We don’t really know how memory works, do we? Most memories fade away with time, except some really strong ones, which are constantly renewed, slightly changed each time. So, odds are, you would not need to explicitly delete anything, it fades away with disuse. And yet, most people* maintain the illusion of personal identity without any effort. So, I don’t expect memory accumulation to be an obstacle to eternal youth. Also, plenty of time to work on brain augmentations and memory offloading to external storage :)
“So, odds are, you would not need to explicitly delete anything, it fades away with disuse.”
I don’t know. Even some old people feel overwhelmed with so many memories. The brain does some clean-up, for sure. But I doubt whether it would work for really long timelines.
“So, I don’t expect memory accumulation to be an obstacle to eternal youth. Also, plenty of time to work on brain augmentations and memory offloading to external storage :)”
Mind you that your personal identity is dependent on your “story”, which has to encompass all your life, even if only the very key moments. My concern is that, as time tends to infinite, so does the “backbone” of memory, i.e. the minimum necessary, after “trimming” with the best technology possible, to maintain personal identity which should include memories from all along the timeline. So the question is whether a finite apparatus, the brain, can keep up with infinite data. Is it possible to remain you while not remembering all your story? And I don’t even care about not remembering all my story. I just care about remaining me.
We know that a computer can theoretically function forever. Just keep repairing its parts (same could be done with the brain, no doubt) and deleting excess data. But the computer doesn’t have a consciousness / personal identity which is dependent on its data. So computationalism might be leading us astray here. (Yes, I don’t like computationalism/functionalism.)
Note: this is all speculation, of which I’m quite uncertain of. Before all the downvotes come (not that I care, but just to make it clear anyway).
We don’t really know how memory works, do we? Most memories fade away with time, except some really strong ones, which are constantly renewed, slightly changed each time. So, odds are, you would not need to explicitly delete anything, it fades away with disuse. And yet, most people* maintain the illusion of personal identity without any effort. So, I don’t expect memory accumulation to be an obstacle to eternal youth. Also, plenty of time to work on brain augmentations and memory offloading to external storage :)
“So, odds are, you would not need to explicitly delete anything, it fades away with disuse.”
I don’t know. Even some old people feel overwhelmed with so many memories. The brain does some clean-up, for sure. But I doubt whether it would work for really long timelines.
“So, I don’t expect memory accumulation to be an obstacle to eternal youth. Also, plenty of time to work on brain augmentations and memory offloading to external storage :)”
Mind you that your personal identity is dependent on your “story”, which has to encompass all your life, even if only the very key moments. My concern is that, as time tends to infinite, so does the “backbone” of memory, i.e. the minimum necessary, after “trimming” with the best technology possible, to maintain personal identity which should include memories from all along the timeline. So the question is whether a finite apparatus, the brain, can keep up with infinite data. Is it possible to remain you while not remembering all your story? And I don’t even care about not remembering all my story. I just care about remaining me.
We know that a computer can theoretically function forever. Just keep repairing its parts (same could be done with the brain, no doubt) and deleting excess data. But the computer doesn’t have a consciousness / personal identity which is dependent on its data. So computationalism might be leading us astray here. (Yes, I don’t like computationalism/functionalism.)
Note: this is all speculation, of which I’m quite uncertain of. Before all the downvotes come (not that I care, but just to make it clear anyway).