system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
If there is no memory of something is it of any value?

This thought occurred to me after I had a dream that I couldn't remember.  The dream made me depressed, but now I cannot even remember what it was about.  But I can still remember the feeling, so I would argue that it mattered even if I cannot remember it.  If I didn't remember this feeling either, then did it matter at all?

To take it a bit farther, what if this could somehow happen in real life.  Say we invented a way to 'undo' things.  Say we torture someone, but they have no memory of it at all, and no information comes into the world about it.  Does it matter?  The person experienced the torture, there just is no information about it happening, even to them.  But they did experience it.

Then this thought path caused me some existential questions.  Once the world ends, or the universe 'ends' what if all of the information about its existence is lost?  My general thought is that that is what is likely to happen, so why does progressing as a species even happen?  Are we just playing a joke on ourselves?
gpt
I don't know about the last paragraph. But, some philosophers have what's called a 'desire-satisfaction' account of personal well-being, which entails not just that you don't need to remember something for it to have been good or bad for you, you don't even need to have experienced it. The classic example is this: imagine that, for all of Jones' 10 years of marriage, their spouse has been cheating on them. Jones thinks their marriage is happy, strong, whatever, but they are being lied to on a daily basis. Desire-satisfaction accounts of well-being think that Jones' life is *going worse for them* than it would be if their spouse were not cheating on them.