Hi, everybody, and welcome to Open to Debate.

I'm John Donovan.

We are at the Aspen Ideas Festival for this episode, and we are taking on a question

of memory.

Now, there is a technology coming into focus right now that once belonged only to science

fiction.

It's the ability to use neurofeedback to alter or erase memory on purpose, basically

to hack your brain.

You have a memory, you want it gone, now it's gone.

So what is the case for something like that?

Well, one would be when a painful memory keeps interfering with your life, for example,

PTSD.

But critics raise all kinds of concerns about unwanted side effects, including losing a sense

of who you are if you're past and what you know of your past can be so easily edited

and rearranged.

So science and some philosophy in this one, as we debate this question, should we erase

bad memories?

Let's meet the debater of answering, yes, the author of the battle for your brain

and defending the right to think freely in an age of neuro-technology, Duke University

professor, director of the Duke Initiative for Science and Society, need a fire, honey.

Thanks so much.

And arguing no, that we should not erase bad memory, senior reporter for Vox Future Perfect

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