
First Person Plural - toffer
http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200811/multiple-personalities
======
hugh
_Such contradictions arise all the time. If you ask people which makes them
happier, work or vacation, they will remind you that they work for money and
spend the money on vacations. But if you give them a beeper that goes off at
random times, and ask them to record their activity and mood each time they
hear a beep, you’ll likely find that they are happier at work._

Hey, I'd be pissed off too if my vacation was randomly interrupted by beeps.

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nazgulnarsil
I've always thought the essential internal dichotomy was between maximizing
mate selection and maximizing offspring survival. the urge to maximize mate
selection carries with it many anti-social behaviors, while the urge to
maximize offspring survival requires cooperation with the group. the history
of governance has been the history of conflict over how far to the "left" or
"right" the social contract should fall. To the left lies collectivism
(offspring survival), to the right lies individualism (mate selection).

~~~
ii
You forget about your own survival. You simply will die from hunger if you
won't go hunting. Mating and children was always a second priority.

The most essential dichotomy is between leisure and running for _your_ life, I
think.

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nazgulnarsil
wrong. the only reason to survive is to mate and ensure offspring survival. if
personal survival was maximized by evolution why don't we all live to be 900?

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hugh
Not to contradict your point, but I think there are other reasons we don't
live to be 900. A human with a 900-year lifespan would be able to reproduce
many more times than a human with a 90-year lifespan, so if a 900-year
lifespan were easy to evolve then we would have done it by now.

~~~
nazgulnarsil
I think there is probably some range of possible lifespans given our
architecture. It just so happened that longer ones weren't increasing
reproductive fitness (probably for several interrelated reasons) so it was
never selected for.

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rkts
Summary: author defines a "self" as something with a fixed, consistent set of
desires; observes that people have changing, inconsistent sets of desires;
concludes that people are made of "many different selves." What an insight.

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danohuiginn
"Some of my colleagues at Yale have developed an online service whereby you
set a goal and agree to put up a certain amount of money to try to ensure that
you meet it. If you succeed, you pay nothing; if you fail, the money is given
to charity—or, in a clever twist, to an organization you oppose."

Anybody have an URL?

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maneesh
<https://www.stickk.com/login.php> i think

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danohuiginn
thanks!

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cousin_it
Definitely something to think about.

The article's amazingly well-written. Smooth to read, but communicates a huge
amount of information with a minimum of fluff. I want more journalism like
this.

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mnemonicsloth
_I want more journalism like this_

The author is a professor of psychology at Yale. It's sad to say it, but he'd
be wasted as a journalist.

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martey
If anything, this proves the point of the grandparent post. Having more
professors write magazine articles would elevate journalism, not degrade it.

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rockstar9
very interesting article. it definitely gave me a new perspective about
thinking about the mind.

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Allocator2008
Great article. The notion of "short-term self" vs. "long-term self", the self
which wants to blow the pay cheque on booze, and the self which wants to save
some of it for a rainy day, explains much internal conflict. My complaint
though is it presents the "multiple selves" idea as in some way different from
Freud's "superego. vs. ego. vs. id" model. I do not believe these are
contradictory. The "short-term self" can be part of the id, I would think. The
"long-term self" can be manifestations of the ego or the super-ego, it seems.
The Freudian model is simpler, and still valid. However in some cases, the
"multiple selves" model can be used to enhance the Freudian model. To me, just
as a layman's opinion, it seems the Freudian model might be like Newtonian
gravity - works in most situations, except in "corner cases" like the orbit of
Mercury, where we need general relativity. Similarly, the Freudian
"id/ego/superego" model of personality should still work in most cases, but
there might be "corner cases" where a more complex "multiple selves" model
might come in handy. By the way Robert Louis Stevenson in 'Jeckyl and Hyde'
comes to this same model himself. Dr. Henry Jeckyl at last realizes that in
each man there are many men, not just two.

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jamesbritt
" The Freudian model is simpler, and still valid. "

Is there any actual evidence, any reproducible tests to validate Freud's
conjectures about the mind?

(For that matter, has any of Freud's work been scientifically validated?)

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izaidi
Freud hasn't really been taken seriously in the psychological community since
the middle of the 20th century. The only place where psychoanalysis still has
much credibility is among a subset of literary theorists.

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Ardit20
What an Awful Ending and what an awful article in general. Ok, Ok, I might get
voted down but common I can express opinions without being hated?

He says that it should not be a democracy, nor should it be a dictatorship, so
what should it be then?

He states that the long-term self is wiser, but also that the short-term self
might be wiser, so which should we listen to?

He misses the point completely of the Miligram Experiment and of the "other"
experiments of such kind, I presume Zimbardo. If anything they show that the
self is a continual construction, not a rigid personality which exists
consistently, but that personality is fluid, it changes, it is made on the
spot.

It is an interesting read somewhat, but it is a prime example of everything
that is wrong with psychology.

