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The growing science of memory manipulation

scientificamerican.com

51–60 of 156 posts

Re: The growing science of memory manipulation

#51
post #9

The mere possibility of tampering with memory is indeed the most dangerous thing that could happen to humanity. Imagine not being able to believe your own memory. In fact we don't have to imagine, I believe I've been subjected to "mass gaslighting" on multiple occasions recently on the internet : some piece of information I'm sure I saw on the internet suddenly completely disappears. Google + Facebook + "right to be…

Unfortunately, I've got news for you, fallible and manipulable memories have been around for a long time. For example, see the research of Elizabeth Loftus: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elizabeth_Loftus

Here is another useful reference >> http://creativethinking.net/how-easily-false-memories-are-cr...

The really interesting part is that you can create a false memory for someone even while telling them that you are doing it.

Re: The growing science of memory manipulation

#52
post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But imagine having much better memories than you have now. It is much better to wake up and go to work knowing that you spent a good vacation last three month, than having boring eternal life of a regular worker with low wage. Forget that your SO cheated on you. Believe that all people are good. If you’d sell memory tampering devices, are you sure that most of them would be used against someone other instead of on bu…

imagine starting every day of your working life thinking you just got done with a wonderful two weeks vacation, energized and ready to continue on with your employment tasks! in fact with our new happy memory management service your employees will never need to take a vacation, weekend, or fake sick day again - because they will think they just did!

"For the memory of a lifetime, Recall, Recall, Recall"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JYRVMeAwVKk

"Don't fuck with your brain pal!"

Re: The growing science of memory manipulation

#53
post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But imagine having much better memories than you have now. It is much better to wake up and go to work knowing that you spent a good vacation last three month, than having boring eternal life of a regular worker with low wage. Forget that your SO cheated on you. Believe that all people are good. If you’d sell memory tampering devices, are you sure that most of them would be used against someone other instead of on bu…

imagine starting every day of your working life thinking you just got done with a wonderful two weeks vacation, energized and ready to continue on with your employment tasks! in fact with our new happy memory management service your employees will never need to take a vacation, weekend, or fake sick day again - because they will think they just did!

Plot twist: you're actually a moderator for Facebook looking at child porn and beheadings all day. Further plot twist: that FB gig was another fake memory to cover up your involvement in a secret government project involving lots of enhanced interrogation, to provide plausible cause for the psychological damage that wasn't entirely fixed by memory replacement.

Re: The growing science of memory manipulation

#55
post #7

The next most interesting direction the researchers could go would be if deletion is possible. I’m assuming the question of deletion being even possible would be amazing to find certainty. I’m speculating for an existing memory to be deleted, it has to be rewritten and thus typical deletion is impossible without rewriting. Once all this is perfected, the future technology of brain interface for humans will have even…

It's not the next step. That was the previous step. It's already known and demonstrated many times that deletion is possible, so now they wanted to know if they could also create memories. See more in Wikipedia https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memory_erasure

I'v been aware of some of the work you're referencing because of the popular goal for solving ptsd in psychiatry.

The methods of "drug-induced amnesia, selective memory suppression, destruction of neurons, interruption of memory, reconsolidation,[1] and the disruption of specific molecular mechanism" are not necessarily as great comapred to what was done in the article where optogenetics is referenced as the method of creating memories.

The current methods being used to attempt at deleting memories have resulted in consequences and typically considered extremely dangerous because of the inaccuracy of the methods. Making me skeptical if it's not just damage to the brain.

Re: The growing science of memory manipulation

#56
post #13
post #9

The mere possibility of tampering with memory is indeed the most dangerous thing that could happen to humanity. Imagine not being able to believe your own memory. In fact we don't have to imagine, I believe I've been subjected to "mass gaslighting" on multiple occasions recently on the internet : some piece of information I'm sure I saw on the internet suddenly completely disappears. Google + Facebook + "right to be…

I could swear this happened with the errant USB-C configuration that the latest Raspberry Pi 4 screwed up. At least 4 other projects I know of configured their USB-C the same exact incorrect way. Three of them absolutely swear that a Google search gave an online application note that told them to do this, but they can't find it anymore--it presumably got yanked as soon as the RPi error came to light and then dropped…

I'm guessing from your post that it was gone before archive.org could crawl it? You can force archive.org to save specific sites immediately so that you can use their (permanent) link as a future-proof citation [0].

Alternatively, something like WebSatchel [1]. I have no experience with it, so can't tell you if it's any good, or whether there's other software that does a similar thing.

[0] https://help.archive.org/hc/en-us/articles/360001513491-Save...

[1] https://websatchel.com/a1/#/

Re: The growing science of memory manipulation

#58
> Memories are essential to the sense of identity that emerges from the narrative of personal experience.

That, for me, is one of the main ethical issues. No matter in which society you live, a very large part of its identity is derived from memory and/or common history. If you can manipulate that, you can manipulate society. And we already have so many subconscious levers pushing our perception of self (social media for one), we shouldn't have another one.

Re: The growing science of memory manipulation

#59
post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But imagine having much better memories than you have now. It is much better to wake up and go to work knowing that you spent a good vacation last three month, than having boring eternal life of a regular worker with low wage. Forget that your SO cheated on you. Believe that all people are good. If you’d sell memory tampering devices, are you sure that most of them would be used against someone other instead of on bu…

imagine starting every day of your working life thinking you just got done with a wonderful two weeks vacation, energized and ready to continue on with your employment tasks! in fact with our new happy memory management service your employees will never need to take a vacation, weekend, or fake sick day again - because they will think they just did!

Remind me of Robin Hanson's Age of Em. Ems are human minds copied into computers and executable there. Being easy to copy, you can spin up as many Elon Musks as you need. And if you have the brain state stored, every day you can have those Elons on the best, most work ready, focused day of their lives. All digitally, of course.

Re: The growing science of memory manipulation

#60
post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But imagine having much better memories than you have now. It is much better to wake up and go to work knowing that you spent a good vacation last three month, than having boring eternal life of a regular worker with low wage. Forget that your SO cheated on you. Believe that all people are good. If you’d sell memory tampering devices, are you sure that most of them would be used against someone other instead of on bu…

imagine starting every day of your working life thinking you just got done with a wonderful two weeks vacation, energized and ready to continue on with your employment tasks! in fact with our new happy memory management service your employees will never need to take a vacation, weekend, or fake sick day again - because they will think they just did!

It is exactly what I meant. Unless you’re meaningless truth seeker, that life is a charm to live. People will do it to themselves, no need for special memory service guys. If you dig deep enough on what happiness, energy and fresh feelings are (against reality), there will be a plast of blurred lines very soon. Even health issues have many roots in your mental state. It is basically side-effect free, natural heroin.

Ed: oops, removed e from heroin

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