• @Savvy95
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    541 year ago

    It reminds me of that old joke of the 2 scientists studying a fly.

    Scientist 1: Fly, fly! Scientist 2: When fly has two wings fly flies 2 feet.

    Scientist 1: pulls off one wing and says Fly, Fly! Scientist 2: When fly has 1 wing, fly flies 1 foot

    Scientist 1: pulls off the other wing and says, Fly, fly!. Nothing happens Scientist 1 Fly, Fly! Nothing happens Scientist 1 showing frustration> FLY! FLY! Scientist 2: When fly has no wings, fly becomes deaf.

    Bad-dum!

  • @anewbeginning
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    1 year ago

    This is a useful technology…for tyrants.

    • @Frozengyro
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      401 year ago

      Potential PTSD treatment. I think this is the plot to a movie or book though, where soldiers are taken advantage of.

      • @[email protected]
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        1 year ago

        There was definitely a Black Mirror about it.

        Sidenote: It’s weird to me that more people don’t talk about the inevitability of that one with the soldiers with cybernetic HUD implants that, shocking twist later, can make civilians look like monsters to be purged.

        On the other hand, why bother when the Boston Dynamics murderbots are probably cheaper?

      • @loie
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        61 year ago

        Universal Soldier?

    • ivanafterall
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      191 year ago

      I agree. But I also wouldn’t mind forgetting one or two things. However, I’ve also watched Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, so I know it ends with me having perpetual dementia-like fever dreams.

  • @illusoryMechanist
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    451 year ago

    Scientists: No guys seriously what have we done I can’t remember

    • The Picard ManeuverOPM
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      201 year ago

      Oh no, they fried the part of their brain that could tell the difference between snails and humans!

  • @solstice
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    421 year ago

    Since the comments all appear to be juvenile Reddit style jokes, here’s TFA (the frickin article: https://futurism.com/scientists-selectively-erased-memories-in-snails-are-we-next#

    Note, I’m not a scientist.

    As I suspected it appears they tortured the snails somehow (my guess is electric shock) to create traumatic memories. This has been done with caterpillars I think to see if they retain memories after turning into butterflies and they do, despite basically turning into primordial goop in the cocoon. They do, and it’s tested by seeing if they retain aversions to certain areas of their cages that are electrified.

    Then something about enzymes created which associate memory with pain and being able to target them.

    Pretty cool, and I for one definitely have a few traumas I’d like erased.

    • @aesthelete
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      201 year ago

      Pretty cool, and I for one definitely have a few traumas I’d like erased.

      It’s kinda neat, but I for one do not want to see Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind become a documentary. I mean I like the movie and all…but.

    • @Wogi
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      81 year ago

      We can kinda do that. There are therapies that target trauma and recontextualize them. Look up EMDR, it’s really cool stuff.

      • @solstice
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        31 year ago

        There is debate about how the therapy works and whether it is more effective than other established treatments.[1][5] The eye movements have been criticized as having no scientific basis.[6] The founder promoted the therapy for the treatment of PTSD, and proponents employed untestable hypotheses to explain negative results in controlled studies.[7] EMDR has been characterized as a pseudoscientific purple hat therapy (i.e., only as effective as its underlying therapeutic methods without any contribution from its distinctive add-ons).[8]

        I read about that fifteen years ago and dismissed it as pseudoscience. Wikipedia confirms. Pass (thanks though, don’t mean to be rude)

    • @Emerald
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      21 year ago

      How is torturing an animal cool?

      • @SCB
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        71 year ago

        Because it can lead to treatment for human suffering. He says it in his post

        • @Emerald
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          -21 year ago

          Causing harm to some other group to help your own group has been an excuse used to justify slavery for hundreds of years.

            • @Emerald
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              01 year ago

              Yes, so let’s respect everyone’s autonomy. No species should be abused.

  • Xusontha
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    341 year ago

    I think the scientists are more worried about why the snail’s head is the size of a human rather than the memory loss…

        • @WhiskyTangoFoxtrot
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          41 year ago

          Wait, the snails are training the gorillas? We’re through the looking glass here, people!

          • @Madison420
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            21 year ago

            I want off this goddamn Jefferson airplane!

      • Xusontha
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        31 year ago

        so aliens are actually just big snails, like the Voth from Star Trek

        Interesting

  • @[email protected]
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    281 year ago

    Have you ever entered a room and forgot why you came in?

    How about your dreams at night? Or what you had for dinner last month?

    I think that memory-deletion is much more common than we think. Like vast invisible whales floating through your living room.

    Of course we’d never know it.

      • @[email protected]
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        161 year ago

        For every memory that you noticed you forgot there are a thousand that you forgot without noticing. I’m guessing here.

      • @[email protected]
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        61 year ago

        You ever read “there is no anti-memetics division” by qntm?

        It’s good science fiction . He explores the subject of memory, deleting memory, etc. They have drugs for erasing memory, drugs for making it so you can’t forget, demons that eat memory, certain kinds of information that resist being remembered… It’s fascinating stuff.

        • The Picard ManeuverOPM
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          31 year ago

          Haha, this skit really feels like it’s 14 years old. First time seeing it, thanks!

    • Archmage Azor
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      -11 year ago

      Chemtrails are real but the chemicals are usually amnestics

      • @[email protected]
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        21 year ago

        I wonder if a general approach to inducing amnesia would be the best approach.

        I think that we always take what we’ve got - what we see, memories - no matter how flimsy, and stitch together a plausible narrative from that.

        So the amnesia doesn’t have to be very precise. Our amnesiator could basically be just a brain damage ray

  • @Zehzin
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    71 year ago

    I can give snails brain (ganglia?) damage too, you’re not that special, scientists.

  • @Lammy
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    51 year ago

    Is this true?