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Comment by smokel | Hacker News Reader

Firstly, I love your approach and if it works I am happy for you!

However, how can we be sure that a person can actually change even some parts of ones identity?

It seems to me that most people assume that our brains can be molded at will, simply by repeating some intended behavior. I'm not saying that this is impossible, but I highly doubt the extents to which this works.

There are so many variables at play, that it is unlikely for any mechanism to simply pick up the "good parts". At most, I would assume that we can learn things cognitively, and some muscular patterns.

Being able to change wants and desires at will however seems almost unattainable.

Doesn't keep me from experimenting with it, though :) And I'd love to hear others opinions on this!

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> Being able to change wants and desires at will however seems almost unattainable.

Operant conditioning makes this very attainable. Depending on how long you've had these exact wants and desires, how much you've thought of them, and what exact conditioning program you design, you may even get results in a matter of hours (unlikely though without spending a ton of time on it, it usually takes me at least a week). Keep up (and space out) conditioning and you eventually won't need it.

Initially you probably won't go from "I always would/wouldn't want to do this" to "I always wouldn't/would want to do this" - typically, you'll have super short periods where you have your old want/desire, and then you rapidly switch to your new want/desire. But it doesn't feel disingenuous or anything - it's a natural switch due to the conditioning. Over time the period with your old feelings shrinks. Combine that time with varying conditioning (maybe a different-feeling conditioning program, or even something random that happens in your life and conditions you), and you may be able to entirely eliminate those short periods.

Here's an intro: https://www.verywellmind.com/operant-conditioning-a2-2794863

In my experience identity (how you think about yourself) is the easiest thing to change. I did it several times in my 38-year-long life, mostly accidentally. Habits are much harder because by default you do them automatically, without thinking. I'm not even sure identity is an independent "thing". IMHO it's an emergent property based on things you do and think and it changes from one moment to another. Habits on the other hand are definitely real and persistent.

> Being able to change wants and desires at will however seems almost unattainable.

I don't think you need to change them. If I'm addicted to video games and wasting my life my root want and desire usually isn't "I want to play more games". It's "I want to feel I'm good at something" or "I don't want to think about myself as a failure anymore" or "I don't want to think about my life falling apart". These are all good things. You don't need to change the desires, just the way in which you achieve them.

Desires and wants change all the time for you already. Try this: The next time you desire something, focus on that desire. Stop talking or doing anything else that might distract you from this focus.

The desire will rise and fall away as you focus on it. Your mind will move on to other things.

You may come back to the same desire in an hour or the next day, but my point is that you can see this desire leave you as you focus on it.

You can’t get rid of desire permanently, but you can recognize that you are not the one in control of your desires. They rise and fall on their own. This is liberating because, with practice, you can lose attachment to these desires when you feel them.

This is one of the goals of certain types of meditation.

Your diffuculties arise from the way you talk about the problem.

You ask how you can be sure that a person can change their identity? Your question already presents a mechanism that naturally doesn't work. What is implicit in what you're saying is that changing somehow involves taking something out and putting something completely different in. As in taking out one set of desires and replacing them with some other desires. That is certainly not what happens.

To change some of your desires is to understand them and understand how they arise. That's very related to how you talk to yourself and what expressions you use and where they implicitly lead you. That is the way you speak imposes a certain view of the world, what it consists of and what is possible within it. (That's not to say that you would suddenly be able to fly but there is a whole human domain that you might start discovering from the inside as a human being rather than looking at yourself from the outside as a collection of organs).

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