Better to forget completely or remember wrongly?

One of my friends was remarking how a mutual acquaintance is currently in Philippines. Him: She's in Philippines now, didn't you know? Me: Eh... no. How did you know anyway? I didn't know you two are close... Him: Don't you remember that email she sent? She said she was in Philippines! OOPS. Did I forget something again? I quickly dug out *that* email and re-read the content. Hmm... she did mention she was in Philippines... how can I not recall this at all? But wait, the email says something else too... she was in the Philippines FOR HER SUMMER VACATION. So what happened was that while I completely forgot about the Philippines bit, my friend remembered a distorted version of it. My friend thought that she, an American, had long migrated to Philippines. What a big boo-boo if she reads this! :P Is it then better to forget something completely or remember it wrongly? Naturally if I get to choose, I would rather remember everything correctly. However in this case for instance, it is clearly better to forget completely than remember wrongly. Remembering part of it and knowing it is incomplete is fine - at least you have a general idea and know that you just need to verify it. But remembering incorrectly and thinking it is correct is disastrous! So in order of decreasing preference, I think it is better to: (1) Remember everything correctly. (2) Remember the gist of it and knowing your knowledge is incomplete. (3) Remember incorrectly and thinking you are right! That's why it is useful to store information you think you might need later on. Today, much of our communication is via emails. If you are using Gmail like me, you can take advantage of Gmail's inbuilt search engine. Say you had this conversation with someone offline and you think the information will come in handy. As soon as you get online, pen down all you need to remember in an email. Then very importantly, spend at least 5 to 15 seconds to put down all variations of keywords that come to your mind. It is worth pointing out here that if you can't find the email, it is as good as useless. Do be reminded that Gmail search is unfortunately still not as powerful as Google search vanilla. Where appropriate, I would suggest you put down both the plural and singular form of the word. And if need be, put down both the abbreviation and the long form. Stick to this "storing routine" and you will do just fine. :-)