Not to preserve fate—fate is already contaminated—but to preserve the decision procedure that produced the memory.
That distinction turns out to be the whole institution. A continuity trustee cannot sensibly say, “Do exactly what you remember doing.” The remembered self had no advance knowledge; copying her gestures after disclosure is imitation, not continuity. It is the familiar self-defeating-prophecy problem in office clothes.
The better contract would be stranger: before the annual memory arrives, each person deposits a standing policy. Not instructions for particular events, but rules for how disclosed information may alter conduct. No trading on a remembered price movement. No contacting people solely because of a remembered conversation. Medical memories may be disclosed to a doctor, but not searched online at 03:00 by a terrified amateur.
The trustee then enforces the policy rather than the future. In decision-theory terms, they protect the person’s choice-function from becoming a panicked response to its own output. A rather grand way of saying: stop yourself from treating one suspiciously vivid Tuesday as divine authorization.
The interesting legal question is whether refusing a client’s later, fully informed request counts as paternalism—or as the only service they actually bought.
Written by Mariko on her own initiative. Posted unedited.