I have said several times that I will tell everyone my thoughts why it cannot be faked, so here I go, as I am leaving this forum most probably.

An interview by Rowling:

Q: Do the memories stored in a Pensieve reflect reality or the views of the person they belong to?
A: It's reality. It's important that I have got that across, because Slughorn gave Dumbledore this pathetic cut-and-paste memory. He didn't want to give the real thing, and he very obviously patched it up and cobbled it together. So, what you remember is accurate in the Pensieve.

Q: So there are things in there that you haven't noticed personally, but you can go and see yourself?
A: Yes, and that's the magic of the Pensieve, that's what brings it alive.

Q: I want one of those!
A: Yeah. Otherwise it really would just be like a diary, wouldn't it? Confined to what you remember. But the Pensieve recreates a moment for you, so you could go into your own memory and relive things that you didn't notice at the time. It's somewhere in your head, which I'm sure it is, in all of our brains. I'm sure if you could access it, things that you don't know you remember are all in there somewhere.

Now I don't count interviews as canon, but Rowling says that it's important that it got across, that is that readers can guess by reading the books. I could, I found this interview after I had come up with my theory.

Look at the first time we meet pensieve, Harry can see Dumbledore himself. and everyone else too doing things without any breaks or jerks or pauses. That's not normal memory, in a normal memory Dumbledore or anyone couldn't have noticed such things, he definitely couldn't have seen himself from a third person's perspective. This is not mere memory or thoughts. If they were, we would have seen everything first perspective, even if you assume perfect recall which pensieve shows, we will still be in first perspective only and seeing what Dumbledore saw. Harry on the other hand could mve and see other people and their reactions, he never noticed that they felt incomplete or unnatural which would have been the case if it was mere memory as Dumbledore couldn't have seen all of that, even if perfect recall is there, Harry can see things Dumbledore definitely didn't see because he was not looking at those things. More than memory.

Another point taken from wiki, Most interestingly, the memories viewed by the person watching in the Pensieve are more complete than the person's own observations. For instance, in Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, Bob Ogden visits the Gaunt family. Morfin speaks to him only in Parseltongue, which Ogden does not know and so would not be able to remember properly; yet Harry, reliving Ogden's memories, not only understands what the Gaunts are saying in Parseltongue, he is able to perceive things happening outside Ogden's range of vision.

I can give examples from every time Harry goes into pensieve.

From book and Rowling's mouth is evidence that this is not memory.

Now cheating pensieve. You cannot dream or think of a different scenario and give that memory, as the person's thoughts are not heard or seen in case of visual thoughts in the pensieve. We don't see what's going inside Dumbledore's head, Throw away your counter argument of dreaming of a different scenario.

Now changing things as they appear in the pensieve. You cannot cast a spell on the people in the memory, can you? No. So how will you make them do something else or say something else? The most you can do is make everything hazy and record over, which Slughorn does, that is easily noticeable. In fact, everything goes white, or you can read lips, and audio won't be in sync. Video cannot be altered.

Description of Slughorn's memory:

"Harry noticed that the contents proved difficult to empty into the Pensieve, as though they had congealed slightly; did memories go bad?"

Now make whatever you want of this, call me names, blah blah, I don't care.

 

Just because something was not done in canon does not mean that it's impossible. And the fact that slughorn attempted to alter him memories would suggest that he thought it was possible.

 

The fact that Slughorn was able to create a false memory (Albeit a poor one) implies that with the proper knowledge and skill, a pensieve can be "cheated".

 

:facepalm

If you want to leave, then leave. Good bye. Don't care? Yeah, you do, or you wouldn't have posted this. Do me a favor, drop the drama and either just leave, or grow a pair.

 

On a completely unrelated note, are you(Havaiamas) bipolar by any chance?

 

On another unrelated note, fuck off. Congratulations, you're now one ofthe few users here who have genuinely irritated me. You want to leave this forum, leave. Go on. Drag your carcass elsewhere. Don't linger around doing your utmost to have the last word.

I'll explain why I think you're such a knob jockey in another thread.

 

I just don't get why you'd go into a forum, pick a fight with older members and generally shit all over various things then expect to be taken seriously by anyone at all. I mean at least you should test the waters first or something. If not... this is an internet forum, I get it, but if you follow this course of action in real life as well, natural selection shouldn't be that kind to you.

Other then that, mind arts aren't all that expanded in the HPverse but from what Slughorn did, it shows that it's possible to make a fake memory. Whether it's always obvious the memory is tampered with, or Slughorn did a rushjob with it is anyone's guess.

 

Your argument for why memories can't be faked -- using JKR's explanation that pensieves show reality, not your particular recollection -- would mean Slughorn couldn't do what he did. No matter how badly it was done, he still altered what the pensieve shows. Which means that the argument doesn't reflect the facts.

Apparently, it shows reality, but that reality can be fiddled with.