Freedom of thought is at a critical crossroads. Policy makers and judges are making important decisions now that set alarming precedent for the future of freedom of thought. The legalization of brain fingerprinting is just one example.Without freedom of thought, there can be no free society.
just saw the movie Eternal Sunshine... very weird. i don't think memory erasure will work in the long run because you have to erase other people's memory too... no memory exists in a vacuum.
This is rather at a tangent, but there is one area in which memory erasure is already an issue, though largely unrecognised as such. So far as professional anaesthetists are concerned, anaesthesia has three elements - it calms the patient so the surgeon can work without a struggle, removes pain (analgesia), and eliminates the patient's memory of the experience. The balance between the three depends on the drugs used, (there are clearly some potential philosophical problems here, but there is a fair bit of reliable knowledge on this point). There are two main issues. First, it is very hard to be sure that amnesia is not being used to cover a lack of analgesia. Now some patients might be prepared to accept pain which they don't remember, but the second point is - shouldn't they be aware of (and perhaps even choose) whether they are going to feel a pain they then forget, or genuinely feel no pain at all? For myself I naively equated anaesthesia and analgesia until I read an excellent essay of Daniel Dennett's ('Why you can't make a computer that feels pain' - in Brainstorms and I think other collections). I don't know why these issues haven't achieved a higher profile.
Hey, come on people, stop being so paranoid. People have known how to forget for, like, eons man...neurotechnology might just offer more precision and selection, that's all.
If you'd like to know how to erase your memory the
cheap way, enter Head-Whacks, Inc. :
Zack Lynch is author of 
1. coolmel on March 20, 2004 2:16 AM writes...
just saw the movie Eternal Sunshine... very weird. i don't think memory erasure will work in the long run because you have to erase other people's memory too... no memory exists in a vacuum.
Permalink to Comment2. Peter Hankins on March 22, 2004 11:38 AM writes...
This is rather at a tangent, but there is one area in which memory erasure is already an issue, though largely unrecognised as such. So far as professional anaesthetists are concerned, anaesthesia has three elements - it calms the patient so the surgeon can work without a struggle, removes pain (analgesia), and eliminates the patient's memory of the experience. The balance between the three depends on the drugs used, (there are clearly some potential philosophical problems here, but there is a fair bit of reliable knowledge on this point). There are two main issues. First, it is very hard to be sure that amnesia is not being used to cover a lack of analgesia. Now some patients might be prepared to accept pain which they don't remember, but the second point is - shouldn't they be aware of (and perhaps even choose) whether they are going to feel a pain they then forget, or genuinely feel no pain at all? For myself I naively equated anaesthesia and analgesia until I read an excellent essay of Daniel Dennett's ('Why you can't make a computer that feels pain' - in Brainstorms and I think other collections). I don't know why these issues haven't achieved a higher profile.
Permalink to Comment3. Trishank Karthik on March 24, 2004 11:53 PM writes...
Hey, come on people, stop being so paranoid. People have known how to forget for, like, eons man...neurotechnology might just offer more precision and selection, that's all.
If you'd like to know how to erase your memory the
cheap way, enter Head-Whacks, Inc. :
http://trishankkarthik.blogspot.com/2004_03_21_trishankkarthik_archive.html#108019015219554010
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