No Stupid Questions

I recently had ECT for depression. It didn't work, but it did make me forget about a bunch of random stuff. It's been such a weird experience. One of the more benign things that keeps coming up is I forget if I watched/finished a show or game and even if I know I did, I can't remember much about it. I worry about what else I've forgotten but I don't know yet because it hasn't come up. Like I haven't been able to work because of my depression, but if at some point in the future I finally get it cured, or at least under control enough to go work, I worry that I'll just randomly not remember some important things I learned in school or something like that.

So it's definitely possible to do things that delete memories. I don't see a reason why with more research we could learn enough about the brain to do this selectively instead of it being a random side effect.

As for whether I'd be worried about such a technology: That has more to do with what our society would look like than the actual tech. If we finally reached a society where we are all truly free, then while I might not use it, I wouldn't fault others who decided some memory was too painful to keep. If we still lived in a society like we have today, I'd be terrified that the rich and powerful would have yet another tool to fuck with us.

Like I feel like there are hidden traumas that got wiped by someone, like… trauma that’s even worse than those that I currently remember, or I wonder if the happy memories are perhaps implanted by someone to try to cover up trauma.

This gets complicated and messy, fast. Allow me to provide some personal experience in this area.

As someone that has had trauma hidden from myself behind dissociation and denial, I've done a hell of a lot of work to not do that anymore. I even have some recall, which is... not great feeling, but I'm now living in the real world. One aspect of this was being triggered by awful verbal and social behavior in others, and almost immediately forgetting that it happened; bullshit would just slide off my brain like it was coated in teflon.

Let me say that having a "spotless" memory like that is hell. It's a state where you fail to learn important red flags about situations, people, and more. This used to get me into a lot of trouble. It runs contrary to avoiding danger - survival in extreme cases - even if you have to sift through a pile of triggers to get to the truth. I won't sit here and say that trauma is good for anyone, but there may be legitimate cases where being triggered (because of trauma) might just save your ass.

At the same time, folks will self-medicate and over-medicate with all manner of substances, in order to forget or dull their senses in the face of trauma and triggers. If there is a more humane option, it absolutely should be explored lest we continue to watch such people slowly self-destruct.

With that, I'll opine that the best possible answer is something that can be surgically applied to specific memories that are causing more harm than good. With the careful guidance of therapists and doctors. Somehow. I have no idea how something like that would even work. Therapy and mindfulness are probably the best we'll have for a long time to come.

So, memories are pretty malleable, and there are already techniques to influence how people remember things. It's frightfully easy for a trained interrogator to ask leading questions that cause the interrogatee to alter their own recollections.

As others have pointed out, memories are extremely fickle. Fickle enough that I do not think it could be feasible to have any kind of fine-grained control over what to delete or replace. It'd be a bull in a china shop.

I think the only way it could potentially be done safely and properly is with a computer several orders of magnitude more powerful than a human brain, capable of copying the patient's brain, running all kinds of simulations on it to figure out how to make the exact changes without touching anything else, then writing those changes back to the host. If we're talking eventually, that could be an eventually, but a very very big eventually.

I highly doubt something like a neurolizer could exist, where they can just erase your memory with a flash of light. But methods to erase memories kinda exist now, and they require actually doing things to your brain physically. Like jamming a metal rod up your nose or behind your eye and swirling it around.

And that shit is pretty scary.

Be even scarier if they could implant new ones like Total Recall, Ghost in the Shell, Fallout 4, or the 6th Day. Did it really happen? Are you a robot? Are you a clone? Shit would absolutely break people.

What if it already exists but you’ve been made to forget about it?

I'll just leave this here and back away slowly...

Good luck to you.

unlikely most tropes in scifi , is completely suppressing the memories, also any scifi babble often involves brain damage that removes memories.

A medical lab controlled case of Rabies, where they make sure it doesn't actually kill you, would erase all your memories.

No selective memories to erase though, more like just wiping the slate clean, and you'd have to learn to walk, talk, and wipe your ass again.

Highly not recommended, but I bet that's been secretly tried more than once..

You'd probably end up living like Leonard Shelby, without the murder investigation

I think planted memories like total recall vacations are more realistic.

I believe the technology will eventually be implemented, but most likely not as an external device but as part of a neural chip/link/augmentation. We are already heading in that direction, and I'm certain we humans (unless we nuke ourselves out of existence first) will finally get to the stage in which our brains are augmented with the aid of some kind of artificial implant.

And it's going to happen relatively slowly at first, then faster and faster. And things will fail or will be exploited and yes, one of those side effects might be wiping your memories or screwing up your identity.

Personally I'm not too worried, I don't think I'll live long enough to reach that phase let alone be able to afford any modifications to myself. I just hope humankind learns from the absolute mess that is social media and AI today and can see the obvious risks of implementing something like that. Or not. Just let the world burn down

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