5 ms·

The Phineas Gage effect

49 points by Vigier 10y ago

EGreg 10y ago
It seems that we associate identity with having what you had yesterday but allowing for growth, improvement, and basically adding information. However, if you remove information, then you no longer remember everything that you were before. Being kinder and more intelligence is sort of a proxy to this concept, since we assumed that knowing more information would make you kinder and more intelligent. That may be the key to our intuitions about identity and whether you are the same person who wakes up 10 years from now.
- zardo 10y ago
  >since we assumed that knowing more information would make you kinder Is that a common belief? I'd never considered the two to have much connection.
  - sp332 10y ago
    Yeah, empathy or seeing things from other people's positions is an increase in information.
    - zardo 10y ago
      So is reading Mein Kampf.
      - sp332 10y ago
        Maybe it's a statistical thing, because there are more people who will hate strangers than people who love strangers?
      - deleted 10y ago
        [deleted]
      - kurthr 10y ago
        If you acquire actual knowledge, then yes reading Lolita or Mein Kampf can make you kinder, because you realize the subtlety and banality of horrifying individuals. Certainly, taking away such knowledge would make you less who you are. I would say that more manipulative media and advertising are less that way, for the very reason that they are manipulative. If their goal was not to change who people are, why refer to them or use them in that way.
empath75 10y ago
Interesting to think of this in the context of psychoactive drugs. If someone gets hooked on heroin or crack, they're 'no longer themselves', but if they take anti-depressants or add medication, they're somehow becoming their truer selves. Or in the case of insanity pleas in criminal trials.
- pavel_lishin 10y ago
  There was an interesting science fiction story I read, once. A man had a bad case of schizophrenia, but the society he was in had a simple ongoing treatment - every morning, he simply had to administer the treatment. Untreated, he became paranoid, violent and murderous. The story ended up asking the question - is he responsible for the actions he takes off medication? And the conclusion reached in the story is that in a society where such a mental illness is preventable, not medicating yourself is tantamount to murder, since it's effectively choosing to release Mr. Hyde onto the world. Similarly, you're still liable for your actions if you get too drunk, or too high.
  - hyperpallium 10y ago
    The Ethics of Madness, Larry Niven. It sure has a different vibe without the spaceships.
    - pavel_lishin 10y ago
      I was hoping to avoid spoilers :) "Madness Has Its Place" is also a good story of his on a similar topic.
davidjhall 10y ago
Reminds me of the murder-Gandhi thought experiment: http://lesswrong.com/lw/ase/schelling_fences_on_slippery_slopes/ http://lesswrong.com/lw/ase/schelling_fences_on_slippery_slo...
awinter-py 10y ago
Missing concept here -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conatus https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conatus conatus, a (very old) philosophical concept that entities seek their own improvement. Selection bias suggests that most of the things we encounter have grown better over time (to stay competitive). Of course we're biased to view positive change as normal. Also missing from the article is the case of aging. I've known some 80 year-olds who have stayed themselves and some who haven't. I've known parents who feel like teenagers are 'no longer themselves'.
- kybernetikos 10y ago
  Yeah, I take this difference in intuitions to be primarily about the fact that we are predisposed to be charitable towards others. If they do something oustandingly evil, we're more likely to say that they weren't themselves, whereas if they do something outstandingly good, we say that they were their best selves. Because of this reasonable bias, I don't think peoples intuitions can be relied on to be any kind of real measure of whether people are discontinuous with their past selves or not.
  - awinter-py 10y ago
    Interesting that you use 'good' vs 'positive'. An uncharacteristically selfless/moral act can be positive or negative depending on the person and the context. Take for example a teacher with a history of burnout who one day doesn't go the extra mile for a student. That's uncharacteristic, and morally it's a step down. But given the growth and sustainability curve for a teacher, it's a positive change -- it's normal and expected.
hyperpallium 10y ago
If you think of a person not as an isolated identity, but as a member of a community which is the "self", then becoming a better member is becoming a better self - your truer self. But... is a community a "self"? One may say that cells in a multicellular organism are both cells and members; that collective nouns for animals do act as a coherent whole - hills, schools, flocks, herds, pods, troops, tribes.
- mercer 10y ago
  I'm thinking more and more that the self is a member/outcome of a community to some extent, but kind of a community in 'itself' as well. Perhaps this is more true for some than for others, but personally I feel like a pretty constant activity throughout my life has been trying to maintain, herd, disentangle, integrate, mediate between, etc., various versions of myself. In my late teens and most of my twenties this could mean actually trying on different lifestyles and 'personalities', but starting in my late twenties this kind of quieted down and I started feeling like a more consistent 'self'. Which is nice in many ways; much more peaceful. The thing is, I don't actually feel confident that these different and sometimes incompatible ideas of my 'self' actually disappeared or integrated or whatnot. At least not as much as I think they did. If anything, I sometimes feel like they got tangled together and became a kind of 'rat king' monstrosity, a kind of meta-self that both pretends and kind of manages to be one larger organism at peace with its selves. As I said, it feels more peaceful. It's probably healthy to an extent. But I do feel that in this tangled mess of selves, the weaker and more unusual ones suffered, while the more 'acceptable' and dominant ones have relatively more sway. I became a simpler, agreed-upon version of my selves. More recently I've (or we've?) been trying to let go of the desire to integrate so much and to accept the fluidity and vagueness of it all. I try to have less of a 'narrative' of myself. Any narrative leaves out important things, so perhaps it's something to do sparingly, if at all. Of course, this post in itself is evidence that 'I' still like to to tell a story of myself and how it progressed, but then I suppose one desire all my 'selves' agree on is to have a sense of self. All in moderation, I guess.
  - hyperpallium 10y ago
    My comment didn't address what it takes to be a "self". Although a herd behaves as an entity in some ways, is it a "self"? Is it even alive, or is it more like a river or a fire? Or mere phenomena? Is a group of people a "self"? Perhaps your "real" self is the one observing all the others? As a mind can observe its body, reflexes etc. [Or do several of them have that level of awareness?] Fallen twigs were branches overshadowed; part of trees' plan.

49 points by Vigier 10y ago

EGreg 10y ago

It seems that we associate identity with having what you had yesterday but allowing for growth, improvement, and basically adding information. However, if you remove information, then you no longer remember everything that you were before. Being kinder and more intelligence is sort of a proxy to this concept, since we assumed that knowing more information would make you kinder and more intelligent. That may be the key to our intuitions about identity and whether you are the same person who wakes up 10 years from now.

zardo 10y ago
>since we assumed that knowing more information would make you kinder Is that a common belief? I'd never considered the two to have much connection.
- sp332 10y ago
  Yeah, empathy or seeing things from other people's positions is an increase in information.
  - zardo 10y ago
    So is reading Mein Kampf.
    - sp332 10y ago
      Maybe it's a statistical thing, because there are more people who will hate strangers than people who love strangers?
    - deleted 10y ago
      [deleted]
    - kurthr 10y ago
      If you acquire actual knowledge, then yes reading Lolita or Mein Kampf can make you kinder, because you realize the subtlety and banality of horrifying individuals. Certainly, taking away such knowledge would make you less who you are. I would say that more manipulative media and advertising are less that way, for the very reason that they are manipulative. If their goal was not to change who people are, why refer to them or use them in that way.

empath75 10y ago

Interesting to think of this in the context of psychoactive drugs. If someone gets hooked on heroin or crack, they're 'no longer themselves', but if they take anti-depressants or add medication, they're somehow becoming their truer selves. Or in the case of insanity pleas in criminal trials.

pavel_lishin 10y ago
There was an interesting science fiction story I read, once. A man had a bad case of schizophrenia, but the society he was in had a simple ongoing treatment - every morning, he simply had to administer the treatment. Untreated, he became paranoid, violent and murderous. The story ended up asking the question - is he responsible for the actions he takes off medication? And the conclusion reached in the story is that in a society where such a mental illness is preventable, not medicating yourself is tantamount to murder, since it's effectively choosing to release Mr. Hyde onto the world. Similarly, you're still liable for your actions if you get too drunk, or too high.
- hyperpallium 10y ago
  The Ethics of Madness, Larry Niven. It sure has a different vibe without the spaceships.
  - pavel_lishin 10y ago
    I was hoping to avoid spoilers :) "Madness Has Its Place" is also a good story of his on a similar topic.

davidjhall 10y ago

Reminds me of the murder-Gandhi thought experiment: http://lesswrong.com/lw/ase/schelling_fences_on_slippery_slopes/ http://lesswrong.com/lw/ase/schelling_fences_on_slippery_slo...

awinter-py 10y ago

Missing concept here -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conatus https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conatus conatus, a (very old) philosophical concept that entities seek their own improvement. Selection bias suggests that most of the things we encounter have grown better over time (to stay competitive). Of course we're biased to view positive change as normal. Also missing from the article is the case of aging. I've known some 80 year-olds who have stayed themselves and some who haven't. I've known parents who feel like teenagers are 'no longer themselves'.

kybernetikos 10y ago
Yeah, I take this difference in intuitions to be primarily about the fact that we are predisposed to be charitable towards others. If they do something oustandingly evil, we're more likely to say that they weren't themselves, whereas if they do something outstandingly good, we say that they were their best selves. Because of this reasonable bias, I don't think peoples intuitions can be relied on to be any kind of real measure of whether people are discontinuous with their past selves or not.
- awinter-py 10y ago
  Interesting that you use 'good' vs 'positive'. An uncharacteristically selfless/moral act can be positive or negative depending on the person and the context. Take for example a teacher with a history of burnout who one day doesn't go the extra mile for a student. That's uncharacteristic, and morally it's a step down. But given the growth and sustainability curve for a teacher, it's a positive change -- it's normal and expected.

hyperpallium 10y ago

If you think of a person not as an isolated identity, but as a member of a community which is the "self", then becoming a better member is becoming a better self - your truer self. But... is a community a "self"? One may say that cells in a multicellular organism are both cells and members; that collective nouns for animals do act as a coherent whole - hills, schools, flocks, herds, pods, troops, tribes.

mercer 10y ago
I'm thinking more and more that the self is a member/outcome of a community to some extent, but kind of a community in 'itself' as well. Perhaps this is more true for some than for others, but personally I feel like a pretty constant activity throughout my life has been trying to maintain, herd, disentangle, integrate, mediate between, etc., various versions of myself. In my late teens and most of my twenties this could mean actually trying on different lifestyles and 'personalities', but starting in my late twenties this kind of quieted down and I started feeling like a more consistent 'self'. Which is nice in many ways; much more peaceful. The thing is, I don't actually feel confident that these different and sometimes incompatible ideas of my 'self' actually disappeared or integrated or whatnot. At least not as much as I think they did. If anything, I sometimes feel like they got tangled together and became a kind of 'rat king' monstrosity, a kind of meta-self that both pretends and kind of manages to be one larger organism at peace with its selves. As I said, it feels more peaceful. It's probably healthy to an extent. But I do feel that in this tangled mess of selves, the weaker and more unusual ones suffered, while the more 'acceptable' and dominant ones have relatively more sway. I became a simpler, agreed-upon version of my selves. More recently I've (or we've?) been trying to let go of the desire to integrate so much and to accept the fluidity and vagueness of it all. I try to have less of a 'narrative' of myself. Any narrative leaves out important things, so perhaps it's something to do sparingly, if at all. Of course, this post in itself is evidence that 'I' still like to to tell a story of myself and how it progressed, but then I suppose one desire all my 'selves' agree on is to have a sense of self. All in moderation, I guess.
- hyperpallium 10y ago
  My comment didn't address what it takes to be a "self". Although a herd behaves as an entity in some ways, is it a "self"? Is it even alive, or is it more like a river or a fire? Or mere phenomena? Is a group of people a "self"? Perhaps your "real" self is the one observing all the others? As a mind can observe its body, reflexes etc. [Or do several of them have that level of awareness?] Fallen twigs were branches overshadowed; part of trees' plan.