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Comment by zyxley | Hacker News Reader

Identity-as-memory isn't something I buy into much, because my own memory is flatly terrible already. My childhood up until 10 or so is mostly a blank, for example, with just some impressionist highlights of place names and locations popping up if I think real hard.

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There is more than one kind of memory. You're talking about episodic memory. I think you have many memories from childhood that you aren't considering. I'm sure you still have many semantic memories (facts, concepts, etc) from before age 10. For example: if you're from the US, you still know the name of the first president of the United States.

You probably have even more information from childhood stored in implicit memory. If you're like most people, you learned how to ride a bike, tie your shoes, understand language, and play catch. The memories of learning these things are separate from the memories needed to actually do them.

Erasing all of a person's memories would truly destroy them. Once they formed new memories, they would be as different from their original self as an identical twin separated at birth.

Hmm, good point.

In fairness, studies of adult twins separated at birth do tend to indicate that they tend to turn out surprisingly not that different from each other....

Just playing devil's advocate: that doesn't necessarily rule it out. You could argue that part of your memory is lost and so it doesn't effect your identity. Or more likely, when those memories were fresh they influenced behavior which created the new more relevant memories. That would explain personality and identity progression. I also kind of like the idea that people's identity becomes less malleable as they grow older, which would make sense if it's all based on "higher order"/more specific memories.

I can replay at least one memory from any year since I was 2. Some of them obviously impacted my identity, like the time I was 4 years old in kindergarten and I spent a little more effort, but not too much, at writing words a little prettier than usual, and managed to beat the rest of the class to win myself a toy car. At the time it was the proudest moment of my life. It taught me I only needed to spend the tiniest of effort more than average to do very well in society. Other memories include seeing a colourful picture of "1995" on the tv and obviously didn't mean much.

But note that memory is a highly creative act, neurologically. Memories are strongly influenced by physical and mental context of each instance the memory is recalled and recommitted to memory.

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