Today I Wish I Was a Cognitive Scientist

Yesterday on my morning commute my brain produced the following helpful assertion:

Ralph Fiennes was the lead actor in Quiz Show

Today I wish I was a cognitive scientist. This rather unremarkable bit of trivia illuminates my staggering ignorance of how the brain works, of its remarkable capability and power. Here are some facts and observations from a layman's perspective:

• I have never seen Quiz Show; in retrospect I vaguely recall seeing previews for it when it came out nearly 2 decades ago.
• The assertion was synthesized, not merely recalled. This was not a whole fact that I was remembering as such; rather, it was derived by "face detection," a sort of visual pattern matching between recalled images, processed automatically.
• By the time it was fully formed in my conscious thought, the assertion had the authority of fact, later verified. If you had subsequently asked me who the lead actor in the movie was, I would have answered with confidence bordering on certainty. If, on the other hand, you had asked me the night before, I would have been unable to tell you who the lead actor was, regardless of my level of conscious effort.
• As best I can remember, the only connection to anything like conscious intention was extraordinarily, almost laughably tenuous: the previous day I had listened to the soundtrack to Harry Potter while working. The next closest connection to Ralph Fiennes that I can remember was having watched Skyfall well over a month ago.
• I was not consciously thinking about Ralph Fiennes, movies, actors, or anything else that would have led me to try to produce the assertion by mental exertion.
• At the moment I became fully conscious of the assertion, I was navigating the infamous and highly stressful intersection between Interstate 285 eastbound and GA Highway 400. I have no idea how long it took to produce.

I'm bemused and utterly at a loss to explain why I needed to know this while hurtling down the interstate, but it's fascinating to think about what the brain is capable of, of its wonderful, startling complexity.