Is immortality with limited capacity for memory really immortality?

Interesting question, the answer depends on how one defines oneself.
Specifically, re memories, I believe that I have been shaped by my experiences, but I don’t believe that the precise memories of those experiences is important to maintain my sense of self throughout my lifespan.
I am a different self, while maintains my core self, than I was, for example, 30 years ago. My reaction to certain stimuli today is very different from virtually identical stimuli from then.

And no, I would not opt for immortality. Maybe some more time than my present allotment, but not forever.

What are thoughts on this, @SmashTheState?

No one is “the same person” over time. If this were the case, life would be pretty pointless. But wouldn’t you suppose that by the time the secret to extending life indefinitely was mastered, the trick to collecting then storing memories externally for ready “re insertion would also be achieved?

This sounds a lot like reincarnation

Great question!
I believe that humans have innate characteristics and instincts, but I also believe that we incorporate experiences from our own ‘frame of reference’ growing and experiencing also.
Your question renders the latter immaterial.
So would you fall back upon what you were born with as a definite and just keep acquiring experiences which might change your whole approach to life entirely…???
If stanleybmanly’s assertion were true also, would a person even be able to go forward- check past, being aware of the now, and more info would be generated for to bog down future actions or reactions?
Perhaps there is still a place for CliffNotes in all of our ‘chapters’, if you will.
Can you imagine how a person with multiple personalities would handle this.
Spontaneous combustion!

Good question! If we were immortal and could only remember the last 100 years we could not tell how old we were and so subjectively we would not feel immortal. All our memories would be of life as an old man and as an old man we would have little to look forward to. Life would be intolerable I think.

Even though I do retain memories of my childhood and young adulthood, sometimes it’s hard for me to believe that I was really that person (that stupid, that smart, that naïve, that brave, that cowardly, etc.).

It’s been said, and I get it now, that “no one steps in the same river twice”. I would add to that and clumsily clarify, “the same person never steps in the same river twice”.

Aside from that, there are a number of memories that I would be very happy to jettison, and some memories without which I would find the future to be pretty pointless, too. It’s just like moving a residence: you have to pick and choose what to keep and what to let go every time you move.

I once knew a grand old woman who had reached the age of 105, or so I was told. She could remember things that happened in her early childhood, especially her immigration to the US, which she remembered as happening at the age of 4. That’s a memory that spans over 100 years.

I certainly have a lot of memories of my childhood that I cherish and would not want to lose. I also have memories through my adulthood that I don’t want to lose. I would probably want to meet my descendants, and I would not want to lose the memories of love, adventures,

I do not know which would be worse…losing memories from the distant past, moving forward, as described by the OP, or losing recent memories, as happens with certain cases of Alzheimer’s.

I agree with @stanleybmanly that as we age, we are very different than the “person” we were when we were younger. My mom once said she and my dad are much different people than they were when they met and she was glad about these changes at it made being married to the same person for 50 years more interesting as these changes occurred. I know I am not only different physically today but if I look back over my life my views on certain aspects of life, religion and politics is greatly different than they were 25 years ago.

When reading up on this Ship of Theseus paradox, it was posited that would this “grandfather’s ax” be the same ax if both the head and handle were replaced? It would still be “grandfather’s ax” he uses but it could in no way be the exact same ax it was when he first acquired it because now, though identical in appearance, it now had a different head and different handle.

They used another example of a ship that had been completely restored by one by one replacing each and every board of the ship. It looked the same but it could not “be” the same ship it originally was because the materials are new. To break it down further the wood did not even come from the same trees so how could it possibly be the same ship?

@Cruiser Our cells are constantly repairing themselves, swapping out old molecules for new ones. Roughly once every twenty years or so, every single atom in your body has been replaced by an entirely new atom. Your body is made of the food you eat and the gases you breathe, and your old body has been shitted, pissed, and exhaled away. You are therefore not the same person if you don’t believe grandfather’s axe is the same axe.

@canidmajor My understanding of identity is a little different from most people’s. I do not believe in the myth of “I”. I am Legion, I contain multitudes. I am not only not the same person I was 20 years ago, I am not the same person I was 20 minutes ago. Different admixtures of archetypal personality fragments recombine in different ways to make many different versions of “me.” Which me I am at any given time depends on many factors both internal and external. “I” am not an “I” at all; we are an “us.” And as I change from year to year, day to day, second by second, different fragments of me surface and subside; and pieces of me fall away to be replaced by entirely new pieces. I am not a thing, I am an event which occurs over a period beginning with my birth and finishing with my physical death. I am not afraid of becoming something new.

Being and non-being create each other.
Difficult and easy support each other.
Long and short define each other.
High and low depend on each other.
Before and after follow each other.

Therefore the Master
acts without doing anything
and teaches without saying anything.
Things arise and she lets them come;
things disappear and she lets them go.
She has but doesn’t possess,
acts but doesn’t expect.
When her work is done, she forgets it.
That is why it lasts forever.

[from verse 2 of the Tao Te Ching, Mitchell translation]

@SmashTheState I have a pretty different view of immortality than anyone I have met and runs along the lines of your atom train of thought. Yes my body is made up of atoms that started from inside my mom (with a couple provided by my dad) that she probably acquired from the food she ate, the water she drank and the air she breathed. That process has continued to this day. So yes my atoms have been changed out a thousand times over recycled through our municipal sewers back into the rivers and out to the ocean and exhaled into the atmosphere. Those atoms that were once in me are everywhere and probably been recycled into various plants and animals. Who know I could have already eaten some of my atoms again and so could have you! lol

That said those atoms I borrowed are out there somewhere and when I die the energy that is in me holding my atoms together to hold me together will dissipate out into the universe where “I” will be…for infinity and beyond.

I agree with @Cruiser

Our self concept is our identity and it is an ego construct.
We are not our minds, our thoughts, our bodies, our work, our roles, our genders our memories. We are only pure consciousness, the rest is ego story.
My answer to this question is that, first, no, I have zero desire for immortality, just more ego not wanting to accept that all organisms die, sooner or later, even if you were manifested as a tortoise or a redwood tree.

150 years, 1,500 years, it matters not, it is all a short time in the cosmic bucket of the universe. I would not mind losing certain old memories that I never think of anymore, good, bad or indifferent, right now, in the present moment it wouldn’t matter much but as far as “immortality” yep, my atomic energy will continue on after my conscious being falls away and I wouldn’t want to be conscious for ever. That’s a looooong, looong time.haha

You just remember bits and pieces. Hopefully you get the
Good bits.

1. Of course I would accept it.
2. To the opposite of what you asked, I think immortal doesn’t mean you live forever or you have memory for thousands of years, I think it’s a state. Everyone can be “immortal”

As the late, great Yogi Berra once said, “It ain’t over ‘til it’s over Boo-boo !

I am immortal, but not invulnerable nor am I all knowing . When I get injured I get a redo. The human brain can hold a penta( byte) flops of data. Or is It a quadrillion nerve connections. I cannot remember grade 3 and 4 much.

@Cruiser I used to be crazy about Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. and I though Simmons, a biological and medical scientist in the show mentioned the similar perspective when she thought she was about to die.
She also said ”...and after we die the atoms of us can be in new lives, maybe in a bird, maybe in a plant, and maybe in someone else, hopefully these atoms from us would confer them happy and great lives”.
This quote went nuts on social media around me.