Show a position from a real game for five seconds, and a chess master will put back far more pieces than a beginner. But in 1973, William Chase and Herbert Simon scattered the pieces randomly across the board, and the master's edge almost vanished. Their memory isn't photographic: it recognizes familiar patterns learned over thousands of games and stores them in chunks.
Remembering is not replaying a recording — it is rebuilding. Each time you recall a memory, it becomes temporarily malleable and can be altered before being stored again. That is why two people can sincerely remember the same event… differently.
In 2003, Johnson and Goldstein compared European countries. Where you must tick a box to become a donor, consent rates ranged from 4% to 28%. Where you're a donor by default unless you opt out, they topped 85%. People aren't more generous on one side; most simply stick with whatever option was chosen for them.