The ‘Real You’ Is a Myth
theconversation.com
theconversation.com
What comes out of it is that events are the "data", while personality/identity is the "software". The data is various, but the software is the same. The consistency of reasoning between now and then is incredible. When I read the setup of an old recounting, I start reacting to it while reading it from the point of view of my now-self, and then I see that the reflection of my old-self on this event to be very consistent with that. It's naive, uninformed and a bit rebellious (probably because of teenagehood), and sometimes because of that it completely misses the point, but the direction of reflection is the same. It's not alien, it makes sense.
We're reacting to events by using our software on related data. The value of experience entirely lies in the data, which can sometimes create entire shifts in perspective, but the software is the same. If you read an old journal you'll see that most reactions are the same, and for those which differ you can point out exactly what piece of data was missing in comparison to today's perspective.
But that's a very interesting experiment you are running. I wonder if you will still hold the same conclusion after next 20 years. Although, you can always say that the data is being interpreted by the software and effectively say that the source code changes but the interpreter stays the same.
Don't underestimate the environmental factor that your journal provides. Perhaps you're most consistent than most because you can and have read your prior journal entries, and this preserves the consistency of your reasoning over time.
Kind of like studying: it's well known that more frequent review of material dramatically improves retention.
Most people don't have such an external log/reference. Memories cannot be externally validated, only internally validated against other memories. So, small deviations can accumulate, and overtime create entirely false narratives (esp around uncomfortable or even traumatic events)
You make me want to start a diary :-)
Another screening happens when you are reading your own journal. We are not objective readers and we add and remove things into what we read.
I'm 40. I've been through 2 divorces and 3 full-on professional careers (academics, music, and programming). I have a 17-year-old son.
Although I can probably think out the evolution of my "software", it's really hard to think of my current releases as having a whole lot of backwards compatibility with that 0.0.1 version. If I had to give it a number, I'd say I'm somewhere around release 6.4.3.
:D
Personally (and this is just my conclusions, not one I expect other folks to come to), my views and strategies for working with the world are so removed from 25-year-old me that I have little problem saying that I am almost not the same person.
Certainly, my "software" has so many revisions to essential functionality that it's hardly recognizable as the same collection of code: there is very little overlap between how I reasoned about things when I was 25 and now, and I feel like that's not just a matter of "data" aggregation. My conclusions is that the software isn't, in fact, the same.
I feel like it's more that I've fundamentally revised the software on a number of levels to the point where there are so many essential differences the identity isn't even consistent.
Will the real me please stand up.
I suppose it would make sense in that particular moment in time, and in that particular context, but it's not an image of Chewbacca is it? Not really. It's just a conveniet way of refering to phenomena... happening and being perceived a certain way.
In a similar way, I'd say yes, we are the "real us" at any point in time, but only in the sense that it makes convient sense in that particular moment, and only as a device to point at a set of particular processes/things happening.
It stands to reason that the "real you" never gets fully realized until you die.
Jude Law repeats this in "I Heart Huckabees" as he slowly slips into existential crisis.
Isn't this somewhat self-contradictory? Why assume the real me has to be based on true memories -- and I don't even want to start a discussion of what a true memory, a true account (save anything subjective?) of some event could be. If we know who we want to be, we most likely also know our real me.
I think people can do that to such an extent that’s it’s possible that they could be deluded as to the nature of their “true” self, thinking themselves, say, kinder, or more competent in certain areas, or less racist than they actually are when their guard is down. Sometimes you need someone else or some experience to realise you didn’t really know yourself!
I think current state is part of it - for example, people might become more cynical over time through their life not going the way they want. Things like that can gradually become part of the “real you” without you noticing.
This article is about how personality is shaped by memory, and how flawed memory is. I'd say that definition is fairly close to the one used in the article, and there being no "real self" supports the shift over time and need for outside views that you have noticed.
My "work" personality is a completely different one to my "Home" personality.
and My Online and internal personalities are all different people as well.
which one is the real me? shrug they're all real, just used for different purposes. I'm fairly sure I'm not unique in this, but then I suspect I'm better at compartmentalising than most others so maybe I am.
Perfectly normal and decent folk outside of work. Able to hold intelligent and thought provoking conversation, and talk intelligently about many fields.
The lesson? Some people are so good at compartmentalizing that they leave their intelligence in another box.
Sometimes I find it's better to be somebody else
- Dave Matthews Band - So much to say
I have been pondering on a similar question for some time now. I have an amateurish and somewhat Jungian theory:
I think the "real me" is a collection of archetypes that are constantly struggling to take control over the mind and body. These archetypes are also constantly being improved on or new ones are being acquired through life time experiences. The "I" or the consciousness is nothing more than an observer and it also has the role to create a reasonable explanation, a justification if you will, of the motives behind actions. But the motives of the "I" are entirely produced by its collection of archetypes. This, in reality, would mean that the consciousness mind has no real choice in what one does! It is the archetypes that drive us to do or say things and the conscious mind just observes and creates a reason out of our memories and knowledge.
This would explain situations where, for example, one gets angry and says something that offends and hurts another person, but they would then almost immediately ask themselves "Why the heck did I even say/do that?" and the conscious mind creates a justification. After that another archetype prevails, e.g.; the one of compassion, and an apology would follow.
Of course, none of this explains how archetypes came to be in the first place.
Question for you...I agree with your observer idea. But why have an observer? What purpose does it serve? Couldn't we make do as just a collection of agents?
I want to thank you about mentioning "Minsky's Society of Mind". On my reading list.
Abstract: This is the first empirical study of vivid autobiographical memories for events that people no longer believe happened to them. Until now, this phenomenon has been the object of relatively rare, albeit intriguing, anecdotes, such as Jean Piaget's description of his vivid memory of an attempted abduction that never happened. The results of our study show that nonbelieved memories are much more common than is expected. Approximately 20% of our initial sample reported having at least one nonbelieved autobiographical memory. Participants' ratings indicate that nonbelieved memories share most recollective qualities of believed memories, but are characterized by more negative emotions. The results have important implications for the way autobiographical memory is conceptualized and for the false-memory debate.
"Approximately 20% of our initial sample reported having at least one nonbelieved autobiographical memory." and an anecdote of Piaget vividly remembering something wrong after being consistently misled by his mother as a child.
Some discrepancy between that and "we constantly create false memories to achieve the identity we want".
If my memory serves right it's well established in laboratory conditions that autobiographical memory is vulnerable to adversarial manipulation, but last thing I heard it wasn't at all clear that it spontaneously malfunctions under normal living conditions. I see very little in this piece that gives me reason to revise that impression.
If I had to put a figure on it, to avoid argument I'd say it accounts for between 30 and 50% of your behaviour. The rest is shaped by social conditioning, life experiences and the environment we find ourselves living in. But even these could be said to be mediated in some part by the initial 30%.
About 50% of personality from genetics, 50% from environment, and approximately 0% from parental influence.
I wonder if people who are more adept at creating and selective recall of memories tend to be happier individuals.
This is why kids like to pretend to play kitchen or use a broom. They see you do it.
Anecdotally, I have seen children who have ‘bad attitudes’ do a 180 when the parents make an effort to model calmness and positivity. Anxious, stressed out or negative emotions in parents affect the kids.
In most settings, mood is contagious and is set by the leader. The catch is you have to keep it up.
What's the source of this? Given that siblings are often so different between each other, and from their parents, it could be that most of personality traits come from the environment, but we're still born with it (i.e. it could be influence in early development of the fetus, from the environment (womb, food mother eats and her hormones, sounds and movement from outside, ...) not from genes).
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2002/11/25/what-comes-nat...
As a parent, that seems about right. We may lay a foundation for helping them make good choices. But, a child’s identity ultimately seems to be formed by their predisposition and the types of peers that they seek out and befriend at around 12 years and onwards.
There's almost no fact checking and they usually mangle the science. http://www.danielbor.com/lehrerandsciencewriting/
http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/science/201...
I figured a ‘pop sci’ reference could at least help guide the way. My bad.
Pop-sci often adopts sensationalism at the expense of rigour in order to shift volumes.
At least personal, lived experience can be taken at face value, if accepted in good faith as a truthful account, and can be cross-examined.
If you have an observer giving a truthful account that conflicts with an established fact then surely something must account for that discrepancy.
See for instance radio-waves vs Kirchoffs law. It's not that Kirchoff was wrong, it's just that he didn't account for frequency as a variable, which was solved by Maxwell.
Now, that's for established facts. If you're talking about commercially adulterated science then you have an even higher burden to bear.
We need to be beyond a level of discourse where "because science" or "a study said" is considered a fait acompli. Science often contradicts herself and studies are often debunked.
Just because "some guy wrote it", doesn't make it so.
I don't disagree. But I don't think personal anecdote is a sufficient answer. You could criticize the quality of the research (in more specific terms than "pop-sci") or present contradictory evidence and I'd have no problem with it. Simply attacking a guy in a casual discussion that is not particularly rigorous for posting a citation you deem insufficiently rigorous without further explanation I do not think is fair.
Initially, I merely proposed that in the modern world we need to be more rigorous in our evaluation of scientific propositions.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18083635
That's where you joined in.
I'd go so far as you're just trying to hurtful.
If parenting is a part of the environment, then that's not 0%.
The conclusion purposely mangles the numbers for the sake of sensationalism, and that is the kind of thing that gets picked up on and becomes myth.
Nonetheless, I don't think it's fair to jump straight to "sensationalism" to explain why he has different findings than yours. Perhaps your sense of influencing your children is more illusory than you think. It wouldn't be the first time a widely-acknowledged phenomenon with children turned out to be in the imagination of parents (consider "sugar high," for instance, which does not really exist).
The influence of parents is very much a factor in development. Just other factors influence a lot more than other people might expect.
You're making assumptions I'm some sort of uneducated whimsical pixie-head and that's your failure. Not mine.
I actually do think this counts for a lot. Certainly there are genetic and epigenetic factors, but scant attention is paid to gestative influence (an area it seems few know much about).
It does seem there is an eagerness to label all personality traits from the date-of-birth as "genetic".
The author proposes three laws of behavioral genetics which summarize results across a wide range of behaviors:
All human behavioral traits are heritable. The effect of being raised in the same family is smaller than the effect of genes. A substantial portion of the variation in complex human behavioral traits is not accounted for by the effects of genes or families.
But most identical twins are not so different from each other. Read up on twin studies, where twins were separated at birth. They tend to have very similar personalities and outlooks on life, despite never having had contact until the study was conducted.
This probably doesn't happen very often. (TBH I don't know if it's even possible.)
Sure it would, if you study enough of them.
Thus, even if raised separately, the 'environment' to which each identical twin is exposed will be more similar than the 'environments' of two non-identical people.
Simple example....
Adam and Bob are raised separately. Yet, both develop to be confident and strong leaders. Is this leadership quality 'genetic'? Or, is it because Adam and Bob are each 6'5" and handsome?
It would be very difficult indeed to statistically tease out these things.
That is incorrect.
The number of identical twins that have been raised separately (and studied) is tiny.
With a sample size that small, it is difficult to get statistically significant results. Obviously. I was just pointing out that one of the issues with which a researcher must grapple is the fact that not only is one shaped by one's environment, but one's environment is shaped -- to some degree -- by one's appearance... a tricky issue when dealing with two subjects who are identical in every outward respect.
Yes, I wonder about this too.
> Given that siblings are often so different between each other, and from their parents, it could be that most of personality traits come from the environment, but we're still born with it.
In terms of genetics, the reason there's variation between siblings and parents, even though it is true that as children we inherit 50% of our genes from our father and 50% from our mother, is due to randomness in terms of which parts get inherited. Our siblings are inherits different combinations of genetics, but we all inherit 50%/50%.
This doesn't answer the question of how much of our personality is inherited vs environmental, but that siblings/parents are so different from each other doesn't argue against heritability.
Both in terms of how the kid reacts to situations around and what the kid likes, dislikes or value (consider good vs bad behavior).
I don't think there is scientific a consensus on this yet. I strongly doubt that there is reasonable study that would make the split 50%, 50%, 0%. It is too round, too nice to be true.
GP provides sources in a sibling thread where the discussion is further elaborated.
Unless you want to go psychodynamic on things but you'll have to start making excuses for Freud then!
This is what Watson would have said (in a roundabout way) [0]. Perhaps it's not related but he's not considered to have been a very nice guy. [1] [2]
Skinner was a lot more fun.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_B._Watson#Behaviorism
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_B._Watson#"Little_Albert"...
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_B._Watson#Advertising
One of the telling trait of serial killers are harsh parenting/tough childhood in general btw.
But even before we even get to overt trauma, simple resentment is pretty powerful in my opinion as well. Resentment can build in lots of ways. Parents perceived to not treat children equally or to restrict child from persuing a particular interest including love interests.
If parents don’t respect a child it has consequences.
Edit: to add that resentment is normally a reciprocation. Meaning, parent resents child and therefore behaves in a manner that causes child to resent parent. Snowball that for a few years / decades = not good.
[0]- https://www.ted.com/talks/nadine_burke_harris_how_childhood_...
It was almost scary that those cats didn't recognise us. I had to hold the "what have you done to my cat!" down more than a few times.
I often wonder if people are similar. That there's really only 1000 different humans or so, and the rest are copies that recognise different people and places. Because for cats, that's definitely the case.
If you can elaborate on your point of view I'd be happy to further explain what I mean here.
[0] https://www.jstor.org/stable/87360?seq=1#page_scan_tab_conte...
There are many many many many twin-studies that demonstrate the limited effects of social conditioning.
There's a lot more certainty about the relative weight of these factors than you might expect. Pick up any beginners developmental psychology textbook and see for yourself.
Unless you're actually trying to debunk the whole field in which case you'll need more than just a glib remark.
No scientist worth a damn watch a very young baby for a few hours and determine that their genetics mean they will have some personality trait. At best, genetics provide a range of how strong a personality trait is, with environment and chance both influencing things too.
You've supplied nothing but spite to this discussion. Go back under your rock.
I'd put the impact of this on humans at like 60% though, higher than your estimate.
I don't think it was ... if anything "it is not based on thoughts" would imply the opposite!
An object "is" an object whether it knows it is or not.
EDIT I think maybe you're interpreting the final clause of the sentence "what is lost when you die" as "what is lost to you" but I read it as "what is lost to others".