Random Thought: Memories

[kaasirpent]

This is relevant to the next short story I'm going to write (the plot of which came to me in a flash in the shower this morning and which I've spent all day taking notes on so I won't forget any of it).

Are you guilty of a crime you didn't commit if you actually have the memories of committing it? And the guilt of having done it? ...but you didn't?

Comments

[dorsai.livejournal.com]

No.

Although if I am going to suffer all the consequences of the crime, I'm going to want to have the pleasure of committing it.

[oxlahun.livejournal.com]

I think that was a Stargate (or Stargate: Atlantis) episode a couple weeks ago.

[kaasirpent]

Well, don't tell me about it. I don't want that to color whatever I might do. :)

[buckeyebrain.livejournal.com]

All I know about memories is that they light the corners of my mind.

[kaasirpent]

Are they misty and water-colored?

[buckeyebrain.livejournal.com]

Of course!

[kaasirpent]

Of course, you know I have to smite you, right?

And I have the worst version evar in my head: Carol Burnett as Eunice singing it. I can't even remember if she ever did actually sing it as Eunice, but if she didn't, she should have. It's funny stuff, in my head. :)

[liddle-oldman.livejournal.com]

No, you're not. Not that you don't have some perfectly real problems -- such as, how do you deal with memories that aren't yours.

Hmmm. If you make Confession for a sin you didn't actually commit -- is that a sin?

[kaasirpent]

I would assume lying is a venial, not a mortal, sin. :)

It also reminds me of a joke with the punchline, "Why, son, I don't think you're confessing! You're bragging!"

[agedwiz.livejournal.com]

I am just way to logical about this. You can't actually have the memories of doing something if you haven't done it.

The relationship between an act and the memory of an act does not seem to me to be transitive While it possible to not have done something you have memories of, it is also possible to have done something you do not have memories of. The event and the memory of an event are not equivalent to one another.

[kaasirpent]

In my story...you can have the memories without actually having been there. That's the whole point. Think "Total Recall," but without Arnold Schwartzenegger and with surrogates, not concocted from nothing.

In other words, the SURROGATE committed the crime, but the client remembers having done it. Including sight, sound, smell, taste, touch, and emotions.

[agedwiz.livejournal.com]

So what's the difference, other than qualitatively, from having "experienced" it that way and having seen it in the movies? In either case I wouldn't think it was equivalent to having experienced the actual event.

There is a theory, which I subscribe to, that who we are is not just the sum of our memories but the continuity, the context as it were, of our memories. Implanting memories from one person into another is not implanting them into the same context.

Are subjective experiences even transportable. How do you know that what I call "orange" is the same subjective experience as what you call "orange?"

[kaasirpent]

Believe it or not, I'm actually intending to cover that in the story, with almost that exact argument. It WILL require a bit of willing suspension of disbelief, of course.

[agedwiz.livejournal.com]

Excellent! Science Fiction always requires some suspension of disbelief. I look forward to reading it.

[kaasirpent]

I've writing notes all day and kept writing things like "Damn! How do I get around..." or "There is NO WAY a cop is going to believe..." or "Why would his wife not question...?" :)

<shakes fist at sky> Damn you, cursed logic!

[the-peej.livejournal.com]

Guilty of a crime I didn't committ?

Am I with the A-Team?

[kaasirpent]

I pity da fool!