Songs: Fuzzy Trace Theory

notes / gigs / releases

In the 1960s supervillains had
A range of handy gadgets they could use for being bad
Shrinking rays and lasers, hypno gas and killerbots
But there's another item that it seems we have forgot

They were well ahead of us by at least fifty years
Supervillains were all hybrid meetings pioneers
They'd pop up on the telly or on any viewing screen
But it's barely mentioned in my survey - what can it all mean?

Where are all the viewing screens?
Where have they all gone?
They were mentioned in my survey by
Hardly anyone

Supervillains in the seventies would regularly decide
To head to the United Nations and get the delegates hypnotised
Cos in comics the UN can legally declare
That e.g. Doctor Doom's the leader of the whole world everywhere

It's a bit of a flaw in the system which does at least explain
Why the UN in our own world doesn't work in the same way
But it doesn't tell us why something that happened all the time
Is once again almost entirely absent from replies

Where's the United Nations
Where can it have gone?
It was mentioned in my survey
By hardly anyone

It's Fuzzy Trace Theory!
I think it's fuzzy trace theory

FTT says memories are stored in these two ways
Verbatim memory, which is precise but tends to fade
And Gist, which isn't accurate but lasts a longer time
And also changes, which explains why our memories aren't always right

Cos as verbatim memories begin to disappear
We rely on the gist, which updates our general idea
So when, for instance, viewing screens became more domestic
We're less likely to think of them in a supervillain's schtick

And the United Nations
It's much less in the news
Than in the sixties and the seventies
So it's gone missing too

And that's Fuzzy Trace Theory!
Also known as dual process theory

In summary our memories are useful as a guide
But are not neccessarily accurate, especially over time
And so we must seek other ways to evidence the past
And that is why we should rely on empirical facts

Published by Wipe Out Music Publishing

Technically speaking Fuzzy Trace Theory does not appear in either my PhD thesis OR my book. My INTEREST in it came about when I was trying to give reasons for the fact that some aspects of Doom which were HIGHLY apparent in my analysis did not appear AT ALL in the survey of 225 fans of Doctor Doom. I presented it at The Superhero Project in Eastbourne in 2024 as a paper called When the world catches up with science-fiction: Doctor Doom and the missing view screens and liked it so much that I adapted it into this here song for Data and Doctor Doom .