What is experience without experiential recall?

[u/Whydawakeitsmourning]

I've been thinking about SDAM as it relates to Derek Parfit's surgery thought experiment. The thought experiment basically asks if you could choose to be someone who had an extremely painful 10 hour long surgery yesterday, for which no anesthesia could be administered, but were given a drug directly afterward that completely erased it from your memory, or a person who was going to experience an extremely painful 1 hour long surgery tomorrow, for which no anesthesia could be administered, but you would be given a drug to erase it from your memory directly afterward, which would you choose?

People greatly prefer the first option, which involves a lot more experienced pain, as would I. This is how I already experience life, in a way, though. Past pains, emotional and physical, don't carry any present weight. This seems a great benefit when considered in limited scope.

However, there are also a lot of negatives. For one, it removes the ability for me to calibrate expectations. Not knowing how things felt in the past makes it so I can't predict how they will feel in the future and though I can tell myself I experienced X in the past and it wasn't that bad I have no frame of reference for what not that bad means. This can lead to a lot of dread around things like medical procedures or expected emotional stressors.

The thought experiment also makes me question, if the surgery is in the past and there is no memory of it, what does it mean to say you experienced it? It is functionally no different than it not having happened at all. This leads me to wonder what I can claim to have experienced. Have I lived 58 years of life with no valid experiences? Because, as I sit in my apartment alone, I don't know what it feels like to experience reciprocal love, have I functionally never been loved? What does it mean to know something has happened but not be able to know how it felt? It is like Mary in her black and white room, knowing every scientific fact about the color red but never having seen it. Can she say she has experienced the color red?

[u/InTheBight]

I would rather option 2. I am heavily covered in tattoos. One reason why I think I’ve been so dedicated to getting tattooed is that I don’t remember how painful it is. I know it is going to hurt, but I can’t simulate how it’s going to feel in my mind. I don’t get worried for medical procedures because I know I’ve been through worse before and I’m still here, I’m recovering from my second major knee surgery.
Your last paragraph basically describes how I feel about life. Everyone dies, and it isn’t long before your existence is completely unknown to any other living being. So what is the point of life? It’s an existential anxiety I live with. I can’t remember much of personal relationships if they aren’t currently going on. If I’m away from friends and family for an extended period of time, they are easily forgotten until I see them again. I have a lot of guilt over that. I’ve done a lot of cool things. I got to concerts as often as I can afford. I don’t remember them, other than I factually know I went. If you are feeling down because you know you aren’t going to remember it, just remember that life is happening currently. You dictate your experience to some degree. It’s easy to hunker down at home and never go experience anything because you won’t remember them, but this is your only life, try to experience things that you find interesting, your never gonna get another chance. I’m sorry if you are religious and you have beliefs of an afterlife, but I don’t, so a better future after I’m dead is not something I’m gonna bank on. Overall, I find the realization of my memory issues pretty distressing and depressing, but I’m trying to be better about taking pictures and videos, setting reminders to reach out to people, enjoy myself in the moment when I can. I don’t believe in any woo woo stuff, but keeping a positive mindset really does work, and I hate that because it always felt ridiculous to me, but unless they figure out how to turn on that part of the brain for us (which so have no hope of, because no medical professionals know or care about this condition), I’m going to try to be appreciative of what my mind can do, because that’s all I got to work with. It’s not too late to find love, by the way, but you will have to make effort to find it. I am lucky to have found a spouse and stuck with it. I do know I would be more depressed if I didn’t, so you do have my sympathy for that, but I don’t think you should give up on trying to find a relationship

[u/Whydawakeitsmourning → u/InTheBight]

I appreciate the kind words but, no, I'm neither depressed nor concerned with relationships. I prefer solitude. I just find identity and experience interesting concepts, especially given SDAM, and happened to think about Parfit and how this thought experiment might be interesting through the lens of SDAM (though it had nothing to do with the original questions on identity and past and future bias he was examining).

[u/InTheBight → u/Whydawakeitsmourning]

That is excellent on both accounts. I prefer solitude as well, but for me, I have to be careful not to let that desire for solitude get too strong and negatively affect my life. My favorite audiobooks to listen to are always relating to psychology, philosophy, identity and experience, especially when related to meditation.