Tuesday, February 28, 2012

Memory

I saw an article on Instapundit to the effect that neuroscientists have something of a handle on the chemistry of memory, leading to the possibility of selective memory erasers. Just some random thoughts arising from that--treat these as story seeds for the next science fiction novel:
  • does it become possible to treat PTSD? Do you only treat those people who are completely shell shocked and nonfunctional? If not, where do you draw the line? For crimes like rape, assault, and burglary, where there's a sense of violation, are the victims treated with memory erasers? How about consensual statutory rape--if the victim gets memory erasers, does it still deserve to be a major crime?
  • If war and violent crime are bad, shouldn't we leave the memories so people have the emotions that, yes, these things are bad? If we can make them less bad by alleviating the memories, does that mean that people will make less effort to avoid those events and they'll happen more often?
  • How about making other people take it? If you have an evil neighbor, the sort of person who is spiteful and petty, and she takes offense at something and starts a feud...are there circumstances in which you can legally compel her to forget the incident that started it?
  • if you're in front of your peers and do something stupid, you can take an eraser, but you can't make everyone else take it. You could find that you don't remember the impromptu stripper act you did when you were drunk at the company New Years party, but everyone else does. Is that better than if you did remember it? Do you tend to seek out strangers, because that way if you do something embarrassing, you can forget it and they won't be around to remind you?
  • To what extend could memory be modifiable? Can you erase your entire memory of a person--your ex-husband, for example? Your mother? How about if you then want the memory back?

No comments: