5 ms·

The Disremembered

17 points by benbreen 12y ago

zyxley 12y ago
Identity-as-memory isn't something I buy into much, because my own memory is flatly terrible already. My childhood up until 10 or so is mostly a blank, for example, with just some impressionist highlights of place names and locations popping up if I think real hard.
- meric 12y ago
  I can replay at least one memory from any year since I was 2. Some of them obviously impacted my identity, like the time I was 4 years old in kindergarten and I spent a little more effort, but not too much, at writing words a little prettier than usual, and managed to beat the rest of the class to win myself a toy car. At the time it was the proudest moment of my life. It taught me I only needed to spend the tiniest of effort more than average to do very well in society. Other memories include seeing a colourful picture of "1995" on the tv and obviously didn't mean much.
  - sukilot 12y ago
    But note that memory is a highly creative act, neurologically. Memories are strongly influenced by physical and mental context of each instance the memory is recalled and recommitted to memory.
- mdcox 12y ago
  Just playing devil's advocate: that doesn't necessarily rule it out. You could argue that part of your memory is lost and so it doesn't effect your identity. Or more likely, when those memories were fresh they influenced behavior which created the new more relevant memories. That would explain personality and identity progression. I also kind of like the idea that people's identity becomes less malleable as they grow older, which would make sense if it's all based on "higher order"/more specific memories.
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
- ggreer 12y ago
  There is more than one kind of memory. You're talking about episodic memory. I think you have many memories from childhood that you aren't considering. I'm sure you still have many semantic memories (facts, concepts, etc) from before age 10. For example: if you're from the US, you still know the name of the first president of the United States. You probably have even more information from childhood stored in implicit memory. If you're like most people, you learned how to ride a bike, tie your shoes, understand language, and play catch. The memories of learning these things are separate from the memories needed to actually do them. Erasing all of a person's memories would truly destroy them. Once they formed new memories, they would be as different from their original self as an identical twin separated at birth.
  - zyxley 12y ago
    Hmm, good point.
  - gliese1337 12y ago
    In fairness, studies of adult twins separated at birth do tend to indicate that they tend to turn out surprisingly not that different from each other....
aurora72 12y ago
Dementia is caused by eating bread as staple food. David Perlmutter, MD shows in his book Grain Brain how gluten gradually wreaks havoc on brain cells. Because people born in between 1920 and 1970 didn't know this fact, many of them caught that horrible disease.
- CapitalistCartr 12y ago
  Extraordinary claims demand extraordinary evidence.
  - aurora72 12y ago
    I'm 43 and for the last and a half year I started to have difficulty in learning new subjects. And one day in last February after I finished lunch which included 2 slices of bread, I decided to solve that problem and began an intensive search on Internet. I read dozens of articles talkin about the bread's bad effects on brain and finally came across Perlmutter's videos on youtube. He was telling not to eat any bread even on breakfast! So the day after I ate no bread even on breakfast and guess what, starting from that day I started to learn new subjects again. I know, not eating any bread leaves a feeling of hunger, it's almost as if I haven't eaten any food. But thats only because I've been eating bread all my life every single day and so the body got very accustomed to it. But after 3 months I also realized that body doesn't need it to feel full. Friends in my vicinity get also disturbed by my saying bread is harmful to the body. But I am myself the evidence that bread is no good for the body.
    - sukilot 12y ago
      Great so I will enjoy bread, and when I turn 80, I will stop eating bread, and enjoy a miraculous recovery of brain function.
    - kazinator 12y ago
      Your personal anecdotal story does not constitute "extraordinary evidence". Your observations are not even gathered in such a way that they could constitute a piece of evidence at all.
ca98am79 12y ago
My grandfather forgot who I was and couldn't recognize me shortly before he died. We were very close and this still haunts me. Not the fact that he forgot, but how he acted towards me during that time. Since then, I have really questioned my own identity, I guess because I identified at least partly based on my relationship with him (and my family), and this made me question all of that.
- sukilot 12y ago
  Imagine if you lived in the 19th Century and you communicated by letter, and your grandfather suffered a severe injury and couldn't and read or write you letters anymore, and instead they were dictated via scribe who wasn't a fluent speaker of the language. That's what a degenerative brain disease is like.

17 points by benbreen 12y ago

Identity-as-memory isn't something I buy into much, because my own memory is flatly terrible already. My childhood up until 10 or so is mostly a blank, for example, with just some impressionist highlights of place names and locations popping up if I think real hard.

meric 12y ago
I can replay at least one memory from any year since I was 2. Some of them obviously impacted my identity, like the time I was 4 years old in kindergarten and I spent a little more effort, but not too much, at writing words a little prettier than usual, and managed to beat the rest of the class to win myself a toy car. At the time it was the proudest moment of my life. It taught me I only needed to spend the tiniest of effort more than average to do very well in society. Other memories include seeing a colourful picture of "1995" on the tv and obviously didn't mean much.
- sukilot 12y ago
  But note that memory is a highly creative act, neurologically. Memories are strongly influenced by physical and mental context of each instance the memory is recalled and recommitted to memory.
mdcox 12y ago
Just playing devil's advocate: that doesn't necessarily rule it out. You could argue that part of your memory is lost and so it doesn't effect your identity. Or more likely, when those memories were fresh they influenced behavior which created the new more relevant memories. That would explain personality and identity progression. I also kind of like the idea that people's identity becomes less malleable as they grow older, which would make sense if it's all based on "higher order"/more specific memories.
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
ggreer 12y ago
There is more than one kind of memory. You're talking about episodic memory. I think you have many memories from childhood that you aren't considering. I'm sure you still have many semantic memories (facts, concepts, etc) from before age 10. For example: if you're from the US, you still know the name of the first president of the United States. You probably have even more information from childhood stored in implicit memory. If you're like most people, you learned how to ride a bike, tie your shoes, understand language, and play catch. The memories of learning these things are separate from the memories needed to actually do them. Erasing all of a person's memories would truly destroy them. Once they formed new memories, they would be as different from their original self as an identical twin separated at birth.
- zyxley 12y ago
  Hmm, good point.
- gliese1337 12y ago
  In fairness, studies of adult twins separated at birth do tend to indicate that they tend to turn out surprisingly not that different from each other....

aurora72 12y ago

Dementia is caused by eating bread as staple food. David Perlmutter, MD shows in his book Grain Brain how gluten gradually wreaks havoc on brain cells. Because people born in between 1920 and 1970 didn't know this fact, many of them caught that horrible disease.

CapitalistCartr 12y ago
Extraordinary claims demand extraordinary evidence.
- aurora72 12y ago
  I'm 43 and for the last and a half year I started to have difficulty in learning new subjects. And one day in last February after I finished lunch which included 2 slices of bread, I decided to solve that problem and began an intensive search on Internet. I read dozens of articles talkin about the bread's bad effects on brain and finally came across Perlmutter's videos on youtube. He was telling not to eat any bread even on breakfast! So the day after I ate no bread even on breakfast and guess what, starting from that day I started to learn new subjects again. I know, not eating any bread leaves a feeling of hunger, it's almost as if I haven't eaten any food. But thats only because I've been eating bread all my life every single day and so the body got very accustomed to it. But after 3 months I also realized that body doesn't need it to feel full. Friends in my vicinity get also disturbed by my saying bread is harmful to the body. But I am myself the evidence that bread is no good for the body.
  - sukilot 12y ago
    Great so I will enjoy bread, and when I turn 80, I will stop eating bread, and enjoy a miraculous recovery of brain function.
  - kazinator 12y ago
    Your personal anecdotal story does not constitute "extraordinary evidence". Your observations are not even gathered in such a way that they could constitute a piece of evidence at all.

ca98am79 12y ago

My grandfather forgot who I was and couldn't recognize me shortly before he died. We were very close and this still haunts me. Not the fact that he forgot, but how he acted towards me during that time. Since then, I have really questioned my own identity, I guess because I identified at least partly based on my relationship with him (and my family), and this made me question all of that.

sukilot 12y ago
Imagine if you lived in the 19th Century and you communicated by letter, and your grandfather suffered a severe injury and couldn't and read or write you letters anymore, and instead they were dictated via scribe who wasn't a fluent speaker of the language. That's what a degenerative brain disease is like.