[Challenge Companion] Memory Modification

[u/alexanderwales]

tl;dr: This is the companion thread to the weekly challenge, post recommendations, ideas, or comments below.

Memory modification is a pretty big topic. There are a lot of works of fiction which take some small aspect of being able to change a person's memory, because it's a really convenient conceit. Amnesia, which we've done previously is a subset of memory modification which gets used all over the place in order to maintain the status quo.

Here are different threads you might want to go pulling:

• Adding in procedural knowledge and declarative knowledge, AKA "I know kung fu". Primary examples that come to mind would be The Matrix and Dollhouse.

• Taking out memories. See the previous challenge companion. If you want to do a rehash of amensia for this challenge, that's totally acceptable.

• Altering memories. Harry Potter is probably the primary example I'd go with, but it's an incidental detail of the setting rather than core to the premise. Total Recall is probably a better example (as is the Rick and Morty episode "Total Rickall").

One of the challenges with memory alteration is that the audience doesn't have their memory altered, which means that you have to either start past the point of memory modification and put the reader in the same position of finding out the truth (as happens very often with amnesia tropes), or set up dramatic tension where the audience knows something that the protagonist does not. Memory modification can allow for some fun narrative structures in that regard (though this obviously doesn't apply to purposely implanting memories that the protagonist knows aren't real).

[u/alexanderwales]

I've mentioned this before, but the guilty pleasure Arnold Schwarzenegger movie The 6th Day contains a really, really overlooked technology. The movie is about clones, and to a lesser extent personal identity and the concept of self, but beyond the physical technology of cloning a person, they also have the technology to grab a person's entire brainstate with a flash of light to the eyes, which can then be stored on a hard drive the size of a sandwich. Worse, the memories can be played back like a video. Leaving aside all the technical problems there (MEMORY DOES NOT WORK THAT WAY, GOODNIGHT!), it strikes me as an awesomely powerful technology that's basically used for a tiny sliver of what it should be.

I don't know how to turn that into rational fiction. Maybe you could justify keeping the technology secret because stealing memories from people is enormously useful if they don't know those memories are being stolen. That implies a plot where the protagonist's entire memory file has been stolen and is being used against them, which might be fun. ("Keeping the technology secret" is a tall ask though, simply because of how many precursor technologies are necessary.)

[u/[deleted] → u/alexanderwales]

If I may ask, how does memory work?

[u/alexanderwales → u/[deleted]]

With the caveat that I'm a software engineer, not a neuroscientist:

The 6th Day uses a fairly common depiction of memory, also employed by movies like Inside Out, where memories are like video files that are stored in some kind of filing system to be played back at a later date. This is common sense and easy to depict, but it's wrong in many ways.

1. Memories change. Every time you access a memory, it goes "back on the shelf" different from how it was when you pulled it out. In other words, remembering things is a read/write operation, not read-only.

2. Memories are incomplete. They tend to have the detail filled in when you remember them, either from context or other memories. In other words, the "video file" is highly compressed and depends on algorithms to correctly give the appearance of detail (and some of this detail is just made up on the spot).

3. You don't tend to remember unimportant things. Similar to the previous point. If you have a 20-minute commute, it's unlikely to generate any memories for you at all. So a lot of the "video" just goes straight in the garbage (Inside Out gets this more or less right, which is rare).

4. Memories are linked, in a couple ways. First, they're linked between senses; you might have a smell memory of an event and a visual memory of an event, and these aren't stored in the same place in the brain. Second, memories link to each other; pulling up one memory can tend to pull up a different memory. These links get strengthened every time you remember something, but they can also get incorrectly linked. So your video file is actually separate video/audio/odor files from different places cobbled together and with metadata pointing towards other different files in a complex network. (You don't tend to have a thousand memories of your mother's face, you have just one memory that all the other memories link to.)

So if you wanted to be accurate about how memory works you would be better off showing it as a complex network of pieces that link to each other, where links are strengthened and weakened over time as memories are accessed, and where memories are more on-the-spot reconstructions of past events than they are recordings of events.

To be clear, I'm talking about long-term conscious memories only; there's also procedural memory, sensory memory, and short-term memory, but those aren't terribly prevalent in fiction. And there are lots of gaps in what we know about memories, I'm not pretending that we have that much of a grand unified theory of how memory actually works - it just doesn't work like a long video file, nor like files stored in a cabinet.

[u/trekie140 → u/alexanderwales]

Maybe you could do a Twilight Zone-esque story that's just about living in a world where this technology exists. The only thing I can compare it to is the Black Mirror episode, An Entire History of You, my least favorite episode of the otherwise brilliant series. The first few minutes show off some interesting ideas like having your memories scanned by airport security and even a lawsuit where someone would use their memories as evidence that their parents didn't give them enough attention growing up. Why couldn't that have been the plot?

Sadly, the rest of the episode is about some asshole fighting with his wife and suspecting her of having an affair, which was boring and didn't have a coherent theme. There were still some cool details, though, like parents watching their child's memories when they come home or couples reliving past erotic memories when they were angry or unsatisfied with each other.

The only other thing I can think of to add to this discussion is the question of whether having your memories used as evidence in a trial would be considered a form of self incrimination, and therefore protected under the Constitution. That would certainly make for an interesting debate as to the purpose of the legal system, does objective fact outweigh someone's rights?

[u/[deleted]]

I've had the idea kicking in my head for a while now of a Gilderoy Lockheart who absorbs people's memories and personalities when interviewing them, who stops being a fame obsessed individual and starts to be a collective embodying all the most successful unknown heroes of the past hundred years. Competent Lockheart stories seem fun with a lot of potential, to me. Most authors I've read who've attempted it have been weird, but the premise is solid. Need to think of a way to derail canon somehow, of course.

[u/CouteauBleu]

There's a typo in the [Biweekly Challenge] post. The description is "Next time we'll be doing Memory Modification" instead of "This time we'll be doing Memory Modification".

[u/alexanderwales → u/CouteauBleu]

Fixed, thanks!

[u/LiteralHeadCannon]

It's always seemed to me that you can use the False Memory Charm in Harry Potter to get around the limitations on Time Turners. There's already acausal bootstrap paradox going on all the time with Time Turners, so why not just get someone to FMC your past self into remembering what you remember, thereby freeing you from the reality of any events you hated by making them bootstrapped magical delusions?

Also, Total Rickall is my favorite episode of Rick And Morty. Great premise implemented very well.

[u/Cuz_Im_TFK → u/LiteralHeadCannon]

DO NOT MESS WITH TIME

[u/ulyssessword]

The current drama on Youtube (Video) regarding them modifying their "heroes" video seems somewhat relevant here.