{"id":638,"date":"2013-08-03T04:00:18","date_gmt":"2013-08-03T11:00:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/michellejolin.com\/wordpress\/?p=638"},"modified":"2013-08-03T08:48:04","modified_gmt":"2013-08-03T15:48:04","slug":"facts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/michellejolin.com\/?p=638","title":{"rendered":"Just the facts, ma’am"},"content":{"rendered":"

 <\/p>\n

CAIRO (murmurs)<\/em><\/p>\n

I don’t know — what to say.<\/p>\n

DUNDY<\/em><\/p>\n

Try telling the facts.<\/p>\n

CAIRO (fidgeting)<\/em><\/p>\n

The facts?<\/p>\n

–the Maltese Falcon<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

 <\/p>\n

When Joel Cairo, played by the inimitably creepy Peter Lorre, is asked to tell the police the facts, he’s at a complete loss. Several different versions of “what is going on here” have been told, and he needs to decide which one is the best one to tell the police.\u00a0 Most of us don’t have quite<\/em> that much trouble, but sometimes facts can be a little hard to pin down. We like to think that there’s a true and a false to facts. We like to think that there’s a right and a wrong to them. In reality, though, facts can be slippery.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Memory is notoriously unreliable.\u00a0 I remember distinctly being in a couple of places where I am assured I have never been and don’t remember being in others where people are certain I was.\u00a0 Sometimes we don’t want to remember what has happened. Sometimes (don’t read this, Mom) there are chemical factors impairing our memory. Personal perspectives also skew things we think we know as “fact.”\u00a0 Physical perspective as much as emotional perspective. How much of our memories are wishful thinking or edited to make us look better to ourselves? Or, in that perverse way some of us have, how much is mentally edited so we look worse to ourselves?<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The legal system has always understood this, and guides witnesses into telling a version of what they saw that matches the evidence on hand in a way convenient to the case they are building.\u00a0 There are a lot of stories of repressed memories that come to light years later, many of which were later demonstrated to be false or which were re-remembered differently with the passage of time. That’s not a huge problem in day to day life (no one but me really cares who my ex-boyfriend went out with right after we broke up–and I don’t even care much), but what about when eye witness testimony is used to put someone in jail? You can overturn a conviction, but you can never return time to the people who were imprisoned.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

I\u00a0 wonder about what our eyes actually see, too. Sure, we all have eyes that see using rods\/cones\/lenses\/irises\/etc and we share conventions on how to describe things like colors and shapes. There are even scientific ways to\u00a0 measure the components of a color, distance and shape. But is what I see as red the same as what you see?\u00a0 Is my rectangle the same shape as the one you see?\u00a0 I have no idea, but suspect it isn’t. My crackpot theory is that what we see as well as what we feel is very personal.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Where does that leave us when we feel a need to know “the Truth?”<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

I think we need to recognize that if it happened in the past (and if it’s isn’t Now, it’s Past), especially if wasn’t documented in photograph or writing, any recollection is at least a little suspect. Maybe (oh, there’s that word again…) we shouldn’t be so sure of things all the time. Maybe we should cut each other some slack when we don’t see the same thing when we see the same thing.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

If we start to\u00a0 remember things that happened in the future, we have a different problem entirely.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

  CAIRO (murmurs) I don’t know — what to say. DUNDY Try telling the facts. CAIRO (fidgeting) The facts? –the Maltese Falcon   When Joel Cairo, played by the inimitably creepy Peter Lorre, is asked to tell the police the facts, he’s at a complete loss. Several different versions of “what is going on here” … Continue reading Just the facts, ma’am<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-638","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-words"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/s7lr3R-facts","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":2168,"url":"https:\/\/michellejolin.com\/?p=2168","url_meta":{"origin":638,"position":0},"title":"Memories light the corners of my mind, badly","author":"Michelle","date":"October 28, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"There's a stain on my notebook Where your coffee cup was And there's ash in the pages Now I've got myself lost --Squeeze\/Black Coffee In Bed \u00a0 Whence did it come? What did it mean? How could I seize and apprehend it? ... And suddenly the memory revealed itself. The\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Words"","block_context":{"text":"Words","link":"https:\/\/michellejolin.com\/?cat=7"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/michellejolin.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/10\/1420298_10202269615402817_1926330723_n.jpg?fit=960%2C720&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/michellejolin.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/10\/1420298_10202269615402817_1926330723_n.jpg?fit=960%2C720&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/michellejolin.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/10\/1420298_10202269615402817_1926330723_n.jpg?fit=960%2C720&ssl=1&resize=525%2C300 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/michellejolin.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/10\/1420298_10202269615402817_1926330723_n.jpg?fit=960%2C720&ssl=1&resize=700%2C400 2x"},"classes":[]},{"id":10884,"url":"https:\/\/michellejolin.com\/?p=10884","url_meta":{"origin":638,"position":1},"title":"When is an alternative fact a lie?","author":"Michelle","date":"January 24, 2017","format":false,"excerpt":"Let's talk about this a little, because it's a little more complicated than Sean Spicer attempting to mislead the public. The WSJ recently made a splash in the news when they announced that they would not be describing the Trump administrations use of apparently less than factual statements as lies.\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "politics"","block_context":{"text":"politics","link":"https:\/\/michellejolin.com\/?cat=6"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":10654,"url":"https:\/\/michellejolin.com\/?p=10654","url_meta":{"origin":638,"position":2},"title":"Slowing down time\u00a0","author":"Michelle","date":"February 27, 2018","format":false,"excerpt":"Time keeps on slippin', slippin', slippin' Into the future --Steve Miller Band Time is a slippery concept, especially if you consider quantum physics. Which, to be clear, I am not equipped to do. It doesn't take an Einstein to understand that time is relative, all it takes is memory. Think\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Random thoughts"","block_context":{"text":"Random thoughts","link":"https:\/\/michellejolin.com\/?cat=20"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":8301,"url":"https:\/\/michellejolin.com\/?p=8301","url_meta":{"origin":638,"position":3},"title":"An imaginary conversation about seeing things differently","author":"Michelle","date":"November 24, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"Don't you ever wonder about how we see things? Philosophically? No, literally. With our eyes? No. Well, yes. There are obviously scientific facts about things we see. Colors come from the way the light waves bounce or something like that, and those things are quantifiable, right? I guess. Science isn't\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Imaginary Conversation"","block_context":{"text":"Imaginary Conversation","link":"https:\/\/michellejolin.com\/?cat=18"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":5458,"url":"https:\/\/michellejolin.com\/?p=5458","url_meta":{"origin":638,"position":4},"title":"What I wonder about, wide awake 0200","author":"Michelle","date":"April 30, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"Somehow, through the days I don't give in I hide the tears That wait within But then through sleepless nights I cry again --F. and B. Bryant\/Sleepless Nights Words. I wonder about words. 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