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shminux comments on Timeless Identity - Less Wrong
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That said, I'm not sure why I should care much about having my non-episodic knowledge replaced with an off-the-shelf encyclopedia module. I don't identify with it much.
If you only kept the hippocampus, you'd lose your non-recent episodic memories too. But technical issues aside, let me defend the "encyclopedia":
Episodic memory is basically a cassette reel of your life, along with a few personalized associations and maybe memories of thoughts and emotions. Everything that we associate with the word knowledge is non-episodic. It's not just verbal labels - that was just a handy example that I happened to know the brain region for. I'd actually care about that stuff more about non-episodic memories than the episodic stuff.
Things like "what is your wife's name and what does her face look like" are non-episodic memory. You don't have to think back to a time when you specifically saw your wife to remember what her name and face is, and that you love her - that information is treated as a fact independent of any specific memory, indelibly etched into your model of the world. Cognitively speaking, "I love my wife stacy, she looks like this" is as much of a fact as "grass is a green plant" and they are both non-episodic memories. Your episodic memory reel wouldn't even make sense without that sort of information. I'd still identify someone with memory loss, but retaining my non-episodic memory, as me. I'd identify someone with only my episodic memories as someone else, looking at a reel of memory that does not belong to them and means nothing to them.
(Trigger Warning: link contains writing in diary which is sad, horrifying, and nonfiction.): This is what complete episodic memory loss looks like. Patients like this can still remember the names of faces of people they love.
Ironically...the (area 10) might actually be replaceable. I'm not sure whether any personalized memories are kept there - I don't know what that specific region does but it's in an area that mostly deals with executive function - which is important for personality, but not necessarily individuality.
What's the difference between personality and individuality?
In my head:
Personality is a set of dichotomous variables plotted on a bell curve. "Einstein was extroverted, charismatic, nonconforming, and prone to absent-mindedness" describes his personality. We all have these traits in various amounts. You can some of these personality nobs really easily with drugs. I can't specify Einstein out of every person in the world using only his personality traits - I can only specify individuals similar to him.
Individuality is stuff that's specific to the person. "Einstein's second marriage was to his cousin and he had at least 6 affairs. He admired Spinoza, and was a contemporary of Tagore. He was a socialist and cared about civil rights. He had always thought there was something wrong about refrigerators." Not all of these are dichotomous variables - you either spoke to Tagore or you didn't. And it makes no sense to put people on a "satisfaction with Refrigerators" spectrum, even though I suppose you could if you wanted to. And all this information together specifically points to Einstein, and no one else in the world. Everyone in the world a set of unique traits like fingerprints - and it doesn't even make sense to ask what the "average" is, since most of the variables don't exist on the same dimension.
And...well, when it comes to Area 10, just intuitively, do you really want to define yourself by a few variables that influence your executive function? Personally I define myself partially by my ideas, and partially by my values...and the former is definitely in the "individuality" territory.
OK, I understand what you mean by personality vs individuality. However, I doubt that the functionality of BA10 can be described "by a few variables that influence your executive function". Then again, no one knows anything definite about it.