If I say Steven Hawking, do I really get to understand what he understood? Or do I just get this jumble of memories that do me no good because I can’ understand it at all?
If I say Jesus, do I get anything which I can use to verifiably prove to others he was or wasn’t divine?
Do I have to know the name of the person? Can I pick whoever created teh “treasure trove” at Oak Island?
If I pick D.B. Cooper, do I get the guy I want because that wasn’t his real name?
John Holmes
My top three are:
Keith Richards - the drugs. The women. The adulation and screaming crowds. All this for decades! And all while looking like a 6,000 year old cockroach!
Louis XIV - an autocrat who lifted the standard of living for all classes of people throughout his whole country for ~5 decades while literally living like a king. And doing so in one of the most interesting periods of european history, with the birth of money as an abstract concept, science and the scientific method, and more. How could you pass this up?
Richard Feynman - one of the best and brightest, and it would be a privilege to eavesdrop on his thought processes. Revolutionizing our understanding of quantum physics whole contributing to the Manhattan project and so much more. And the man knew how to have fun on top of it all!
The choice between them is the only hard part. 
Are the accessed memories admissible as evidence in a court of law?
Just poppin’ in to see if this has been Godwin-ed yet.
If Jesus was God, and God knows everything, accessing Jesus would give you the memories of everybody.
And next week’s wining Powerball numbers.
Or worse, the most salient memories are unpleasant ones like extended periods of ass itching or drooling or whatever due to his motor neuron disease.
I’d still go with Jesus. Nobody would believe me; everyone would still argue their positions, but it would be fun to know the actual truth.
Well, I’m convinced.
Jesus for me too.
Godwin isn’t dead yet, and I already have the memories of someone who used to spend a lot of time on Usenet.
Like many, to me a culture is more interesting the less that is known about it. So I’d probably pick the most well-read scholar in the Indus Valley Civilization. Or I’m curious about what type of stories about and interactions with ground sloths and glyptodonts early Native Americans had, so maybe the memories of one of their storytellers or shamen. Or maybe the memories from a member of a culture that was in contact with the Neanderthals or the Denisovians. Or one of the priests (or whatever) at Gobekli Tepe.
Hefner.
Sorry for the delays folks but work kicked in to 12 hour days and unlike some here, I can’t surf on company time. They expect me to actually be on the shop floor working.
This line of thinking led me to the question. If I had to narrow it down…
One time download of the chosen memory. Any time before right now.
You only get memories of people if they actually existed. If they were mythological or a legend created by combining several personas, then they didn’t exist. Think of it as searching a hard drive of the library of congress for a specific book that you recall but don’t know exactly which one. You can look at multiple files up and down the directories but you’ll only get to remember the memories after you say “aha this one.” As to understanding, you have the persons entire lifetime of memories to help you. If Hawking knew it and understood, so would you.
Only if the are yours. Otherwise wouldn’t they be hearsay?
The reason I’d go with this one too. You’d get his human memories. That which the divine knows would be out of reach.
Joe Hill. I want to know what* really* happened! Oh, and all the songs he never wrote down…!