Too often, I find myself in situation where I argue something that I know to be the case, only to find out afterward—in the face of incontrovertible evidence— that the opposite was true. How did I ever end up thinking one way, and finding out that what I had reported—and, worse, acted upon—was contrary to fact?
A recent item may give a clue: It seems that the human brain is not only capable of real-time editing, but it actually does it. As described in the referenced article, despite all best hopes, the human cognition system is not a simple data-acquisition-and-retrieval construct. There’s more going on than we are commonly aware.
Such phenomenology shouldn’t be a surprise. It has long been known that eyewitness accounts are notably fraught with inaccuracies, and perceptions can be altered by the smallest of contributions, as noted here.
Clearly, we must be on guard against apparent certainty!
Questions: How do you know that what you think is so, is so? In what kinds of difficulties have you found yourself because of misremembering or misperception? How can you dig yourself out of such a hole, should you find yourself so located? How can you prevent such positioning in the first place?