I remember with 100 percent clarity doing great in sophomore high school math. I loved it and I went on to get a PhD. Then my mom passed and I got a box of stuff with my name on it from her house. It included my report card. C.

That's because you remember correctly...the simulation just messed up the report card object and accidentally decremented the counter twice.

In all seriousness it's crazy how bad memory is. Like we all have a false version of the truth.

It's not only memory. Realtime perception is completely warped as well. An objective view of reality is impossible for humans.

Conversation is throwing fictional worlds at each other.

Sorry that came off like a reddit comment. The first part was just me joking. I don't actually believe in the simulation hypothesis although it is fun to think about.

The second part was just me agreeing with their comment that it's crazy how bad our own memory is and how it's difficult to come to grips with. Like when my mom, sister, and I are all arguing over a past event and remember it very differently. The true events are (to my knowledge) absolute, but in a philosophical sense, we're all living in our own reality as our memories are telling us the events unfolded differently even though they didn't.

You had low standards when you were a kid. You thought a C was great.

yep possibly "oh shit I'm gonna fail, I better study like crazy" gets 100 on the final and brings a D up to C, and realizes he can do math pretty well when he tries.

Interesting! Without going into personal details, can you explain what sort of incongruence he found between his diary and his memory?

I sometimes keep a diary, for example when I go on long trips that are different from my day-to-day life. I try to be as accurate as possible, but sometimes i notice what i write isn't fully representative of my state of mind at the time, simply because when you're writing stuff down (especially when you're writing with a pen and paper (slow!)), you can never fully capture all the concurrent thoughts and emotions you're experiencing, so its impossible for a diary to be fully accurate. Undoubtedly, e.g. Elizabeth Loftus has done a lot of prominent research in that field, our memories tend to be fallible, but maybe that's part of the reason?

It was about what transpired on the missions.

When I was writing a paper on the history of D, I had kept a lot of records, such as emails. I was often surprised when the details didn't quite line up with my memories.

This is one reason why one cannot get a fair trial 40 years after the fact, if any of it relies on eyewitness testimony.