva lot worse than it already is.

[karynnj]

50. But. but, but ....it worked by Bill in 1992

He made up one unbelievable story after the next on why he wasn't drafted - starting with the one I bet every baby boomer knew was fishy - that he didn't remember if he was ever called up.

“Oh, what a tangled web we weave, when first we practice to deceive.” Sir Walter Scott

Life is MUCH easier when you tell the truth all the time. This is clearly not a life lesson learned for Hillary.

[txaslftist]

34. I wasn't there, true. But I've seen the video of her landing.

No gunfire anywhere.

[Tellurian]

35. A 30 sec blurb is a historic memory?...she was on the ground for hours..

and basically an arbitrary exhibit meaning it proves nothing at all.

[txaslftist]

53. ...forgot to mention... no media mention of gunfire either...

and she had a news crew shadowing her the entire time. You wanna keep digging?

[Tellurian]

56. I take her word on her restatement...she only visited 80 countries..

put your shovel down and step away from your car.

[roguevalley]

45. Reagan used to talk about his bombing missions over Europe, the

ones he never took except on film. He truly believed it happened but everyone thought and said he was nuts. How is hillary's 'belief' different?

[HereSince1628]

2. If her brain is playing tricks on her the under pressure of a primary campaign

how is that better than her just being in to telling phoney war-stories?

[donkeyotay]

3. Now why would you be wanting to humanize Hillary and interfer in the neo politics

This new day of getting beyond the bitterness and battles of the past.:sarcasm:

snip>

I was on the plane with then First Lady Hillary Clinton for the trip from Germany into Bosnia in 1996. We were put on a C17-- a plane capable of steep ascents and descents -- precisely because we were flying into what was considered a combat zone. We were issued flak jackets for the final leg because of possible sniper fire near Tuzla. As an additional precaution, the First Lady and Chelsea were moved to the armored cockpit for the descent into Tuzla. We were told that a welcoming ceremony on the tarmac might be canceled because of sniper fire in the hills surrounding the air strip. From Tuzla, Hillary flew to two outposts in Bosnia with gunships escorting her helicopter.

[GarbagemanLB]

4. You remember being shot at. End of story.

[txaslftist]

21. Unless you weren't actually shot at... then you make it up.

[TahitiNut]

25. (Uhhmmm) Well, sometimes those memories are in stop-motion snapshots.

Mine come back to me like strobed images ... almost without a time context. It could be (probably is) due to "putting it behind me" and working hard to forget for the first 10 years. After all, the flashbacks triggered by tightly-associated contextual reminders (loud noises, smells, foliage, etc.) had to be stopped by severing the associations. Those memories I still have are "cleaned up" a bit like a movie ... without smells and other tactile associations. It makes them more tolerable.

Then again ... I had only a very little "professional" help. Maybe my "do it yourself" approach isn't the most common.
:shrug:

[Andy823]

6. Of course it could be

That she has told so man lies over the years, she can't tell the truth from a lie. In that case don't you think she needs some real help? We already have a president that can't tell the truth from a lie, I don't think we need another! :crazy:

[John Q. Citizen]

8. As a liberal Obama supporter, I hear you. As a typical whiteblackyoungoldvoter, Hillary is toast.

I have to say, I don't care about Hill saying she landed in a hot zone. I know the memory isn't perfect.

But she's still toast.

What I care about is the repeated implication from the Hillary Campaign that McCain is qualified and patriotic, but Obama isn't. That should disqualify her as the nominee prima facia. that's very bad for the whole party. It's unacceptable.

[txaslftist]

9. K & R. Just for the discussion.

For the record, I'm one of those southern guys who sits around bullshitting, too, and I also call all carbonated beverages "Coke" as in, "Can you get me a Coke?" "Sure, what kind? I got Dr. Pepper, Sprite, Yoo Hoo..."

Be that as it may, when I bullshit, I KNOW I'm bullshitting. I've even been caught doing it (by virtue of a girl from Chicago, who'd heard the same story twice and didn't understand, being a Yankee, that consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds). I properly admonished her on the first rule of bullshitting, which is that it's not important that you tell a true story, what's important is that you tell a good story.

So Hillary decided to do a little harmless bullshitting about her experiences in Bosnia or wherever. "When the situation is too hot for the president, they send the first lady." She said, or words to that affect.

Oh come on, now. Ever one knows that there is bullshit. The secret service isn't about putting the first lady into harm's way so that the President can stay in the Oval Office and rest.

We had to all run to our cars to duck the snipers... Well, see, that there could have been true, except that it warn't, it was all on tape. So that there was bullshit. Worst of all, she said her bullshit on tape, so that you could compare and contrast the bullshit with the reality and there were witnesses and ever thing.

The bottom line is that Hillary just ain't a very good bullshitter. Now, "I did not have 'sexual relations' with that woman as defined by the questions but we did have an innappropriate relationship..."

That there was some good bullshitting. If he'd added in a few snipers, he might have gotten a medal.

[dchill]

11. You folks really need to learn about Rule #5...

if you want to post at DU.

5. Copyrights: Do not copy-and-paste entire articles onto this discussion forum. When referencing copyrighted work, post a short excerpt (not exceeding 4 paragraphs) with a link back to the original.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/forums/rules.html

[Texas Hill Country]

17. fixed, sorry, didnt realize i had done that.

[Hepburn]

12. It's ONE thing if it had been an off-the-cuff remark....

...but in a prepared speech? Ummmmm...no. Those things are FACT CHECKED. So what you are saying is not only did this happen to the Queen, but to her whole fucking campaign, right?

:eyes: What? They heard the alleged sniper fire, too?

Your explanation reeks of bullshit to the max.

[mrreowwr_kittty]

29. That's what I'm saying.

It's enough of a stretch for her to concoct an entire memory out of pretty much whole cloth - which raises a host of questions about her grasp of reality. But to write that false memory into a speech, one that we can assume was gone over by high level staffers, speaks volumes about her competence and that of her advisers.

[krkaufman]

51. Along with the fact that it's not some stray subject on which she's prevaricating

Her lies were obviously intended to puff-up the perception of her as military leader or Commander-in-Chief.

If she's merely stretching the truth due to subconscious confabulation, then where are the other examples of her doing similarly for other non-military subjects? Why are her Walter Mitty moments solely focused on CIC puffery?

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

16. LOL

:rofl:

[phrigndumass]

22. bad memory

[ForeignSpectator]

36. This picture real, that happened in the show?! n/t

[JTFrog]

23. Shhhhhhhhhhhhhhh........

Must. Block. Out. Truth.





It's not like she actually came under fire or had to run for her life here. I could understand changing the story in your mind to say twenty snipers instead of one. But meeting an eight year old little girl and listening to her poem and later forgetting anything but running for cover is just a tad to much for me to buy. If that is the way she remembers it, then she is in no way fit to be commander in chief.

If some diplomat reads her a poem in the future will she be convinced she was under fire by the time she gets back home or the next year? Will we have to go to war because she had a lapse of memory over real events?

[TahitiNut]

24. The KEY to creation of such false memories is motivation.

As I've said often, we believe what we WANT to believe. Confabulation serves some deep-seated motivation. We eradicate memories when they don't serve us ... either in terms of lessons or emotional well-being. It seems Hillary enjoys (needs?) to portray herself as a victim ... the target of "unfair" attacks. This was the posture she adopted in "standing by her man" in the 90s. She also adopts the "victim" posture to defend her vote for the IWR - "he done me wrong" - another MAN who couldn't be trusted. (But she's still "loyal" in any case.)

I have a real problem with folks who, at the same time they cast themselves in the melodramatic role of Victim - apologize their own Villainy by claiming that others are the Villains (first). (Victims NEED Villains - without which the melodrama isn't complete. Any Villain will do.) I've yet to see a person in the Victim role who didn't get jealous of real-life victims.

[mrreowwr_kittty]

26. This does not mitigate her claims.

She may have been engaging in revisionist memory, but there is a public record of what actually happened. It is simply inexusable for her and her staff to not vet this story, since she incorporated it into a speech.

[anigbrowl]

27. While I'm sympathetic...

and I posted pretty much the same thing several times, saying how it's easy to mingle events 12 years on, the fact remains that her latest remarks were delivered in the context of a prepared speech, and her campaign knew she had come in for some joking about the issue previously, when comedian Sinbad contrasted his memories with hers. The smart (and very easy) thing to do would have been to do a quick fact check, and dial back the speech to discussing what she learned about war and foreign policy from the trip, rather than going for a dramatic retelling of it.

What this article glosses over is the difference between casual and spontaneous conversation and a prepared speech delivered in front of a public audience at an esteemed foreign policy institution.

[K Gardner]

32. Bullshit. It was a fabrication, a lie pure and simple. You don't "misremember" about being

shot at.

[whatchamacallit]

33. It's not memory failure, it's LYING!

She's a huge fucking liar.

[yodermon]

37. Scooter Libby called.

He wants his defense back.

[Justitia]

38. If so, then she's not mentally fit for the presidency. Of course, it's simply a LIE. -eom

[jgraz]

39. Seriously, when you need scientists to explain why you lie, you may have some issues.

Just sayin...

[Hepburn]

42. You know....

...I would bet most of us are parents...and we (unfortunately) have had past life experiences with our kiddos lying to us.

So...how in the hell does ANYONE think that we have no clue as to the difference between a deliberate falsehood and an unintentional mistake in memory?

Geeeeez!

[ShortnFiery]

40. Not all cognitive scientists. Three separate occasions and not corrected?!?

Continuing to repeat "the lie" after Sinbad made his joke.

"The only thing that was a red phone decision was whether we to eat here or the next stop."

THEN HRC dismissed Sinbad's comment that he was "a comedian."

However, today during the press conference where she, for the first time, admitted making "a mistake" she balks when pressed on THE LIE. "Come on guys, it was just a joke."

Yes, the first time she told this story, it may have very well have been confabulation. However, continuing to tell this erroneous story when she knows it to be false, is flat out LYING.

It goes to character not unlike her allowing her family members to repeat the LIE that she was related to the belated famous mountain climber, Sir Edmond Hillary. It was during the 1990s when the press uncovered her relationship with this famous man was "a lie" that she told her family to "lighten up."

She not only lies but allows others to lie for her.

Sorry, as much as I WOULD LOVE to have a woman as President of The United States, I do not want HRC, in particular, because she's repeatedly demonstrated a lack of integrity. In no way, shape or form do I wish for women who demonstrate some character traits of HRC to become role models for my young daughter.

[scheming daemons]

43. So... she's either a liar or is mentally unfit to hold the office.... I'll buy that....

..Thanks for the clarification.

[PATRICK]

44. It might be simpler

but it's too late to get caught up in explanations now. Likely on the plane the typical Secret service evaluations were done with the First Lady's party considering the ground security and the danger threats.
Long range snipers might been discussed at length. Then she switched to the happy face that the event was supposed to portray 100% plus for the photo op of THAT day, when all such speculations and precautions had to be suppressed.

Switch to 2008 when pleasant photo-ops to show America's success take a far second to the hardcore danger handling elements. Not only is it more politically expedient(necessary) to shift away from the "casual" safe photo op triumph, but the behind the scenes security and personal danger elements are a needed plus.
Not only has everyone done that in politics, but it might have been a relief to let out a lot of the suppressed anxiety for herself and her daughter about entering any type of danger zone on behalf of the nation- as potential targets.

The whole thing is very minor except for one thing. The political mistakes and costs of Clinton under pressure have been a test, a torture, that have broken the overwhelming power and aura of her presumptive candidacy. She just isn't performing well enough vis a vis her rivals, which I might excuse as an all too natural effect of struggling on the down side. You tend to propel yourself almost like an inner vertigo toward your downward destination- and everyone is looking for and expecting it after a while.

Sleepless marathons. Endless talking and questioning in a dizzying array of venues and people of mixed sympathies or outright gotcha hostility, never getting anywhere close to the original planned stride, never getting trounced enough to have the luxury of thinking it is finally all over. The too fierce loyalty of your base. All problems coming home to roost. After this is over, cut her some slack somewhere no matter how indignant or how opposed you are.

Oh all right. Then we have to worry about her taking a toll out of the convention using her delegates to war for power and influence and generally muck up the Veep selection. That will be different, because her actual grueling campaigning will be over. Maybe we ain't seen nothing yet at DU until the Convention hits.

[Cha]

46. Bullshit..it's a freakin pattern of hilary's..Lying is in her

DNA, apparently. Other lies need to be exposed..who wants another fucking LIAR for a president(sic)?

[krkaufman]

47. Best laugh I'm going to get all day, probably. Thanks. n/t

[beachmom]

49. Memory is always a problem. WHICH IS WHY a campaign should

have vetted her story (which was in prepared remarks). A good well run cammpaign would not have let this happen.

[northernsoul]

52. So she's neurologically incapable of distinguishing reality from fabrication?

That's even scary than just acknowledging that she deliberately made shit up in order to mislead her audience.

[GeorgeGist]

54. one singular scientist ...

is an anecdote.

[McCamy Taylor]

55. Gore Is a Liar