302cc9b4780f8cbef6f70c3a8417913050b6aafb ([info]mindbound) rakstīja,
@ 2015-06-22 13:57:00

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Garastāvoklis:working
Mūzika:Android Lust - The Dividing: Burn
Entry tags:personal, philosophy, psychology, quotes, rationality

Disclaimer: Follows a core dump of semi-formulated semi-beliefs, decidedly not intended to be taken as suggestions or advice. Caveat lector.

The core of one’s identity is a curious thing. A confusion. An geometry of inability. A plurality that fails to count the moments in time that define it and see the edges of causality that divide and subdivide it, and thus perceives itself as something single and whole.

You go through a lot of changes in life, but the real you never changes. It accumulates a bunch of experiences, beliefs, preferences. The real you has a bunch of things that comprise your life. Right?

But what if you removed from that picture the thing that accumulates, and just left all the components? The experiences and their relationships to each other and other things. The behaviours and the effects radiating outward from them. Memories, both accurate and confabulated. Intentions. Beliefs, including beliefs about what you are. The causal network impacting all of these, which extends well beyond your skull.

Given all of that, I anticipate that you would end up predicting precisely the same set of observations. If so, then the “true self” becomes an unnecessary hypothesis to describe an agent. It’s like thinking that an oxygen atom has eight protons and eight electrons (and a number of neutrons), when in fact it simply is eight protons and eight electrons (and a number of neutrons).

It’s not the case that if you dug deeply enough through your collection of memories, desires, patterns of thought, and personality test results, you’d discover the real you and thereby gain new and valuable information. No, you just are the memories, desires, patterns of thought, and personality test results. There’s nothing else to find.

It can be very uncomfortable to not know “who you are”, to not be in touch with your “true self”. Why? Perhaps because it’s very difficult to work out your relationship to the rest of the world when you don’t have a well defined, discrete node labelled “me” in your model, and the closest thing you have to such a node is the collection of all the things you’re trying to work out your relationship to. The prospect of navigating the world without such a “true self” node is daunting. Reifying the “real you” just makes everything easier. So you pick out the cluster of things you “identify as” and label it “me”.

Believing falsely that there is something else to find when you reflect on all your parts encourages us to account for fewer causal mechanisms driving actions, beliefs, emotions, etc.; incorrect weightings assigned to the variables affecting those actions and such; and cognitive dissonance at the border areas where your map doesn’t match the territory, because the reality turns out to be quite a bit more fuzzy and complex than “I go through the world and things happen to me”.

As such, I do not like the phrase “identify as X”. I think that’s partially a defense mechanism: “Don’t make me look at the evidence that I’m wrong! My map has a picture of X hooked right on to my true self, see? I don’t care if the truth is more complicated. Shut up and let me identify as X.” It’s as though “identifying as X” imbues us with the essence of X-ness, such that no contingent fact of mere reality could take that away. Believing (or alieving) in an essence of X-ness oversimplifies your model of the world, preventing finer distinctions and uncertainties at the borders of concepts, many of which are quite important.

This gets really obviously important when considering things like sexual orientation, political attitudes, occupation, and gender. But it’s non-obviously important also when considering day-to-day behaviours. “Should I donate to this charity?” can too easily become “Am I, fundamentally, a generous person?” You answer the wrong questions. You use imaginary criteria to make your decisions. You pay the “false belief tax” as you would with any other false belief.

I’m not saying “Keep your identity small”. I’m saying, “Don’t have an identity”.



(Ierakstīt jaunu komentāru)


[info]doomed
2015-06-22 18:32 (saite)
approx. 2400 years later, buddhism is rediscovered and concept of anatta redefined.

"I" or skinbag, as some call it, is an onion - as you peel layer and layer, in the end, there is nothing at all.
now, the problem is, that we are conditioned generation after generation, to answer question "who are you?"
"i am a businessman"
"i am dominant"
"i am drunkard"

but it is just some description, so that we can find some coomon things to relate.

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[info]mindbound
2015-06-22 23:21 (saite)
I don't have anything to do with Buddhism, since I don't ascribe to the four noble truths, the eightfold path or any other of the core beliefs that are (AFAIK) shared by all the different branches of that religion.

Nor is this set of ideas anatta, although I can at least see where you're coming from. In so many words, what I'm talking about is avoiding a category node that tends to assemble out of the network of all the things that actually make up our thought-space. In doing so, one could perhaps reduce things like tribal affiliations, decision making based on in-group/out-group distinction and the like (or at least control their presence), all of which are important goals to me to some degree.

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[info]gnidrologs
2015-06-22 19:23 (saite)
Sounds like a bunch of things describing one's identity.

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[info]mindbound
2015-06-22 23:27 (saite)
It's a bunch of things describing an agent (or a person, which is the same for this purpose).

The post itself is a bunch of thoughts on how and why I would like to avoid some of these things lumping together and forming an overly strongly attached subset (an identity) that I would then try to cultivate and preserve even in the face of evidence to the contrary, as humans are wont to do.

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[info]gnidrologs
2015-06-23 09:32 (saite)
Given your posting history here and elsewhere, you're not doing too well.
Besides, faceless drone would still have an identity of a faceless drone, even if said identity is underwhelming. They also have their own category of.. faceless drones.

I agree with the poster above that detaching yourself from affiliations would only work if a person could kill or at least suppress his own ego to the extent of being able to denounce most of the luxurious worldly needs and petty emotions, which again, you seem to be very far away from. Just like me or most people for that matter. Not a task one could accomplish by simple rationalizing.

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[info]mindbound
2015-06-23 14:00 (saite)
Of course I'm not doing too well, these contemplations should be evidence enough for that.

About the rest, I don't think ego, however defined, has got anything to do with this. I don't seek self-annihilation à la Buddhism (besides, I look around myself and don't really see what "worldly luxury" I could be accused of, even if we assume that it's something meriting accusation).

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[info]gnidrologs
2015-06-23 15:16 (saite)
Wordly luxury is things like you addiction to coffee and stimulants, or urge to look up useless stuff on internet, or even urge to make these blogposts, as well as your jimmies being constantly rustled by ''diffrunt people''.
The later also makes easy to lump you in certain ''category'' you seem to want to avoid.

Buddhism isn't really about self-annihilation, not in the sense you might interpret it, i believe, though i haven't read any elaborate sentiments about it from you to judge.

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[info]mindbound
2015-06-23 18:45 (saite)
Nootropics and stimulants are tools, most of which I wouldn't use if I lived a life of leisure, intellectually or otherwise.

Internet, in this day and age, is a de facto essential necessity (and is in the process of being recognised as such also de jure) and it's up to me how and for what purposes I use it. I don't think much of my time is spent looking up and/or writing useless stuff, my days are too densely packed for lolcats and yellow press.

Finally, and I believe I have said this before, OP is not about aspiring to asceticism.

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[info]gnidrologs
2015-06-23 23:55 (saite)
Then it makes no sense, because without aspiring to asceticism, you are 100% embraced in your emotions, which in turn makes you very predictable specimen of certain ''category''. And that shows.

You know, i like the overall aspiration, but there aren't any tools outlined in your rant.

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[info]mindbound
2015-06-24 00:21 (saite)
It is no secret to us, that emotions (and the First System in general) are not opposed to rationality but are instead yet another set of tools to be used, with proper measure of caution, by the aspiring rationalist; like everything. I have long outgrown the "Straw Vulcan" phase, thank you very much.

Also, it's true that there is nothing about any tools in OP. I wrote that, I would know. I'll probably write something about that at some later point. Or not. There's actually a lot of solid material concerning the means of changing one's mind, I just hadn't seen anything specifically about identity and the problems with it.

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[info]gnidrologs
2015-06-24 02:19 (saite)
You have ''outgrown'' shit, otherwise you wouldn't be such a whiny little bitch whenever something doesn't go your way. But ok, i wont continue this further. Good evening and ligo ligo, young padavan!

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