[Skybird]

In a way many of you guys avoid to adress the original question. The hypothetical description implies that the procedure is risk-free. and the original question posted was

"so - if you could have a specific memory deleted... would you?"

No talk of general memory deleting. No talk of brain damage and risk for it involved. No talk of that it is enforce don you which memory gets deleted. The context is that you can freely chose which memory to delete, and whether to have any deletion taking place or not at all.

I ask the question differently, to illustrate the differences between the original object of the question, and the object to which many of you replied.

Can you imagine any sort of memory or experience that may be - in any sense you see worthwhile to define for the purpose of this question - so harmful or damaging or suffering-inducing to you that you wish you could just extract and delete it and not suffering from it and not being affected from it, assuming it could be done without any further health risk or chance for personality change involved?


Feel free to consider an experience of loosing a loved one. Having physical pain, or an accident. Getting raped. Witnessing disaster or humans suffering. And take into account in which way such experience may affect you in the present or your life after these experiences, how they defined them in good or bad, or may have turned you into a suffering wreck or a psychopath. Whatever.

That is the tricky part in this hypothetical question, isn't it. To what degree do not on ly comfortable, positive experiences, but also negative experiences define us for good or bad, and when is traumatization of such a nature that we would be better off if we never had experienced it? Obviously, a very subjective,. individual choice to make. Or not? I dare not to give a general answer, nor do I dare to exclude the chance that a general blueprint could be imagined.

BTW, such scenarios already are a reality. Although rather rare, hospital doctors can give you descriptions of syndroms, injuries and diseases where surgical procedures in the brain or drugs to be given to battle a serious problem, can lead to lasting personality changes, changes of habits, tastes, likes and dislikes, and loss or replacement of cognitive abilities. Often the patient is aware of the decision to be made, and plays an active role in it. So why does the one agree to procedures having such consequences, and another not? That would be a third way to ask the original question, maybe.