TheCunningLinguists
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Ramirez cautions against overblown fears about memory manipulation, but that's just naiveté; capitalism always bulldozes ethics. Humans have proven time-and-again that any technology we develop will be used by the worst people for the most nefarious purposes.
We aren't at Total Recall yet, but we will be eventually.
The whole article: https://gizmodo.com/the-scientists-who-want-to-rewire-your-past-to-fix-the-present-2000679500
QuantumInc
This could really, really help people, but it also feels like the wrong political moment to invent mind control.
ThrashAndChemistry
This episode of Black Mirror sucks
DiracsDelta
Amazingly, i saw his guy doing a National Geographic event in the last month. Some really interesting stuff demonstrated with fiber optics in mouse brains. Successfully implanted and recalled a memory of a bad room vs a good room the mouse hasn’t been in. But the really cool stuff was the newest brain mapping. The optimistic goal is the ability to eventually treat Alzheimer’s and dementia better.
emu314159127001
There's a drug that erases the memories you access while on it. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/new-drug-could-help-you-forget-long-term-traumatic-memories-180949386/
Helixninja333
Utter non-sense and possibly someone who wants lobotomies back. Because lets compare: If we can't figure out how a pile of AI lasagna figures stuff out, where we can at least track all the binary, how the hell are you going to figure out the part of the brain that remembers an embarrassing memory?
SavageDrums
Can they manipulate it so that I can remember things? I'll take basically anything.
GreenMnM
Yeah bc that shit worked out real well in every story ever told.
AidanPrydeCork
Why do I get a Nightcorp and Mr. Blueeyes vibe from this?
NeverEnoughFoxes
Because you, too, have played Cyberpunk!
MrTimsel
Am I the only one who has read 'The scientists who want to rewire your brain to fix the President'?
MadD0c
Yet another Torment Nexus?
Zyvun
Ah. Another shit stain on society masquerading as someone trying to make things better.
Gerokeymaster
I'm sure this won't cause any sort of huge societal problems because of people becoming convinced their "new" memories are real and causing a massive moral panic and multiple copycat events that lead to huge numbers of innocent people being accused of horrific crimes for the better part of a decade or anything...
Whoops, dropped this link here, how clumsy of me: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michelle_Remembers
TheCunningLinguists
Fond memories of the Satanic Panic on Long Island where I grew up: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_Gary_Lauwers
rmellis1112
As someone who has a deeply troubling and traumatic past it would be amazing to just have someone wave a hand and all of a sudden things are great. However I don't see this as realistic. I didn't read the whole article but it didn't seem like an actual inquiry as much as an advertisement for the next breakthrough. I find the whole concept alarming. What i went through is a huge part of the empathy i feel today. What happens to that empathy of you take the trauma away. What happens to societ
EvaThePuppy
The "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind."
nosoupforoldmen
Maybe it won't be the erasing of bad memories, maybe it'll modify how the emotional parts of the brain reacts to the memory.
mrjonesandme1010
It’s still there somewhere, way way down deep.
MoonAmericanFloydHeywoodR
It’s the same priorities as using EVs to solve oil dependency when mass transit and car sharing have always been readily available to us, or using AI instead of doing research and writing.
Why use proven methods when we can jump into quick fixes that are certain only to make tech hucksters richer?
StrangePaegan
I had a C-PTSD childhood and, to me, this seems dangerous. I'd rather know why I'm fucked up.
OgreEye
Tbh, my memory is already completely fucked, I only have scraps of stuff just a few years ago, and practically nothing before college but a few key events. I'd be more than willing to leave the bad behind with the good I've already lost - the real problem is if they'd ever use this to actually only wmdo what you'd want it to do
circlebreaker
Bingo, right to the meat of it. Although serious trauma can instill chronic mental health issues, at the root of it all is an essential brain process which safeguards the person in question from further harm from whatever was the source. As inimical as flashbacks and anxiety are, they're tied to the process in an essential way despite being unpleasant. If someone doesn't trust doctors, cops, priests, etc., the dislike doesn't exist in a vacuum, they have a good reason for it.
omnomnomivore2
Have you tried emdr? It reduces the emotional response when traumatic memories are triggered but doesn’t impact the memories themselves
SenOfFiveTails
I don't want to forget, I've already done too much of that. I've gotten to a point where I'd rather remember and face it and peel back the survival measures my brain created so that I can work on replacing them with something more robust and permanent and healthy. Outright forgetting feels.. wrong. Destructive of who I am. I want to process the trauma while keeping the lessons learned from it.
JAPONfan
Yeah, I want to know how the y plan to rebuild my brain damaged by depression.
bikergeek6249
Or cPTSD. :-/ oversized amygdala, undersized prefrontal cortex.
RetrogradeLlama
“Hauser, you’ve lost your mind!”
Lontri
I don't like this. Like, bad things happen and we learn from them, we grow, we develop ways to keep ourselves safe. The abuse potential also concerns me. And what if it doesn't work in the long run and you start getting flashbacks of the real bad things and you don't know what's real anymore and what's fake. Or if a person gets angry or confused when they thought that something was real but it wasn't. Yeah, no thanks, I'd rather just have my traumas than risk dealing with all of this.
MyDogTige
No real scientist would ever want to do that. There are no ethical grounds to do that.
haggerton
Clearly you are unfamiliar with scientific history...
MyDogTige
I know it well, I just don't consider ethically ambiguous people as legitimate scientists.
elvisdumbledore
"You know that pain and guilt can't be taken away with the wave of a magic wand! They're the things we carry with us, the things that make us who we are. If we lose them, we lose ourselves. I don't want my pain taken away, I need my pain!" -- James T. Kirk, Star Trek V: The Final Frontier
PyroAvok
YOU CANNOT HAVE MY PAIN! -Dalinar Kholin, Oathbringer
battery1979
Cool, industrial grade gaslighting......I hate this time line.
meowingintensifies
"eternal sunshine of the spotless mind" doesn't sound so wholesome now, does it?
reverendbonobo
Skystriker8492
As a psych major, only 2 more semesters yay, I'm conflicted here. Yes the ethical stuff is scary, but the part for me that gives me pause is, what if you have two conflicting concrete memories this sounds wildly dangerous and could take a mind that's just damaged but treatable and make that person completely insane. We literally know less about the mind than the ocean floor, and we know more about space than that. I smell a snake oil salesman.
NickNoltesDrinkingShack
Unfortunately anything that gets created you have to ask yourself, how will this be used as a weapon against us?
androidshard
Realising that is what made me interested in game dev. Couldn't bear the thought of my code ever being used to hurt people and couldn't think of a more harmless kind of software development.
LurkMasterP
The real competition is between military and corporate. It will be weaponized literally or economically.
JimJim11
No competition really. The Yanks war machine is way too well funded. They have technology we won’t even see for 5 years. Absolutely anything developed in America that would benefit the military gets appropriated with or without people disappearing. Anything it takes.
GlutenFreeCocaineWaffles
It's called shrooms, dude.
LariCheltsy
Tahiti is a magical place
diemajorthrilldie
Sandy beach, blue waves.....
Bunhyung
"Two weeks!" "Two weeks!"
JarJarDrinks
Why eyewitness testimony is the least trusted evidence in court. "He raped me, I remember his face as clear as day!" - "Sorry ma'am, DNA says he didn't"
sharikov
What a curious go-to example.
LostCaterpillar
Why do you consider it curious?
HollerinAtTheVoid
You mean the example used thousands of times as an excuse to lynch black people?
Dontstopbelever2000ismyfavoritesoap
Damn dude, they don't all look alike. That's fucked up