In Stephen Jay Gould's essay, "Some Close Encounters of the Mental Kind," Gould explained how certainty can be both beneficial and dangerous. According to Gould, certainty can be a blessing because it can bring warmth, comfort and security. However, it can also pose a danger because it can fool our minds with false information about what we see and remember. Gould also discussed the three possible levels of error in direct visual observation: misperception, retention, and recovery. According to Gould, our human mind is nature's greatest miracle and the villain of all fraudsters and swindlers. To support his argument and statements, he used the example of an experiment that University of California Irvine professor Elizabeth Loftus gave to her students and a personal experience from her childhood trip to the Devils Tower. I agree with Gould that sight and memory do not provide certainty because what we remember is not always true, our minds can be tricky and make us believe that what we see/ hear is real because of the three potential errors of visual observation. Certainty is unreliable and delicate. Sometimes what we see and remember is not always accurate or real. For example, Gould talked about a trip he took to Devil's Tower when he was fifteen. He remembers that he can see the Devil's Tower from afar and that as he approaches it, it rises and grows. However, about thirty years later, Gould returned to see Devil's Tower with his family. He wanted to show them the amazing view of Devil's Tower as it rose as they approached it, but when they got there, everything was different from what he remembered. Then he discovered that the Devils Tower he saw when he was younger wasn't really...... middle of paper ...... people say even though when it's not not true because we tend to believe what others say. Our memories in our minds can be delicate and mixed up by what people say; it can make us believe that it is true. This makes them incapable of separating what is false, fantastic, from reality. Overall, memories do not provide certainty because what we see or remember may not be reality. Additionally, the way we remember something can change over time and that memory will eventually fade away. Although certainty is a blessing because it gives us warmth, comfort and security, it is more of a great danger because it gives false information and tricks our mind into believing something that is neither real nor true. Therefore, I am fully convinced by Gould's essay because I completely doubt what people observe or remember since memories do not provide certainty..