
The Phineas Gage effect - Vigier
https://aeon.co/essays/how-a-change-for-the-worse-makes-for-a-different-person
======
awinter-py
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
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
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.

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empath75
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
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
The Ethics of Madness, Larry Niven. It sure has a different vibe without the
spaceships.

~~~
pavel_lishin
I was hoping to avoid spoilers :)

"Madness Has Its Place" is also a good story of his on a similar topic.

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davidjhall
Reminds me of the murder-Gandhi thought experiment:
[http://lesswrong.com/lw/ase/schelling_fences_on_slippery_slo...](http://lesswrong.com/lw/ase/schelling_fences_on_slippery_slopes/)

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EGreg
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
>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
Yeah, empathy or seeing things from other people's positions is an increase in
information.

~~~
zardo
So is reading Mein Kampf.

~~~
kurthr
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.

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hyperpallium
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
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
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.

