We Are What We Remember

I was thinking about designing different chat bot. Instead of analysing given current question, it would instead prepare code/data for all possible next questions given current question and answer. So when the next question would come he would already know the answer as all data are ready.

And that got me thinking. What if our brain does this with our memory when we go to sleep. Our conciseness dies, but brain carefully prepares memories in a way that in the morning the new consciousness doesn't notice and consider itself to be the same as yesterday.

Ted Chiang has a wonderful story called "The Truth of Fact, the Truth of Feeling" which delves into this phenomenon, as well as how written language shapes our memories.

Something which may be disturbing to think about in this context is how limited our access to our own electronic "memories" has become over time, in comparison with how much it was before.

For example, if you were using MySpace or LiveJournal, or early Twitter, you could see your entire history, and in some cases do query and search like "between 2 and 3 years ago" or "everything with X tag".

However, with today's services, it is becoming increasingly difficult to do that kind of querying outside of the, if you're lucky, 3 different sorts of hot/top/new. Some places will also limit the number of items you can see.

We are what we do.

this story on frontrow lifestreamer just showed up right next to this story, & that coincidence is one happening worth noting. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25738635