Day: August 9, 2022

As we learned in this module, memory is constructed and is built by the mind, they are not recorded or stored in an archival mind. Our memory is influenced by context, emotion, and our environment.

In the movie “Marjorie Prime,” we are introduced to a woman in her 80s who is being told stories about her past with her deceased husband by a holographic replica of him called Walter Prime. I would consider this movie to be cognitive integration because you have an outside source assisting the main character with her memories and helping her to remember them. Marjorie and Walter Prime feed off of each other’s memories. Walter Prime will tell her a story about her life before her husband passed and brings things back to her memory that she had forgotten, and she will also update his program by telling the holograph something she remembers that he did not know about.

There is a scene in the movie where Walter Prime is telling Marjorie a story about the time Marjorie and Walter (when he was alive) went to the pet store and bought a Black French Poodle, who eventually dies. Shortly after the poodle Toni with an I dies, Tessa Marjorie and Walter’s daughter are born. When Tessa was about three years old, her parents took her to pick out a dog, and she picked out the same black poodle her parents had years before her birth. This dog is named Toni 2, but eventually, the family drops the two and calls her Toni. What strikes me about this story is when Walter Prime tells Marjorie that eventually, memories blurred, and they couldn’t tell the difference between Toni 1 and 2. That, to me is Affect Priming because the dogs are two different animals; however, because of the love that was had for the dog, the emotion blurs the fact that one was owned years earlier and Tessa was not yet born; all they remember is that they dogs are both loved and in their memories have somehow become one. Marjorie remembers one fact, Toni 2 loved the ocean no matter how much it irritated her to have sand in her fur.

Tessa was not very fond of the holograph that played on the memories of her parents and looked like her father. In one scene, she tells her husband that memories are not sedimentary layers in the brain that have to be dug out as he suggests but that they are, according to William James, remembered from the last time you remembered the memory and not the exact moment itself. This is like what we are taught in this module memories can change and still be accurate.

In Star Trek’s “Measure of a Man,” Data is requested to be disassembled so he can be studied for a research project about memory, and he refuses. Data remembers the man who wants to take him apart as Commander Bruce, who was against Data being on the enterprise because he was not part of what makes a sentient being he is an android. This episode is about cognitive offloading, where the Commander wants to test the theory that memory can be downloaded and contained in a separate brain. Data tells the commander that memories have an essence, and he does not believe they can survive his experiment or procedure.

Majorie Prime and Star Trek both show how each regards memory. Some believe that every time you access memory, it is not the memory itself but a recreation of the last time you remembered it, making it a copy of the memory itself. Others believe that memories can be downloaded or dug out when an individual means to access them on purpose or by accident. The question arises in my mind, though, when an individual suppresses a memory, is it not buried deep within their mind? I only ask this question because I watched an episode of NCIS today, and in one of the episodes, a suspect buried a tragic memory, and it took a lot to get her to remember the memory. What then causes the mind to suppress tragic things that occur?

Memory and its uses are considered to be one of the main characteristics that make us human. Animals remember feeding grounds and their predators, but humans are able to remember almost every event that they experience whether it be small or significant. With our memories comes how we perceive and react to all different forms of events and situations. Creating our personalities, what we like and dislike, and how we deal with certain situations all derive from how we felt about the same thing originally. Both Marjorie Prime and Measure of a Man display how memory can not only create happiness out of past events but also how they create the personalities of each character.

Marjorie Prime depicts a woman names Marjorie that has a holographic connection to an AI hologram of her late husband. Through the brain, body, and interpersonal support this hologram would remind Marjorie about events that happened in their past. It seems that the whole point of this hologram was so Marjorie can continue to have good memories of her life with him. This can be seen as “Good Remembering” due to the emotional content of her memories and the variety of these memories. One example of this is when Tess and Jon are remembering themselves something that happened in the past before talking about firing Julie. “Memory is not like a well that you dip into or a filing cabinet. You don’t remember the memory; you remember the last time you remembered it”. Tess believes that he was eating vanilla ice cream back then while Jon thinks that he was eating pistachio. They are both relieving good memories that, for the most part, stayed true. However, there are always little details that are forgotten for the purpose of remembering the major ones.

“Yet when I finally played poker, I discovered that the reality bore little resemblance to the rules”. Data is a robotic member of the ship in Star Trek and has good and bad memories of the crew. He can feel love and friendship towards others, and he is one of the most valued members of the team. Even with this, many different people aboard the ship like his inspector only view him as a robot that does not deserve the respect of a human. When confronted with the question of whether or not humans had souls to separate themselves from robots, both Captain Louvis and Maddox could not produce an answer. It is also shown that he remembers romantic feelings for Tasha and that he valued the friendships of all the crew members, especially Captain Picard. Overall, Data may be considered a robot but he feels and remembers the same if not more than any member on the Starship Enterprise.

In Star Trek: The Next Generation’s “Measure of a Man”, the Starfleet Enterprise seeks to answer the question of whether or not Data has a soul. If he has a soul, that means he is human. And if it’s proven that he’s human, that allows him the right to resign or refuse being disassembled. Of course, in the end, it was proven that he wasn’t human, but that he possessed human characteristics such as consciousness, self-awareness, and intelligence. In addition, he was regarded as a valuable asset to the team. 

The part that was most interesting to me is when Captain Louvois admitted that she didn’t know if she had a soul. Neither she nor Maddox could explain what made their sentience different from Data’s. Aside from being extremely intelligent and aware of his current situation, Data was capable of loving someone romantically (Tasha) and placing value on friendship (he packed a book that was given to him by Picard). However, he was still considered to be a machine/automaton, or in Maddox’s words “property”. 

And, while it might seem cruel to suggest that, Maddox wasn’t entirely wrong. Data’s name suggests that he is simply a collection of information, hence why Maddox believes that disassembling him won’t affect his core memories, since data (the way it’s viewed in the tech world) can be backed up and restored. It’s not entirely lost except in special circumstances. But, while Maddox views Data’s memories as, well, data, Data views his memories as human memories (he holds a constructivist view of memory). These memories, that, once destroyed, cannot be remade. Even if he were to attempt replicating the situation in which he experienced the memory, as he said, “The substance or the flavor would be lost”. The memories would just become facts, facts that would not have any special meaning to him. His claim reminded me of last week’s movie “Inside Out”, where it was shown that Riley’s memories were influenced by her environment, which is why her emotions thought that sending her back to Minnesota would help her recreate the core memories that she lost.

 

“Marjorie Prime” also focused on memory, but it did so through the portrayal of a lady, Marjorie,  who has Alzheimer’s. Marjorie is able to remember the past through the use of a “Prime”- a projection (I think) of her husband, Walter, who relays the past back to her. I’m not sure if the Prime is really a projection, because he seems to be physically present when ice is thrown at him, and he’s able to hold a conversation with Marjorie’s family and caretaker.

So, I guess he’s a robot? Anyways, the Prime is fed information from Marjorie’s relatives, who themselves seem to have little recollection of the past, considering that Tess was a child and the in-law wasn’t even there to experience it. 

 

A quote from the movie that explains memory best is, “Memory is not like a well that you dip into or a filing cabinet. You don’t remember the memory; you remember the last time you remembered it”. The act of remembering something was compared to making a photocopy of a photocopy. Funny enough, a real life example is provided right after this quote. Tess says that she remembers eating vanilla ice cream the last time Jon told her the quote. Jon says that it was pistachio. Tess calls him insane and says that it’s vanilla ice cream. They are speaking about the same event, yet their memory of what they ate is different. The memory has changed over time that neither one can differentiate between the truth and a false memory. 

 

While Tess and Jon experience a false memory, Marjorie can’t remember at all unless prompted. However, it seems like her brain is able to recall memories that weren’t even given to her. For example, Jon tells Walter Prime not to bring up Damian, but despite that, Marjorie randomly retrieves the memory of their dog, Toni and her son, Damian. This is surprising because, ever since Damian killed himself and Toni, Marjorie never spoke of him again. I think that forcing that memory into her subconscious mind where it could be forgotten was a form of protection. She didn’t have to confront a memory that hurt her-until it came into her consciousness in her old age.

 

In this final module, we learned about memory and how we construct memory with experiences, technology, and people around us. When recalling memories, we are often not remembering the whole experience, but parts most significant to us. As we remember these memories, they become significant to the time in which we are remembering them in. 

Marjorie Prime (2017)

In Marjorie Prime (2017), Marjorie is an elderly woman diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease,  and her daughter and son-in-law have acquired a program, Prime, that creates holograms of one’s loved ones. This hologram helps patients with Alzheimer’s to try to remind them of memories while holding conversations with individuals they once knew. 

Memory is not “true” and “accurate” as we often forget small details and try to seal those small cracks by mistakenly adding other small details that weren’t actually part of the memory to begin with. In the film, Tess and Jon speak about William James and his idea of memory. Stating that it is not a filing cabinet, but that when you remember something, you remember the memory, and the last time you remember it. The actual event is getting harder to remember, and so when cracks are sealed with false details/memories, those are remembered the next time you try to remember that event. We’re also viewing these memories at different times in our lives, making them significant in different ways. Due to the added experience that comes with age, a memory we used to hold fondly as children, we might think of it differently because we have experienced life differently at this point. It does remind me of the film Inside Out, where we talked about how as Riley was growing up, due to certain life experiences, new emotions kept popping up and her core memories were eventually mixed emotions of those joyful memories she held as a child. Remembering those emotions helps our recollection of them.

Seeing each Prime in the final scene of the film speak about themselves, their memories and experiences reminded me of the term autobiographical self. In the film, the Primes are “constructing” themselves by learning about themselves from what they are told. The people and the stories they learn about are helping them build the version of themselves that most closely resembles the actual individuals. The building of ourselves leads to an understanding of those experiences, leading to autobiographical memories. Walter Prime learned from Marjorie and Jon about his life, and became better when it came to acting and expressing himself similar to the actual Walter.

“Measure of a Man” Star Trek: The Next Generation

In the episode, Measure of a Man, Commander Maddox wants to examine Data’s brain in order to make many more like him. His plans, however, are not entirely clear and so Data refused to be examined by him. His refusal makes everyone question if Data is allowed to choose for himself, and if he is sentient enough to choose. During the hearing, Commander Riker is forced to represent Maddox, and argues that Data is a machine with physical strength no human is capable of in an effort to show how different his body is to a human body.

In order to show that Data is sentient, Captain Picard points out how intelligent and aware Data is. In this episode, cognition is extended by Data’s interactions with the world around him, experiences, and other people. Data is able to cherish a book given as a gift from Captain Picard, medals that remind him of special occasions and of his achievements, and a hologram of a significant other that reminds him of special times. Extended Cognition is not just the body and the mind, it is extended out into the world in our usage of technology (phones), culture, and other people as well.

This week we watched Marjorie Prime and Star Trek: The Next Generation’s “Measure of a Man,” both show how our memories, emotions, cognitions, and societies are built and connected. Especially Marjorie Prime made me cry a while watching it. The loved ones are gone, only their memory remains, and I can only talk to the memory over and over again, and I am no longer alone with the former one. The memories we remember each time are only those we remembered the last time, and the people in our memories will disappear in the end. Is memory just a piece of a story?

Marjorie Prime

One of the exciting things about the movie is Prime’s service in the film, which provides holograms for deceased family members and “feeds” according to the patient’s memory to assist Alzheimer’s patients. They can “recite” them just in case they forget them. Marjorie has a quote that stood out to me; she said, “You remember the last time you remembered it, not the source. So, it’s always getting fuzzier, like a photocopy of a photocopy. Even a very strong memory can be unreliable because it’s always in the process of dissolving.” My understanding is that all your memories are memories and not facts. Because, as mentioned in Voicethread, memory is constructed. It is not that in the mind of an archive, they aren’t recorded or stored, but they are being built. The mind is actively constructing them—also, the emotional value of memories changes with changing experiences. Thus, memory, emotion, and cognition are interrelated, and together they create our perception and understanding of the world.

Another point of the lecture relative that Andy Clark and David Chalmers mentioned is that the mind could expand into the world without being limited by the boundaries of the brain and body. Holograms are an example of extended cognition, as they use “the brain, the body, external tools and technologies, interpersonal and social support, and culture to create complex interactions that form a cognitive system. In the film, Walter is in the process of chatting with Marjorie; he is also constantly learning and revising those memories. He always says, “I’ll remember now or next time.” Therefore, Walter can extend Marjorie on What the memory she has spoken of in the past is now blurred. Moreover, Jon begins to create a holographic AI version of his beloved wife and fills “her” with his own memories. So memories between Jon and his wife, especially Jon’s flashbacks to their marriage, underscore emotions’ pivotal role in how and when we remember.

The director’s cleverness is that he chose an elegant and mysterious villa by the sea to house most of the scenes, and there is no high-tech expression. The audience sees the beach, rocking chairs, and dogs but does not see any computers or other technology. It seems that in the future of human life, all technologies have been hidden and penetrated our lives. The entire film also embodies the concept of autobiographical memory, through the construction and control of each “AI”‘s memory, the stories they tell others and themselves about who they are, with an element of self-preservation, self-control, and self-definition. For example, in Walter and Marjorie and Jon and Tess, the dialogues and memories between them affect Walter and Tess’s memory and style and also impact Marjorie and Jon’s emotions.

“Measure of a Man” Star Trek: The Next Generation 

Data isn’t just a robot; he’s family. Data is called IT, and this episode made me think about when robots will become human. For example, while Maddox promised to recover the data after analysis and assured Data that his memory would be intact, Data believes that while will be preserved the detail of his memory, the nuances of his experience may not be reserved. The data, therefore, reject surgery. The critical factor that Data is a human rather than a robot here is that he understands that his memory is full of emotion and values ​​the people and things in his memory. Memories and emotions shape our understanding and perception of the world and determine who we are. Without our memories and the feelings in our memories, we are not complete beings. So, Dade is not the property of Starfleet but a living being. Meanwhile, when Data finally found Riker alone in a conference room, ashamed of having to argue with his friends at the hearing, Data understood his behavior. Data said, “That action injured you and saved me. I will not forget it.” I comprehend that Riker’s actions and emotions strongly influence Data, and he can empathize with Riker’s actions and feelings.