Memories are stored in three different ways: as BELIEFS, INFORMATION (sometimes mistaken for facts), and as RECORDS (mostly used for reminiscing--"now as I recollect..."). A lot of unresolved arguments are due to the fact that one person has the topic being discussed stored under belief, while the other has it stored under information. It is very difficult to win an argument against someone who is arguing from belief -- for they will not be swayed by facts. Facts will be stored as information and items there can contradict items stored as beliefs.

Sometimes enough contradiction can build up to cause the person to change their belief (but often they just reject the information).

Records are of the "this is the way it happened" type -- "good ole days" and all that. The process of reminiscing changes records, editting them to make them more pleasant and appropriate to the needs of the current self-image. Information memories are edit-protected -- their recollection is different.

Beliefs are created by the AI theory of "chunking". That is, I don't know how to deal with this set of items, so voila (chunk!), a belief is born to handle this combination. Now everytime the same situation pops up, the belief chunks into place (and logic goes out the window).

Beliefs are created when a person does not have the resources and/or mental ability to process all the required information to take a complete argument to a conclusion. So they throw up their (mental) hands and skip to the conclusion. A satisfactory short cut on trivial matters (e.g., I believe Walmart has the best price on this item = I am not going to do a price survey before I buy this $5 item), but a dangerous shortcut in matters less trivial.

And what's really dangerous is that most people are not aware of how much of their lives are affected by beliefs. Much in our lives is the result of beliefs -- things like "I'm not good at sports" or "alcohol makes me feel good" or "people who are different are dangerous". Things that "chunked" into place long ago and haven't been reexamined because they were filed under belief. Many people spend their whole lives struggling with this. They may also have a bunch of beliefs that were imposed on them as children ("you're clumsy", "you're lazy"). They can see the facts the contradiction to what they were told, but the beliefs persist. We now have data that indicates many beliefs come from Ancestor memories that have been incompletely recalled and processed.

Beliefs are like records in that they supply emotional needs, and so they may change as those needs change over time. To successfully change a belief that is causing you problems, you must first be aware of the source of the belief, so that you can become more aware of the information needed to contradict and change the belief.