Forget the bad Times?

So now the mad scientists have found ways to remove our memories - forever.

They have discovered that while there are millions of cells in the brain, only a handful are linked to 'fear' or 'threat' memories.

Experts at the University of Toronto were able to pinpoint these cells and delete them - in MICE.
The researchers believe they can now wipe away single, specific memories, while leaving others intact.

Some say there could be ethical hurdles in this treatment in humans, because they believe that removing memories deletes a vital part of a person's identity.

Personally, I believe we learn from experiences and our mistakes. If they removed these, what is to stop us making the same mistakes again?

What do you think?

Re: Forget the bad Times?

You are your memories.

So this is an important issue.

Any human is just an empty vase until programmed and until experience begins to load memories into the brain. If you could control the memories then you could create a human being, that is, to take an empty human (baby) and implant it with memories. That's a dangerous thing.

It means the elite can and will eventually create an entire human race with artificial memories and programmed tendencies so they can be used as slaves to do nothing but work, and accept that role willingly and wholeheartedly as if there were no other way of life.

.
.
.

There is a school of thought that suggests this has already happened !

Re: Forget the bad Times?

Yes, perhaps at present the removal process destroys the memories, but if they can remove them without damaging them, they could in theory, transplant them into another brain.

Re: Forget the bad Times?

That's Ok, provided the pay is good.

Re: Forget the bad Times?

Thankfully, when you employ someone to remove a virus on your computer, you get the machine back working, but, you always get the sense that something is not as it was, you just can't put your finger on it., that is life.

Re: Forget the bad Times?

I think it is a dreadful idea Mups! We are influenced by our experiences in life, so if you remove all the bad ones, I think it will make us more vulnerable to new bad experiences. Surely we would lose the ability to avoid dangers?
Once the medical research is allowed to start these practices, they will discover that they can turn humans into flesh and blood robots.
I am just eternally grateful that won't still be here to see it!

I don't often agree with Realists theories, but I do wonder why the medical profession cannot accept that we all deal with traumas differently.... that is what makes us the people we are...... unless they are trying to make us all the same

Re: Forget the bad Times?

Imagine if someone has such a terrifying memory that it is stopping them functioning normally in everyday life. Perhaps such terrors haunt them continually. Maybe something like seeing a parent or child murdered, or be forced to kill someone themself, maybe even raped, abused, . . or anything that they can't recover from.
Possibly this removal process could be used for that sort of purpose, I don't know?

However, as already suggested, it is also wide open to abuse and could easily be used to manipulate humans or animals one day. They've removed the memories of mice already.

As you say Twink, we might become little more than flesh and blood robots one day.

Re: Forget the bad Times?

This could be used very usefully in some people, we have men and women coming back from war zones with debilitating ptsd, we have people with crippling anxiety can't function after being raped or witnessing a violent death.

Ok their experiences made them but can we really say they have to go through life like that if there is something could help them ?

Re: Forget the bad Times?

Would you really trust anyone to rummage about in your brain?

I most certainly would not. It is not that long since trepanning and frontal lobotomies were supposed to be the cure for all mental ills - does anyone still believe that?

Besides which - Mother Nature has her own way of dealing with really traumatic memories - temporary amnesia until the person is sufficiently able to deal with them. I would rely on nature rather than experimental science every time and, as Mups said earlier, we learn from our memories.

Re: Forget the bad Times?

I'd trust them to remove a tumour so I'd trust them to do what was needed if this was used in a therapeutic manner.