
A Drug That Could Give You Perfect Visual Memory - dlnovell
http://io9.com/5306489/a-drug-that-could-give-you-perfect-visual-memory
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TrevorJ
"I can't see much of a downside for this potential drug"

Really? The brain is one of the most complex organs in the human body. It is
also a finite resource. There is a very high probability that increasing
performance on one area will have complex side effects in other areas.

~~~
yan
I think the author of the blog post meant that given the drug a) works in
humans and b) is determined to be 'safe' by some level of metrics, she doesn't
see the downside to remembering visual memories for much longer. I don't think
it's fair to leave it to bloggers to assess the dangers of a neurological
drug.

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mquander
I agree that you've probably nailed the intent, but it makes the statement
seem rather vapid in the first place.

"If the drug [does this great thing] and has no destructive side effects, then
I can't see much of a downside to it." Well, duh.

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yan
No, I don't think it's obvious. We forget things for a reason; increasing the
level of noise in the human mind doesn't just come with no side effects. Even
if the drug works perfectly as intended, not having the ability to forget
memories that are irrelevant can be a big disadvantage I'd think.

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khafra
I don't think you can proceed from "we forget things" to "it's good that we
forget things." We get cancer.

However, a decade and a half on the internet _is_ enough to convince me that
the ability to let certain visual memories fade into oblivion is a good thing.

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joeyo
There is fairly good evidence that inability to forget is at least correlated
with cognitive and social deficits. For an overview see:
[http://books.google.com/books?id=BooNAAAACAAJ&dq=The+Min...](http://books.google.com/books?id=BooNAAAACAAJ&dq=The+Mind+of+a+Mnemonist)

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mquander
> "I can't see much of a downside for this potential drug"

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Funes_the_Memorious>

"In effect, Funes not only remembered every leaf on every tree of every wood,
but even every one of the times he had perceived or imagined it...It was not
only difficult for him to understand that the generic term dog embraced so
many unlike specimens of differing sizes and different forms; he was disturbed
by the fact that a dog at three-fourteen (seen in profile) should have the
same name as the dog at three-fifteen (seen from the front)."

~~~
pygy
"Funes the Memorious" is a work of fiction.

~~~
jjames
"Funes the Memorious" is allegory

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mquander
"Funes the Memorious" is merely (tasty) food for thought :)

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wallflower
> I can't see much of a downside for this potential drug, unless the act of
> not forgetting what you see causes problems or trauma.

Many years ago I read about a professional gambler with photographic memory
who was unfortunate to be caught in a deadly casino fire. Since the fire, he
was unable to enter another casino because he would be flooded with perfectly
horrific visuals of the deadly fire.

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gojomo
_I can't see much of a downside for this potential drug_

Amazing that the author of a _sci-fi_ blog would say this; such a drug could
feed the premises of a dozen short stories or Twilight Zone episodes -- and
many would have dark endings. (Perhaps this was really her intent, to trigger
fun scare stories in comment threads.) Examples:

You could remember a good experience so well you spend your whole life trying
in vain to reproduce it.

You could remember a bad experience so well it paralyzes you.

Your initial advantage could go through phases of benefit and detriment,
ultimately be so isolating you're completely alone, and then be reversed (a
little like 'Flowers for Algernon').

There could be an ironic turn (blinded just after gaining perfect visual
memory; 'Time Enough at Last').

You could, imperceptibly at first, lose other valuable skills in proportion to
the memory gain. Social abilities; judgement; empathy. The irony would be you
can't even remember the dimensions of life you've lost -- they're no longer
perceptible compared to the eidetic perfection.

Etc, etc...

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rodyancy
Looks like you can self-administer for $340.

<http://www.abcam.com/RGS14-antibody-ab14262.html#images>

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vollmond
This is one of the few places I think I would actually prefer a technological
solution, rather than bioengineering. Given the scifi-prophesied implanted
visual and aural enhancements, I would like to be able to search my stored
memories, giving me a much better signal-to-noise ratio.

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cmos
In no way would I want this. Perhaps I'm just being that old guy on the porch
complaining about technology, but I happen to like my innate ability to forget
things.

I come from an extremely forgetful and absentminded family, and so it is a
constant struggle to keep 'important' things in the brain. But the benefits of
it by far outweigh the drawbacks (which usually come in the form of late fees
and only 1 arrest :).

The brain needs to wash things down the drain to make room for new stuff.
While medically we might be able to prove this is not damaging, I can only
think I'd get a little crazy having so many details in me. How can we say it's
not damaging when we know so little about how the brain works?

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jerf
I am skeptical of anything like this, because if it were so awesome to just
goose the production of one protein and suddenly gain some new awesome
cognitive power, evolution would have already selected for it, in all
probability.

The flip side is that our current environment is very different than it was
even a thousand years ago, and what was disadvantageous then _may_ be an
advantage today, but this turns out to be a very tricky determination to make.

Redesigning the human body is _hard_. Almost by definition, it's already
largely in a local optima; presumably it isn't entirely, but finding the path
out in the horrifically multidimensional space of possible enhancements is
non-trivial, in the dry-mathematician-humor sense of the word "non-trivial".

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calambrac
Evolution is not the process of selecting for traits you think are awesome,
it's the process of selecting for traits that lead to more offspring. The fact
that this particular protein hasn't been naturally amped to the max just means
photographic memory may not be as important a part of getting laid as you
might hope.

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asciilifeform
Cue the luddites...

