Dollhouse

We’re watching Dollhouse now, Mr Whedon’s latest. It will, of course, be cancelled and not renewed – that happens to anything I enjoy watching, it seems. (Maybe I should write to screenwriters and threaten to watch their shows unless they buy me off?)

The premise is that a group of people, kept in the titular Dollhouse, have their personalities erased, and are used as programmable slaves – the client specifies a task, and the Dollhouse programmes someone to carry it out perfectly. After the mission, the programming is erased, so the agent retains no memory of it.

This started me thinking. If this technology were to exist, how do I know I have not been programmed with fake memories? Which of the many personalities who have used a physical body would have the best right to keep it permanently, and why? An interesting variation on the simulationist hypothesis.