would you go through with the procedure?

[Sailor Steve]

Originally Posted by Cybermat47

I voted no, because your experiences make you who you are!

Exactly.

While there are things in my life I wish I could forget, if they were gone then I would have lived through them for nothing, and I would not be who I am today. Sometimes I think that might be a good thing, but to have part of your life just gone? I watched my father go through that in his last days without outside help, and it wasn't pretty.

[joea]

No thanks-I am what I was.





Plus that the others said about unforseen consequences, not sure the brain works as neatly as you would think.

[Oberon]

I can understand why it might be useful in people suffering from a very traumatic experience that makes them unable to integrate with society. However, as the question is directed at me as an individual then I would have to answer no, most emphatically no. Sure, there are memories I'd rather forget, and indeed I've succeeded in forgetting most of them, or at the very least putting them at the back of my mind but I would not want to lose them for they are a part of me just as much as the good memories.

Steve is right, I've seen people with lost memories, just gotten off the phone with one in fact who thought I was my father, it's not something I'd wish on anyone, not even my worst enemies.

[kraznyi_oktjabr]

No. I don't believe we know our brain's functions well enough yet. I have already lost most of my memory from birth to autumn 2008 and I would rather keep what I have left no matter how awful those memories are.

[Sailor Steve]

Originally Posted by kraznyi_oktjabr

No. I don't believe we know our brain's functions well enough yet. I have already lost most of my memory from birth to autumn 2008 and I would rather keep what I have left no matter how awful those memories are.

Exactly. I've been writing down my memoirs for my kids to read when I'm gone, and I'm amazed at how much I do remember. I've been remembering, and writing down, everything, including the very worst. I want to keep those memories, not lose them.

[mapuc]

You know, when i was reading this thread, I came to think of
Osmium Steele's thread my daughter

I do not have kids of my own, but should I lose one of them. I would not have my memories of that child erased.

Markus

[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.

[Takeda Shingen]

Skybird, I reject your view that past trauma renders every individual a suffering wreck or psychopath, which seems to be your general belief, both stated in this thread and in others. Painful memories are part of who I am as well. I would not have the procedure done.

EDIT: The procedure theorized is something I would compare to mental liposuction. As real liposuction will remove fat and make you thinner, it will ironically, not make you any healthier. Your plaque build-up, cholestorol, diabetes, etc, will remain. You've addressed only the superficial. This theorized procedure will remove your bad memories, leaving only a bland euphoria. It sounds like a less traumatic lobotomy. It's not something that I would be comfortable with.

[Skybird]

Originally Posted by Takeda Shingen

Skybird, I reject your view that past trauma renders every individual a suffering wreck or psychopath, which seems to be your general belief, both stated in this thread and in others.

Thats something you read into it. I cannot recall that I made any quantitative assessment that allows the conclusion that I think every traumatization leads to utmost existential breakdown. As a matter of fact traumatization can come in many shades, forms and grades of severity. Thats why studies seriously researching on them often do - at least should - include the definitions of grades or diagnostic keys on which the researchers based when categorizing different grades of traumata.

Painful memories are part of who I am as well. I would not have the procedure done.

Yes. I hinted at that myself two posts above. But pain can have different degrees of intensity, from pain you can bear, to pain that makes you breaking down and loosing your mind and senses, and/or leads to social and psychic handicaps that let your social life collapse and turn your life into a mess, even lead to changes in your personality. I think one of the links I gave in the thread on PTSD even illustrates cases they examined where traumatization that became chronic and got not treated led to both physical changes in the brain structure (loss of grey matter in the brain, with possible decline of IQ as well although that is not always the case), and lasting personality changes.

That extends the original question of this thread here by a whole new dimension. Are you still "yourself" if your suffering is such that it already has turned you into a different person?

EDIT: The procedure theorized is something I would compare to mental liposuction. As real liposuction will remove fat and make you thinner, it will ironically, not make you any healthier. Your plaque build-up, cholestorol, diabetes, etc, will remain. You've addressed only the superficial. This theorized procedure will remove your bad memories, leaving only a bland euphoria. It sounds like a less traumatic lobotomy. It's not something that I would be comfortable with.

A liposuction it would be if memories get extracted for the mere purpose of heaving it easy, for comfort, in other word: for reasons that would fall under the label of luxury. But when memories get extracted that are so traumatizing that they affect your cardiovascular health, your personality, your brain, your IQ? I think then it more compares to the extraction of cancer tumurs in a fight for your very life, or to lessen incredible physical pain.

I read about this American idiot of a senator who recently should have said that when a women got raped and gets pregnant, then it was God's will (no religious debate intended, mind you). I now try to imagine the victim of such an attack. And when (and why) some victims may wish they could just "forget" that memory of such an attack, while others maybe would not. Can a clear criterion be given that decides when such a memory helps you to realize your "real" nature, and when it hinders you? Can one really say that easily "But that experience of having gotten raped just defines her what she afterwards is, after the rape?" That would sound as bright an answer to me as the remark of that senator.

[Takeda Shingen]

Originally Posted by Skybird

Thats something you read into it. I cannot recall that I made any quantitative assessment that allows the conclusion that I think every traumatization leads to utmost existential breakdown. As a matter of fact traumatization can come in many shades, forms and grades of severity. Thats why studies seriously researching on them often do - at least should - include the definitions of grades or diagnostic keys on which the researchers based when categorizing different grades of traumata.

You're substituting philosophy for science.

Yes. I hinted at that myself two posts above. But pain can have different degrees of intensity, from pain you can bear, to pain that makes you breaking down and loosing your mind and senses, and/or leads to social and psychic handicaps that let your social life collapse and turn your life into a mess, even lead to changes in your personality. I think one of the links I gave in the thread on PTSD even illustrates cases they examined where traumatization that became chronic and got not treated led to both physical changes in the brain structure (loss of grey matter in the brain, with possible decline of IQ as well although that is not always the case), and lasting personality changes.

That extends the original question of this thread here by a whole new dimension. Are you still "yourself" if your suffering is such that it already has turned you into a different person?

Again, this is philosophy substituted for science, but I will play along. Clearly the only time that man is not shaped by his experience is when he is in the womb. Is the ultimate goal then to return man to his native prenatal state? It's the only time that you're not going to have suffering.

A liposuction it would be if memories get extracted for the mere purpose of heaving it easy, for comfort, in other word: for reasons that would fall under the label of luxury. But when memories get extracted that are so traumatizing that they affect your cardiovascular health, your personality, your brain, your IQ? I think then it more compares to the extraction of cancer tumurs in a fight for your very life, or to lessen incredible physical pain.

The comparison is that it is an unnatural method for extracting the unwanted. As it is natural to have memories, to wipe the memory to remove those memories is unnatural in the almost Orwellian sense. What of the repeat criminal offender? Can we alter his brain to make him a law-abiding citizen? What of the pedophile? Or the white supremacist, who holds views that are destructive to the running of society. What of your image of the Muslim? Can we alter his brain to make him a non-Muslim? Those things could be done for the common good, and the individual in each case could be made into a happy, productive model citizen.

That's quite a Pandora's box that you're eager to kick open.

I read about this American idiot of a senator who recently should have said that when a women got raped and gets pregnant, then it was God's will (no religious debate intended, mind you). I now try to imagine the victim of such an attack. And when (and why) some victims may wish they could just "forget" that memory of such an attack, while others maybe would not. Can a clear criterion be given that decides when such a memory helps you to realize your "real" nature, and when it hinders you? Can one really say that easily "But that experience of having gotten raped just defines her what she afterwards is, after the rape?" That would sound as bright an answer to me as the remark of that senator.

Strawman argument.

[TLAM Strike]

[Skybird]

Originally Posted by Takeda Shingen

You're substituting philosophy for science.

That's clinical fact. Traumatization can come in different grades of severity. Some are light, others are heavy. Don't even try to argue with me on this, I know it better than you. And active clinical practitioners know it better than you anyway. I have seen people with traumatizations that had pushed them into catatonic conditions for days and weeks, as if they were schizophrenic. Light cases of traumatization also suffer, but in kind of an automode or ghostmode can run the needs of everyday life. Between the two extremes, a wide variety of intensities and syndromes is possible. By diagnostic keys according to DSM or ICD, the keys and possible symptom list to be checked for may be the same. But the intensities by which symptoms form out, can vary tremendouslya, can find their very individual modulation.

Again, this is philosophy substituted for science, but I will play along. Clearly the only time that man is not shaped by his experience is when he is in the womb. Is the ultimate goal then to return man to his native prenatal state? It's the only time that you're not going to have suffering.

Suffering from a hurting dent, is one thing. Suffering from having seen how your village got wiped out and the victors torturing you for three days afterwards, destroying your soul, is something very different. The pain of a woman giving birth to her child again is something different. And a given small quota of mothers start to hate their child due to their experience during birth. (This is not the depression up to 15% of mothers after birth may fall into, or the inability of some rare mothers to accept and love their kid, it remains to be a foreign object to them. I'm talking about some mothers learning to hate their kid for the rest of their life for the pain it has caused them during birth. Rare, but happens. Can lead to very ugly family histories. I know one such example).

Different also is the way you react to aversive stimuli of differing intensity. And what makes one man yell out in anger and trying harder, makes another guy already break down and give up, seeking salvation from his suffering.

Should I tell you what it was like to spend almost 60 hours, almost in one piece, in one with a girl who had suffered something like what I described above, war, destruction and torture? She was as well as catatone since weeks and had not spoken for as long when she arrived with us. Difficult to handle without her breaking down, hitting and immediately collapsing when one touched her by acident or to lead her the way to a chair, a new room, the plane, whatever. No relatives. She got fed by injections, initially the RC did it by force in Bosnia, since on locaiton they were lacking the resources, time and personnel to adapt to her special conditions, they already struggled to just keep her physically alive. The heaviest traumatization case I have ever seen, and one thing I still find it hard to remmeber. A walking corpus, with dead eyes. A zombie. No pleasant story, and one of the toughest things I have ever gone through. 60 hours of silent company, no words spoken, no intruisve eye contact, no sudden movements, no nothing, just by thtav trying to communicate that I would not do anything to her or agaiunst her will, that I was no threat, no origin of suffering. Heartbreaking. Whatever it was that has been done to her, it was not nice. The reward?

Don'T dare to compare this fate to the suffering of man "outside mother's womb" as you put it, this suffering called ordinary life. That would be philosophy indeed, brought up from t he comfort and safety of your chair - and YOU have brought it up, not me. You are so fixiated in your anger on me and your desire to debate me into a corner, that you seem to not knowing what you are talking many more. But this stuff I know better than you. From theory. From good teachers that I always seemed to have had the luck to find. And from practice.

Take away the body, and man is no more. Change the brain's chemistry or EEG patterns, and the owner feels different emotions, has same perceptions interpreted differently by the brain. Hallucinations become reality, signals by your retina are not recongised by the brain, your eyes see, but your brain says youz are blind. Your emotions - are in your brain. Your behavior - is in your brain. Cognition, intellect - in your brain. Perception: in your brain. The world: in your brain. Your world. Change the brain by physical or chemical intervention, and you change the person, the personality, the schemes of deciding and behaving.

That girl I mentioned, surely would have had her experience deleted from her memory, if that were possible, and be given back her former life, if that would have been possible. And then comes Takeda telling her that she should stay with her nighmares, because they are what has turned her into the walking corpus she now was? As if that were a desirable state...?! Who do you think you are that you tell this or other victims of crushing events to live with it? That US senator I mentioned earlier, the one saying pregnancy even from rape being a gift by God for woman - is he a relative of yours...??? Torture victims wanting to just beeing dead, in order to lose the memory of what was done to them and their loved ones - they just are craving for returning to what you call a prenatal status? What'S next - calling them weaklings and cowards, maybe? It seems you are a blessed man and life so far has saved you from realising how grim and unforgiving it can be if things turn nasty. And I mean really nasty.

Really, man, come back to your senses. You get blinded from your own fuming.

The comparison is that it is an unnatural method for extracting the unwanted. As it is natural to have memories, to wipe the memory to remove those memories is unnatural in the almost Orwellian sense.

"The" memory? The scenario starting this thread was more specific, if only people would care to read more precise. And I explained what it meant, and that was not the undiscriminatory cleaning of the memory, but whether one could imagine to have a precise special memory taken away due to the consequences, most likely of aversive nature, it has caused in life. If that were an option he could chose, that is.

People can be hit so hard that that is a desirable option indeed. Because the alternative would be to die, for example. Well, I have some people on my mind who without doubt would be better off if we could relieve them from the memory haunting them.

And I have two bad memories of my own life on mind that are related to events that I would prefer to make undone. But I cannot. Needing to remembering them, does no good for me, and has not turned me into a better being either. I can bear the memory now, and I lived beyond the events, yes. But a benefit from those experiences there is not, I need them as much as an appendicitis. Sure, there are other memories, from times before the final events spoiling them. These are good. Don't want to miss them But the memory of how it ended I could live without more happily, maybe. At least i could bear them now. But not everybody is so "luckily" struck by fate. Some get it really heavy. And then your wisdom would sound like right from the ar$e.

Let me reformulate the original question of the topic starter once again. Imagine to have memories of events that have destroyed you. I mean that really destroyed you, leaving you in the dust of this cosmic highway. I do not mean experiences that made you suffer but you was strong enough to endure it and to bear what fate threw at you. Fate broke you. Your spirit is gone. So is maybe your life will. You are ruins and ashes, and wish to be dead just not to need to remember anymore. When confrontation therapy has no chance to do any good for you and explanations explain nothing anymore and drugs keep you vegetating but not living, and meanings have no meaning anymore - would you stay that way and enjoy being yourself, this precious new self you are now and that seems to be so precious to you no matter any imaginable circumstances, that wreck I described - or would you try your chances to find some relief and maybe regain the strength to live on by having the event you remember and that has destroyed you so severely being removed from your brain'S RAM?

Do you refuse a cancer tumour being extracted because actually it is a part of your body, your own cells?

What of the repeated criminal offender? Can we alter his brain to make him a law-abiding citizen? What of the pedophile? Or the white supremacist, who holds views that are destructive to the running of society. What of your image of the Muslim? Can we alter his brain to make him a non-Muslim? Those things could be done for the common good, and the individual in each case could be made into a happy, productive model citizen.

I don't know, and the hypothetical scenario and original question in no way was about this.

Ironically, you here open the door to philosophy for sure, while you accused me of having done that when mentioning different intensity grades of traumatization. Funny.

And so it is me playing by your rules, and I say this:, neurological and brain research shows the possibility - not more, not less - that indeed criminal behavior of certain types may be linked to genetics. And why not, when our behavior is determined by the processes in our brain. But brain is not exlcusively affected by genetic dispositions, but also by learning and experience and other stimuli. However, genetic dispositions, for neurochemical abnormalities or even just individual characteristics, maybe play a bigger role than we feel comfortable with finding out. Which would raise questions about free will. And questions on free will raise questions on our responsibilities for our actions and decisions. Indeed, some constellations of strong correlations, even causal links between neurochemical specifications and certain diseases and psychologial abnormalities, are known to exist. The question is: is all human behavior to be traced back to neurological conditions preset by genes, or not. If it is, there hardly would be free will in deed. Not pleasant for the robot to find out he actually is just a robot running a program. On the other hand we know thatg hormones play an incredibly important role in you emotional states, do control our readiness to show this ore that behavior and reaction, their influence is hard to be overestimated. And sexuality only being the most obvious example. And the most authoritative endocrine gland - again resides inside the brain.

Genetic dispositions deciding criminal behavior, yes, that would raise moral problems, namely for jurisdiction. In extreme: could one sentence an offender for a crime he committed if by his genes he had no choice than to do what he did? If pedophilia were found to be a genetic predisposition, we still are right to defend ourselevs and our chidlren and takr actions against these people, no doubt. But could we still morally judge them for natgure having turned them into what they are? Homosexuality can be a learned habit but it most likely also gets created genetically - and we have stopped to accept the moral condemnation of homosexuals, and now say they are what they are and have same rights to be here like others. - For the record: no, I did not attempt to claim that homosexuality were a crime like pedophilia. I wanted to illustrate a moral dilemma if pedophilia were found to be genetically influenced as well. Usual consensus today is that experiences in early childhood are responsible for forming out sexual perversions like pedophilia. Once implanted, sexual habits are almost impossible to be revised, they remain to be a dominant motive in all life. That'S why I rate pedophilia as incurable.

That's quite a Pandora's box that you're eager to kick open.

I did not until right now. You went beyond the parameters for the original scenario, while just. Not me. You. And many people before have answered to issues of the scenario that it originally did not include or asked for.

Strawman argument.

Unbelievable.
Considering to what former passage's content this reply was coming from you,

I read about this American idiot of a senator who recently should have said that when a women got raped and gets pregnant, then it was God's will (no religious debate intended, mind you). I now try to imagine the victim of such an attack. And when (and why) some victims may wish they could just "forget" that memory of such an attack, while others maybe would not. Can a clear criterion be given that decides when such a memory helps you to realize your "real" nature, and when it hinders you? Can one really say that easily "But that experience of having gotten raped just defines her what she afterwards is, after the rape?" That would sound as bright an answer to me as the remark of that senator.

that senator and you MUST be close friends, if not even twins. If I would have read the ending first and saw this comment at the very beginning of wasting my time here, I would not have cared to reply to you.

You know what, from now on leave me alone, you haughty hypocrite. I'm done with you.

[Buddahaid]

Better reference.

[Sailor Steve]

Originally Posted by Skybird

Don't even try to argue with me on this, I know it better than you.

And that's what everyone says when they've run out of real arguments.

And then comes Takeda telling her that she should stay with her nighmares, because they are what has turned her into the walking corpus she now was?

He never said that. He only said that he wouldn't do it himself.

You know what, from now on leave me alone, you haughty hypocrite.

Look in a mirror lately, Mr Pot?

[Takeda Shingen]

Originally Posted by Skybird

....

Skybird, it appears that that you just cannot have a discussion with anyone that disagrees with you. You resort to argumentative fallacy and fall into the trap of victim mentality. You tell me how I am fuming and how angry I am, and yet the only one I see getting worked up is you, with your passive-aggressive syntax and attempts to put words in my mouth via strawman tactics as you have done now four times in less than 24 hours.

I would suggest that, for the sake of your own temper, you refrain from discussion on the forum until you are able to handle disagreement in a mature manner. You'll thank yourself.