How much of me is in my memory?

[dimreepr]

A thought experiment:

Suppose I experience the day, the ups and downs, the same as anyone else, held in my ram memory; and I am still me, held in my operating system. 

But every day, when I wake up I forgot what I did yesterday.

I think I would lose an important part of me, so my question is, what part and how important is it?

[swansont]

You should watch that documentary, 50 First Dates 

[wtf]

10 hours ago, dimreepr said:

A thought experiment:

Suppose I experience the day, the ups and downs, the same as anyone else, held in my ram memory; and I am still me, held in my operating system. 

But every day, when I wake up I forgot what I did yesterday.

I think I would lose an important part of me, so my question is, what part and how important is it?

And the converse question. The Flying Spaghetti Monster created you five minutes ago, with all your memories as they are. Does it matter that you've never had the experiences you thought you had, as long as you have the memories?

[Genady]

6 minutes ago, wtf said:

And the converse question. The Flying Spaghetti Monster created you five minutes ago, with all your memories as they are. Does it matter that you've never had the experiences you thought you had, as long as you have the memories?

I think it does. It will be very confusing to discover inconsistencies between your memories and the world.

[TheVat]

Anything's better than being a Boltzmann Brain.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boltzmann_brain

 

[TheVat]

Hey, I'm still here!  Maybe I'm not a Boltzmann brain.  Man, I was really worried for a while there.  No, wait, that's not quite right.  I could still be a fresh Boltzmann brain and I only think that I've been around for a while due to bogus memories of having a prior existence that spans many years.  

All jesting aside, there's a related philosophic thought experiment called The Swampman, introduced by Donald Davidson in the eighties.  From his book....

 

Suppose lightning strikes a dead tree in a swamp; I [Davidson] am standing nearby. My body is reduced to its elements, while entirely by coincidence (and out of different molecules) the tree is turned into my physical replica. My replica, The Swampman, moves exactly as I did; according to its nature it departs the swamp, encounters and seems to recognize my friends, and appears to return their greetings in English. It moves into my house and seems to write articles on radical interpretation. No one can tell the difference. But there is a difference. My replica can't recognize my friends; it can't recognize anything, since it never cognized anything in the first place. It can't know my friends' names (though of course it seems to), it can't remember my house. It can't mean what I do by the word 'house', for example, since the sound 'house' it makes was not learned in a context that would give it the right meaning—or any meaning at all. Indeed, I don't see how my replica can be said to mean anything by the sounds it makes, nor to have any thoughts.

— Donald Davidson, Knowing One's Own Mind

 

  

[MigL]

Moreso for some than others.
Some of us are legends in our own minds.

[joigus]

On 5/8/2022 at 1:02 PM, dimreepr said:

I think I would lose an important part of me, so my question is, what part and how important is it?

Does 'me' have parts?