It's like the difference between using a degausser to erase and entire tape, or using a more precise tool to edit out some scenes (tools which, by the way, generally come with the ability to read what's on the tape, so I can be precise in my selections). Causing complete amnesia is way more general than using some event-selective mind wiping power.

See, for me I don't see that there's enough fact to be able to say that it's more like degaussing or cutting and pasting. I don't see evidence that he can cut out last Tuesday but not Wednesday, or the bits with the dog last week, but not the bits without.

As far as my memory serves, he's done two wipes--one standard "full" amnesia (language skills intact and mature, facts gone--but the whole "Why are you calling me Brody" was weird--does he think he has another name? Wouldn't that question trigger the realisation he doesn't know what his name is, otherwise) and one that seems to be the past day or so.

It could be degaussing and search and wipe, or it could be something with a simpler mechanism.

since they've had MBG be able to be selective in what he wipes out, it seems to me more likely that he has some read-access to the material he's wiping out.

Unless I'm missing anyother blanking scene, they've just as clearly shown him be selective about the time periods he's wiped. What read access would that require?

how would he ever have realized he had the power in the first place?

How do you discover you can fly without having your brother jump off a building? You can. You can wish you girlfriend would forget that whole last hour when you were fighting...and conversation soon shows that she does. There's no hard work done to come up with scenarios like that.

See, for me I don't see that there's enough fact to be able to say that it's more like degaussing or cutting and pasting. I don't see evidence that he can cut out last Tuesday but not Wednesday, or the bits with the dog last week, but not the bits without.

But even allowing him to choose his starting point in the person's memory is specific, where wiping the whole memory bank out is general. A selection is made.

But even allowing him to choose his starting point in the person's memory is specific, where wiping the whole memory bank out is general. A selection is made.

Where did I say he couldn't be specific?

My point is, if I were writing code (which is what it too often boils down to), I'd write one procedure, and you'd specify your starting point. I'd not write one that says "wipe all" and another that says "wipe from this starting point forwards." The set of all starting point for memory wipes includes the beginning.

FWIW, I've been told that what helps doctors distinguish true amnesia and true paralysis, etc., from cases of 'hysterical' afflictions is that generally those victims with the latter seem somewhat unconcerned or at least at peace with their condition, since the brain at some level realizes that it is 'faking'. So Brody not being terribly upset would actually be consistent with MBG giving him a case of (perhaps permanent) 'hysterical amnesia'.

Or, you know, just bad writing/acting of a character's reaction.

(Guess how I'd bet.)

I think P-C saw an unaired version of the Heroes pilot, too -- maybe at Comic Con. The one he saw had a different ending with Peter.

It wasn't the Comic-Con version, which was longer. I saw a screener, and it didn't have the van scene.

How to make a Dalek o'Lantern

Yep but the hollowing out of the rapist quarterback took away his name, but not his ability to speak. So memory erasure does not have to be date based, though it seems to include that.

I don't assume he neccesarily has mind reading. That is a lot more precise than erasure. But as I said the erasure itself seems to be telepathic - mental projection and getting some sort of mental feedback in return. And I don't agree that we can't use Occams razor in guessing which way a fiction will go. It applies to some extent to good writing too. I'll agree it is not certain. We will eventually have canon on this (probably) and canon may completely prove my guess that it is a projective mental power with feedback wrong. But I'll bet you four persian, to one I'm right - that it is projective telelpathy, with some very general weak feedback, the feedback not neccesarily anywhere near strong enough to be mindreading, just a general feeling about how much memory was erased.

The don't-notice-me thing is much more tenative. It is not like we've seen MGB break into anything with high levels of security , so he could just be good at sneaking. But that he has that ability is a strong hunch, and IMO would be good story telling as well. A memory erasor with effective invisibility: that is a spooky villain or a very scary watcher type. Actually I suspect he does not have mind-reading - mind erasure end invisibilty are both mainly outward projecting mental powers. No reason he should have as strong ability to pull detailed information the other way. And it is better story telling if not one person h as too many powers. And the fact that Nathan took him by suprise with the supersonic whoosh seems to argume against mind reading.

Incidentally on the "no-one gets too much power thing". We are starting to see hints of limitations even on Hiro who I thought was going to end up unbalancedly powerful. Too many paradoxes risks a "rift". That certainly limits what he can do with time travel. (I'm assuming that a "rift" is a Very Bad thing.)

Also, his blog reveals another weakness.

He can't maintain timestop for more than 20 seconds. Which contradicts some of the time stops that seemed to go on longer in actual episodes. But how to you time a time stop anyway? At any rate, lets take it as canon that he can't maintain timestop indefinitely.

Too many paradoxes risks a "rift". That certainly limits what he can do with time travel. (I'm assuming that a "rift" is a Very Bad thing.)

Yeah, that's always the peril of time travel. You don't want to fuck up the space-time continuum or you risk DESTROYING REALITY AS WE KNOW IT.

As scary as it is, I sort of like that idea because it posits a math-based universe that exists in a definite structure, and mucking about can cause a divide-by-zero error and cancel out the equation.

Yep but the hollowing out of the rapist quarterback took away his name, but not his ability to speak. So memory erasure does not have to be date based, though it seems to include that.

Yeah, but that's what fictional total amnesia always looks like. Is that based on sound real world data about forgetting? If so...is name an event and language something stored somewhere completely different, and therefore not caught in the cleanup?

It's not that it's fiction which makes Occam's razor unreliable for me--it's that it's a fictional power we're hypothesising about. What is simple about telepathy other than the norms we've each accepted from the fiction we've read? There isn't one common thing we can centre back on.

the fact that Nathan took him by suprise with the supersonic whoosh seems to argume against mind reading.

What the hell did Evil Dad know? Not that he could fly? Or did he just bargain that he wouldn't?

I think Evil Dad did not know how well Nathan could fly. He may have expected slow hovering; they would be able to grab him before he got very far off the ground.