Memories aren't genetic - Moon (2009) Discussion

[–] kya1 8 years ago

Actually, that's a good point.

It's been a while since I saw this, so I'm not 100% sure, but wasn't there some specific reason to implant original Sam's memories into the clones?

http://youtu.be/GAIJ3Rh5Qxs

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[–] phantom2-2 8 years ago

the original sam's memories are implanted so that the clones can be manipulated to act the same way and successfully complete their three year stint without any serious variation.

it's also ironic that sam tells gerty at the end that "we're not programmed" when, in fact, he is.

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[–] Harold_of_Whoa 8 years ago

Neither are tattoos.

The land dreams in a false peace, and for a while all evil is withdrawn.

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[–] Sequentialist 8 years ago

Why should they?

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[–] jfriesne 7 years ago

I think the main reason to grow clones was to avoid having to train new station-operators all the time.

Presumably they chose Sam as the person to clone because he was a well-trained, high-performing station operator, perhaps combined with other factors (e.g. he was the person who happened to manning the station the year that management hatched their evil scheme)

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[–] mymtproject 7 years ago

Hmmmm.... I disagree somewhat.

Some memories are genetic. Basic instinctual memories that we all have from shared experiences (fear and confusion at birth for example) are the most common, yet there are others. Who among us hasn't dreamed of someone we never met but then discover that our parents knew the person we dreamed about? Don't tell me that hasn't happened to another person here. It happens all the time.

Also, the brain is a giant computer, so it's very plausible that memory implants could be a real deal. You can program a computer, so why not a human biological one? Heck, we've all ready about people who see a shrink and get "new memories" of things that never happened, like being abducted by blue aliens with big eyes or something. So what I'm saying in my winding way is that it's possible.

Dear Santa, please send me a Tiffany Mynx clone or lovebot this year.

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[–] DethstruXioN 7 years ago

Who among us hasn't dreamed of someone we never met but then discover that our parents knew the person we dreamed about?

I cant remember a moment like that right now, i do have flashes of people that my parents used to know, it might have happened in the past but that i didnt care enough to remember it, but i dont think id dream about that.

But i did have a period where i befriended a classmate in high school, and i started getting images in my head of blue flooring and a yellow kids drum set.
They kept recurring.
Then i got another memory flashback from a couple of kids that i used to hang out with in elementary school, but that suddenly broke off.
After i got closer with the new high school classmate, we started playing video games at each other's house, and suddenly it dawned on me, i asked him if they had blue carpet flooring and a yellow drum set back in the day, and they had!
I could even point to the exact spot where it used to stand.

Turns out that i had just rediscovered childhood friends more than a decade later, they had forgotten about it too, so that was actually kinda nice.
The contact had previously broken off because i went to a different school after the first year.

Also, the brain is a giant computer, so it's very plausible that memory implants could be a real deal. You can program a computer, so why not a human biological one?

Brainwashing is always an option, manipulation into anything.
They are working on brainwaves, chemicals and magnetic impulses and whatnot, so i wouldnt be surprised that it will be possible.
We are overestimating our being, our free will etc., because we are still susceptible and dependent on chemistry and biology, when you stop listening to your body, when you let your paranoia or irrational thoughts take control, thats when you start losing yourself.
For example, descending into madness wouldnt be so common if we would be aware of the process, or strong enough to fight it.
Especially in the case of Sam, isolation is the best environment for this, no feedback from other people, only the confirmation of the world that you think you live in.

But you can take the brain programming as far as you want, i think that if there werent regulations on this, we would have been totally enslaved by now.
At least we feel like we can do something now, but without restrictions, this world would have been a madhouse already.
Screens flickering and flashing, weird chemicals in the air, mantra's out of the speakers on the streets, disorganized crowds, trash everywhere.
Hm, i guess were getting there ;)
The only thing really missing still is the "mark of the Devil", a digital tag, or a small device that releases hormones and other thought-affecting impulses.

But who knows, maybe they will be able to crack the memory code and give us happy thoughts soon.

I skip reading the bottom line, because it is usually some lame signature.

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[–] jriley555 (7048) 6 years ago

there have been theories about that (Jung in particular), but whatever it is that memories 'are', they are mediated by neuronal states. they are phenotypic, not genotypic.

the closest, imo, we come to that is in the brain's linguistic wiring, which according to linguists like chomsky, is pre-adapted, pre-wired, for language. visual processing similarly. chomsky has absolutely no explanation or theory how that came to be (though others do).

perhaps instincts like fear of falling are genetically determined. but beyond a few rudiments, and the aforementioned staggering language & visual pre-adaptations (we, in a large sense, already 'know' a universal language and how to map a 3D world within the visual cortex), memories are phenomenological. things happen. we record something about them in our neurons.

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[–] [deleted] 5 years ago

It must be hard to try to fit reality experience to a narrow-minded, materialistic worldview. You run into problems so quickly, especially with the quantum level, but even just everyday experience.

There have been men, who have suffered from grenade explosions and such, having most of their brains blown away.

Some of these men had only 15% of their brain matter left, and yet, they had 100% of their memory intact.

Memory is not physical, these cases prove it.

Memory exists somewhere as a more spiritual or 'holographic', or whatever term you want to use, 'energy form' that we, as souls/spirits/energy/vibration have varying levels of access to.

You can explain this any way you want, but reality and actual case studies and histories dictate that memory is not physical, and what people think is 'genetic memory', is mostly closer to 'incarnational memory'.

Maybe you have certain habits and ways of thinking and certain behaviour patterns, not because of your biological genetics that have remembered things through generations, but because you, yourself, have travelled through countless incarnations, and have every experience saved somewhere in your sub-conscious, guiding your way..

Of course you can 'cultivate' certain things with 'selective breeding', like people have done to dogs (kind of sickening, really), but the physical brain and genes are the physical tool of the spirit. Without the spirit, can you really say there's any behaviour information in a certain body?

A body without spirit is just biological matter, it's just dead. And even a body inhabited by a spirit is not ever -truly- alive, the spirit just makes it seem so and replenishes it constantly.

Instincts are certainly part of some bodily structure, but do they exist more in the etheric level, biological level or astral level, or are they a quality of the soul? That's a tougher question to answer, because 'whole science' does not exist in this world, that would encompass the whole.

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[–] [deleted] 5 years ago

Sciences, like everything in this world, have been fragmented to separate pieces that do not necessarily always communicate all that well.

Knowledge of what is it to be a human, is very much shrouded in mystery because of this.

Church and religions do not explain the human soul very well, health industry only cares about the biological side, the old Asian medicinal and health sciences do take the more 'invisible side' of a human entity into account, but this old wisdom is not incorporated into every other field, but it remains a 'curious fragment', in the misty and surreal arena that exists somewhere between the silly magazine horoscopes and philosophy.

There's no unifying wisdom that would run through philosophy, human body, energy and soul systems to human health practices, to teaching architecture (that's called 'education' nowadays), to everyday life, to how things are manufactured, to how people live, work, create, celebrate.

Every facet is a separate fragment that doesn't connect to others. People work isolated in offices and factories, they intoxicate themselves when they want to celebrate, they go to a doctor that has no understanding of human energy systems, when they get sick, ill or injured, and they're prescribed destructive toxins.

So when people want to talk about things like 'memory', they inevitably limit their understanding of the topic, because it's required by their 'education' - nothing beyond the physical is allowed..

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[–] Sacredpony (20) 5 years ago

--Church and religions do not explain the human soul very well

That might be because the very concept of a soul is a nonphysical entity that cannot have any interaction with the phyiscal world - otherwise it would be a physical entity by defintion.

What you describe with words as "soul" is not. It is a quality of mind. How you feel. And that can be influenced with phyiscal means. As in: drugs.

--the old Asian medicinal and health sciences do take the more 'invisible side' of a human entity into account

Nope. They say they do that. What they really do, is to take the state of mind into account. With or without intent, they try to increase the placebo effect. Your mind anticipating medical help on the other hand will change your stress levels and hormones and such, wich makes it very phyiscal.

--So when people want to talk about things like 'memory', they inevitably limit their understanding of the topic, because it's required by their 'education' - nothing beyond the physical is allowed..

Why should it be allowed? Just because you can think of an unproven and non-disproofable concept does not make it reality.

What seems to be correct: behavior that people attribute to memory is not always the result of memory.

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[–] Sacredpony (20) 5 years ago

--Some of these men had only 15% of their brain matter left, and yet, they had 100% of their memory intact.

You yourself do not have 100% of your own memory intact. What did you eat 132 days ago? Cannot remember? Well, that is normal. Humans constantly forget and the brain lies to itself about it.

--Memory is not physical, these cases prove it.

No it does not. This only proves that enough memory was stored inside the leftover brain to not have a walking tomatoe. Memory is physical. Proof: you can induce circumstances for the brain not to record stuff. Like too much alcohol. This can be permanent too due to too much damage. Look up Anterograde amnesia.

And please do not bring metaphysics or religion into this. There is not one test available to disproof something (that exists - and is not an abstract concept) not being physical.

--Memory exists somewhere as a more spiritual or 'holographic', or whatever term you want to use, 'energy form' that we, as souls/spirits/energy/vibration have varying levels of access to.

What makes you think that? Other than religion. You are free to believe what you want, but please do not assert any physical interaction between your magical thinking and physical world just because you wish it to be so. And retrieving memories that have no physical storage would be such an interaction.

A brain is a complex thing and it is expert in many things. Among them is: lying to itself. Please look up saccadic movement of the eyes as an example (oh, you never noticed that your are completely blind while moving your eyes? Or the induction of fake memories. No, not fake news. Fake memories. There are studies about that. You can trick a brain into "remembering" things, that proofable never happened. The brain then fabricates the details to fill in - it is VERY (!) good at such a task. One should never underestimate the ability of the human mind to make stuff up.

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[–] chrisjdel (2714) 5 years ago

We may very well be able to duplicate the human brain before we completely understand it. And record a human consciousness before we're able to interpret each piece of data. Maybe they can't extract just Sam's occupational training and relevant living skills (like how to cook), leaving the personal memories and emotional baggage behind. All they know how to do is create a template - like an .iso image file of the person's brain - and then load that image into each clone. It's a package deal. As long as they get him to buy into the same BS scenario, then with Gerty's guidance each clone should respond the same way and finish his tour of duty without incident, never suspecting he's not going anywhere when it's over.

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