> Many people don’t regard “you’ll be in pain and then forget” as the same as “no pain.”
I find this incredibly fascinating. If people were to be offered a sum of money in exchange for feeling immense pain for an hour but then having that memory wiped, I wonder how many would shrug and say "I won't remember anything? Sure, sign me up." I wonder at the ethical and morality of such things. If the person's reality is based solely on their memories, is it even unethical? Like I said, fascinating.
Thank you for the intriguing thought experiment for today.
A few years back, I had a procedure that involved twilight sedation. That means you're aware of the experience while it's happening, but have no memory of it afterwards.
I thought about this exact thought experiment constantly leading up to the day of the procedure.
It's a fascinating philosophical question. Did I experience the pain of the procedure? A past me before the procedure agreed to commit some future me to pain. During the procedure, that me then certainly experienced pain. But the hypnotic drug washed that memory away leaving a third me that had the benefits of the procedure but no memory of the pain.
So what is the moral calculus to perform when signing your future self up to pain that your future future self will forget?
There might also be a difference between a) You will be in pain for an hour, remembering the whole thing, and at the end of that hour, your memory will be wiped; and b) You will be in pain for an hour, but you will not form any memory of any part of that hour in the first place. It's the difference between saving data to a huge file and then deleting it, versus piping the data to /dev/null as it comes in. AFAIK amnestic drugs are intended to be closer to the second method.
The lingering physical effects of a body experiencing trauma for that amount of time might be too damaging for some to be willing to accept amnesia as a panacea.
I find this incredibly fascinating. If people were to be offered a sum of money in exchange for feeling immense pain for an hour but then having that memory wiped, I wonder how many would shrug and say "I won't remember anything? Sure, sign me up." I wonder at the ethical and morality of such things. If the person's reality is based solely on their memories, is it even unethical? Like I said, fascinating.
Thank you for the intriguing thought experiment for today.