4 ms·
I think the author of the blog post meant that given the drug a) works in humans and b) is determined to be 'safe' by some level of metrics, she doesn't see the
by yan 17y ago
I think the author of the blog post meant that given the drug a) works in humans and b) is determined to be 'safe' by some level of metrics, she doesn't see the downside to remembering visual memories for much longer. I don't think it's fair to leave it to bloggers to assess the dangers of a neurological drug.
- mquander 17y agoI agree that you've probably nailed the intent, but it makes the statement seem rather vapid in the first place. "If the drug [does this great thing] and has no destructive side effects, then I can't see much of a downside to it." Well, duh.
- yan 17y agoNo, I don't think it's obvious. We forget things for a reason; increasing the level of noise in the human mind doesn't just come with no side effects. Even if the drug works perfectly as intended, not having the ability to forget memories that are irrelevant can be a big disadvantage I'd think.
- khafra 17y agoI don't think you can proceed from "we forget things" to "it's good that we forget things." We get cancer. However, a decade and a half on the internet is enough to convince me that the ability to let certain visual memories fade into oblivion is a good thing.
- joeyo 17y agoThere is fairly good evidence that inability to forget is at least correlated with cognitive and social deficits. For an overview see: http://books.google.com/books?id=BooNAAAACAAJ&dq=The+Mind+of+a+Mnemonist http://books.google.com/books?id=BooNAAAACAAJ&dq=The+Min...