"The ‘real you’ is a myth – we constantly create false memories to achieve the identity we want"
Isn't this somewhat self-contradictory? Why assume the real me has to be based on true memories -- and I don't even want to start a discussion of what a true memory, a true account (save anything subjective?) of some event could be. If we know who we want to be, we most likely also know our real me.
It depends on how you define "the real you." Generally, people use it to mean some long term inner identity that defines them as a person. This is what is a myth. You seems to use "the real you" to mean your current state.
Would many people agree with the definition of “real you” as self-identity? I’d define the term as more as a combination of somebody’s personality and how they act and think when not consciously trying to act differently. For example, at work you might inhibit some of your normal characteristics and be more serious, or act nice to people you don’t really like when you might not do that normally.
I think people can do that to such an extent that’s it’s possible that they could be deluded as to the nature of their “true” self, thinking themselves, say, kinder, or more competent in certain areas, or less racist than they actually are when their guard is down. Sometimes you need someone else or some experience to realise you didn’t really know yourself!
I think current state is part of it - for example, people might become more cynical over time through their life not going the way they want. Things like that can gradually become part of the “real you” without you noticing.
>I’d define the term as more as a combination of somebody’s personality and how they act and think when not consciously trying to act differently.
This article is about how personality is shaped by memory, and how flawed memory is. I'd say that definition is fairly close to the one used in the article, and there being no "real self" supports the shift over time and need for outside views that you have noticed.
I think it's a rather classic problem. Does it move? Is the arrow there the same arrow as it was here? How did it get from here to there? The problem here is of course cutting time into intervals where the arrow (or the self) has a state. The problem (or myth) probably lies in the eye of the beholder.
It's not a problem, the term can have different definitions when needed. In this situation, "the real me" is a personality based on past experience. This article says that definition is a myth that doesn't work with our current understanding of memory. You can now speculate if there is a "real me" that consists of something else.
not only that, but all perception is a constructive process based on predictions according to multiple competing models which run in parallel of which we are only aware of a few at most.
As such, other people have no single or objective perception of us either.
I'm fairly self conscious of the fact that I am at least 3 or 4 different people.
My "work" personality is a completely different one to my "Home" personality.
and My Online and internal personalities are all different people as well.
which one is the real me? shrug they're all real, just used for different purposes. I'm fairly sure I'm not unique in this, but then I suspect I'm better at compartmentalising than most others so maybe I am.
What you're sort of saying, is that you show different sides of yourself depending on what role you're currently playing and who your audience is. I think we all do that to varying degrees. Some more than others.
It's more than that. The mind doesn't have the mental capacity to hold all of yourself at once, so when interacting with others you become fused with current role and it becomes almost impossible to juggle other roles with current one. There are many psychology studies of internal conflict when you are forced to play two or more roles at once (for example, introducing your parents to girlfriend/boyfriend). A balanced person therefore needs to have goals of different roles aligned.
I've known people who, at the office, are devoid of logic and are unable to think through complex topics. They operate in a permanent state of lizard brain, reacting with panic to everything that comes their way.
Perfectly normal and decent folk outside of work. Able to hold intelligent and thought provoking conversation, and talk intelligently about many fields.
The lesson? Some people are so good at compartmentalizing that they leave their intelligence in another box.
same here... my "work" personality is so much different than "home" or "friends" personality. And the real me is somewhere in between.
When I'm with friends I have problem with compulsivnes, I am really care-free etc.... When i'm at work I'm 100% serious, I dont make jokes, I dont make fun of myself etc... I really noticed this when i started working full time so I am 100% serious person half of the day instead just sometimes and it shows in my "home" and "friends" personality
I can't really tell, because I can't know for sure what you experience internally, but I felt similarly a few times, and I think that calling that "personality" is not appropriate. I believe you are talking about "behavior". We can display different behaviors in different contexts and that can still be perfectly coherent with our personality. In fact, I think that realizing about those details that make you behave differently, even when you initially think about the situations as "similar contexts" is really helpful in getting to know yourself (and others near you) much better, and finding out about the often most subtle and yet most unique details about your own personality.
I feel like the "version" of me interacting with my wife has a lot less redaction of thought/stage management going on than the one of me at the office.
> The 'Real You' is not a myth, and it is not based on thoughts. It is what you truly are, and what is lost when you die.
I don't think it was ... if anything "it is not based on thoughts" would imply the opposite!
An object "is" an object whether it knows it is or not.
EDIT I think maybe you're interpreting the final clause of the sentence "what is lost when you die" as "what is lost to you" but I read it as "what is lost to others".
Real me. Right. Which one is that? 2 Year old me? 10 Year old me? Current age me? Me yesterday? Me today? The me I experience phenomenologically or the me other people perceive, interpret and interact with? The different me's others perceive individually?
I dunno, would it be reasonable to call a cloud that temporarily looks like Chewbacca Chewbacca?
I suppose it would make sense in that particular moment in time, and in that particular context, but it's not an image of Chewbacca is it? Not really. It's just a conveniet way of refering to phenomena... happening and being perceived a certain way.
In a similar way, I'd say yes, we are the "real us" at any point in time, but only in the sense that it makes convient sense in that particular moment, and only as a device to point at a set of particular processes/things happening.
"I" is most valuable thing I have and only thing undoubtedly existing. And this thing not exists at all if I believe thats the world exists independently of me. This is not about natural sciences, it's a philosophical paradox that will never be solved.
Since having a child, and seeing my friends and sibs having children I have come to the conclusion that there is a large degree of our personalities are "hard-wired". It's amazing how each child comes out differently with their own personality right off the blocks. You typically see invariant characteristics persist through life. To me this is "the real you", the aspects of your personality that are with you throughout your life.
If I had to put a figure on it, to avoid argument I'd say it accounts for between 30 and 50% of your behaviour. The rest is shaped by social conditioning, life experiences and the environment we find ourselves living in. But even these could be said to be mediated in some part by the initial 30%.
Not just that: where you live, what kind of house, is there green space nearby, what toys are there, how many people are around in the house whether you spend a lot of time with friends/grandparents, whether there is a lot of interaction with the parent or they are just left by themselves or with the TV on.
Yes. Parental influence would be tough to deny. Normally developing children use modeling (imitation) to instruct their behavior.
This is why kids like to pretend to play kitchen or use a broom. They see you do it.
Anecdotally, I have seen children who have ‘bad attitudes’ do a 180 when the parents make an effort to model calmness and positivity. Anxious, stressed out or negative emotions in parents affect the kids.
In most settings, mood is contagious and is set by the leader. The catch is you have to keep it up.
What's the source of this? Given that siblings are often so different between each other, and from their parents, it could be that most of personality traits come from the environment, but we're still born with it (i.e. it could be influence in early development of the fetus, from the environment (womb, food mother eats and her hormones, sounds and movement from outside, ...) not from genes).
“... Pinker relies on a 1998 book called "The Nurture Assumption," by Judith Rich Harris, which has been the object of some controversy in the field of developmental psychology. Harris claimed that "shared family environments"—that is, parents—have little or no effect on a child's personality.”
As a parent, that seems about right. We may lay a foundation for helping them make good choices. But, a child’s identity ultimately seems to be formed by their predisposition and the types of peers that they seek out and befriend at around 12 years and onwards.
Sorry, I would have cited specific chapters and paragraphs if I had more time. I don’t even know where my copy of the book is, at the moment (somewhere around here).
I figured a ‘pop sci’ reference could at least help guide the way. My bad.
I think there's an emerging etiquette around this kind discourse that where "research" conflicts with personal experiences that attempts be made to cross-check and reconcile that. These days with all the bad science around we have to be a lot more careful about what we accept as fact.
I'd say the opposite, because pop-science books at least represent an effort to collate multiple examples in support of some thesis and do not exclusively rely on the experiences of one individual. Of course we can see this used maliciously all the time (I think people are finally starting to turn on Malcolm Gladwell), but to me that just suggests both are fairly low-quality sources.
Except, you can't deny personal experience. The onus on science is to explain experience, not the other way round.
If you have an observer giving a truthful account that conflicts with an established fact then surely something must account for that discrepancy.
See for instance radio-waves vs Kirchoffs law. It's not that Kirchoff was wrong, it's just that he didn't account for frequency as a variable, which was solved by Maxwell.
Now, that's for established facts. If you're talking about commercially adulterated science
then you have an even higher burden to bear.
Of course you can, or I'd have to accept all sorts of wild claims about alien abductions and near-death experiences. Even discounting such extreme examples, personal experience, as presented by anecdote, is colored by the person's perceptions and beliefs, both before and after the experience they relate.
ah you're just being facaetious now. We are discussing a very specific phenomenon where prevalent observer experience can't just be chalked down to fantasy.
People rejected the germ theory of disease because, among other reasons, they didn't feel it was in accord with their personal experience. Personal experience is the root of baseless superstition. Tell me what's wrong with these different examples, which fit the new criteria you've added.
We're discussing the experience of educated, and critical truthful observers, vs sensationalistic scientism and you throw up alien abductions, life-after-death experience and something about germ theory. I don't know which people you're talking about but it's been known for time immemorial among many cultures that cleanliness is a good way to avoid disease. You are cherry-picking narratives to suite your rhetoric.
We need to be beyond a level of discourse where "because science" or "a study said" is considered a fait acompli. Science often contradicts herself and studies are often debunked.
Just because "some guy wrote it", doesn't make it so.
> We need to be beyond a level of discourse where "because science" or "a study said" is considered a fait acompli. Science often contradicts herself and studies are often debunked.
I don't disagree. But I don't think personal anecdote is a sufficient answer. You could criticize the quality of the research (in more specific terms than "pop-sci") or present contradictory evidence and I'd have no problem with it. Simply attacking a guy in a casual discussion that is not particularly rigorous for posting a citation you deem insufficiently rigorous without further explanation I do not think is fair.
I can't see what was wrong with your post; whatever we might say of any of the books in question, it seems to me like you're answering a question and helping us understand where Pinker's claims come from. If someone is going to carp that the sources of "pop-sci," let them cite what they feel is a higher-quality source.
Sorry, you are right; I got confused about the claims with the multiple threads of the discussion. You are right: Harris claims family is essentially irrelevant.
Nonetheless, I don't think it's fair to jump straight to "sensationalism" to explain why he has different findings than yours. Perhaps your sense of influencing your children is more illusory than you think. It wouldn't be the first time a widely-acknowledged phenomenon with children turned out to be in the imagination of parents (consider "sugar high," for instance, which does not really exist).
No mate, he's totally spinning the results to stir up a buzz. I'm not just speaking from my own lived experience either, I've an academic grounding in developmental psychology.
The influence of parents is very much a factor in development. Just other factors influence a lot more than other people might expect.
You're making assumptions I'm some sort of uneducated whimsical pixie-head and that's your failure. Not mine.
> influence in early development of the fetus, ... womb, food mother eats and her hormones, sounds and movement from outside
I actually do think this counts for a lot. Certainly there are genetic and epigenetic factors, but scant attention is paid to gestative influence (an area it seems few know much about).
It does seem there is an eagerness to label all personality traits from the date-of-birth as "genetic".
You could test this by looking at whether pairs of fraternal twins are as similar on personality traits as pairs of identical twins. If they are more different, then genes are the cause.
The author proposes three laws of behavioral genetics which summarize results across a wide range of behaviors:
All human behavioral traits are heritable.
The effect of being raised in the same family is smaller than the effect of genes.
A substantial portion of the variation in complex human behavioral traits is not accounted for by the effects of genes or families.
> Given that siblings are often so different between each other
But most identical twins are not so different from each other. Read up on twin studies, where twins were separated at birth. They tend to have very similar personalities and outlooks on life, despite never having had contact until the study was conducted.
There's not much known because it's almost impossible to research, surely? You'd have to have one identical twin developing naturally, and the other brought to term inside a surrogate mother.
This probably doesn't happen very often. (TBH I don't know if it's even possible.)
That isn't sufficient, unfortunately. A third-party's treatment of an individual depends a lot on the appearance of the individual. (i.e., beautiful people are treated differently than ugly people.) That is, one's appearance can have a causal effect on one's 'environment.'
Thus, even if raised separately, the 'environment' to which each identical twin is exposed will be more similar than the 'environments' of two non-identical people.
Simple example....
Adam and Bob are raised separately.
Yet, both develop to be confident and strong leaders.
Is this leadership quality 'genetic'? Or, is it because Adam and Bob are each 6'5" and handsome?
It would be very difficult indeed to statistically tease out these things.
The number of identical twins that have been raised separately (and studied) is tiny.
With a sample size that small, it is difficult to get statistically significant results. Obviously. I was just pointing out that one of the issues with which a researcher must grapple is the fact that not only is one shaped by one's environment, but one's environment is shaped -- to some degree -- by one's appearance... a tricky issue when dealing with two subjects who are identical in every outward respect.
Hundreds of such twins have been studied, and hundreds more of fraternal twins. Combined with data from thousands of other twins which have contact (UK twin registry alone tracks 12,000 twins), this enables significant comparative analysis. You're seriously underestimating the amount of data available.
That is incorrect. The sample consisted of 8,280 monozygotic (identical) and dizygotic (fraternal) twins. Twins separated at birth were not involved, if I'm reading the study correctly. In any case, it's nothing worth arguing about. (I will say, though, that if there are 8,280 pairs of identical twins in Denmark who were raised separately, there is something very strange happening in Denmark.)
> Given that siblings are often so different between each other, and from their parents, it could be that most of personality traits come from the environment, but we're still born with it.
In terms of genetics, the reason there's variation between siblings and parents, even though it is true that as children we inherit 50% of our genes from our father and 50% from our mother, is due to randomness in terms of which parts get inherited. Our siblings are inherits different combinations of genetics, but we all inherit 50%/50%.
This doesn't answer the question of how much of our personality is inherited vs environmental, but that siblings/parents are so different from each other doesn't argue against heritability.
I guess one major parameter will be how much the parent is present in kids life and whether they have good relationship. If the parent is not present, his or her impact will be smaller.
Unfortunately, I have no idea which studies GP has in mind and what exactly they measured (whether things related to what I observed or something entirely else), age of kids in question, whether parents had significantly different approaches etc.
I don't think there is scientific a consensus on this yet. I strongly doubt that there is reasonable study that would make the split 50%, 50%, 0%. It is too round, too nice to be true.
Like I say, I agree with you in the broader sense but I was making a finer point here. i.e. not whether the premise is true, but just what the scope (or even how valid) was of the research that demonstrated the premise.
GP provides sources in a sibling thread where the discussion is further elaborated.
Interesting ... personality strongly mediates behaviour. How else would you "measure" personality? A strict behaviorist (in the line of Watson or Skinner) would say personality doesn't matter or even exist. It's like the life of a subatomic particle - you only know of its effect but what actually goes on in there is forever a mystery.
Unless you want to go psychodynamic on things but you'll have to start making excuses for Freud then!
I guess what I am proposing is not really testable. If behavior is the evidence of personality, maybe personality is always just a back-filled hand wavy explanation to describe the behavioral trends. I guess the reason I think that: there is evidence of that subatomic particle (personality) but it is very elusive.
Thanks for sharing — I am not very well read on psychology so I probably operate in ignorance a lot. Never enough time to read and learn everything I wish I could.
The nice thing about psychology, is understanding a little bit about how the mind works, means you can optimise for increasing your capacity to learn all sorts of other things!
So, if I beat my wife in front of my kids regularly, I can have a clear conscience if they'll beat theirs or accept abuses from their husbands in the future?
Absolutely. Childhood trauma shapes adult behavior, can induce psychosis, and greatly affect health. [0]
But even before we even get to overt trauma, simple resentment is pretty powerful in my opinion as well. Resentment can build in lots of ways. Parents perceived to not treat children equally or to restrict child from persuing a particular interest including love interests.
If parents don’t respect a child it has consequences.
Edit: to add that resentment is normally a reciprocation. Meaning, parent resents child and therefore behaves in a manner that causes child to resent parent. Snowball that for a few years / decades = not good.
I wonder did this research just look at the "normal range", with these kinds of instances treated as "outliers". I'd expect the results to be strongly qualified as such but these kinds of details often get lost in translation.
Read about this in a book recently, not sure which.. Parents who abandon/do not care about their child, will raise a child which believes no one values them. This causes them to believe they are not worth much, thus they will be afraid of going out and getting their voice heard as an adult - because deep inside, they believe their voice to be worthless. This person will avoid risk, avoid being heard as it may be "punished", according to previous experience..
I visited a cat convention first time 3 years ago, since me and my wife have gotten "a few" cats. It was incredibly striking just how similar cats can be. Every 10th booth there was a cat looking, and acting like one of our cats. Down to the looks, whether they sat straight or crooked, the sounds they made and what catches their attention and what they ignore.
It was almost scary that those cats didn't recognise us. I had to hold the "what have you done to my cat!" down more than a few times.
I often wonder if people are similar. That there's really only 1000 different humans or so, and the rest are copies that recognise different people and places. Because for cats, that's definitely the case.
What traits are you seeing in newborns that you think last through life? As the social conditioning begins the moment you decide they are showing that trait.
My point is that social conditioning begins the moment you have interactions with the child, and if you notice a behavior you expect a similar behavior. I can't see how that would be disputed, though the importance of any one aspect is still unclear.
There's a lot more certainty about the relative weight of these factors than you might expect. Pick up any beginners developmental psychology textbook and see for yourself.
Unless you're actually trying to debunk the whole field in which case you'll need more than just a glib remark.
The field hardly has consensus on the issue. It is one if the areas where twin studies are a primary form of research. Ignoring any potential issues being raised about twin studies, personality traits seem to have a medium heratibility. Which makes it difficult to determine what personality traits are genetic in the best situations, and a parent's anecdotal opinion is far from the best situation.
All you've said is that I'm wrong, and linked a 1939 Anthropology paper detailing an experiment testing if certain people talk more.
No scientist worth a damn watch a very young baby for a few hours and determine that their genetics mean they will have some personality trait. At best, genetics provide a range of how strong a personality trait is, with environment and chance both influencing things too.
Raising lots of dogs and cats is like this too. You can tell their lifelong personality pretty well from around 8 weeks old, one you minus out generic things like being playful.
I'd put the impact of this on humans at like 60% though, higher than your estimate.
Mazzoni G, Scoboria A, Harvey L. (2010) Nonbelieved memories.
Abstract:
This is the first empirical study of vivid autobiographical memories for events that people no longer believe happened to them. Until now, this phenomenon has been the object of relatively rare, albeit intriguing, anecdotes, such as Jean Piaget's description of his vivid memory of an attempted abduction that never happened. The results of our study show that nonbelieved memories are much more common than is expected. Approximately 20% of our initial sample reported having at least one nonbelieved autobiographical memory. Participants' ratings indicate that nonbelieved memories share most recollective qualities of believed memories, but are characterized by more negative emotions. The results have important implications for the way autobiographical memory is conceptualized and for the false-memory debate.
"Approximately 20% of our initial sample reported having at least one nonbelieved autobiographical memory." and an anecdote of Piaget vividly remembering something wrong after being consistently misled by his mother as a child.
Some discrepancy between that and "we constantly create false memories to achieve the identity we want".
If my memory serves right it's well established in laboratory conditions that autobiographical memory is vulnerable to adversarial manipulation, but last thing I heard it wasn't at all clear that it spontaneously malfunctions under normal living conditions.
I see very little in this piece that gives me reason to revise that impression.
The good news is "real you" probably are not your memories - these are yours, not you. The bad news is you are probably going to forget this and have a hard time getting the clue if you lose your memory. But perhaps it may be right the opposite - maybe one with all their memory lost may automatically get "face to face" with their "real self" actually. I would love to test that given a guarantee that all my memories are going to return soon. I've heard some psychedelics can induce this experience (and the memories are supposed to return as it wears off) called "ego death" if taken in sufficiently high doses. Perhaps I have even had such an experience but I'm not sure if it was that: I've once smoked some strong weed after drinking too much booze and forgotten everything (for about half an hour) - the feeling (but no information) of self-identity remained perfectly intact but I was afraid to leave the bar as I had no idea of where do I live and how do I get there.
I disagree. I've been keeping a journal for more than 10 years (started when I was 14 and am 25 now), where I report important events and more importantly reflect on them, and also on general concepts. Reading old entries can be very enlightening.
What comes out of it is that events are the "data", while personality/identity is the "software". The data is various, but the software is the same. The consistency of reasoning between now and then is incredible. When I read the setup of an old recounting, I start reacting to it while reading it from the point of view of my now-self, and then I see that the reflection of my old-self on this event to be very consistent with that. It's naive, uninformed and a bit rebellious (probably because of teenagehood), and sometimes because of that it completely misses the point, but the direction of reflection is the same. It's not alien, it makes sense.
We're reacting to events by using our software on related data. The value of experience entirely lies in the data, which can sometimes create entire shifts in perspective, but the software is the same. If you read an old journal you'll see that most reactions are the same, and for those which differ you can point out exactly what piece of data was missing in comparison to today's perspective.
Our software wouldn't be very interesting if it wouldn't be able to at least partially modify itself.
But that's a very interesting experiment you are running. I wonder if you will still hold the same conclusion after next 20 years. Although, you can always say that the data is being interpreted by the software and effectively say that the source code changes but the interpreter stays the same.
I think it's more like a Moore state-machine, coupled with some invariant functions. The events come in, and they alter the internal state somewhat thereby altering future outputs elicited by similar events, but the invariant functions mean that certain things will never change over time. Of course, as with any real-world system at operational limits unpredictable behaviour can emerge.
> The data is various, but the software is the same. The consistency of reasoning between now and then is incredible.
Don't underestimate the environmental factor that your journal provides. Perhaps you're most consistent than most because you can and have read your prior journal entries, and this preserves the consistency of your reasoning over time.
Kind of like studying: it's well known that more frequent review of material dramatically improves retention.
I agree, I've actually made a point to not read older entries before I write anything new in mine and wait until afterwards or an entirely different time specifically for reading it and not writing because I've noticed this effect in myself.
Your case is somewhat particular (and is a very good thing to do). Because you have a log of past events, your memory processes can match against a reference and filter out deviations.
Most people don't have such an external log/reference. Memories cannot be externally validated, only internally validated against other memories. So, small deviations can accumulate, and overtime create entirely false narratives (esp around uncomfortable or even traumatic events)
Things you write down into your journal have already been under psychological screening mechanism described in the article.
You don't write down things that don't seem relevant to you or things you don't remember when writing it down. You are creating personal narrative and documenting it.
Another screening happens when you are reading your own journal. We are not objective readers and we add and remove things into what we read.
I wonder if you'll change your view on this as you age.
I'm 40. I've been through 2 divorces and 3 full-on professional careers (academics, music, and programming). I have a 17-year-old son.
Although I can probably think out the evolution of my "software", it's really hard to think of my current releases as having a whole lot of backwards compatibility with that 0.0.1 version. If I had to give it a number, I'd say I'm somewhere around release 6.4.3.
:D
Personally (and this is just my conclusions, not one I expect other folks to come to), my views and strategies for working with the world are so removed from 25-year-old me that I have little problem saying that I am almost not the same person.
Certainly, my "software" has so many revisions to essential functionality that it's hardly recognizable as the same collection of code: there is very little overlap between how I reasoned about things when I was 25 and now, and I feel like that's not just a matter of "data" aggregation. My conclusions is that the software isn't, in fact, the same.
I feel like it's more that I've fundamentally revised the software on a number of levels to the point where there are so many essential differences the identity isn't even consistent.
I agree but for me the business logic is the same. It's trying to solve the same problems. I want the same things I always wanted and I'm not talking about money or material or social status and relationships. I still want the same specific skills and experiences that did I when I was a kid but outlook is totally different.
This has been dealt to death in Dharmic philosophies; I'm surprised there is zero attribution to this anywhere in this article. This is not the first such instance though; I have to wonder why standard academic ethics is not followed with anything concerning Indic traditions.
I often find modern psychology heavily resembles ancient life philosophies. For example, CBT (Cognitive Behavioral Therapy) is, effectively, applied Stoicism. If you were to explain CBT to an ancient stoic they would just nod and agree, understanding the approach intimately.
But what is selected as a personal memory also needs to fit the current idea that we have of ourselves. Let’s suppose you have always been a very kind person, but after a very distressing experience you have developed a strong aggressive trait that now suits you. Not only has your behaviour changed, your personal narrative has too. If you are now asked to describe yourself, you might include past events previously omitted from your narrative – for example, instances in which you acted aggressively.
I have been pondering on a similar question for some time now. I have an amateurish and somewhat Jungian theory:
I think the "real me" is a collection of archetypes that are constantly struggling to take control over the mind and body. These archetypes are also constantly being improved on or new ones are being acquired through life time experiences. The "I" or the consciousness is nothing more than an observer and it also has the role to create a reasonable explanation, a justification if you will, of the motives behind actions. But the motives of the "I" are entirely produced by its collection of archetypes. This, in reality, would mean that the consciousness mind has no real choice in what one does! It is the archetypes that drive us to do or say things and the conscious mind just observes and creates a reason out of our memories and knowledge.
This would explain situations where, for example, one gets angry and says something that offends and hurts another person, but they would then almost immediately ask themselves "Why the heck did I even say/do that?" and the conscious mind creates a justification. After that another archetype prevails, e.g.; the one of compassion, and an apology would follow.
Of course, none of this explains how archetypes came to be in the first place.
This is similar to what is presented in Minsky's Society of Mind. What you're calling archetypes, he calls agents.
Question for you...I agree with your observer idea. But why have an observer? What purpose does it serve? Couldn't we make do as just a collection of agents?
An observer could be required because of the causality nature of our reality. I would assume the observer is an agent that connects cause and effect. It could be the one thing that brings order out of chaos in reality, if by chaos we mean the collection of agents.
I want to thank you about mentioning "Minsky's Society of Mind". On my reading list.
Wow, the claim of the headline does not follow from what the article explains at all. OK, people craft a narrative that fits their self-conception and use memories selectively to that end, some of which are not even real. How does "the 'real you' is a myth" follow from that at all?
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[ 3.0 ms ] story [ 229 ms ] threadIsn't this somewhat self-contradictory? Why assume the real me has to be based on true memories -- and I don't even want to start a discussion of what a true memory, a true account (save anything subjective?) of some event could be. If we know who we want to be, we most likely also know our real me.
I think people can do that to such an extent that’s it’s possible that they could be deluded as to the nature of their “true” self, thinking themselves, say, kinder, or more competent in certain areas, or less racist than they actually are when their guard is down. Sometimes you need someone else or some experience to realise you didn’t really know yourself!
I think current state is part of it - for example, people might become more cynical over time through their life not going the way they want. Things like that can gradually become part of the “real you” without you noticing.
This article is about how personality is shaped by memory, and how flawed memory is. I'd say that definition is fairly close to the one used in the article, and there being no "real self" supports the shift over time and need for outside views that you have noticed.
My "work" personality is a completely different one to my "Home" personality.
and My Online and internal personalities are all different people as well.
which one is the real me? shrug they're all real, just used for different purposes. I'm fairly sure I'm not unique in this, but then I suspect I'm better at compartmentalising than most others so maybe I am.
https://youtu.be/uPG3YMcSvzo
Perfectly normal and decent folk outside of work. Able to hold intelligent and thought provoking conversation, and talk intelligently about many fields.
The lesson? Some people are so good at compartmentalizing that they leave their intelligence in another box.
There can exist things which are not bound by your current set of logical rules.
Maybe those people have more conscious intelligence.
I don't think it was ... if anything "it is not based on thoughts" would imply the opposite!
An object "is" an object whether it knows it is or not.
EDIT I think maybe you're interpreting the final clause of the sentence "what is lost when you die" as "what is lost to you" but I read it as "what is lost to others".
Will the real me please stand up.
I suppose it would make sense in that particular moment in time, and in that particular context, but it's not an image of Chewbacca is it? Not really. It's just a conveniet way of refering to phenomena... happening and being perceived a certain way.
In a similar way, I'd say yes, we are the "real us" at any point in time, but only in the sense that it makes convient sense in that particular moment, and only as a device to point at a set of particular processes/things happening.
It stands to reason that the "real you" never gets fully realized until you die.
Jude Law repeats this in "I Heart Huckabees" as he slowly slips into existential crisis.
Sometimes I find it's better to be somebody else
- Dave Matthews Band - So much to say
If I had to put a figure on it, to avoid argument I'd say it accounts for between 30 and 50% of your behaviour. The rest is shaped by social conditioning, life experiences and the environment we find ourselves living in. But even these could be said to be mediated in some part by the initial 30%.
About 50% of personality from genetics, 50% from environment, and approximately 0% from parental influence.
I wonder if people who are more adept at creating and selective recall of memories tend to be happier individuals.
This is why kids like to pretend to play kitchen or use a broom. They see you do it.
Anecdotally, I have seen children who have ‘bad attitudes’ do a 180 when the parents make an effort to model calmness and positivity. Anxious, stressed out or negative emotions in parents affect the kids.
In most settings, mood is contagious and is set by the leader. The catch is you have to keep it up.
What's the source of this? Given that siblings are often so different between each other, and from their parents, it could be that most of personality traits come from the environment, but we're still born with it (i.e. it could be influence in early development of the fetus, from the environment (womb, food mother eats and her hormones, sounds and movement from outside, ...) not from genes).
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2002/11/25/what-comes-nat...
As a parent, that seems about right. We may lay a foundation for helping them make good choices. But, a child’s identity ultimately seems to be formed by their predisposition and the types of peers that they seek out and befriend at around 12 years and onwards.
There's almost no fact checking and they usually mangle the science. http://www.danielbor.com/lehrerandsciencewriting/
http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/science/201...
I figured a ‘pop sci’ reference could at least help guide the way. My bad.
Pop-sci often adopts sensationalism at the expense of rigour in order to shift volumes.
At least personal, lived experience can be taken at face value, if accepted in good faith as a truthful account, and can be cross-examined.
If you have an observer giving a truthful account that conflicts with an established fact then surely something must account for that discrepancy.
See for instance radio-waves vs Kirchoffs law. It's not that Kirchoff was wrong, it's just that he didn't account for frequency as a variable, which was solved by Maxwell.
Now, that's for established facts. If you're talking about commercially adulterated science then you have an even higher burden to bear.
We need to be beyond a level of discourse where "because science" or "a study said" is considered a fait acompli. Science often contradicts herself and studies are often debunked.
Just because "some guy wrote it", doesn't make it so.
I don't disagree. But I don't think personal anecdote is a sufficient answer. You could criticize the quality of the research (in more specific terms than "pop-sci") or present contradictory evidence and I'd have no problem with it. Simply attacking a guy in a casual discussion that is not particularly rigorous for posting a citation you deem insufficiently rigorous without further explanation I do not think is fair.
Initially, I merely proposed that in the modern world we need to be more rigorous in our evaluation of scientific propositions.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18083635
That's where you joined in.
I'd go so far as you're just trying to hurtful.
If parenting is a part of the environment, then that's not 0%.
The conclusion purposely mangles the numbers for the sake of sensationalism, and that is the kind of thing that gets picked up on and becomes myth.
Nonetheless, I don't think it's fair to jump straight to "sensationalism" to explain why he has different findings than yours. Perhaps your sense of influencing your children is more illusory than you think. It wouldn't be the first time a widely-acknowledged phenomenon with children turned out to be in the imagination of parents (consider "sugar high," for instance, which does not really exist).
The influence of parents is very much a factor in development. Just other factors influence a lot more than other people might expect.
You're making assumptions I'm some sort of uneducated whimsical pixie-head and that's your failure. Not mine.
I actually do think this counts for a lot. Certainly there are genetic and epigenetic factors, but scant attention is paid to gestative influence (an area it seems few know much about).
It does seem there is an eagerness to label all personality traits from the date-of-birth as "genetic".
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twin_study
The author proposes three laws of behavioral genetics which summarize results across a wide range of behaviors:
All human behavioral traits are heritable. The effect of being raised in the same family is smaller than the effect of genes. A substantial portion of the variation in complex human behavioral traits is not accounted for by the effects of genes or families.
But most identical twins are not so different from each other. Read up on twin studies, where twins were separated at birth. They tend to have very similar personalities and outlooks on life, despite never having had contact until the study was conducted.
This probably doesn't happen very often. (TBH I don't know if it's even possible.)
Sure it would, if you study enough of them.
Thus, even if raised separately, the 'environment' to which each identical twin is exposed will be more similar than the 'environments' of two non-identical people.
Simple example....
Adam and Bob are raised separately. Yet, both develop to be confident and strong leaders. Is this leadership quality 'genetic'? Or, is it because Adam and Bob are each 6'5" and handsome?
It would be very difficult indeed to statistically tease out these things.
That is incorrect.
The number of identical twins that have been raised separately (and studied) is tiny.
With a sample size that small, it is difficult to get statistically significant results. Obviously. I was just pointing out that one of the issues with which a researcher must grapple is the fact that not only is one shaped by one's environment, but one's environment is shaped -- to some degree -- by one's appearance... a tricky issue when dealing with two subjects who are identical in every outward respect.
[0] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4653279/
Yes, I wonder about this too.
> Given that siblings are often so different between each other, and from their parents, it could be that most of personality traits come from the environment, but we're still born with it.
In terms of genetics, the reason there's variation between siblings and parents, even though it is true that as children we inherit 50% of our genes from our father and 50% from our mother, is due to randomness in terms of which parts get inherited. Our siblings are inherits different combinations of genetics, but we all inherit 50%/50%.
This doesn't answer the question of how much of our personality is inherited vs environmental, but that siblings/parents are so different from each other doesn't argue against heritability.
Both in terms of how the kid reacts to situations around and what the kid likes, dislikes or value (consider good vs bad behavior).
I don't think there is scientific a consensus on this yet. I strongly doubt that there is reasonable study that would make the split 50%, 50%, 0%. It is too round, too nice to be true.
GP provides sources in a sibling thread where the discussion is further elaborated.
Unless you want to go psychodynamic on things but you'll have to start making excuses for Freud then!
This is what Watson would have said (in a roundabout way) [0]. Perhaps it's not related but he's not considered to have been a very nice guy. [1] [2]
Skinner was a lot more fun.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_B._Watson#Behaviorism
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_B._Watson#"Little_Albert"...
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_B._Watson#Advertising
One of the telling trait of serial killers are harsh parenting/tough childhood in general btw.
But even before we even get to overt trauma, simple resentment is pretty powerful in my opinion as well. Resentment can build in lots of ways. Parents perceived to not treat children equally or to restrict child from persuing a particular interest including love interests.
If parents don’t respect a child it has consequences.
Edit: to add that resentment is normally a reciprocation. Meaning, parent resents child and therefore behaves in a manner that causes child to resent parent. Snowball that for a few years / decades = not good.
[0]- https://www.ted.com/talks/nadine_burke_harris_how_childhood_...
It was almost scary that those cats didn't recognise us. I had to hold the "what have you done to my cat!" down more than a few times.
I often wonder if people are similar. That there's really only 1000 different humans or so, and the rest are copies that recognise different people and places. Because for cats, that's definitely the case.
If you can elaborate on your point of view I'd be happy to further explain what I mean here.
[0] https://www.jstor.org/stable/87360?seq=1#page_scan_tab_conte...
There are many many many many twin-studies that demonstrate the limited effects of social conditioning.
There's a lot more certainty about the relative weight of these factors than you might expect. Pick up any beginners developmental psychology textbook and see for yourself.
Unless you're actually trying to debunk the whole field in which case you'll need more than just a glib remark.
No scientist worth a damn watch a very young baby for a few hours and determine that their genetics mean they will have some personality trait. At best, genetics provide a range of how strong a personality trait is, with environment and chance both influencing things too.
You've supplied nothing but spite to this discussion. Go back under your rock.
I'd put the impact of this on humans at like 60% though, higher than your estimate.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anatta
Abstract: This is the first empirical study of vivid autobiographical memories for events that people no longer believe happened to them. Until now, this phenomenon has been the object of relatively rare, albeit intriguing, anecdotes, such as Jean Piaget's description of his vivid memory of an attempted abduction that never happened. The results of our study show that nonbelieved memories are much more common than is expected. Approximately 20% of our initial sample reported having at least one nonbelieved autobiographical memory. Participants' ratings indicate that nonbelieved memories share most recollective qualities of believed memories, but are characterized by more negative emotions. The results have important implications for the way autobiographical memory is conceptualized and for the false-memory debate.
"Approximately 20% of our initial sample reported having at least one nonbelieved autobiographical memory." and an anecdote of Piaget vividly remembering something wrong after being consistently misled by his mother as a child.
Some discrepancy between that and "we constantly create false memories to achieve the identity we want".
If my memory serves right it's well established in laboratory conditions that autobiographical memory is vulnerable to adversarial manipulation, but last thing I heard it wasn't at all clear that it spontaneously malfunctions under normal living conditions. I see very little in this piece that gives me reason to revise that impression.
What comes out of it is that events are the "data", while personality/identity is the "software". The data is various, but the software is the same. The consistency of reasoning between now and then is incredible. When I read the setup of an old recounting, I start reacting to it while reading it from the point of view of my now-self, and then I see that the reflection of my old-self on this event to be very consistent with that. It's naive, uninformed and a bit rebellious (probably because of teenagehood), and sometimes because of that it completely misses the point, but the direction of reflection is the same. It's not alien, it makes sense.
We're reacting to events by using our software on related data. The value of experience entirely lies in the data, which can sometimes create entire shifts in perspective, but the software is the same. If you read an old journal you'll see that most reactions are the same, and for those which differ you can point out exactly what piece of data was missing in comparison to today's perspective.
But that's a very interesting experiment you are running. I wonder if you will still hold the same conclusion after next 20 years. Although, you can always say that the data is being interpreted by the software and effectively say that the source code changes but the interpreter stays the same.
Don't underestimate the environmental factor that your journal provides. Perhaps you're most consistent than most because you can and have read your prior journal entries, and this preserves the consistency of your reasoning over time.
Kind of like studying: it's well known that more frequent review of material dramatically improves retention.
Most people don't have such an external log/reference. Memories cannot be externally validated, only internally validated against other memories. So, small deviations can accumulate, and overtime create entirely false narratives (esp around uncomfortable or even traumatic events)
You make me want to start a diary :-)
Another screening happens when you are reading your own journal. We are not objective readers and we add and remove things into what we read.
I'm 40. I've been through 2 divorces and 3 full-on professional careers (academics, music, and programming). I have a 17-year-old son.
Although I can probably think out the evolution of my "software", it's really hard to think of my current releases as having a whole lot of backwards compatibility with that 0.0.1 version. If I had to give it a number, I'd say I'm somewhere around release 6.4.3.
:D
Personally (and this is just my conclusions, not one I expect other folks to come to), my views and strategies for working with the world are so removed from 25-year-old me that I have little problem saying that I am almost not the same person.
Certainly, my "software" has so many revisions to essential functionality that it's hardly recognizable as the same collection of code: there is very little overlap between how I reasoned about things when I was 25 and now, and I feel like that's not just a matter of "data" aggregation. My conclusions is that the software isn't, in fact, the same.
I feel like it's more that I've fundamentally revised the software on a number of levels to the point where there are so many essential differences the identity isn't even consistent.
I have been pondering on a similar question for some time now. I have an amateurish and somewhat Jungian theory:
I think the "real me" is a collection of archetypes that are constantly struggling to take control over the mind and body. These archetypes are also constantly being improved on or new ones are being acquired through life time experiences. The "I" or the consciousness is nothing more than an observer and it also has the role to create a reasonable explanation, a justification if you will, of the motives behind actions. But the motives of the "I" are entirely produced by its collection of archetypes. This, in reality, would mean that the consciousness mind has no real choice in what one does! It is the archetypes that drive us to do or say things and the conscious mind just observes and creates a reason out of our memories and knowledge.
This would explain situations where, for example, one gets angry and says something that offends and hurts another person, but they would then almost immediately ask themselves "Why the heck did I even say/do that?" and the conscious mind creates a justification. After that another archetype prevails, e.g.; the one of compassion, and an apology would follow.
Of course, none of this explains how archetypes came to be in the first place.
Question for you...I agree with your observer idea. But why have an observer? What purpose does it serve? Couldn't we make do as just a collection of agents?
I want to thank you about mentioning "Minsky's Society of Mind". On my reading list.