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> I personally feel that "Being who you are", "Staying true to yourself" etc, are very negative things to tell someone

I think life advice is much more case-by-case than we tend to acknowledge.

Maybe Person A needs to stop being so hard on themselves, stop conforming to other people's expectations for once, and just live life the way they want to live it. But maybe Person B needs to take a good hard look at their life choices, and understand that they've been hurting themselves and the people who love them. Maybe Person C needs to take a risk every once in a while, learn to think outside the box. But maybe Person D needs to get their affairs in order and start following through on long-term plans. Maybe Person E is too nice, and Person F isn't nice enough.

Some people need to hear "be who you are." Other people need to hear the opposite.

Most super-simplified advice like "be who you are" is actually just people repeating the instructions that led them to their growth experiences, but it's not the actual growth experience.

Same is true for proverbs and folk wisdom.

I used to hate those as a young person. They always sounded trite, cliché. Now I recognize them for what they are - pointers to experiences. Pointers in the programming sense. You just won't get a piece of folk wisdom until you've lived through a situation to which it applies, and then thought about it and perhaps did some introspection. But after that, that proverb becomes a concise and convenient way to communicate to others who also get it, "hey, the situation will likely evolve this way", or "consider applying this pattern of reasoning to the situation".

The best proverbs are phrased in such a way to at least point you in the right direction if you don't understand them. But in the end, you can't skip experiencing the subject of the proverb yourself.

This describes exactly my viewpoint of religion. I grew up with a Christian background but at young age (I remember questioning it at the age of 5-6) decided I wouldn't devote my life to it. Nowadays, I recognize many of the lessons shared/taught through these stories, and I wonder if my children are going to be better off with or without them. At the very least, they'll still get similar lessons from Disney.

Growing up in charismatic Christianity I don't think the baggage is worth whatever modest bits of advice are there. It seems to me like looking trying to strain potable water from a thoroughly polluted lake.

Nobody is going back and verifying their growth experiences were actually a good idea though. I enjoy pointing out that there is no globally dominant religion - who whatever the most correct spiritual outlook is we know most people have it wrong.

Given how few people achieve meaningful success or happiness under their own steam it seems fundamentally risky listening to their advice. Most people are playing status games - there are a lot of losers and no winners in status games these days. The world is too big.

Reducing life advice to a few words is a disservice to the quality of the advice.

> Your entire identity, hobbies, likes and relationships are a construct of your environment, genes and randomness.

...

> You absolutely can and should shape your identity around what type of person you want to become in the future.

If your entire identity is shaped by the things you listed above, how is the "type of person you want to become" not also a product of those same things? That is, how are your wishes independent yet your identity contingent?

I do believe your wishes and even your knowledge of the space of what is possible is a product of exactly those things.

My wish to change and then taking an action to change is a function of the environment and everything that came before, probably I read or heard about it somewhere. Similarly, perhaps by me writing about it here a neuron will flip in someone else's mind that the way "they are" is not immutable, and that they can take an active role in molding their own personality and likes.

I think the "type of person you want to become" is not static. It changes as you attempt to become it. It changes because you learn more about yourself and the universe _as_ you try to change.

So while your knowledge and perception of the universe is always imperfect, it can also always improve. Pursuit of your better self is the means by which you both improve yourself and your knowledge of what that better self is.

Absolutely.

I used to be a pretty picky eater and wouldn't eat things because I thought I didn't like them. This didn't change until I started to intentionally try things that were new, or that I thought I didn't like. Turns out, a lot of stuff is really good, and me not liking them was based in lack of experience, not in my actual taste!

I absolutely believe picky eating is a learned behavior. The wide varying cultural differences in food already tells us there's nothing biologically innate about the preferences.

Toddlers will observe their parents facial expressions and behaviors even as they're being served. If you scrunch your nose when giving them broccoli, they won't like it. If you incentivize eating it, they learn they're not "supposed" to like it. At the other extreme, if the parents fight for the last piece of broccoli the kid will happily join in, in my direct experience. Somehow we have convinced our toddler that broccoli is the best thing ever and lollipops will break her teeth and should be avoided :D Your reaction to hearing about this kind of "conditioning" is also no doubt a product of your own environment.

For things like sour or spicy which may be unpleasant at first, repeated and consistent small exposure over time changes their preferences almost without fail. Millions of Korean kids loves Kimchi as a staple, if you could replicate that environment your kid would too.

  > Toddlers will observe their parents facial expressions
  > and behaviors even as they're being served.

I did an experiment with this. When my daughters were around 4 and 6 I introduced them to Shproti, a small canned fish, as a desert. I would only let them eat it on special occasions, and only if they were well behaved. For probably five years they would reject ice cream in favour of these canned fish if given the chance.

I do not know who broke to them the secret, but now the little one does not like them anymore. The older still eats the fish with me, but of course no longer as a desert.

This hasn't been my experience with our twin toddlers and 5 year old. What they like is all over the place. We don't force or bribe them to eat anything - we put their options on their plate (usually around 4 things) and let them eat whatever they want. Everything they eat my wife and I eat, and we don't make things we don't like to eat.

Usually only around half of what we serve them will be eaten by all 3 kids. What they don't eat I generally eat for lunch the next day.

There are also some completely random habits. Take asparagus for example. One toddler won't eat the tips.

Right. As weird as it sounds I think you have to "practice" liking certain foods.

I used to hate ginger but drinking ginger kombucha, which has a ginger taste but isn't overwhelming, slowly acclimated me to the taste of ginger. A few months later and I actually liked ginger.

I can still see why I use to hate it but it's just...more palatable now.

The more I looked into flavors (bitter, salty, sour, sweet, umami) I realized I almost always had issues with sour. Not anymore.

> Right. As weird as it sounds I think you have to "practice" liking certain foods.

We do. The taste buds of young children are attuned to liking sweet. Milk is sweet (lactose), and poisonous foods are usually not, so its of evolutionary use. As is switching teeth.

From what I read, it takes about 10 times till a child likes something they disliked before. Force feeding leads to trauma though; so we provide our child with options and encourage her to sample. One particular quote I use (translated from Dutch): "you don't know yet how it tastes. If you try it you'll find it out. Maybe you're missing out?" I want to stimulate her curiosity because its a trait I like (in both her parents). She won't get an alternative food though, and she will be allowed her desert regardless.

As for sour, we combine yogurt (sour) with custard (vanilla, sweet) at times. The balance is more in favor of the latter for the child; parents eat a more sour version. From my memory I disliked bitter as child (some vegetables are abundant with that taste). Now I drink coffee black daily, and love bitter vegetables, as long as the taste is combined with herbs, spices, pepper, and other flavors such as sweet/sour/salty/umami (while respecting the bitterness as being the dominant taste).

Well, acquired taste is absolutely a thing, as probably anybody who likes coffee, beer, red wine, or a thousand other things can readily attest to. We're hardwired to like energy-rich food, most other things are learned.

I'm a bit surprised this came as a revelation to you. People in my social context all knew that tastes are acquired. And liking certain things was seen as a sign of maturity, leading people to brag about liking stuff before they actually did.

Also, one's tastes can change over time. In my case I had never considered that possibility until it happened to me. As a kid, I would not touch salad with a 10 foot pole. But at one point in early adulthood I tried one and actually enjoyed it. A bit later I realized that what I really like are a lot of savory, acidic flavors (salsa, mustard, tomato sauce, vinegar), which of course includes many salad dressings.

I completely agree. I recently made a similar change; the removal of the cognitive dissonance between "I'm a person who likes X and not Y, but I admire people who like Y and not X" was refreshing and invigorating.

On a side note, it's interesting to meta-analyze the strategy and realize that the kind of person you want to become is also shaped by the same factors. However, I find I have a much better chance at arriving at a "correct" or "best" aim by objectively analyzing identities other than my own, and then changing my own to match, than by simply following my own random impulses.

I remember reading about a study from long ago where they asked people their opinions on smoking and then had some start a smoking habit. Afterwards, the opinion on smoking was much more positive for those who had started smoking. Nicotine's addictiveness explains the continued habit, but the opinion change came from our fluid preferences and post-hoc rationalizations.

I think this is called "cognitive dissonance".

They've had people rate various prizes by desirability. Then the person receives a prize of lesser desirability. Later, when asked again the person will rate the item they received higher. It is reasoned that the person's psyche would rather increase the desirability of what they did receive rather than accept that they received something that "sucks".

However that is the cynical take we are compelled to choose because of what we know and think of smoking.

Taking only the study itself into consideration, one could easily argue that the participants "knocked it before they tried it", i.e. by taking up smoking they realized how nice it actually is.

I am not trying to revive 60's tobacco propaganda, but I would say for a lot of personality/opinion/habit/preference changes in general this explanation is very likely (and far less sinister)

No, smoking is great. If it didn’t cause disease, everyone should smoke. It feels good, it looks cool, it’s social but not clingy, and it calms you down. The biggest problem with America today is we all need a smoke break but look at social media instead.

> I remember reading about a study from long ago where they asked people their opinions on smoking and then had some start a smoking habit.

"Had some start a smoking habit" for a study does not sound like an ethical study to me.

"long ago"

ta, point taken

Genes, Environment, and Randomness covers a lot of causes!

Staying true to yourself is not a good idea if you have an inaccurate self-image. It will cause great harm.

On the other hand you can’t in fact shape your identity around arbitrary desires about who you want to be.

There are constraints to what is possible for you become, especially if you care about being happy.

Knowing and respecting those constraints can be seen as a more positive interpretation of “being true to oneself”. Interpreting it this way, there is no ‘one true identity’, but there is definitely a sense of who you are, and who you it’s better not to try to be.

> "Being who you are", "Staying true to yourself" etc, are very negative things to tell someone

I disagree with this though I think I understand how the lack of nuance in "be yourself" can allow it to be easily misinterpreted.

> I used to really like X, it was a core part of my identity. One day I simply decided to not do X anymore, I didn't like the people doing X and I didn't see any successful people in my orbit, and I replaced it with Y & Z.

This is basically the textbook definition of "Being who you are" or "Staying true to yourself"

The "Textbook definition" point you made is quite confusing.

"Being who you are" means that you keep your values static and shape your decisions around those, unless there is some additional nuance to this.

The GP is making a point that you need to make a clear assessment of yourself - in particular your actions, your deficiencies and strengths and identify values to adopt which could make a positive impact to your life. That's not the the same thing according to me, unless I misinterpreted what you intended.

If changeable, are those values really part of who you are? Can being who you are can be an endless journey of discovery until you die?

Can you be yourself or stay true to who you are without having a clear assessment of yourself?

> There is no one true yourself, just many different versions and possibilities

At the anecdotal, personal experience level, I noticed that many of the people I met in college who were depressed or otherwise somehow stuck were stuck “looking for themselves” to the point that I decided the cliche that we should all find ourselves should be considered harmful. There was just so many of these people out there.

Around that same time I came to believe, as a countervailing measure if anything, that to the extent possible, in the absence of other direction or desire, people should do what they are good at. Being good at something and doing it feels good and will in time become what you like and “who you are.” You’ll be good at it, and everything will be great. If you’re not good at anything, the challenge, then, is to find something you’re good at. But drifting from thing to thing trying to find yourself is way harder and less reliable, and I think this is because as this article says, there is no yourself to find.

I think, ironically, you and the people who recommend "being yourself" are trying to say almost the same thing you are, and for the same reasons.

Because we are so much at the whim of our environment, it can work against you to follow someone else's advice, because the advice is based on seemingly similar but different experiences, and the best thing you can do is to act mindfully in every moment, which is what "being yourself" is about, in my opinion.

Acknowledging that you are in big part of your environment, and that you are the product of the combined imprint of life's experiences, you try to act in the best possible way you know how, given the combination of all of your experiences up to that moment, rather than some kind of answer you tried to prepare ahead of time, because that time was in the past, and your combined experiences now exceed those you had when making that plan in the past.

> Split brain experiments prove a hemisphere will simply make something up, lacking some key information provided only to the other hemisphere, and you will honestly believe the made-up explanation is correct.

That is one of the most disturbing facts that nobody ever talks about. And the fact that it was experimentally showed decision is made before we are aware of it.

And it takes a huge swing at what we believe to be our agency/free will etc. Its not far fetch to consider that we could possibly be a mere passengers in a meat bodies convinced that we are in control.

> We constantly lie to ourselves and to each other about why we like and do the things that we do

As Yoda would say, "there is no why" https://youtube.com/watch?v=TJ8KIzkCAto

What you're describing is attachment to the perceived self. Congrats, you are now enlightened.

Gotta plug one of my favorite books: "Strangers to Ourselves" by Timothy D. Wilson

https://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674013827

TL;DR: we think we know why we do stuff we do, but we do not.

The rest of us have decided that only you are the gene zombie.