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Comment by p1esk | Hacker News Reader

Long lasting neuronal plasticity sounds a bit scary. It might mean your personality could gradually change.

You mean... Kind of like living? Are you the same now as you were a year ago? I find it scarier to think that my personality might become static! Plasticity is the ability to learn new things.

Um, yeah and forget old things ...

We'll just have our trusty robot companions remember our entire lives and remind us as we go.

It'll be _perfect_.

This is kinda the nature of life. I struggled with depression until my mid-late 20s. At 35, my high school years seem like a blur - my college years are starting to feel the same. I'm pretty ok with this.

No, it’s kind of like living when you are 4 years old. Very different than when you’re 40.

> You mean... Kind of like living?

Well, no, and that's the point! It's not like living, it's an alteration to the natural course of life. Whether it's without negative consequences or not remains to be seen.

Alan Watts has some profound talks about this which I found quite mind-blowing and wish I had learned earlier in life.

Which talks?

> It might mean your personality could gradually change

Hmm… that might actually be nice. :)

Would it be nice if you no longer know who you are (as a person), or what you are capable of?

Until some kind of personality engineering methods emerge to shape your development you might not be in control of the changes.

Eh, I’d always know who I am as a person… and who I was holds little value, frankly, because the past is the past. And it’s not like I’ve ever had a ton of control over my personality. I didn’t decide to be a pedantic nerd. I didn’t decide to have ADHD. I didn’t decide much about myself at all, really. I’ve simply gone along and gotten along. Also, “We’ve always done it this way” isn’t always useful.

It honestly sounds like a great recipe to being even more open-minded, avoiding zealotry and overly-conservative stick-in-the-mud-ness. What’s not to love?

Not gonna lie, I’d probably sign up for a clinical trial of this procedure, just to experience it. But the risk of something going wrong is significant.

Is that worse than your personality not changing?

I am happy with who I am today.

Who you are today likely isn’t who you were 15 years ago. And likely won’t be who you are in 15 years.

But I imagine you’re thinking significant changes where you’re an entirely different person, and I’m thinking just the gradual change we see in everyone. …except my dad. You could set your watch based on the tempo of his mood.

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