Unknown White Male Hoax?
Submitted by jim on Thu, 03/23/2006 - 10:21
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Remember the documentary I linked to awhile ago, Unknown White Male, the story of Doug Bruce, who walked off a subway unable to recall anything about himself (or the world, for that matter)? Could be a hoax. All the more painful for him if it's not, but you know what I always say, "never trust a guy with two first names."
"...but you know what I always say, "never trust a guy with two first names." What about a guy with three first names? :-D
I called in here because as I read the title on Recent Posts it made me realize that in writng my essay on sorts of experience I failed to emphasize that each sort has both a 'normal' aspect and a pathological aspect.
There are three basic sorts of memory: recognition (misnamed because it needn't involve thinking, and which is why multiple-choice exam questions are easiest), recall (does involve thinking, and which is why essay-type exam questions are harder), and skill (which also need not involve thinking, just lots of practice.
Each sort has its pathology, basically failures to recognise, recall, or exercise a skill. Note that recognition is past-regarding (it's always about the individual's past experience, that is); recall transcends time in that it can be recall of historical fact or of speculation about the far future; and skill is future-regarding, it's about what the individual can cause to happen in his/her future.
Memory loss rarely if ever involves loss of all three sorts of memory.
Btw, I must say Jim it's odd coming to this page and finding an Edit button when my own pages no longer have them.
Three-first-namers are of course completely trustworthy. :-)
Thanks for the memory info, very interesting, as usual!
Yeah, the "Edit" think vexes me. The price of caching. I've set it up now so the edit button should now just appear all the time (but only work if you own the content). That rule will only start taking effect as lists are saved or commented on, as that is how the change will propagate through the cache.
There is an officially classified mental disorder called dissociative amnesia:
http://www.nami.org/Content/ContentGroups/Helpline1/Dissociative_Disorde...
This is usually due to emotional trauma, but there are indeed cases like Doug's, where there doesn't seem to be any reason for it. So his situation is definitely medically possible.
That link mostly discusses episodic (life story) memory loss, not semantic (knowledge of the world). Of course, it's just a quick blurb for the layperson, and I don't doubt that it's possible. Personally, the article makes me think it's a hoax, and I haven't seen anything yet to counter that. Maybe I'll change my mind when I watch the documentary.
What disturbs me the most about that article, is the following quote from Rupert Murray, the friend who directed the documentary, when asked why he didn't ask Doug to submit to a type of MRI which would have tested the amnesia, "Then he wouldn't have made the film," snaps Murray, a little indignantly. "How would you explain to your friend, he's just about to make a documentary, 'Before we start [would you take an fMRI?]' It's just rude."
It boggles the mind that a documentarian, supposedly someone who values and seeks the truth, with so much at stake, wouldn't do everything in his power to verify the story just because it's rude?!
What disturbs me the most is the juxtaposition of "He has yet to regain his memory and is still basically a blank slate, learning pop culture, sports, science, arts -- everything -- one day at a time" and "Bruce handed over his e-mail address, which he told friends he'd registered just days after the incident..."
It's remarkably convenient to get up to speed on the internet before you learn who Bono is... especially when you consider the impression that music has upon your memory.
I'm not sure every documentarian "values and seeks the truth." I'm sure that Michael Moore would be an incendiary example. Film makers always have a point of view. Sometimes that could be unrestrained credulity. Then again, WaPo has had its own issues with plagiarism.
"One man come in the name of love..."
Excellent point, I'm embarrassed that one slipped by me. So really, is there any reason beyond "it's possible this guy has some unprecedented (?) form of memory loss" to think this is for real?
That is the exact paragraph that struck me as well. And, if the tests are definitive (and that article makes it sound like they are, unlike a lie detector), why not do it just to silence the doubters?
Absolutely.
I'll probably still watch it, but now the experience will be completely different.
Yes, I'll be far more defensive and skeptical than before I heard the arguments against it. However, I wonder if our natural skepticism wouldn't have arisen and we wouldn't have discovered the same incongruities on our own?
Possibly. I don't know about you, but I'm an odd mix of skeptical and gullible.
Yes, indeed, I am too.