As the philosopher George Berkeley said, ‘esse est percipi’ – ‘to be is to be perceived’. Only our perception of reality matters. It means that our misperceptions of reality can be placed into our memory systems to be later recalled in spite of never accurately representing more objective reality. While they may generally be close enough to be functionally useful, the truth is that probably every single one of our memories – even the clearest – contains perceptual flaws and inaccuracies, right from the outset.
