Posted on 10/07/2016 7:19:33 AM PDT by BenLurkin
The scenario sounds like a plot from a science fiction novel, but it’s not necessarily as implausible – at least in principle – as it might seem. For a start, memory researchers have known for decades that our recollections of the past are often inaccurate, and that sometimes we remember entire events that never happened at all. These false memories can occur spontaneously, but they are especially likely to occur when someone plants the seed of a false suggestion in our mind, a seed that grows into a more and more detailed recollection each time we think about it.
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Could planting ‘beneficial’ false memories be the next big thing for tackling obesity, or myriad other health complaints from fear of the dentist to depression? Even if such an intervention is scientifically plausible, there still remains the fundamental question of whether it could ever be ethically justifiable.
Certainly, it would be naïve to say that nobody would ever try it. In fact, even looking back several decades, we can find documented cases in which therapists claimed to have tackled their clients’ psychological troubles by manipulating their memories. Asking ourselves whether this kind of intervention is justifiable, then, is important: not only because we can conceive of a future in which false-memory interventions are on the menu, but also because in at least some rare cases, practitioners have been ordering from that menu for years.
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Even if the day never arrives when your family doctor can prescribe a course of false memories, reflecting on this ethical minefield may remind us that recollections are among our most precious assets. Maybe false memories can be just as precious.
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Robert Nash is a psychologist at Aston University, UK.
(Excerpt) Read more at bbc.com ...
All I know if that I was in Cambodia on Christmas day, 1968, having been ordered there by President Nixon. That memory is seared in my brain.
They’re already trying to implant false memories - in government indoctrination center “history” classes.
Hellary does nothing but plant false memories.
England just keeps getting nuttier.
Maybe it’s better the Muslims are taking it over.
(That’s sarcasm, the second line. Not the part about England getting nuttier).
Good one.
How else can you take a "Total Recall" vacation?
yeah, no I’ll pass.
It’s been a hard life. Lost pop at 14 and had to grow up early.
But he was a GREAT guy for those 14 years and I had a lot of great times with a BIG Italian family for many years.
I dont need “fake” memories to cope.
That’s what God is for.
BBC is funny. A press outlet, asking about the ethics of imparting false belief.
I remember on November 4, 2008 when now forgotten Chicago politician Barack Obama lost the electoral vote 538-0.
Rachel in “Bladerunner.”
“Memories... you’re talking about memories.”
Did you remember to keep your special hat?
Removing memories associated with trauma is more feasible, simply destroy the neurons.
Extended therapy to acclimate you to what triggers the PTSD is more moral and better long term, but “let’s erase the bad / implant a good” is yet another reach for a quick fix.
Implanting fake memories mechanically would be immoral because of the likelihood of abuse, especially if done to alter people’s personalities and hide memory erasure.
Correct. I do have a funny story though. Once right before going to sleep my father told my mother to “watch out for the asparagus,” that night she had a dream that the garden was producing bushels of the stuff every day and even though she spent her days cooking piles of asparagus in a big dutch oven, she couldn’t keep up.
“All those moments will be lost in time, like tears...in...rain.”
I wouldn’t mind having a few false memories involving Sean Young.
Have read about a number of cases where counselors/child psychologists have created memories of child abuse via suggestiveness. Implanting memories, like everything else, can be used for good or bad. This is an area in which we should tread lightly.
Is there such a thing as too much asparagus?
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