The 'Batman Effect': How having an alter ego empowers you (2020) | Hacker News Reader

The 'Batman Effect': How having an alter ego empowers you (2020)

lsa.umich.edu

436 pointsmrleinad162 comments

I taught comedy improv for many years. One tip I would give new performers is to adopt an alter ego for the stage (a fun fake name and/or personality) and to choose a totem (an object) that they wear to do just that such as shoes, a shirt, watch, etc.

This helped so many different people such as accountants, pre-k teachers, stay-at-home moms, and even university professors get out of their shells, prevent their stage fright, and to be more energetic on-stage when their normal persona is calm, cool, and collected.

I do believe we also have an alter ego in three different situations such as work, home, and play. Another common thing I would teach is that you can alter your characters in scenes easily by adopting one of those personas of the character you're portraying.

I believe many people adopt an alter ego without knowing it today. These are YouTubers, Streamers, Conference Speakers, and really anything where there's a concept of a "stage".

The book "The Alter Ego Effect" by Todd Herman goes into this further, but my favorite material on this is "Impro" by Keith Johnstone.

I’ve found five years of D&D to have a similar, and persistent, effect. In the beginning I found it hard to relax and “yes and” what was going on. Fast forward to now, I can be in character in front of random people without a hint of anxiety. It was a completely unexpected side-effect of playing, and I’ve also seen a general increase in creativity as well.

Came here thinking about how much my time as a B|X ref has helped me socially/professionally.

Want to tell what B and X stand for here apart from random consonants?

A bit of googling suggest this might stand for Basic and Expert dungeons and dragons, after the Basic / Expert boxes the rules came in

There have been a lot of versions and revisions of D&D over the years. Amongst players of the earlier (or "classic") versions of the game, 'B/X' stands for play based around the Basic Set edited by Tom Moldvay, and the Expert Set edited by "Zeb" Cook, both published in 1981.

The 'B/X' edition of the game came after the "Holmes" boxed set,first published in 1977 and edited by J. Eric Holmes, and before the BECMI (Basic, Expert, Companion, Masters, Immortals) published in 1983 and later (and eventually compiled in the D&D Rules Cyclopedia published in the early '90s). They existed at the same time as Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, which had more, and more complex, rules.

That was a lot of words, to still skip saying Basic | Expert

I appreciated the ancient history lesson ;)

> 'B/X' stands for play based around the Basic Set edited by Tom Moldvay, and the Expert Set edited by "Zeb" Cook, both published in 1981.

Which part was difficult to grok?

When push comes to shove and I need to get stuff done, I turn into an arrogant and self gratifying Dunmer.

Usually, I am just a calm and loving introvert.

I think you’ve hit the nail on the head. Almost all of the “successful” people I’ve met over the years do this. Whether they be porn stars, tech gurus, YouTubers, or drug dealers, they have two personalities, the totally unfiltered public persona that instantly draws people to them in a room of strangers, then later in the night, they suddenly become the broken, real person, under the skin, that constantly fears being judged, worried what everyone else thinks about them. I’ve rarely met a successful person without the whole two personas thing going on somewhere in their psyche.

> totally unfiltered public persona

You mean extremely filtered

So, cocaine mode and withdrawal mode basically.

> to choose a totem

I thought totems were to test if you were in the real world or the dream world. Who knew totems had so many uses.

Totems have a long and rich history that predate and have nothing to do with Inception.

A totem is generally an object that holds some kind of spiritual or symbolic significance. Its use here is true to the traditional definition.

Symbolic is much more powerful imo.

You could even argue certain guitars or other instruments are totems for musicians. When that guitar is worn, or that synth is used...

Certainly the idea of totems is probably one of the most inate human behaviours.

We all have our favorite 'X'. You could even extend it to software.

People are indisputably more productive when they use the tools they prefer, when compared to the most objectively 'efficient' tools.

Totems are indeed an ancient concept. Their use in lucid dreaming might not be the first, but it certainly predates their portrayal in Inception.

There are countless real life examples that support this.

For example, David Bowie (as a real person) was notoriously filled with anxiety and stage fright.

He went into 'Bowie'/'Ziggy' mode in order to perform and distance himself from his real life anxieties.

Honestly this is probably the most important advice anyone shy can ever use. I have 'work' ego & person. It is slightly different than who I am day to day. Similar enough to hold my values, but certainly different enough for me to feel much more confident in work related discussions.

It has to be a conscious (or at least self aware) 'switch' in order to really have an impact.

The totem point is really key. Wear a certain shirt or pants etc that you wouldnt wear in day to day casual life constantly when in work etc. It does make a real difference.

You put that on, after enough reinforcement, and you will automatically adjust 'X' mode when wearing it.

Even something as simple as cleaning. If you have a 'cleaning' outfit that you wear to do a proper deep clean of you living area, it will motivate you to push more when you put it on.

It's essentially the same effect as a uniform. We all know people wearing a uniform (especially police etc) do become more enthusiastic/passionate/egotistical when wearing them.

I often wondered if it's linked in any way with the phenomenon of a person who speaks with a stutter, but who can sing without the stutter.

A different region of the brain is active while singing vs speaking. There are also physical difference between singing and speaking that prevent stuttering, such as: controlled breath, memorized lyrics, and longer phonation.

That explains Marshmello and Daft Punk.

I can attest to the power of "acting" even in private. When I was a teenager, I had incredible difficulties getting myself to study. I was behind in every single class and the stress created a vicious cycle where it became harder and harder to study due to the paralyzing anxiety.

One day I got fed up with that huge pressure / inability to move and said, "Damn, how is this so easy for Anne, or Josh!!! How do they do it?" Then suddenly, "wait... how DO they do it?"

I tried to put myself in the shoes of the best student I knew. He was quite autistic, moved his face and body in unusual ways, but he loved learning and always read the books before term even started. I had a bit of experience with acting, so I adopted his body language, movement patterns, and mindset. "Wow," I thought, "I frigging love learning!!"

I got to work on my math homework, worked with effortless joy for the next hour, and was so weirded out by the experiment that I never repeated it.

(I later overcame my fear of math "myself" thanks to meditation: I realized trying harder didn't work because it only made me tired faster, I had to learn to truly relax—then study became effortless for me.)

I later learned a technique from Napoleon Hill where you have a big meeting in your imagination with folks whose wisdom and character you admire. In this way you use your "hardware" (brain) to run different OS (mind) using an "emulator" (imagination).

It might sound silly but I'm always amazed at the fresh perspectives I'm able to obtain when I ask "someone smarter" for advice in my imagination. Truly my range of thought is severely limited by the constraints of my own self-concept—it's good to let go of it from time to time and see what else comes up.

> It might sound silly but I'm always amazed at the fresh perspectives I'm able to obtain when I ask "someone smarter" for advice in my imagination.

That sounds eerily like asking GPT3 to pretend to be someone else.

Yes, and GPT-3 has the advantage of having read all their books!

Yet understood very little!

Not so different from my brain, then!

Rommel, you magnificent bastard!

ooooo! so you’re a super genius! excellent post

I might clarify that by "effortless" I am referring to a state like the one described in the book Flow, where you get out of your own way so that a challenging activity becomes "frictionless" and most of the movement happens through "momentum" rather than pushing. There's a kind of wonderful threshold where effort starts to energize rather than drain you.

really hate to do this but does all this inspiration come naturally to you or you augment your efforts by external stimuli?

This comment got way too long * and I forgot to mention the important thing: most people's attitude will tend towards negative, or at most bland, without constant external "uplifting". Most people's environment isn't very uplifting, but you can create one artificially through inspirational audio. Have something inspirational on in the background every day, while driving, doing the dishes etc.

* “Forgive me this long letter, I hadn't the time to write a shorter one.”

Most of my "great ideas"* are derivative, ie. frankensteins created by combining pieces other people's work. (The more people like something I made, the more likely it is that it's just a clone of / homage to something I really liked. Take something you love, then take it 1 step further.)

There's a quote I love that goes something like, «If you steal from one person, they will call you “the new so-and-so”, but if you steal from many, they say “oh! How original!”» (Or was it, “good artists copy, great artists steal?” ;)

Still, inspiration by itself will not get you far: * you also have to put in the other “99% perspiration” as well, or you will just end up with dozens of “cute, but whatever” projects. So for me the greatest lesson is (still) to stop relying on inspiration and just do a couple hours of work every day.

“I only write when inspiration strikes. Fortunately, it strikes every morning at 9 o'clock sharp.” On that note, I really do have to get to work immediately upon waking, or the day is basically lost. I turn off the internet before bed, and turn it on after 2-3 hours of work. Use offline documentation like DevDocs. Major focus boost!

Another weakness is that if I stop working for even a day I basically lose all momentum and will to continue, so I stole this guy's work ethic:

http://plumshell.com/2016/03/10/work-for-only-3-hours-a-day-...

Also, never pander to the audience (Bowie), create primarily for yourself (Paul Graham on language design). My most favorite (most "original") design was something I thought already existed, but couldn't find. I didn't want to make a game, I just wanted to play it, but to my surprise I found that it did not exist. (It too was a simple synthesis of many childhood games, with all the extraneous fluff removed. Which of course brings me to...)

“Perfection is achieved not when there is nothing left to add, but nothing to take away.”

I find this -very- same effect very useful for doing Dungeon master work in D&D.

So much for the age-old advice: "just be yourself".

Agreed. It's lazy and dismissive advice. I wish it wasn't such a trope in children's entertainment.

Most people don't have a fixed sense of self until adulthood. And wise adults understand that there's no self at all.

>wise adults understand that there's no self at all

Except, of course, for Carl Jung. And Polonius in Hamlet. But that's all.

I reinterpreted it as "be the you you would be if you could control who you are", but that doesn't exactly roll off the tongue

You can also reinvent yourself whenever you move from a place to another. I used to live in a small and enclosed community to my twenties until I moved out into an environment I knew nobody. It gave me a clean-slate, and after returning a year later, people close to me told I had changed a lot. Moreover, I continued to be the new me. The gap in the shared history cut both ways: I could forever hide behind it and explain e.g. some opinion of mine to come from influences of that time, but on the other hand, it was also the last time someone else than I knew a coherent history of me.

Since then, I have moved into new environments four additional times. Each time I see it as a possibility to reflect what I'd like to change and work towards that. And whenever I return to home, I feel like a tourist now.

Very valuable perspective for someone like me who is on the verge of drastically changing their environment.

It feels like I've written this comment. My experience is very very similar to yours.

Do we not all have a professional alter ego? I'm a completely different guy when I'm at work, I don't give myself a different name, and it's not the same pressure as a rock star but still, it seems natural.

I am at least and it's terribly exhausting. Need to pretend I care about the product, care about being perceived as a high output individual contributor etc. Need to pretend I'm good with people and generally cheery.

I am all of those things at work, but I need to say to myself "be all of these things" and consciously think about "ok how would or should the professional me act in this situation".

Maybe everyone does it to an extent, I don't know.

Professional life has certain expectations I find artificial and incomprehensible (multiple weird games going on behind the scenes etc) so I try to cope.

Weird rules like "every engineer is expected to take pride in their work and have their professional output be a matter of honor" and so on. My take is - "meh. You pay me. I write your high quality code. It's terribly important but also terribly tedious and boring. I really do not appreciate the hours I need to waste at my job but that's what it means to earn a living as a cog in a machine and I seem to be a pretty well performing cog".

Every programmer probably dreams of winning a lottery so they could focus on writing programs they find interesting and not just those that pay the bills.

It is so exhausting. I made the mistake of letting the real me peek out during a "why are you leaving?" conversation and holy hell it led to a kerfuffle:

"Why are you leaving?" "<3 other reasons> And, I'm a bit bored, the product and roadmap aren't very technically challenging to me".

Queue worried texts and emails from all over the company, thinking my boss isn't explaining the roadmap or hiding things, trying to figure out how to get me to stay, etc. It was a cool company that definitely helped people, but at the end of the day, it's basically a survey app and we were going to integrate with other companies that were doing the challenging technical bits. Lesson learned.

I hate that feeling. The real me is kind of an asshole. I let a lot of people see that at a previous job and now I can't be around any of them any more. I've worked hard to be someone else where I'm at now and I've been mostly successful. When I let my guard down I caused a minor shitstorm with my peers, but I was able to tamp it down.

It's absolutely imperative to keep my real self away from work. I'm hoping I can keep this up long enough to retire early, and then I can just be me.

> pretend I care about the product

This form of hypocrisy is a recipe for burnout.

Unfortunately, the opposite is often met with repercussions, and finding a job where one cares about the product is still a privilege.

So yes, many of us accept the potential burnout outcome while trying to find something better.

I would not call it hypocrisy but necessary.

I mean what can you respond to outreaches like "Our client has a billion euro building project X, our collaborator has promised them Y, but our product can't do Z, can you fix it please"

Either you respond with sufficient gravity which enables the stakeholders to trust you that you can get the job done, or you admit you don't care anymore and find another job.

Yeah I'm sure everybody has their worksona.

Only if you have any sense and a clue.

Some people don't do that and maybe learn the hard way that it's not good to be too genuine all the time with everyone.

Or some people go the other way and tire of the masquerade and can’t handle the incongruity anymore.

Eyes wide open I just stopped pretending to care. Still did my work at a high level just didn’t play the game anymore of happy hours and ‘fun incentives’ and paid meals at 6pm.

I now earn a third of what i did.

Sleep, eat, play and fuck way more now though.

I suspect very few people are the same when they're alone with whoever they have sex with vs when they're with their the parents or their kids. My seductive persona is not something I do around my mom.

Yeah I just nod and agree with co-worker’s exclusionary forms of inclusion, to continue exchanging time for money and potentially sex with that co-worker.

A very large part of how echo chambers form

I really like the framing you used: 'exclusionary forms of inclusion'. Really encapsulates it well.

You sound like you're on the spectrum, like you can't "feel" human emotion and see it as objective and transactional.

sometimes I just say things very bluntly because others are doing it but wont say it

this is very intentional as opposed to misreading the room, as its definitely for introspective purposes, but maybe I could fit on some part of the spectrum solely for thinking its okay to say divisive things!

They're not. I never think "Greetings, potential courtship participant. Shall we exercise a barter of hormones?" That's a maladjusted type of thinking.

But you're the one phrasing it in that purposefully maladjusted way. Paying lip service to someone you want to have sex with is entirely common.

No, I'm pretty much the same at work as with my friends and alone.

I also don't do well in very corporate environments. But that tradeoff is worth it.

amen

This, pretending is exhausting..

I genuinely believe that most successful people do.

People who struggle in corporate environments generally are not able to do this in my personal experience.

The inability to separate work/personal you either ends up in burning out or becoming a delusional bore who doesn't shut up about work to your friends.

nope, same guy at work, at home, with friends, and in public.

its liberating. and pretending to be someone else is exhausting.

life is too short.

imagine going through life walking on eggshells, pretending to be someone else. people do this in mating too, and it never ends well.

Reminded me of something my mother told me about her school years in Finland in around the 60s: In the beginning of the year for the foreign language classes every student had to came up with a fictional persona that fits the culture of the language being learned and stick with it during the entire year.

As I understand one of the main rationales was, that if it less likely for you to fall back to the native tongue when you don't know how to say something when you are playing a role. I found that pretty interesting. I have no idea how widespread this sort of thing is/was.

Do you know how effective it was?

Sounds like an interesting idea. I

Here's someone (one of many DDG hits[1]) talking about personality changes when speaking different languages: https://www.babbel.com/en/magazine/how-bilingualism-almost-d...

[1] https://duckduckgo.com/?q=personality+when+speaking+differen...

When I studied French in high school, we started by choosing a French name. It's not necessarily a fictional persona, but it had the same effect on me - I was able to act like (what I imagined to be) a French person, without worrying about how it reflects on my "real" self.

Not sure if related but when i was an ESL student in Canada it was really common to see Asian students using English names as their natives ones are difficult to pronounce, maybe changing your name could play part of it.

You'll see politicians do this back stage at events. There will be some jet lagged, annoyed guy who is late for an appointment standing there. Then some reporter will come up, turn on their camera lights and suddenly the guy from on TV is there, confident, cool, and on point. CLICK the lights go off and late-for-an-appointment guy is back. It's kind of disturbing if you're not expecting it.

Ted Cruz is well known for being 2 people. A Texas monthly pc a couple years ago caught both sides at once when a staffer kept letting an elevator door ding as it was being held open. Ted was doing his politics side with the reporter and lost it on the staffer then went back to gentle Ted.

Have you ever had a conversation with a parent of a small child? They’re like “Yes, very nice, we should totall—PUT THAT DOWN THIS INSTANT GREGORY—totally get together next week or so. <smile>”.

Wow. I've never been able to articulate this experience, but it is something I find very jarring. It's jarring for me to see people behave outside of their usual persona. A favorite teacher of mine once had his young son in class for some reason. The class was normal except for when the son started playing with something he shouldn't have. The teacher snapped at the son with such anger and fear.

I had never seen the teacher behave this way and it was deeply upsetting at the time.

Biden's hot mic gaffe was another example - from gentle grandpa and distinguished statesman to a glimpse into the "hunan" side

Which is why Trump got so popular. He's one big ego, but at least it's singular and consistent.

Just to nitpick, "Bruce Wayne" is the alter ego of batman, not the other way around, at least in the Chris Nolan movies. In reality he's smart and tough and hardened by the League of Shadows, etc. But as Bruce Wayne he plays a bimbo billionaire so that nobody will realize who he actually is.

Many consider me a bimbo thousandaire

don't be so harsh on yourself. there is no such thing

Bimbo hundredaire?

In many comic books too. He thinks of himself as Batman, not Bruce Wayne, and never feels entirely comfortable without the mask.

Not just the Nolan movies; a number of comics mention that, and a memorable scene in Batman Beyond makes it even more explicit. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7t7yiN_Z5eg

Even better, these panels from the comics: https://images-cdn.9gag.com/photo/a1QNOLv_700b.jpg

Not to nitpick!, but by the end of Dark Knight Rises, it is "Bruce Wayne" that enjoys a relationship with Selina Kyle as... Bruce Wayne. Including a send off from Alfred. No? So... at least this can be viewed in different ways as it should I think.

And along the same vein, this quote from Kill Bill about Superman :

“Bill: Superman didn't become Superman. Superman was born Superman. When Superman wakes up in the morning, he's Superman. His alter ego is Clark Kent. His outfit with the big red "S", that's the blanket he was wrapped in as a baby when the Kents found him. Those are his clothes. What Kent wears - the glasses, the business suit - that's the costume. That's the costume Superman wears to blend in with us. Clark Kent is how Superman views us. And what are the characteristics of Clark Kent. He's weak... he's unsure of himself... he's a coward. Clark Kent is Superman's critique on the whole human race.”

This is an anecdote of 1, but I grew up in France speaking French and moved to the US at 11. I don't have an accent when I speak English or French. I'm truly bilingual. I feel like I have way less anxiety, am more relaxed and have more confidence when I speak French, and it's not just the setting. I've done it for long periods of time professionally, on dates, etc.. I don't know if there's anything to this. To me it's always felt like there was.

I believe this phenomenon is called “linguistic relativity”, or “The Sapir–Whorf hypothesis” [1], which says that a language affects its speakers' cognition or even personality. I'm probably not truly bilingual, my native lanuguage is Ukrainian, but I too feel as if my personality and behavior is slightly different when I talk or write in English.

Further reading:

1 // https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_relativity

https://qz.com/925630/feel-more-fun-in-french-your-personali...

Chen et al 2010, https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/014616721038536...

Chen et al 2013, https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/jopy.12040

Athanasopoulos et al 2020, https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/02643294.2020.17...

M. Keith Chen 2012, https://elischolar.library.yale.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?arti...

I was told I had a different personality in English by fellow Japanese learners. I think it’s sort of common.

I'm bilingual portuguese/english, and two completely different personalities. I have a really hard time flirting in english, for instance, when in portuguese it's very easy. Also I always write perfectly in portuguese very rarely mispelling a word, whereas I'm a full blown dislexic in english. I think it only shows how much language is the code of learning.. I learned to read and write both in E|P at the same time, and spoke english daily for 2 years as a child in Africa, but after that I went back to speaking only portuguese in Brazil, and having english mostly for the sole purpose of entertainment. Another notable differences I could notice is that with English I have a much more flexible accent, which can easily vary after spending a few days speaking it on travels.

Where is the paper?

This appears to be a BBC journalist and writer, covering some research without citing it directly, and then pointing to a longer article on the BBC America website whilst still not citing the work.

Is it because the work by Ethan Kross isn't open access? So instead the Michigan psychology department organise press coverage for their own website?

Help a person out, does anyone have links to the research?

The closest I've got is this http://selfcontrol.psych.lsa.umich.edu/papers/ which doesn't appear to list it.

I guess this can be view from Jung's point of view where you adopt different personas in different situations. If I understand correctly this is necessary for normal existence but identifying too much with a specific persona can lead to undesired side effects.

I've adopted a mindset where each persona is just a tool for a specific situation or setting, but I always try to be aware that it is just the self using the persona, not the other way around. I had fallen into the trap of strongly identifying with a persona and was wondering why I was feeling so confused, so stepping back a bit helped a lot.

Reading about Jung's map of the psyche has been quite interesting and useful.

Well, but Jung is wrong. What did this guy know about humans, anyway? You have one identity and only one. Anything else is just lack of integrity. Said Mark Zuckerberg.

Full article: https://www.bbc.com/worklife/article/20200817-the-batman-eff...

Strongly disagree. While “alter ego” helps short term it just delays the reckoning and imposter syndrome for later and leads to identity issues and confusion. Take the hard path in the present and watch it get easier later

> leads to identity issues and confusion

I was going to agree with you, but what do you define as identity here? Aren't people really a collection of hundreds of thousands of various spirits they have encountered and chosen to imitate? Most primarily their parents/siblings and beyond that spirits from friendships, books, religious study, movies/TV, music, etc. All of these are mini alter egos and shape an overall dynamic.

At the core one could argue there's that baseline "chooser" identity which is fairly set in stone and has predisposed traits based on some initial nature/nurture settings.

What you noticed is correct, the concept of "identity" is constructed. Stop caring who or what you actually are and you gain like, several new dimensions of freedom and agency.

Yeah, what you say makes sense. Pretending you’re something else can be detrimental for a lot of folks.

I’m not going to say the article is wrong either though. Some folks need to pretend they’re something before they graduate to the level of actually living the ideals they want for themselves. Everyone is different.

In my opinion, at least for me, what you are saying is the long game truth though. The people I meet who are truly at peace with themselves and live with a quiet acceptance of who they are, seem to do exactly what you say.

These folks make the hard decisions necessary to define for themselves who they want to be. This is difficult but forces them to accept who they are and what actions they take.

I’m sure some folks will say, “well that’s just a multifaceted person playing many roles”. However, I think there is merit in what you’re saying. Reducing a strong character down to “many roles” seems almost disingenuous when that person might think of their actions and person as singular.

I think what you say accepts people as who they are and holds them accountable as such, without masks or personas, for better or worse.

I think it depends on the context. If you're a talented musician or you want to do stand up comedy or something it can be super useful to pretend to be a more confident version of yourself while you're performing. It goes on, you perform, it comes off. I've found the more you perform, the less you have to pretend and eventually you can just can be confident (it's basically just exposure therapy), but it's hard to bridge the gap to get up at all. And that's not even mentioning what actors do, where it's expected that they're pretending to be a character!

Obviously if you were consciously putting on an act to appear to be a completely different person just for a relationship, or all day, every day at work then that's not healthy.

Childish Gambino, Donald Glover’s alter ego, covering a song by Chris Gaines, Garth Brooks’ alter ego:

https://youtu.be/yBPKdl_YeqE

When does it stop being an alter ego and become dissociative identity disorder?

When it starts being involuntary and harmful, or perhaps in response to emotional trauma?

All personality disorders contain normal traits; you’re not supposed to go around diagnosing or curing people unless it’s literally causing them to be “disordered” because of it.

I’ve seen a claim that DID is actually caused by psychologists telling suggestible people they’re supposed to have DID, but maybe mr. SSC guy was joking about that one.

I wonder if this comes with side effects, like how mindfulness increases selfishness in those who think that their existence is independent from the existence of others, which is how most people in Western countries think.

Playfulness is probably a healthier option for shifting your perception compared to this much self-distancing.

You managed to shit on both westerners and people who use mindfulness… for no real reason.

Or maybe it was your alter ego?

Anyway, I used to have an alter ego. But I stopped using it for years, then one day a guy I never met got really mad at me because he didn’t want to use my nickname. It was an odd moment because I had never met him and don’t even use that nickname. He just heard it from someone else and the existence of a nickname apparently made him angry.

I quit shortly after because the manager who was also on the call didn’t even react as this guy I never met yelled at me for reasons that made no sense.

> like how mindfulness increases selfishness in those who think that their existence is independent from the existence of others

... If one was really being mindful, they'd eventually see that the existence of their "self" is only possible in relation to others existing. So there's the self and the other, but in essence, one.

And that's one of the reasons the golden rule makes so much sense.

So I wouldn't blame mindfulness for any side effects. Negative side effects are the result of the ego/self creeping back into the picture.

The problem might not be with mindfulness, but with our self-centered culture, which causes this secularized mindfulness to be a snake oil with a few personal benefits at best. It's more of a self-discipline or concentration tool when you strip it from it's culture, which used to involve ethics as I understand.

The original purpose of vipassana (mindfulness meditation) is to realize that selves don’t exist and disconnect you from your emotions, so you’re ready to leave the world behind and do monk stuff. The fact that it works for secular mindfulness is surprising and doesn’t really have any theory behind it.

It doesn’t involve ethics though. Buddhism didn’t come with those; they borrowed standard Western ones as part of a marketing campaign to make you think the Dalai Lama is just the most ethical guy ever.

If one was really being mindful

There's a sort of No True Scotsman fallacy combined with confirmation bias that comes into play with other spiritual practices with which I am experienced. For example, "If your prayers aren't getting answered, you aren't fasting enough and praying hard enough, or you are praying for the wrong thing."

This is an easy trap to fall into with anything that generally works for some people but not others, and it's important to remember that there are other dimensions beside "really" or "enough", plus general randomness, that affect whether a practice/belief/etc is good for a person and successful.

Hey do you have a link for this?

Sounds interesting

How do you elicit playfulness?

yeah science hell yeah lets go baby 6 paragraphs about celebrity quotes and some questionable study.

also i remember when at least titles for questionable "facts" have "may", "can", "might" in them, now its just given like it is a trueism.

all the similar "facts" i grow up reading in newspapers and seeing in documentaries are myths today, or just Instagram/facebook posts with no merit (like your left brain is for science/right brain for arts or the opposite i don't remember, women being better with spatial thinking while better with navigation, women have smaller brains which make them smarter...).

This is a fascinating topic, some of the comments are interesting too. I wonder whether some folks who knowingly or unknowingly use this technique to their advantage are the ones recently insisting the end to WFH and a return to the office? It's possible they're not given a chance to unleash their alter ego at home while the family members are around?

That's interesting because as recently as a couple of months ago I read "The Alter Ego Effect: The Power of Secret Identities to Transform Your Life" and found it pretty good for at least 90% of it.

There's something about the overall principle, worth investigating on an individual basis.

There's a 2021 episode[1] of BBC Sideways that looks at this same thing and specifically features both Beyonce and this same kids study. It's worth a listen, as is the podcast in general.

I don't recall Syed mentioning this earlier BBC article which is a little weird considering there's another whole episode[2] of Sideways where he talks about being (wrongly) accused of ripping off someone's else's work[2]!

1. https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000y6nw

2. https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000x4wh

This enforces the idea, which I believe is absolutely true, that our identity, the concept we have of ourselves is actually a persona created by us, throughout our entire lives, built from our experiences, memories, traumas etc. It is not set in stone. It is a fabrication. We can change it at will. We could even destroy it and build a new one from scratch. Once you realize this, you can see how powerful this is. You can in fact do anything or be anything just by manipulating your persona and putting in the work to make it a reality.

I wouldn't say you can destroy your identity completely. Most of it will always remain as the foundation for what you build.

Aldous Huxley wrote about this in Antic Hay. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antic_Hay

Huxley's second novel. His first, highly autobiographical, was published two years prior -- Crome Yellow. Discussed on HN a few days ago:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30997257

Chris Gaines [1]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chris_Gaines

Furries have known this power for decades.

I recall there was an article of mental models to make the most in life, knowing that their time on Earth is limited. For example one would try to live like they are the protagonist of their own life movie, living like a rock star. Does anyone recall an article like that?

My first thought I’m reading this is "Ah, so us furries have natural superpowers".

Despite all the hate that furries and furrie-related things get, this was actually a great joke.

The author gets is backwards though.

Bryce Wayne is the 'alter ego'.

Batman is the OG persona!

The definitive book on this is ‘The Alter Ego Effect’ by Todd Herman (there’s also a bunch of extra resources on his website https://alteregoeffect.com )

He goes into great detail about the method and the science of what’s happening in your brain when you use it.

It’s helped me go from introverted engineer to successful start-up founder that just exited.

I have a post it that says "What would batman do?" at my wall. When unproductive at work or struggling, I look at that.

Funny fact: I’m a totally different person speaking English (I’m not a native English speaker). Much more outgoing, confident and extrovert. It’s been like that since I was a kid. I think I might even like my English-self more than the actual me, lol :)

This could be downvoted but this was really common to see on 90s Seduction forums or later Pick Up communities as "fake it till you make it". Back then it really helped me to move on of my introvert side to a more outgoing one.

This reminds me of the great Vonnegut short story “Who Am I This Time?”.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Who_Am_I_This_Time%3F

To me the effect occurs - to some extent - with regard to which language I speak.