If you lose your memories, are "you" dead? If a close relative/friend lose their memories, are they still "your relative/friend"? What the hell even is memory? How sentimental are you about memories?

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Submitted ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩ by ⁨DeathByBigSad@sh.itjust.works⁩ to ⁨[deleted]⁩

Every time I think of a memory, I’m like “Holy Shit… that was once ‘the present’”. What the hell?

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thespcicifcocean@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
Depression struggled with me for several years, I lost my ability to recall events which happened in my life. I had knowledge of my life’s events, but I wasn’t able to actually recall any of them. My son’s birth, my parents’ faces, etc. I felt dead inside and considered myself already dead, even if my mortal coil still churned on like some kind of pale imitation of life.

Anyway, one day, a traumatic event from my past resurfaced itself, and I was forced to confront it. After that, I slowly began regaining my memories which had been locked away. I made the choice to leave an abusive relationship, I reconnected with my loved ones from my earlier life. I still sometimes hear the whisper in my ear to end it all, but it’s not as persistent, not as loud. I can touch the memory of the trauma without feeling like a pit just opened within me.

I guess what I’m saying is, I was dead when I lost my memories, and when I got them back, I am alive again.

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- AnarchistArtificer@slrpnk.net ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  I hope this doesn’t sound trite, given that I’m just a random stranger on the internet, but I’m proud of you. Whilst I haven’t experienced depression in the way that you describe, I know how suffocating of an experience it is. It takes a tremendous amount of strength to endure that, especially when there are concrete life circumstances exacerbating things, as you describe. I am glad that you get to be alive again; you deserve it.
  
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memfree@piefed.social ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
Years ago a friend was in a horrible car wreck and came out mostly paralyzed and with no memory of the last few years. She didn’t remember her college friends and clung to her newly found relgious support group. She was never religious before. Her personality was completely different in numerous ways. She was effectively a different person and we no longer had anything in common. I don’t know what happened to her after that, but I mourned the loss of a friend.

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AnarchistArtificer@slrpnk.net ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
Story time!

I once bumped my head and got complete retrograde amnesia. I lost basically all of my episodic memory — that is, the memory of all my past experiences. My semantic memory appeared to be intact, which meant I retained my general knowledge of the world, such as who was prime minister. However, I basically lost all sense of my identity for a while. I didn’t even remember my name at first. Honestly, I don’t know if I can say that I ever truly remembered my name after the fact; I was fortunate that my memory did return to me gradually over the course of many days, weeks and months, but because I was told my name many times over that period, I never got that sense of remembering my name (I’m going to use the psuedonym Ann for the sake of this story)

Anyway, it was terrifying at the time, but now that I’m past the dread and trauma of it all, I can reflect on it as a cool experience. A few days after the accident, when I still had very little memory of who I was, I went to a Christmas party with many of my friends. However, it felt like being in a room full of strangers. It was awkward at first when I arrived; people didn’t know how to act towards me, and seemed uncertain of whether I was still the person they knew. That was a fear I shared. However, they seemed to ease up quite quickly, because it seemed that my personality was still authentic to the person they knew, even if I had to start from scratch in getting to know them. It’s a bizarre experience to reflect on, because now I have two sets of memories of meeting some of my dearest friends for the first time.

The most distressing part of it all was when I had gotten to know some of the people in my life, and had put together many of the fragments about who I was. I wasn’t sure that I was that person though. I felt like an intruder in someone else’s life, and I was terrified that I wasn’t the same person. All the wonderfully supportive people around me — how could I call them my friends when I wasn’t the same Ann that had earned their friendship. Apparently I still acted like her, but if I was her, why was there such a stark division between the two versions of Ann in my head: there was the Ann who existed before the accident, and the Ann that I was afterwards — I didn’t know whether I could consider them to be the same. If we were the same person, why was I talking about “her” rather than “me”?

Some months after the accident, a romantic relationship started between me and my best friend. We had been close friends for a few years prior, and he later confessed to me that a part of him was anxious that maybe we wouldn’t have been together if not for the bump to my head. I was surprised to hear this, because my friend was a super charismatic guy and this kind of anxiety seemed out of character for him. I understood where he was coming from though. I told him that it would be nice if I could tell him that his worry was a silly one, and that of course the amnesia wasn’t the only reason we were together. However, I didn’t actually know whether I was the same person. By then, it felt like the vast majority of my memories had returned, and no-one reported any discernible personality change to me. However, I had no way to know what significant memories, if any, were still missing to me. I didn’t think that his fears were true, but ultimately, I had no way of knowing, and I just had to live with that — and unfortunately, so did he.

One of the most disconcerting aspects of it all was how it felt to rediscover a memory. Have you ever had something remind you of a memory that was tucked away so deep in your mind that you didn’t even know you still had it until something brought it to the surface? A foggy fragment from childhood perhaps? Well that’s what regaining my memories felt like. In the early days, it was extremely vague bits that I remembered.

The first fragment was in the hospital waiting room, when I remembered that the friend who was with me was someone who reuses day old tea bags (they will take the mug they used the previous day and add a new teabag in with the old one, and pour in new hot water). Bear in mind that this was a person who I had initially thought had drugged and kidnapped me, because my first memory after the fall was feeling dizzy in a room, surrounded by complete strangers who claimed to be my friends. I was so overjoyed and surprised to have something come back to me that I loudly exclaimed this revelation in the half full hospital waiting room. The first thing I remembered of my best friend was snow, because of a road trip we’d taken together the previous year. The next fragment about him was barbeques (he enjoyed getting people together for one in the Summer), and the next bit was Lord of the Rings. At first, it felt like I was receiving loose, disparate fragments about a person, but over time, it began to feel more like I was filling in the final pieces in a mostly complete jigsaw. But then, that’s not far from how it feels to be close friends about a person, and to discover new facts about them, despite having known them for years.

Nowadays, when I have that feeling of a long forgotten memory returning to me, I’m unsure of whether it’s another fragment returning to me post amnesia, or if it’s just the regular kind of remembering stuff. It’s been around 6 years since the accident, so I have a heckton of new memories on top of that. A few years ago, I had that peculiar feeling of a memory returning, and I assumed that it was another amnesia thing returning, but then I realised that this particular rediscovered fragment happened after the accident, so this was just normal, run of the mill forgetting. That was jarring to realise that memory has always been fallible like this. Whilst yes, complete retrograde amnesia is a super rare experience, nothing had really changed.

Memories are always slippery things. I’ve read neuroscience research that suggests that when we remember a thing, we’re sort of rewriting the memory. It’s like if every time you checked out a book from the library, you weren’t allowed to return that specific book, but instead had to write out the book and return a new copy of the same book. Even if you try hard to be accurate, there’s inevitably going to be some errors in transcription (just look at transcription errors in manuscripts before the invention of the printing press). This means that the more you check out a particular book, the more likely it is to be changed. Trippy stuff, huh? That’s what I mean when I say that nothing had really changed. The amnesia made me feel unstable because I didn’t have my memories to rely on to build my sense of reality, but memories will always be fallible. We like to pretend they’re not, but everything we perceive is filtered through our own subjective filters, and then each time we reflect on our recollections, we pass those memories through the filter again. Even before my amnesia, my memories were not an accurate reflection of reality — that’s just a lie that makes us feel more at ease with the inherent instability of our own perceptions and experiences. That fact was brought to my attention in a rather abrupt way, but it’s one of the reasons I’m oddly glad for this absurd experience. It was certainly philosophically interesting.

I could talk forever on this topic, because it was a hell of a ride, but I’ll stop here, because this comment is long enough already. I’m open to answering any questions that y’all want to throw at me though, because God knows there aren’t many people with an experience like this. You don’t have to worry about being overly intrusive or about upsetting me, though be aware that I might not get round to answering your questions.

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- DeathByBigSad@sh.itjust.works ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  I have memories that I feel like is part of my identity… I’m so afraid of losing this memory, it’s a very painful one, but it’s part of my identity, it’s part of my personality, of who I am.
  
  So… I had a adverse childhood event when I was like maybe 6 or 7. Bascially it was 2 things. Supposedly, the events went like this: I was playing with some of my older brother’s toys, and like I didn’t even have the concept of personal space and personal belongings yet, my mother said the toys were meant for “us” didn’t get specific about it, I was a kid so I assumed it was shared… so anyways he got mad at me, and so he used zipties to tie me up and my parents weren’t home. The latter part is the only thing I’m sure of, I wasn’t sure what instigated it, but he was older so there was no excuse for him. Then the next thing (different day) that happened was thay I probably (I assume anyways, I don’t know for sure) that I was probably playing with 'his" toys again, so he chased me around the apartment unit, so I got scared I ran for the door, I ran away from home. Granmother was home, but didn’t do shit about it. The whole fucking scene was chaotic, its like the “Darkest Timeline” meme. So I was alone, for the first time in my life, truely alone. Idk what to do, I kinda just ran. I walked like half an hour to the nesrest bus stop, I got on a bus, and I was just trying to find my mother’s workplace. I got there, she wasn’t there, (because she was already looking for me, grandmother called her), so I was just fucking scared in the fucking store that she worked at, idk what to do. So after like idk 10 minutes, I just went home again, waiting for he bus in the opposite side.
  
  And if you wonder why nobody said anything about a seemling distressed and unaccopanied child, this was mainland China, nobody would step in to other people’s bussiness, bus driver probably though I was the kid of the adult in front of me anyways.
  
  Like I’m just fucking crying as I type this, its so traumatic but I can NEVER forget this. I can never forget the betrayal by my own kinship. I DO NOT WANNA FORGET THIS. As painful as it is, its important. I cannot trust this person who is supposed to be my protector in absence of my parents, “兄弟” (brotherhood) amirite? Where the fuck did his responsibilities go, huh? You were supposed to be a brother, not a fucking abuser.
  
  So anyways, when I got back to the bus stop I can see the cops looking around and I saw my mother. So there that was that.
  
  BUT WAIT, my mother later told me that if she hadn’t found me, I would probably get kidnapped, and she’d just pretend I never existed and would not fault my older brother (5 years older than me) for my disappearance.
  
  MY MOTHER SAID SHE DIDN’T CARE IF I WENT MISSING. WHAT THE FUCK?!?
  
  This was a suppressed memory for a while. I mean I knew it happened, but actively tried to not think about it but it always come back. The past happened. Its because it happens again and again and no matter how many roses I put on top of the remnants of the battle, there’s still blood, blood everywhere (“battle” being the incident, and “blood” meaning the emotional trauma).
  
  I can’t hide it. I don’t wanna hide it.
  
  I was a fucking anamoly, wasn’t even supposed to be born, yet somehow was born under the One Child Policy era, escaped from the grasp of the CCP, only to have a fucking abusive brother fucking up my life anyways.
  
  Honetly, I might’ve been reincarnated in Norway or something, had the CCP been able to find my mother and forced an abortion before I was born.
  
  The idea of “China” has been forever tainted in my mind. Its a graveyard of traumatic memories, I went to Baidu maps to look at where I was, and I just fucking cry.
  
  But I can’t forget it. I can’t afford to. I need to remember. I need to remember this betrayal. Someone of my own blood attacking me. What the fuck?!? I remind myself every so often. Never forget. Never.
  
  So this is why I asked the question. If I ever forget this, am I still me? Because I’d be vulnerable to betrayals. I do not want to be betrayed again.
  
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- FinishingDutch@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  That was a very interesting read!
  
  Did the accident also reset your personal preferences and dislikes? I.e change your favorite color, the way you dressed or foods you liked/disliked beforehand?
  
  A lot of preferences I have are often based on years of habits. I find it very difficult to break them because of that.
  
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EmilyIsTrans@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
I’m personally of the belief that you are largely the sum of your experiences, so yeah a total loss of memories would mean I am by some definition “dead”. That said, you could easily argue by that same logic that the “me” of a year, month, or even minute ago is also “dead”, since she lacks the experiences that makes me who I am now. I don’t even dispute that that much tbh.

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Sunsofold@lemmings.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
How deep do you want to go down the rabbit hole?

Do you trust your memory? Is how you remember it really how it happened? If someone else tells you it happened another way, is there any way to tell which one, or even if either, is correct?

If the memory happened long ago, how much of the body that was there then is still here now? Is any of it?

How much of your knowledge can be trusted? Do you still believe thunder is the sound of clouds bumping together, or some other old story from your childhood?

If you have a memory of a dream, or a hallucination, is it a memory of a real event? If you don’t remember that it was a hallucination, does it become real for you?

Step out of self-focus for a moment. What is a memory? The resonance between a perceived pattern and the stored pattern in the pattern-recognition system in your head. If the pattern isn’t perceived to trigger the memory, do you still remember? If the connection is malformed, and the smell of chocolate reminds you of the taste of cheese, what does chocolate taste like when it isn’t in your mouth? If the connection is fully broken, and you forget your name, who do you become? Who are you if, after living longer as this new self than as the old self, your brain heals and restores your memory of who you were?

Is the body that holds this memory you? Where are the edges of that object? Materials move constantly in and out of the visible bounds thought of as your flesh, through lung tissue, through skin, through disgestive tissues, eyes, teeth, all of it to varying degrees. Nothing is impermeable. When oxygen is absorbed by your skin, carried to a neuron that forms part of the pattern that tells you you had a chicken sandwich last night, is chemically bonded to another molecule and expelled again, when it is part of you? Is it part of the memory?

Research shows ones personality can be changed by as little as how long it has been since lunch. Are you a different person when you are hangry?

How much of you is your memory? If your memories go away, how much of you remains? Does any?

Is there even a you? The you you are now is clearly almost nothing like the you you were as a child. Are you still the same person? If yes, how? If no, when did the transition happen from one to the other? If information is part of what makes you you, are you even the same person you were when you started reading this comment?

If there is no real separation between you and the things that move in and out of you, is memory anything more than a cycle of reactions, matter and energy triggering chemical changes triggering chemosyntesis, chemotaxis, osmosis. Do even those things exist, or are they merely more patterns of information found to assist the pattern of matter that stores them in the function of preserving that information?

WHEEEEEEEEEEEEEE, PHILOSOPHY RABBIT HOLE!

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- DeathByBigSad@sh.itjust.works ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  Average Exurb1a Video lmao
  
  I recommend this one as a start
  
  Or do you wany some Unlimited Rice Pudding? (Time Machine Hypothetical)
  
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solrize@lemmy.ml ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
People with amnesia are usually considered still alive, I expect.

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- Kolanaki@pawb.social ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  Maybe they just forgot they were dead. 🤷‍♂️
  
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- otter@lemmy.ca ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  This sounds more like a ship of Theseus style question
  
  Is the person with amnesia still the same “person”. I assume the question would also need to enforce the type/extent of the amnesia
  
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Windex007@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
I had west Nile virus and it got into my brain and it was a mess.

Anyhow, during that years long Rollercoaster of a recovery, there was a period of apparently a week where I don’t remember at all.

Like, woke up in a hospital I’d never seen before. Wandered out to have strangers greet me as if they knew me… had to literally ask the question “where am I? How long have I been here?”

Anyways, the experience made it difficult to escape considering questions similar to yours. Who was that guy who was apparently walking around doing stuff and talking to people that week in MY body?

Short answer: always me. People have such little understanding of how at the mercy of chemicals and electrical impulses they are. You’re you when it’s all working, you’re still you when it’s not. Trying to tie something as foundational as identity to something as ephemeral as memory isn’t a good idea, unless you want identity to be something that changes second to second.

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- AnarchistArtificer@slrpnk.net ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  Oh man, I relate to this. I have a somewhat similar experience which I have recounted in a long comment elsewhere in this thread that you may be interested in checking out.
  
  My conclusion is much the same as your own. In some ways, I think I had to believe that I was the same person, because otherwise, I’d be living out the rest of my life feeling like an imposter who had stolen another person’s life. I imagine it might’ve been harder to believe that I’m still me if I had experienced personality changes as people who experience head trauma sometimes do.
  
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  - Windex007@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    Oh wowza, good on you for sharing that! Super interesting and I feel a bunch of what you said right to the bottom of my soul.
    
    I really appreciate the share as well because it’s PRETTY rare to get to talk to someone with an inkling of such a bizarre life event, how it changes you, and how you grapple with (and hopefully conclude in some way on) uncomfortable questions about the nature of life and identity.
    
    I’d always felt comfortable with where I landed on this… but I’m finding myself surprised by the relief that someone else resolved these questions in the same way I have. I didn’t think I needed… I dunno, validation? Validation that my conclusions were reasonable? Maybe I just never thought I’d get the opportunity to exchange with someone who I trusted actually understood. Not sure, either way, I feel validated and I never thought there would be a mechanism for me to feel that about this topic, and it’s a welcome surprise and I appreciate it, so thank you.
    
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DagwoodIII@piefed.social ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
The Apple TV show “Severance” is mind fucking presented as entertainment.

It imagines a process whereby you can be made to forget all your personal history. Employers use it so they can have workers who don’t care about anything except the company and their jobs. At the end of the day the ’original you’ comes back for 16 hours.

I can think of some other science fiction that deals with the same idea.

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- AnarchistArtificer@slrpnk.net ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  I recently played Signalis which explored these themes in an awesome manner. (It’s a survival horror game, but speaking as someone who isn’t great with horror, it wasn’t too bad on that front.)
  
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- pturn1@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  Can you give examples of other sci-fi shows/books along this line? I’m loving Severance at the moment (still on season 1)
  
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  - DagwoodIII@piefed.social ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    First chapter of “Creatures of Light And Darkness.” Roger Zelazny. A god controls a gladiator’s mind and removes all memories of his past.
    
    TV show ‘The Prisoner.’ Psychoman episode. The bad guys convince a man he is someone else, then tell him he needs to pretend to be the man he was.
    
    “Eternal Sunshine Of the Spotless Mind” Never seen it myself, but the plot involves getting memory wipes to get over bad relationships.
    
    “We Can Remember It For You Wholesale” by Philip K. Dick. Basis of the movie ‘Total Recall.’
    
    “The Forever War.” Joe Haldeman. In order to train soldiers quickly, the troops are dropped into tanks where they ‘live’ other lives. You are a Zulu warrior fighting with spears, or a Hessian cavalryman, or a Burmese partisan.
    
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Horsecook@sh.itjust.works ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
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- Willy@sh.itjust.works ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  Ima tell it to delude me a lil better tomorrow.
  
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  - unconsequential@slrpnk.net ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    You can actually do this which is the wild part about memory and cognition. It’s basically what a lot of therapy practices are.
    
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- DeathByBigSad@sh.itjust.works ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  My name is Hououin Kyouma, Maddo Scientisuto.
  
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- femmylemmy@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  If I am a delusion, who is being deluded?
  
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JackbyDev@programming.dev ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
Well, you’d be interested to know that people with amnesia and cannot form new memories still become accustomed to people are are friendly around them despite not knowing who they are or why they feel friendly. It’s in a different part of the brain. Also some forms of muscle memory are literally stored in your muscles.

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jeena@piefed.jeena.net ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
Everybody loses their memories all the time.

You are not your memories, it’s not your memories which define you.

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- 14th_cylon@lemmy.zip ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  
  it’s not your memories which define you
  
  it is your behaviour what defines you and if you lose the memories, at will affect the behaviour, so i am inclined to say yes, you are different person then.
  
  it is similar to when you lose a loved one to a cult, be it maga or some religious cult. they are no longer the same person. you want to get back the person they were before, but right now, even if you kidnap them and lock them in your basement, they are not the same person.
  
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- hypnicjerk@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  our memories are not our values, our principles, our habits, our quirks, our capacity for positive experience or engaging interaction.
  
  but they’re pretty closely tied into all of them. i’m not an amnesiologist but i imagine it depends on the specific case how much is ‘lost’ in a given case of amnesia and what’s able to be recovered.
  
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- DeathByBigSad@sh.itjust.works ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  Memories do define me tho.
  
  I need the memories of all the betrayals, by individuals, and organizations, and governments, otherwise I’d get betrayed again. Memories are important to know who to trust.
  
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  - Willy@sh.itjust.works ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    issues
    
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scarabic@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
My point of view is that the entire “you” concept needs to be constructed in the first place because it isn’t a self-evident, easily-defined thing. There are centuries of philosophy on this topic, none of it conclusive. Ergo: it’s kind of your call if you are even “you” when you wake up each morning, or just a fresh iteration with your memories that believes it’s “you.” Having hit my 50s I’m quite confident that the person in all my pictures from college is not “me” in any meaningful way.

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- shalafi@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  Same age, and no, I don’t recognize old pics of me.
  
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FRYD@sh.itjust.works ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
I’m an amnesiac and one of the first things I learned is that memories don’t really matter. The past is over, what matters is what you choose to do and not what you did. Obviously people do terrible and sometimes unforgivable things. I can sympathize with people who can’t let stuff go, but I personally just can’t be bothered by it anymore though. I have and will offer support to even my abusers.

To me, a person is how they act and what they want in the present. Lived experience affects everything a person does, the parts of a person’s past that are relevant reveal themselves in the present through how a person is.

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e0qdk@reddthat.com ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
This was my grandfather’s axe; the head’s been replaced twice and the handle three times since he owned it.

It’s the same pizza we had last week. / Eww! Shouldn’t you have gotten rid of it by now? / No – I mean, it’s just got the same toppings! We ordered it last night!

If you could swap memories with another person, which body is “you”? Well, that depends on what the meaning of the word is is… Mr. President.

An annoying amount of philosophy “problems” are really just equivocation about different kinds of equivalence.

These ramblings brought to you from my aging – though not yet lost – memories of long hours of procrastination during my sophomore year in college…

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Regna@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
I have (had) two relatives succumb to dementia (Alzheimers) before they passed.

In one case, that person reverted back to the memories which were at the time of my early childhood. We reconnected in a way that shed off the later traumas for both of us, and while I still could not love that person, I appreciated them for who they were (or thought they were) at that time. And I could grieve their passing.

The other person was pretty much dead to everyone anyways, so yeah, once their memories were gone, they were already dead to us.

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Perspectivist@feddit.uk ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
I believe that the entire concept of “self” is just an illusion. There is no “you” back there behind your face looking out into the world. There’s just consciousness - the fact of experience and its content. The sense of self is just an appereance in consciousness. Not something that’s outside or separate of it.

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- whalebiologist@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  it’s a mark of existence in buddhism, your belief is shared by many.
  
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theneverfox@pawb.social ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
It depends on how you define yourself

I am me. Not my memories, not my body, not my knowledge, not even my mind

At the very center of my being, there’s a driving spark. My most fundamental self. It’s the desire for understanding in a very specific flavor, and the form of it is reaching out to touch something with your fingertips. It’s like a fractal that has endless meaning the closer you look at it, it contains many understandings of the truth of the nature of things and how things fit together. And within those truths is everything that I am

That’s me. I am not the animal I inhabit, I act through the animal. I freely share my understandings with the animal, and so the animal can see clearly and know truth to find new understandings in all things.

One day the animal will die, and everything but the understandings will be burnt away, because the animal is afraid of being left behind.

I’ll have understandings of people, but memories are a physical thing. I’ll have understandings of how the world works, but knowledge is in my mind. I’ll have understandings of beauty and emotion and the full spectrum of the human experience, but my nature is not human

So it all depends, who are you? Are you a person who acts a certain way? Are you your relationship with others? Are you your memories, skills, and experiences? Are you your physical body?

Have you awakened your spark? Have you looked deep inside yourself to learn from it and add to it? Is it you, or is it something that whispers to you? Are you the combination of the spark and the animal?

Or do you walk another path? Are you your blood? Your legacy? Will you die when your name is last spoken? Will you live on for the rest of time through the ripples you made on the world?

It’s a question you have to decide for yourself. I think maybe the most important question

But that doesn’t have the truth of understandings, so I guess it’s just my opinion

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unconsequential@slrpnk.net ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

If you lose your memories, are “you” dead?

No, because other people hold many of those memories for you. And while memories and conditioning play a role in personality they aren’t the end all on who we are. We are still us, even if a bit “different” from before.

If a close relative/friend lose their memories, are they still “your relative/friend”?

Absafuckinglootly, because I carry that friendship and _I _ owe that loyalty. Just because they can’t remember us, I don’t get to abandon them. Loyalty. People need to learn it.

What the hell even is memory? How sentimental are you about memories?

Memory to me is often jarring and annoying. I suffer from unrequested flashbacks frequently.

But, memory is kind of amazing because you can have a shared memory with someone and it be completely different from their experience. Memory is so malleable, and often a coping mechanism, both natural and taught, for dealing with traumas is literally rewriting your memory to something you can live with. Shaving off the pieces you can’t or making them more “dull”.

I had night terrors after a bad accident until my brain literally rewrote the visuals of some of it and while I could verbalize it to you, I couldn’t “relive” that piece anymore which was a huge physical and emotional relief when it finally happened. And I didn’t do it, my brain did it on its own. Memory is weird.

Memory is often deceitful anyway, so relying on it as heavily as we do is actually kind of odd. Our perceived memory is stronger than the real event. We catalog all kinds of other information on top of what is actually the “present”. Think about when you wake up and commit a dream to memory. The retelling of the dream to yourself is actually stronger than the dream itself. Our “story” is the memory not the “present”.

Neat question. I could ramble on this topic for a long time…

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HubertManne@piefed.social ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
Sorta. Its why you sorta lose a person to demetia. Even with retrograde amnesia I have heard a persons personality. Likes, dislikes, etc. Do not change. So there is something a bit more to a person.

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HubertManne@piefed.social ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago
Im. Well. Old. I mean not super old but I have passed a half century. I have come to the realization that I have a been a different person throughout my life and I can’t say for sure if I even know past versions of me with clarity. I feel I need to point out that I am an unusually static person. Like while I physically change people will comment how Im kinda the same. Which kinda bowls me over when I think about who I was. When I was in gradeschool I could barely talk to other kids. In high school my look changed as I started doing what I decided to do in terms of dress and such and while I was not talkative with people I did not know was very talkative with those who I did but I would interact with other people and did drama and model un. In college I did a bit more drama and got back into choral things and mock trial. In the work world I give presentations and training seminars and between jobs I substitute taught. I got married and I mean I change a lot. But I also didn’t. There is some semblance of self and way of doing things that im pretty sure would be there even if my memory were wiped. I would over think things and gravitate to certain subjects and I bet my likes and dislikes would gravitate in the same direction. Without memories though I would not know my past selves. It makes me sorta get the buddhist thing about what comes forward in rebirth. Its something but its hard to say its anything tangible but it just may well be like the periods in the lives we live. We are the same but we are not the same.

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Paragone@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago
I’m a brain-injury survivor, so this question is something I’ve had to face.

Now, after my 3rd-wave of braindamage ( this one self-inflicted, as I tried to break will-to-live from my brain, with a cudgel, so that murdering my life could happen. Failed. it’s fine: it was just part of my hellish growing-up process, these past 6-ish decades ) I’ve BAD memory problems.

Here’s the key:

When you come-to in a dream, without your normal-life’s memories, are you still you??

Elegant, isn’t it?

Completely bypasses most of the dead-ends of the question…

“yes I’m still me, even without my memories, because…”

because why?

I’ve learned that it isn’t one’s memories that make one oneself:

… rather, it is one’s instincts which do.

IF anybody puts drugs into my body-life to alter my personality, and they alter my instincts, THEN they have obliterated the someone that had been inhabiting this-life, & induced a drugged-replacement for the someone who inhabited it, before.

IF any experience alters the instincts of the personality who inhabits this-life, THEN that experience has replaced the less-experienced someone with a ( somewhat? ) different more-experienced someone.

Even without memories, so long as my instincts are clean ( unadulterated ), & MINE, then “I” am existing.

So, even in dreams, when I appear/come-to suddenly in some random context, with no memory of any other life, my instincts make me me, see?

The simple fact that I still work to face-into karma, that I still work to challenge abuse, that I still work to make things right, that I’m still careful with meanings & words, relentlessly,

THAT is what makes “me” me.

It took decades of brain-injury to notice the fact that normal dreams oft have me not remember anything from my normal life…

But once noticed, then anybody who has such dreams can understand the principle/truth of it.

_ /\ _

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YesButActuallyMaybe@lemmy.ca ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
Theseus, that you?

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- DeathByBigSad@sh.itjust.works ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  Well yes, but actually no.
  
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  - xavier666@lemmy.umucat.day ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    Hah! A classic Theseus joke
    
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Jankatarch@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
Imagine if the world was created last thursday but with your and everyone else’s memories already filled just like current so nobody noticed.

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- DeathByBigSad@sh.itjust.works ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  OR IS IT?
  
  vsauce intensifies
  
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YaBoyMax@programming.dev ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
I’d suggest reading up on John Locke’s “continuity of consciousness” theory of self. It’s essentially what you’re describing here: he holds that the “self” over time is a construct of the continuity of one’s consciousness through memory. This has some interesting implications: for instance, if someone becomes blackout drunk and has no recollection of the experience, can it be said that that experience belongs to the same person after the fact? Also, as another commenter pointed out this has significant implications in the case of memory loss, especially for someone suffering from dementia.

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CheesyFox@lemmy.sdf.org ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
whether a bunch of images are separate, or are they a part of a movie is a matter of whether you can spot images being switched

Same goes for personality and “sameness” of pourself.

After all, we remember and forget all the time, our bodies physically change. I’d dare to suggest that most people still consider you to be you even if you’d lose a limb in some kind of tragic circumstances. Same goes for memories.

Continuity of existence is a charade that we’re willingly playing, bc it’s easier that way.

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SlartyBartFast@sh.itjust.works ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
Memento Mori?

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un_aristocrate@jlai.lu ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
You might want to read Mickey 7 by Edward Ashton

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- DagwoodIII@piefed.social ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  I didn’t like the book or the movie.
  
  It’s a great idea, but imho it wasn’t used very well.
  
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