Mind Modification

The concept of total and complete mind modification allows for a nearly endless amount of possibilities. Minds, run like nearly infinitely complex machines built of particles barely imaginable, computed by pure physics, can be changed in any way that's physically possible. On the scale of consciousness, what is 'physically possible' almost doesn't matter - anything and everything you could want to do or be can be created and modified.   Do you want to remove a phobia? Reduce your anxiety to nothing? Rid memories of embarrassing moments? Rewrite your entire psyche, from its roots to roof, to be another person? Mind Modification makes it all easy. Unlike Neural Restructuring, Mind Modification is more permanent, more difficult, and much, much more influential. No longer are you simply reducing an aspect of yourself that you don't like, it can be completely removed. Not just bypassed or overwritten, but physically taken out of the skull, nothing left of it, the hole replaced with something else to avoid regrowth.   Similarly, without the restriction of merely hard-wiring parts of the brain, the "self" can be directly modified, with extremely precise and surgical precision. Some may intentionally remove every memory, change, and aspect of a singular individual, event, or concept from their mind, leaving it empty, while others may instead introduce memories, learning anything they wish. Do you want to live as a fictional character? An idealized version of yourself? Someone else? Immutable?   Biology, chemistry, physics - all tools to warp the universe itself, thoughts included.

Much like Neural Restructuring, Mind Modification has its major opponents, those saying it's akin to 'cheating' on a personal growth scale, 'immoral' on a scale of freedom, and even 'impossible' from those who misunderstand the technology.   Granted, many of these issues have their roots in ethics. What does it mean if a being not yourself decided that you would come into existence - said being a past version of yourself. Do you abide by their wishes? Are you the same person, merely a different expression of them? Did they inhibit your freedom of choice and self to make those decisions without the knowledge of what could happen to you? Does it even matter if you like it how you are now, even if those feelings were implanted by another?   In some way or another, almost all issues of the mind stem from the idea of immutable freedom of choice. Some may justify all decisions with the concept that, regardless of circumstances, the nature of physics would mean that, in identical circumstances, said outcome would have always happened. Others may say that, despite all things being physically predetermined, that the mind's perception of these events being in-determinant may as well be the same as the choice being made by oneself, influencable by the thought alone, irrespective of said thought being technically predictable to the creation of the universe.   Many simply justify their choices with an argument of scale; though technically an action could be predicted through perfect measurement, it doesn't matter, as the energy requirement to perform the measurement itself would change the outcome in potentially a great way, making the line of reasoning no more useful than speculation.