The case for having an imperfect memory – a psychologist explains

Gillian Murphy, a cognitive psychologist writing in The Conversation, argues that your faulty memory might actually be a feature, not a bug. Research shows people systematically misremember grades as higher than they actually received—recalling A grades eighty-nine percent accurately, but D grades only twenty-nine percent. This positive distortion increases with age and correlates with better mental wellbeing. Murphy contends that memory's selectivity and flexibility help us maintain a coherent sense of self and sustain long-term relationships. But modern technology—smartphones, fitness trackers, AI assistants—operates on a different principle: preserve everything, quantify everything, resurface everything. While humans have always used tools to remember, today's digital systems assume more memory is inherently better. Yet research shows the opposite: people with extraordinarily detailed memories often find them exhausting and struggle to move past painful events. We may be building technologies that strip away memory's strengths rather than merely compensating for its weaknesses.

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