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If you could erase all trace and all memory of your acts, would you follow the same moral code?

Asked by Jayne (6776points) July 5th, 2009

I’m not talking about men in black suits wiping down rooms for fingerprints and erasing people’s memories with little sticks that flash. Imagine that you have the power to rearrange all the particles in the universe at any time to exactly recreate the recent past, down to the memories of everyone but yourself (because this isn’t supposed to be an exercise in time travel, let’s say you can only revert one month into the past or less). You can, in effect, undo everything that has been done by anybody or anything over that month, and only you will remember how it all went down. Your life is now like a video game with checkpoints wherever you want them, enabling you to always make the best decisions and leaving you free to explore to your heart’s content.

So, what do you do? Do you forsake your ability and live your life as normal, do you use it as a buffer against bad decisions, so when you say something hurtful or do something thoughtless you can make it all right, or do you tell everyone what you really think of them to their face, rob a few banks and live the good life until the cops catch up with you and then * poof * back to normal with no harm done. It’s not just that there are no consequences for you; ultimately, no one has to bear the burden of what you may have done, and the only lasting effects are the knowledge, good or bad, that you gain. The possibilities are endless, ranging from the benevolent to the sordid. So how would you use it? And does it matter? For those of you who believe in absolute morality, is an evil act still evil if, one second from now, that evil act will exist nowhere but in your memory and in the past? Or would you simply be too afraid of how this double life and safety net might change you to explore it at all?

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