Comment on Does Consciousness Disappear in Dreamless Sleep?
SpaceCadet@feddit.nl 1 year agoif a memory never forms it may as well not have happened
That is an interesting philosophical question.
If suffering is not remembered, was there even suffering? And if there was, does it matter? I can think of a few counterexamples of that, for example: a killer who tortures his victim before killing them.
Presumably in your scenario the victim remembers the torture though.
In the case of general anaesthetic the memory is effectively considered to be deleted in real time. On its way through the brain it ceases to exist so it never reaches the conscious mind.
pinkdrunkenelephants@sopuli.xyz 1 year ago
Uhh, yes and yes? What’s stopping a rapist from anesthesizing their victims before the act and using the fact that they did as an excuse to get off charges under your logic?
jarfil@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Physical abuse tends to leave some physical consequences. You’d have to come up with an example where there would be neither physical not psychological consequences… but even getting anesthesized against one’s will is already a consequence.
pinkdrunkenelephants@sopuli.xyz 1 year ago
No it doesn’t, not always. Actually it’s routine for medical students to be brought in to give anesthesitized women pelvic exams without their knowledge and consent, and no one was the wiser until universities that did this announced it… nytimes.com/…/pelvic-medical-exam-unconscious.htm…
That is textbook rape right there, and it doesn’t often have physical consequences. Most women didn’t even know but doctors fucking did it anyway.
How you people have any faith in any aspect of this society is beyond me.
jarfil@lemmy.world 1 year ago
That article is a mix of several cases.
One of those you might call going against the wishes of the patient… then again, that’s quite common in the ER, patients are yet to be established as “sound of mind” and capable of deciding for themselves, so an ER doctor can overrule them, including sedating to perform any procedures they consider necessary.
Others seem like letting students perform a non-vital part of a procedure, which is both expected from University/teaching hospitals, and in my personal experience was spelled out in the consent form (although they never told me personally, so if I hadn’t read it, I wouldn’t know).
None of those are. Communication could be improved, and I personally get pissed when medical personnel switches from “medical adult talk” to “patient baby talk” right in front of me… but I’ve also seen patients get upset because they didn’t understand what was being talked about, and had to be calmed down with “baby talk”… so it’s a difficult issue overall.