The Prefect of the Synesis denigrates reports of immortality on extra-solar colony planets. He begins by stating that cerebral data-storage capacity is finite, an issue addressed in other Andersonian works. But does a brain retain - or need to retain - every experience?
However, even if retention were infinite, a more fundamental problem would remain. The longer you lived, the less often you would be able to remember any given earlier experience. Thus, how long would you retain any sense of identity or continuity with your younger self? Surely eventually you would effectively become a different person which is what happens naturally in any case when some people die and others are born? Maybe nature has got this issue right in the first place?
In any case, I fully agree with Fenn's response to the Prefect's speech:
"'...I don't think I'd mind a run of several thousand years, myself. And after that - who knows?'" (p. 82)
Exactly. Not caution, courage.
9 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
My sympathies are for Fenn, but I'm extremely of it being possible to upload human personalities into databases.
I would settle for breaking the grip of the cybercosm in the Solar System.
Ad astra! Sean
Ad astra! Sean
We don't record everything we experience -- memory is self-editing.
Yes, that has been said here and I remembered it when I wrote this post. Was the theory that brains un- or sub-consciously remember every single experience just one of those assumptions that get made or was there some evidence for it? A University Psychology student told me that she was hypnotically regressed to a very early age like maybe her second birthday. She was asked, "What kind of shoes are you wearing?" She was reliving that moment. She answered childishly and impatiently, "They're not shoes. They're sandals!"
Kaor, Paul!
I can remember some things as far back as age 3, but I'm inclined to agree more with Stirling, memory is self-editing, we simply forget stuff.
Ad astra! Sean
Most experiences are repetitive. Hence remembering them all is a waste of storage capacity, and evolution tends to eliminate waste.
I think "universal memory storage" was just an assumption; there was some evidence for it, but more against.
But it seems that at least some people can be hypnotically regressed to details of childhood experiences.
Paul: yes, but childhood experiences are often formative -- they 'set' your personality.
In my "just sitting" meditation, early memories are coming up. I do not mean that I am remembering things that I have not remembered before, as in "regressions." I just mean that memories are coming up and linking together and that I have to "sit with" them. I find this unpleasant but unfortunately necessary.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
I agree, childhood experiences, good and bad, and memories of them, are major factors "setting" one's personality.
Ad astra! Sean
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