Paul GrahamVerified account

I wonder how their self-esteem & family life follow suit. When you keep building an intermingled network of lies, the compounding resultant might not be very elegant after a few decades.

"if you tell the truth then you don't have to remember anything" -Mark Twain

True for all people but Trump. He doesn’t bother even remembering them because he follows each lie with another lie.

If lies fit within the patterns of fictional stories they may not be that difficult to remember. You can always claim that you don’t remember the actual details. Of course, if you habitually tell the truth you don’t have to bother with crafting stories in the first place. Cheers!

I don't think the memory of a politician matters as much as the memory of the populace. And the latter can easily be manipulated through the media or a self-serving narrative that makes a politician's lies irrelevant if it furthers their interests.

Good memory isn't synonymous with intelligence, chess is a game of good memory, many brilliant chess players had average intelligence, many great scientists had bad memory. What I believe anyway ;)

If that’s the case, you can trust me with all the power

A little work-around to not remember the lies (i.e differences with reality): build your own reality. Remember the facts as you wish them to be, not as they are. Then there are no lies, just the regular "facts" remembered. Everybody else lies, not you. Hence, the "fake news" etc.

It’s not that the pols memories are good. It’s that ours are so bad. This is true investing also. Cycles last 8 years; memories last 5. History repeats. Etc etc.

How much do you think having a good memory impacts a person's ability to be a good leader?