Eternal Inception of the Spotless Total Recall

Scientists figure out how to implant false memories in mice.

More at the link.

There, NOW life is truly meaningless.

I was pretty sure, but now it's irrefutable.

It's tempting to shrug this off as some minor thing.

But a transistor's a pretty minor thing, too, and in 1947, no one could imagine how much we could do with a billion of them etched onto a small piece of silicon...

I wonder if we will--in the not very distant future--be able to read and write memories just as we do a hard disk or a flash memory today...

What the fuck is a mouse going to remember anyway?

"Big furry thing...a cat maybe....I played dead and it batted me around. It's owner had a laser pointer, and it forgot about me. Makes you think...."

"I smelled cheese.....the big wooden thing with the metal bar seemed harmless.
I saw a flash and I shot sideways. This big bar came down right where I was sitting a micro-second before! God must have been watching out for me that day!"

Something nobody has touched on yet is this: This also just might put us a step closer to Matrix-style learning. Because once science can have you "remember" an experience, how much longer before science can have you "remember" how to speak Latin? Or how to fly a plane?

They better hurry up with flying a plane before we run out of pilots/planes.

Or perform surgery, repair complex machinery, or anything else. This could be the greatest advance to mankind ever if we can learn how to harness it.

I volunteer to be a test subject, as long as they are implanting memories of me fucking the ever-loving-shit out of Kate Beckinsale!

Or absorb the training memories of every master of hand-to-hand combat.

There is a big leap between 'knowing' and 'doing'. Muscle memory can't be implanted to my knowledge. That can only come from repetition, repetition, repetition.

Sure, but the ability to simply implant the academic knowledge would still significantly speed the learning process. From zero knowledge to the equivalent of being "rusty" in a day, then full proficiency after about a month, that's extremely accelerated learning.

Besides, if declarative memory can be manufactured, figuring out how to manufacture procedural memory isn't outside the realm of possibility.

Gives a whole new meaning to "upgrading the memory"...!

There is no such thing as muscle memory. That's one huge myth that never seems to go away. You're muscles have zero to do with memory. It's 100% brain....

If they can implant the memories which themselves are experiences of events then you do have the knowing and the doing.

So you could download learning how to do karate and at the same time you could download the hundreds or thousands of hours of practice and matches.

Not only do you now know karate but you've got the memories of doing it. A lot of it.

So you've got the knowing and the doing at the same time.

Of course I'd still rather they institute tough testing to make sure that surgeon has the knowing and the doing down pat before he cuts me open.

Of course, there's the other angle to what Ancalagon might (not sure, but might) have been getting at, and your martial arts example really brings it to the forefront:

You could have the knowledge and experience downloaded into you, but that wouldn't give you the physical conditioning you need. I'm not talking about "muscle memory", I'm talking physical strength, speed, flexibility and reflexes.

But you'd still be a damn sight further ahead than someone who had neither. At the very least, it'd be an epic way to "jump start" the ability.

No I'm pretty sure he meant muscle memory in the terms that everyone thinks about it. Which is you may have learned to do something but you're not good at it unless you practice at it.

I say if you can download how to do a thing you can also download the practicing of that thing and so from the moment the download ends you're ready to go.

You're talking a separate issue which I do agree with. If you take the knowledge and experience of an athlete and drop it into a out of shape guy that guy may have all the info but his body obviously can not do the things the athlete does.

There is also intelligence to consider. Can I really download Stephen Hawkings total knowledge of physics and be at his level? I doubt it.

Exactly. And yet, having the raw knowledge of the athlete's skills and the experience of having developed those skills would put that out of shape guy on the fast track to "re"-acquiring the athlete's abilities.

Because here's another really exciting angle: Habits. Instantly (or nearly instantly) acquiring productive habits and (setting aside for the moment questions of chemical dependency issues) similarly erasing destructive habits.

And here's a frightening angle: How much of your personality is the result of your experiences? And if your experiences become territory that can be rewritten, what happens to your personality?

Here's an example: Let's say we subjected an Archie Bunker type to a rewrite where an armada of positive experiences with minorities was inserted. Now all of a sudden, Archie Bunker stops being Archie Bunker.

Good question. There might be a question of "system requirements" just as there is with software.

Sure. You could fix a lot of things that way.

Want to quit smoking? Download the memories of someone who successfully did it.

Or program false memories that you quit.

Or false memories that make you disgusted to smoke. Picking up a cigarette makes you think of dog shit or something.....

Babylon 5 mindwipe

http://babylon5.wikia.com/wiki/Edward

http://www.netmoon.com/babylon5/story/season3/passing.htm

Among other sci-fi uses of it.....

Of course, you also touched on something with that question of intelligence. If it's in our future to write memories -- and as an extension of those techniques, write knowledge, expertise and habits -- what we're really talking about, in essence, is the ability to upgrade human beings via "software patch."

How far behind that will intelligence upgrades be? Probably still quite a distance. But now it becomes a question of 'when' rather than 'if.'

That being the case, designer intellect and designer personalities are now things worth planning for rather than merely speculating about.

This technology WILL become available to humans, for humans, and when it does, real life will become like those fucking people that buy accomplishments on Farmville. People will buy happy memories, will buy instantly downloaded skills, everything will have a price tag, reality will have paywalls, and pirates, and real experience will become extinct. People who really accomplished things will become obsolete, and laughed at. Whole identities will be up for grabs like a free app. And if your mind violates copyright? They'll take it back, and you'll be a vegetable. It's going to be loads of laughs for a sickie like me.

Oh, this is still some rich soil for speculative fiction. "We Can Remember It For You Wholesale" is going to be the drop in the bucket when we get the whole new industry of "metaechnology."

Ohhh I just realized something......

Once we get cloning down we can simply transfer our minds from the old body to the new one. Immortality........

So we could download favorable gay experience memories into Apostle's mind?

Johnny Mnemonic can't get no love.

What about Max Headroom?

Oh, and we could also use it like that DS9 episode where they put Chief O'Brien into mind prison and he felt like he was gone for years.

Seriously though it could change the way we rehabilitate criminals.

Obviously muscles themselves don't have memory. But your mind does learn and remember how to manipulate YOUR complex and unique body to do certain things. Having a memory of how SOMEONE ELSE does something in no way helps YOU know how to do something.

Let me put it this way. If I put Mike Tyson's boxing memories in you, how good of a boxer are you going to be? Even if you bulked up and put on as much mass before I transferred the memories, how useful would it be? You'd be a different height, have a different reach, different reflexes, heck you THINK differently. You might not have the instincts/ability to go all Raging Bull (okay, different boxer, still, you get the idea).

Muscle memory refers to what YOUR BRAIN remembers to tell your muscles what to do in certain situations to get certain results. That can only be gotten through practice as your muscles, tendons, bones, nerves, etc will be different from everyone else.

Yes, this can help you get the basics down, but in no way will you be able to download kung fu and be able to actually do it. Accelerated training, fuck yeah, but you're still talking months....

Yeah, months instead of decades. I'll take the head start even if it's not instant gratification.