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by AlphaGeekZulu 251 days ago
Ted Chiang wrote an essay about the implications of recording everything: "The Truth of Fact, the Truth of Feeling".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Truth_of_Fact,_the_Truth_o...

The essay does not deal very much with technical aspects, like "Do I want to remember this and that banality?". In the story, those questions are already solved as an AI will manage access to the desired "flashbacks".

The essay focusses more on the question, how "remodeling" our memory over time might be an important aspect of social interaction, self perception and self development.

2 comments

I read this recently, and about halfway through I thought "wow, the HN crowd would eat up this anti-surveillance story!" But without spoiling the story, I was thinking just about the opposite of that by the time I got to the end. It really didn't go where I thought it was going to go, which is something I love about Chiang's stories.
Thanks for that. It was a great read. Very, very thought provoking.