The memory-based and the moment-based views draw on different intuitions about what counts as real. There is an obvious sense in which present experience is real and memories are not. But memories have an attribute of permanence which lends them a weightiness that the fleeting present lacks: they endure and populate the mind. ** The experiencing self can easily choose what to do. Sex, skiing, restaurants, concerts, parties – all of these things are about being happy during the event. The remembering self is not so sure. It would rather go to Egypt and see the Pyramids or Interail around Europe just to see what happens.