First Person Plural | Hacker News Reader

First Person Plural

theatlantic.com

38 pointstoffer24 comments

Such contradictions arise all the time. If you ask people which makes them happier, work or vacation, they will remind you that they work for money and spend the money on vacations. But if you give them a beeper that goes off at random times, and ask them to record their activity and mood each time they hear a beep, you’ll likely find that they are happier at work.

Hey, I'd be pissed off too if my vacation was randomly interrupted by beeps.

I've always thought the essential internal dichotomy was between maximizing mate selection and maximizing offspring survival. the urge to maximize mate selection carries with it many anti-social behaviors, while the urge to maximize offspring survival requires cooperation with the group. the history of governance has been the history of conflict over how far to the "left" or "right" the social contract should fall. To the left lies collectivism (offspring survival), to the right lies individualism (mate selection).

So that explains why conservatives have higher birth rates, live in low crime areas, oppose abortion and favor traditional family structures! Wait...

don't make me laugh. you really want to try to map the modern political parties onto the traditional left right political spectrum? forget it, both sides are far to the left.

Psst, he was being sarcastic.

Yeah, he was trying to invalidate my point by sarcastically saying that conservatives don't map well onto the traditional right of the political spectrum. He's right, but not for the reason he thinks.

You forget about your own survival. You simply will die from hunger if you won't go hunting. Mating and children was always a second priority.

The most essential dichotomy is between leisure and running for your life, I think.

wrong. the only reason to survive is to mate and ensure offspring survival. if personal survival was maximized by evolution why don't we all live to be 900?

Not to contradict your point, but I think there are other reasons we don't live to be 900. A human with a 900-year lifespan would be able to reproduce many more times than a human with a 90-year lifespan, so if a 900-year lifespan were easy to evolve then we would have done it by now.

Good question. The only answer I can think of is to discourage competition with your own offspring.

I think there is probably some range of possible lifespans given our architecture. It just so happened that longer ones weren't increasing reproductive fitness (probably for several interrelated reasons) so it was never selected for.

Summary: author defines a "self" as something with a fixed, consistent set of desires; observes that people have changing, inconsistent sets of desires; concludes that people are made of "many different selves." What an insight.

"Some of my colleagues at Yale have developed an online service whereby you set a goal and agree to put up a certain amount of money to try to ensure that you meet it. If you succeed, you pay nothing; if you fail, the money is given to charity—or, in a clever twist, to an organization you oppose."

Anybody have an URL?

https://www.stickk.com/login.php i think

thanks!

Definitely something to think about.

The article's amazingly well-written. Smooth to read, but communicates a huge amount of information with a minimum of fluff. I want more journalism like this.

I want more journalism like this

The author is a professor of psychology at Yale. It's sad to say it, but he'd be wasted as a journalist.

If anything, this proves the point of the grandparent post. Having more professors write magazine articles would elevate journalism, not degrade it.

very interesting article. it definitely gave me a new perspective about thinking about the mind.

Great article. The notion of "short-term self" vs. "long-term self", the self which wants to blow the pay cheque on booze, and the self which wants to save some of it for a rainy day, explains much internal conflict. My complaint though is it presents the "multiple selves" idea as in some way different from Freud's "superego. vs. ego. vs. id" model. I do not believe these are contradictory. The "short-term self" can be part of the id, I would think. The "long-term self" can be manifestations of the ego or the super-ego, it seems. The Freudian model is simpler, and still valid. However in some cases, the "multiple selves" model can be used to enhance the Freudian model. To me, just as a layman's opinion, it seems the Freudian model might be like Newtonian gravity - works in most situations, except in "corner cases" like the orbit of Mercury, where we need general relativity. Similarly, the Freudian "id/ego/superego" model of personality should still work in most cases, but there might be "corner cases" where a more complex "multiple selves" model might come in handy. By the way Robert Louis Stevenson in 'Jeckyl and Hyde' comes to this same model himself. Dr. Henry Jeckyl at last realizes that in each man there are many men, not just two.

" The Freudian model is simpler, and still valid. "

Is there any actual evidence, any reproducible tests to validate Freud's conjectures about the mind?

(For that matter, has any of Freud's work been scientifically validated?)

Freud hasn't really been taken seriously in the psychological community since the middle of the 20th century. The only place where psychoanalysis still has much credibility is among a subset of literary theorists.

The Freudian model isn't simpler: it postulates three "selves" with constant, fixed agendas. This model talks about arbitrary numbers of selves with arbitrary agendas which pop into existence all the time.

The "short term self" vs "long term self" conflict is unlike the id vs ego conflict in that there isn't a "superego" to adjudicate it. The no-superego model fits better with my subjective experiences.

Of course the "long term self" and "short term self" are themselves composed of multiple selves... for instance I have one long-term self who is working towards one set of goals, and another who is working towards another set of semi-contradictory goals.

What an Awful Ending and what an awful article in general. Ok, Ok, I might get voted down but common I can express opinions without being hated?

He says that it should not be a democracy, nor should it be a dictatorship, so what should it be then?

He states that the long-term self is wiser, but also that the short-term self might be wiser, so which should we listen to?

He misses the point completely of the Miligram Experiment and of the "other" experiments of such kind, I presume Zimbardo. If anything they show that the self is a continual construction, not a rigid personality which exists consistently, but that personality is fluid, it changes, it is made on the spot.

It is an interesting read somewhat, but it is a prime example of everything that is wrong with psychology.

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