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The Seven-Year Rule
- FrankWilhoit 1y agoThe whole point of learning is that it is cumulative.
- metabagel 1y agoIt can be emotionally freeing to learn from the mistakes of that other person you used to be, rather than your own mistakes which you return to again and again with feelings of regret.
- metabagel 1y agoSo basically, it’s a neat mental trick to provide emotional distance and allow you to move on with your life, and also allow you to keep your mental model of yourself fluid (changeable).
- FrankWilhoit 1y agoKey word: trick.
- readthenotes1 1y ago"So why not focus your energy and attention on the present moment?" Because sometimes having a better future requires focusing on that instead of just now. Of course, ironically, having a better future often requires I become more present in the moment I'm in...
- mattlondon 1y agoRegret is real for a reason. "Those who ignore history are doomed to repeat it" as they say, even it was over 7 years ago...
- metabagel 1y agoHow much time and energy should you spend today regretting your mistakes of 10 or 20 years ago?
- mattlondon 1y agoDepends entirely on how many people you killed I guess?
- dgfitz 1y agoI think the correct answer in terms of mental health is: as little time as possible. The actual answer is more complicated. Someone who got locked up for 25 years knowingly committing a significant crime might regret it for the majority of their sentence, at least.
- tsimionescu 1y agoI don't think this is true at all. Living your life ignoring all of your past mistakes can be just as unhealthy as dwelling on them needlessly. Dwelling on past mistakes can lead to hopelessness and depression, but ignoring them entirely can lead to narcissism and repeating damaging patterns.
- ludicrousdispla 1y agoI think mistake is an overused word, and a choice that qualifies as a mistake in the future may not be judged as a mistake now. Simply put... we make choices based on the information we have now. And our future judgment of our choices should account for the information we had back then, most of which has probably been forgotten. But to answer your question, we shouldn't regret our mistakes but it is very good to remember them.
- tsimionescu 1y agoDepends a lot on the mistake and your life since then. Is it something you could still fix today? Is it a mistake you keep repeating? Is it a huge mistake that still directly impacts your relationships and today in some way?
- sxg 1y agoLots of comments here disagreeing with the article and missing the point...sure, the seven-year rule can be taken to a ridiculous extreme, but I think many people suffer from dwelling too much on past mistakes and overcorrecting them. Seven years seems like a roughly reasonable period of time to learn from a serious mistake and then move on with life as an improved person. The spirit of the article is saying that you should ultimately forgive yourself for making a mistake after a period of time (not always literally seven years).
- frozencooler 1y agoPerhaps it be better to consider 3.5 years as a half-life instead. Every 42 months, half your life has or could be upturned. That’s how long it takes to find yourself in new job, or for a new child to become a fully talking toddler with a personality, or a long-term relationship to solidify, or a national government to turn over, or a pandemic to initialize and then resolve. That all tracks.
- ludicrousdispla 1y ago>> Lots of comments here disagreeing with the article That might be true in twenty-four hours, but only three comments were posted on this thread before yours.
- aspenmayer 1y agoThanks for saying something. I’ve noticed other folks on other threads making similar comments to argue against opposition that doesn’t even exist apropos of nothing and it feels like a self-fulfilling straw man building prophecy that they’re willing into existence.
- didgetmaster 1y agoIs that why the IRS insists that we keep the past 7 years of our tax records?
- SirHumphrey 1y ago>>> The person you are today doesn’t share a single cell with the version of you from seven years ago. (This is, of course, a generalization as some cells regenerate much faster and others a little slower.) No, that is not even remotely true. Most of the neurons in the central nervous system (the part of the body one could argue does the most of thinking) stay mostly the same from adulthood to death[1]. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neurogenesis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neurogenesis
- joshuaturner 1y agoah man I really wanted to be a new person
- g0db1t 1y ago[dead]
- daxfohl 1y agoA body's atoms do completely recycle every 5-7 years though. 98 percent are recycled annually. Weird.
- darkr 1y agoIncorrect
- daxfohl 1y agoI thought so too, but it seems reasonable considering we're 70% water, much of it flowing and actively taking stuff out and around. Plus cells are apparently way more dynamic than is typically conveyed in high school bio (I think there was a quantamagazine article a while ago). So it's perhaps surprising that a body's atoms aren't fully recycled even faster than that.
- gus_massa 1y agoIANAMD. IANAB. Let's guess anyway: The Ca in bones is probably renewed very slowly. C H O N very fast, in particular water. Na, K and Cl are very soluble and also get renew very fast. Some rare elements like I are probably reused a lot and renewed very slowly. I'm not sure about P, my hand waving is confused. Assuming a burger per day, we ate our weight in meat every few years, but I'm not sure if all the Fe is absorved in and exchanged for the internal one.
- akubera 1y agoI'm reminded of the SMBC comic https://www.smbc-comics.com/?id=2722 https://www.smbc-comics.com/?id=2722 which resonated with me. If it takes ~7 years to master something, you should dedicate yourself to becoming good at it. Or at least you don't have to tie your identity to what you do you right now; you can reinvent yourself and experience more from of life, but you have to give yourself the time to do so. It's been almost 14 years since that was published, so maybe some self-reflection is due.
- gmuslera 1y agoSo if Theseus was aboard his ship for many years it would add another layer of it that ship still is his own? In Vernon Vinge’s A Fire Upon The Deep you have pack of dogs that are not so smart individually, but they had a pack personality that was smart. Even (for one case in the book) the dogs could be replaced but the personality remained. Changing individual cells doesn’t change what is the you of your consciousness and memories. Of course, even without cell replacement you change with time, new memories, insights and so on, but both changes happen at different abstraction levels.
- globnomulous 1y agoPeter F. Hamilton's Pandora's Star contains a wonderful variant of this thought experiment: in the future he describes, memories are editable; so it's possible to commit a crime, like murder, and then wipe all memory of it, so that you are, from your own perspective, innocent. The justice system, of course, says otherwise. The metaphysics (whether or not it's possible to step into the same river twice) don't matter. Technological advancement dictates the answer to the philosophical question about continuity of the self and guilt.
- borski 1y ago> Changing individual cells doesn’t change what is the you of your consciousness and memories. It’s a metaphor.
- smitty1e 1y ago> As you read these words, you are uniquely yourself, different from who you were a moment ago and who you’ll become in the next. By extension, a "culture" is a snapshot of a subset of the human population. To be clear, copious physical artifacts outlive people, so the state of the State is more than my reductionism. But, in keeping with Barlow' Pronciples[1] [1]
- HellDunkel 1y agoIt feels so strange to read blogposts like this in 2025. The level of mediocrity makes you question if this has been created by a human or an ai bot. Next you start questioning yourself why you still look into your smartphone like a junkie.
- j_bum 1y agoBecause there are some nuggets of gold to be found, many of which make their way onto this site.
- johnfn 1y ago> I recently spoke with a friend who was still dwelling on something that happened thirty years ago. “Why do you care?” I asked him. “That was four versions of you ago. That person doesn’t exist anymore. Move on.” Do you think this actually helped your friend? In any way?
- travisd 1y agoOf course! It helped your friend realize what kind of person you are and hopefully spurred them to find better friends who possess actual human empathy.
- blaze33 1y agoSeems to me the Dalai Lama used the 7 years cell replacement thing as a metaphor to explain some classic Buddhist teachings. > still dwelling on something that happened thirty years ago. Exactly that: clinging causes suffering. Buddhism also goes a step farther, they have a whole doctrine about emptiness and no-self: there's no permanent or unchanging self to be found.
- efitz 1y ago“My cells” are not “me”. Without resorting to metaphysics, “I” am a slowly-but-constantly changing set of experiences, memories, predilections and preferences that happens to be instantiated in and associated with a particular physical body. My relationships with other people tend to be the most important things to me and the things that most shape whatever direction my identity is going. My body is not the same exact set of cells or molecules that I was 30 years ago. But I’m like the Ship of Theseus- the essence of what I am is a direct consequence of my formative experiences regardless of what pieces I’m built of at any given moment. It’s my choice (within the constraints of how brains work) of how much I let past experiences affect my current behavior. But I can’t forget those experiences and if I could, then I would not be the same “me” in a much deeper sense than just having different cells or molecules.
- MeteorMarc 1y agoAnd there is the 7 year inch.
- mehulashah 1y agoitch?
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- alganet 1y agoNope. I am going to decide not to renew myself into a new thing. I don't live like Buddha or the Dalai Lama. I don't have a castle or forest of isolation to shed my skin. I also don't want to. I am shaped more by what others perceive of me than myself. It is a tragedy of this age. I cannot change that. But I can challenge some of those assumptions by choosing to see things from multiple perspectives. By choosing to not completely do that to others (there's always a risk, but hey, I'm doing the best I can. Are you?). I have learned to perceive Buddhist thinking in this age as a difficult thing to concilliate with reality. Religion-like rules are supposed to draw my attention. Well, fuck it. I cannot avoid it, but I can choose to try to understand what it means in this context I am, which, again, is very different from what some Lama wrote. Sure, I can totally empathize with someone who is tired and wants to let it all go. I have been there. You can let it go, and it's OK with me. But I cannot pretend that I enjoy this Mad Men transition into eastern meditation clear-your-mind shit. Fuck that. What I am is deeply shaped by living among others, being influenced and shaped by others opinions. I will not forget that. But I can pretend to. Not by their rules though. As I said, can't forget.
- brianhama 1y agoBy this logic, there’s no reason to save for retirement either. Might as well maximize enjoyment now.
- Muromec 1y agoYes, and?
- lud_lite 1y ago[flagged]
- sentimentscan 1y agoThat explains this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Seven_Year_Itch https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Seven_Year_Itch idiom/movie with Marilyn Monroe
- throwaway150 1y agoThis post confusingly conflates "cells" with "self" resulting in a muddled and pseudoscientific message. It reads more like feel-good content than facts and would be better suited for other social media platforms.
- rappatic 1y agoThis reminded me of a hilarious passage from Chapter 9 of the novel Ulysses. Stephen Dedalus is pondering a £1 debt he owed from five months prior: > Wait. Five months now. Molecules all change. I am other I now. Other I got pound.
- JasonBorne 1y agoThe paradox to this is we want to stay connected to some things that are important to us such as family and deny the things that cause us pain.