Re: Immortality changes everything.

On 2006-02-06, r.rice@xxxxxxxxxxx <r.rice@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
On Mon, 6 Feb 2006 13:59:54 +0000 (UTC), phoenix@xxxxxxx (Damien
Sullivan) wrote:

r.rice@xxxxxxxxxxx wrote:

I guess my question is really about how the brain works. If we learn
to associate two items because of something that happened in the past,
but get to a point where we don't remember the event, would the brain
still associate those two items? Given that we don't even understand

I think so; that's basic conditioning and doesn't depend on episodic memory.
I think almost anything with a nervous system can be conditioned, though I
won't swear to it. But humans with anterograde amnesia (like Memento), lacking
the ability to make new long-term episodic memories, can still exhibit priming
effects or even acquire new skills.

That's the crux of what I am considering. Conditioning requires being
subjected to the same situation often enough that something becomes a
habit. For a physical activity, it's often referred to as "muscle
memory". Since this is all theoretical, I'm wondering if you can
acquire this by, essentially, being told that you have it already. Or
does it take actually conditioning in order to achieve it. Is there a
difference between remembering that you have done a double-axle 500
times, and actually doing it 500 times so that your body knows
automatically what to do?

"Muscle memory" isn't in the muscles. But certainly the amount of
muscles, the distribution, the toning, etc, matter a great deal in doing
various athletics. It's not totally ridiculous to think that the the
rest of the nervous system, outside the brain, matters more than we
might think to many tasks. I tend to doubt it for extremal nerves, but
certainly we would want to duplicate the spine as well the brain, and
probably any nerve clusters inside the torso. Heck, even details of the
vagus nerve _might_ matter for how the body "feels".

--
Aaron Denney
-><-
.

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