Proof it’s possible to enhance or suppress memories

“Many psychiatric disorders, especially PTSD, are based on the idea that after there’s a really , the person isn’t able to move on because they recall their fear over and over again,” says Briana Chen, first author of the paper, who is currently a graduate researcher studying depression at Columbia University.

In their study, Chen and Ramirez, the paper’s senior author, show how traumatic memories—such as those at the root of disorders like PTSD—can become so emotionally loaded. By artificially activating in the bottom part of the brain’s hippocampus, negative memories can become even more debilitating. In contrast, stimulating memory cells in the top part of the hippocampus can strip bad memories of their emotional oomph, making them less traumatic to remember

(Philip K. Dick got there first.)

The Peculiar Blindness of Experts

The pattern is by now familiar. In the 30 years since Ehrlich sent Simon a check, the track record of expert forecasters—in science, in economics, in politics—is as dismal as ever. In business, esteemed (and lavishly compensated) forecasters routinely are wildly wrong in their predictions of everything from the next stock-market correction to the next housing boom. Reliable insight into the future is possible, however. It just requires a style of thinking that’s uncommon among experts who are certain that their deep knowledge has granted them a special grasp of what is to come.

Seeking Status Based upon Social Media

Other surveys have uncovered similar trends: Roughly two in three millennials think that social media has a negative impact on their financial well-being, according to a 2018 survey of more than 2,000 millennials from financial firm Fidelity. Data released in 2018 by mobile bank firm Varo Money found that 53% of millennials admit to buying something they saw advertised on social media. And a 2018 survey from Allianz Life shows that more than half of millennials (57%, versus just 28% of Gen Xers and 7% of boomers) say they’ve spent money they hadn’t planned to because of something they saw on social media.

This is partly because millennials say they feel pressure to keep up with their friends’ spending — and of those, nearly half say that social media posts of friends’ vacations and lifestyles contribute to that pressure, according to 2017 data from TD Ameritrade. Social media also makes 61% of millennials (versus just 35% of Gen Xers and 12% of boomers) feel inadequate about their own life and what they have, with 88% comparing themselves to others on social media (compared to just 71% of Gen Xers and 54% of boomers who say the same), according to the Allianz data. And the Varo data found that three-quarters of millennials feel social media portrays an unrealistically positive view of people’s lives — and as a result 41% have made a purchase to feel better about their own lives.

The power of shame and honor, of envy and resentment is remarkable. Solomon already answered the question about getting everything:

Ecclesiastes 2:10–11 (NASB95)
10 All that my eyes desired I did not refuse them. I did not withhold my heart from any pleasure, for my heart was pleased because of all my labor and this was my reward for all my labor.
11 Thus I considered all my activities which my hands had done and the labor which I had exerted, and behold all was vanity and striving after wind and there was no profit under the sun.