Daniel L. Schacter

In this course

Schacter is a cognitive psychologist whose research on memory construction and confabulation is central to understanding how the mind creatively reconstructs rather than simply retrieves the past. The course readings invoke his work to explain the mechanisms underlying false memories and the "Mandela Effect"—collective misrememberings that reveal how memory operates as a generative system rather than a faithful archive. This matters for discussions of AI and machine learning insofar as it challenges deterministic models of information storage and retrieval, suggesting instead that both human and computational systems engage in constructive, potentially error-prone synthesis.

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