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Comment by devrandomguy | Hacker News Reader

There are times, when I can't honestly claim that my behavior is any smarter than that of the houseflies that die in front of the window, or the salmon that spends the remainder of its life searching for a way past a dam. The environment might be more complex, but the behavior is not. It is helpful to have a name for the system that is responsible, makes it much easier to recognize and derail it.

I believe Sir Mix-A-Lot studied the problem thoroughly in the 1990s, but in the end, had to concede that he was unable to take control of his own reptile brain.

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One of the books that really allowed me to think differently and sometimes overpower my train of thought is called "The Power of Now". The rhetoric can be super flowery at times (especially in the beginning), but the point he tries to get across was incredibly novel to me and there's strategies in there to help you control your brain and use it more as a tool.

I often think that salmon has it better than us humans. The salmon is focused on doing what it's doing at the moment, and doesn't have the time or capacity to build a sense of 'self' that they are proud or ashamed of, that colors their actions and gives them pain in the moment because it wasn't what they wanted or thought it would be. They just want to get up stream.

Would you rather be a salmon? I rather prefer the complexity that comes with having a self.

That's because you value your power over your peace of mind, which is fine and true for most people. I think they just meant in terms of a purely happiness based value system.

Honestly, as an enthusiast of all things callipygian, Sir Mix-A-Lot's treatise (BGB) was groundbreaking.

To your point about being unable to control his own reptile brain, however, I don't know how much I buy that. From the get-go, SMA acknowledges that "[he] cannot lie", which I think is a concession to determinism more so than one to biology.

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