AnarchistArtificer
@AnarchistArtificer@slrpnk.net
- Comment on 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? 1 day 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.
- Comment on 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? 1 day 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.)
- Comment on 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? 1 day 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.
- Comment on 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? 1 day 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.
- Comment on Why are fruits and berries healthy, even though they are mostly just sugar? 2 days ago:
People have spoken a lot about how digestible the sugars are, but in terms of overall healthiness, the fibre is an important component even beyond its impact on sugar absorption. Many people do not get enough fibre in their diets.
- Comment on 2 days ago:
It does look pretty comfortable
- Comment on 2 days ago:
Gosh, that’s… a lot.
“When I was an alcoholic” I hope that the “was” in your comment means that you’re in a better place now. I also hope your best friend is still your friend and/or that he didn’t end up ruining his life (or that he was able to rebuild a half decent life from the wreckage of his mistakes)
- Comment on Meh, I'm more of an Aragorn fan... 2 days ago:
Did you show this image to your girlfriend and ask her if she got the joke, only for her to give you this oblique reply? If so, that’s hilarious
- Comment on Winner winner! 4 days ago:
Same. At least we won one game today.
- Comment on Tesla Is Sued by Family Who Says Faulty Doors Led to Daughter’s Death 6 days ago:
A sad testament to the fact that safety regulations are written in blood. Even before tragedies like this occurred, there were people saying that this would be inevitable with how difficult it is to access the manual door releases.
It’s fucking disgraceful that this happened
- Comment on Being a dude sucks 1 week ago:
This is just anecdata, but something that I find really funny is that of all the lesbian couples in which there appears to be a butch and a femme, people seem to expect that the more “masculine” of the two will be the one to dispatch spiders and other scary critters, but it always seems to be the more feminine one.
This is a sample size of 6 couples, so it’s obviously not representative, but I find it funny nonetheless
- Comment on Ah yes that's my bad 1 week ago:
Oh damn, you’re the moth person. I am bad at names, so I didn’t remember. I really appreciated that silly period — I have a friend who likes moths, and they were delighted at all the moth memes I was sending them.
- Comment on And the pre-peeled containers for 4x the price are a ripoff 1 week ago:
I saw a friend do this and I was so impressed. Although she didn’t beat the slices.
Tangentially, the bowl of pomegranate seeds was for snacking on during a movie. I found it hilarious because it felt like it was middle class popcorn (I grew up super poor, and pomegranate was one of the many foods I didn’t try until university)
- Comment on Is Star Trek Discovery that bad? 1 week ago:
I’ve been doing a complete rewatch of Deep Space 9, and it really underscored why I didn’t enjoy Discovery and Picard. My favourite parts of DS9 are the character driven moments, whether they’re big and dramatic, or lightweight and silly. I like that the show has enough space for that. The show has more Plot than previous Star Trek, but that Plot still serves the characters. Discovery is not nearly as bad as Picard on this front, but I still found myself wishing for more opportunity to get to know the characters.
- Comment on New "symbolic image compressor" posted in r/computerscience turns out to be AI hallucinated nonsense 1 week ago:
Wow, that’s super impressive. The compression is so efficient that it’s like I can see the original image in my head. Truly, we are living in the future.
- Comment on Shakes pear 1 week ago:
My favourite example of it is Ben Grosser’s edit of Andreeson Horowitz’s “Techno-optimist Manifesto”. It takes something gross and makes something beautiful out of it, by distilling Horowitz’s masturbatory prose into something more honest. It’s a long document, but it’s a refreshingly speedy read, what with entire pages being blacked out.
- Comment on Microsoft blocks Israel’s use of its technology in mass surveillance of Palestinians 1 week ago:
Mass surveillance was definitely okay with them though, as long as they could hide behind flimsy plausible deniability; I remember one of the early 972mag pieces about this that called bullshit on their claim that they have no knowledge that they are supporting mass surveillance — if military/intelligence services come to you and say “hey, we need servers to store terabytes of audio files”, then it’s bloody obvious what the point
- Comment on UK is ‘worst country in Europe’ for drug prices, says Mounjaro maker 2 weeks ago:
I’ve heard it’s gotten worse since Brexit
- Comment on Who the fuck needs an x axis anyway 2 weeks ago:
Sure, it’s possible, but I’m not sure there’s data to support the idea of increasing rates of autism. The increase in diagnosis rates is way too strong of a confounder
- Comment on More than 150 lawyers and refugee NGOs report being ‘pressured into silence’ by far-right protesters 2 weeks ago:
This double standard is why Palestine Action being proscribed was such a galling move
- Comment on 2025 Ig Physics Nobel Prize goes to perfect pasta sauce 2 weeks ago:
You might enjoy the work of Kenji López-Alt, from Serious Eats. He’s not a scientist, but the manner in which he investigates and iterates when solving cooking problems is super scientific. I fucking loved his investigation into Yorkshire puddings , because it validated some of my own findings when investigating the best methods. For example, my tests led me to use a hydration level of 250% (so for every 100g of flour, use 250g of liquids (a combination of eggs and water/milk). López-Alt found that 266% worked best, and I was pretty chuffed at someone I respect so much arriving at such a similar answer to my own.
He also wrote a book, titled The Food Lab: Better Home Cooking Through Science . It’s one of the few books that I’ve actually bought. Lots of the good stuff can be found on the Serious Eats website though.
- Comment on The 2025 Ig Nobel Prize Winners 2 weeks ago:
I would unironically rather win an Ig Nobel prize than a Nobel prize. Granted, it’s easy to say this as I’m exceedingly unlikely to win either, but a girl can dream.
- Comment on Can't argue that. 2 weeks ago:
My pragmatic understanding of this as someone who is a life scientist (but not a neuroscientist) is that neuroplasticity itself is sort of like a skill, and if you don’t use it, you lose it. That is to say that you needn’t rush to cram in new knowledge, but you should continue to indulge your hunger for knowledge. If you keep expanding your horizons and ways of thinking, you’ll maintain a high level of neuroplasticity as you age
- Comment on Mark Zuckererg Demos New Facebook AI And It Couldn’t Have Gone Worse 2 weeks ago:
I feel like I’m going to end up overusing the joke of blaming the WiFi for increasingly absurd things, because this is hilarious
- Comment on They just couldn't say the word 3 weeks ago:
I love it when I stumble across incredibly human moments like this in textbooks in the wild. It really brightens my day because it reminds me that a person (or more usually, people) wrote this hefty tome.
- Comment on same as it ever was 3 weeks ago:
I’m not on Bluesky, so I’m not going to follow this person. However, I really appreciate how considerate it is to leave this link for people who would like to. Thank you; this is the kind of action that communities are built on.
- Comment on Anon asks out a friend 3 weeks ago:
I’m also glad you didn’t fall down the incel hole, because then it’s likely that we wouldn’t have you here with us
- Comment on found an anti-vax book at my library 4 weeks ago:
Anti-vaxxers often do a lot of reading, ime. The stuff they read is often bullshit written by scammers or other people who drank the Kool-aid, but I think the “research” they do is a big part of the anti-vaxx culture. My view is that many who are drawn into conspiracy theories end up there due to a diminished sense of agency, and that the “research” is key to them feeling more in control — it gives them a false sense of understanding in which they can take all their bad feelings about how the world is, and construct a worldview in which they feel more oriented.
It reminds me a lot of the line “antisemitism is the socialism of fools”, though I feel like this is more like “anti-vax is the antiauthoritarianism of fools”. It’s frustrating because in some ways, they’re so close to understanding the ways in which the world is super fucked up, but they snatch defeat from the jaws of victory and hide in a fortress of ignorance instead.
- Comment on Fishnet stockings 5 weeks ago:
Those are more like whalenet tights. Fishnets have smaller holes
- Comment on What strategy would you use to estimate the number of hazelnuts 5 weeks ago:
I got it laughably wrong
