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You are what you read, even if you don't always remember it

blog.jim-nielsen.com

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Re: You are what you read, even if you don't always remember it

#141

Post by 082349872349872 »

sublinear wrote: post #39
y04nn wrote: post #25

Don't forget that you are the result of all the past sensory interactions that you experienced in your whole life, people you interacted with, books you read, advertisements, songs, news headlines, etc. Even if you think you don't remember them, at one point in your life it was processed by your brain and may have changed some posterior decisions you made, thus making you what you are now. Since I realized this, I am…

I don't think the blog post necessarily supports this view. You still have your free will. Your past experiences also teach you what to ignore. You are free to do that to my comment. :)

> Your past experiences also teach you what to ignore.

"Everyone learns from experience. The wise try to learn from other people's experience."

Re: You are what you read, even if you don't always remember it

#142

Post by justsid »

loceng wrote: post #137
y04nn wrote: post #25

Don't forget that you are the result of all the past sensory interactions that you experienced in your whole life, people you interacted with, books you read, advertisements, songs, news headlines, etc. Even if you think you don't remember them, at one point in your life it was processed by your brain and may have changed some posterior decisions you made, thus making you what you are now. Since I realized this, I am…

This is missing the understanding that there is a lever to mitigate what you describe above that I believe likely everyone, or close to everyone, is able to develop through practice. Four factors that are party to this mechanism of not "being what you eat" are: - developing attention and aim, - self-awareness/emotional regulation development [which will clear past trauma and allow you to 1) be processing fully int he…

This reads like a scene from Silicon Valley. Good for you my man, but what does that have to do with being shaped by one’s experiences?

Re: You are what you read, even if you don't always remember it

#143

Post by loceng »

affgrff2 wrote: post #87
somenameforme wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd challenge this with a thought experiment. Imagine we put a group of toddlers on an island and somehow give them knowledge of language (and enough sustenance to survive), but absolutely 0 external input otherwise. These people, as they grow, would gradually develop their own views, values, and perspectives. Do the exact same thing on another island and you'd get entirely different results! One can see this very th…

This thought experiment is deeply flawed as it assumes that what you propose is possible and the outcome would be as you suggest. I am not convinced that people can bootstrap themselves like this and that language itself does not contain views, values and perspectives.

Step one with someone locked or frozen-stuck in such belief-logic is that improvement is possible - which is part of developing psychological flexibility.

You'd have to pay attention and find any step forward possible for them to begin to enter the discomfort that is holding them back - which may be the biggest challenge of their lives up until that point.

Ideally though, as we're all sheep to some degree - which is exactly what this HN post is stating in a more sophisticated way, and attempting to warn for this - ideally there's a culture of practices that develop oneself, so you're just going along with the "herd" - that path hopefully not corrupted and led by bad actors attempting to send us off a cliff or into their totalitarian pen.

Re: You are what you read, even if you don't always remember it

#144

Post by vasco »

modeless wrote: post #76

This is why blocking and muting (especially "mute words") are essential on social media. You have to be intentional about the diet of language you feed your brain, just as you have to be intentional about the diet of food you feed your stomach.

I think this is the wrong take. A discerning reader can read all manner of crap and know its crap. It can even learn how to avoid doing the same styles of mistakes in the future by reading it. So it affects you, but in unpredictable ways. Not like you're trying to say like "read bad things -> become bad".

To give you a specific example (lets not call it crap this time). I've read more communist literature than I can list right now and I'm a social democrat and think Marx is full of flaws and communism is a hugely flawed economic system.

You are shaped by what you read, but not in the basic "you'll agree with what you read".

Re: You are what you read, even if you don't always remember it

#145

Post by abandonliberty »

somenameforme wrote: post #74
y04nn wrote: post #25

Don't forget that you are the result of all the past sensory interactions that you experienced in your whole life, people you interacted with, books you read, advertisements, songs, news headlines, etc. Even if you think you don't remember them, at one point in your life it was processed by your brain and may have changed some posterior decisions you made, thus making you what you are now. Since I realized this, I am…

I'd challenge this with a thought experiment. Imagine we put a group of toddlers on an island and somehow give them knowledge of language (and enough sustenance to survive), but absolutely 0 external input otherwise. These people, as they grow, would gradually develop their own views, values, and perspectives. Do the exact same thing on another island and you'd get entirely different results! One can see this very th…

You're rolling a die and claiming the result was dictated by the die. All outcomes are probabilistic.

Though there's a shocking amount of convergent evolution.

Re: You are what you read, even if you don't always remember it

#146

Post by modeless »

vasco wrote: post #144
modeless wrote: post #76

This is why blocking and muting (especially "mute words") are essential on social media. You have to be intentional about the diet of language you feed your brain, just as you have to be intentional about the diet of food you feed your stomach.

I think this is the wrong take. A discerning reader can read all manner of crap and know its crap. It can even learn how to avoid doing the same styles of mistakes in the future by reading it. So it affects you, but in unpredictable ways. Not like you're trying to say like "read bad things -> become bad". To give you a specific example (lets not call it crap this time). I've read more communist literature than I can…

That's not my argument and I don't think it's the article's argument either. "You are what you read" doesn't mean you agree with what you read any more than "you are what you eat" means you'll turn into a potato chip.

My point is more like, do you want to devote a bunch of your thinking time to arguments about communism or politics in general? Maybe you do and that's great, but I very much don't. I've thought about politics plenty in the past and formed my opinions already. I'm not a politician and don't care to evangelize my political beliefs. I have very limited time these days and I want to spend that time thinking about other things. Things that matter to me.

I follow people who post useful and interesting things on those topics. However, those people also frequently discuss politics. And although I know those posts aren't why I follow those people, seeing them constantly makes them impossible to ignore. I end up spending time thinking about stuff I know I don't want to spend time on, even later when I'm not reading it. So I mute the words "liberal", "conservative", and a whole lot of others. Now I can follow those people but still spend my time thinking about the things that matter to me instead of politics. And over time, that literally changes my brain.

Re: You are what you read, even if you don't always remember it

#147

Post by loceng »

justsid wrote: post #142
loceng wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is missing the understanding that there is a lever to mitigate what you describe above that I believe likely everyone, or close to everyone, is able to develop through practice. Four factors that are party to this mechanism of not "being what you eat" are: - developing attention and aim, - self-awareness/emotional regulation development [which will clear past trauma and allow you to 1) be processing fully int he…

This reads like a scene from Silicon Valley. Good for you my man, but what does that have to do with being shaped by one’s experiences?

The TL;DR would be that you can regulate-manage how, how much, or if you are shaped by an experience.

And understanding this and factors that help or factors that may make you more prone or fragile, make it more difficult to regulate, is valuable knowledge as well - such as if you're high in conscientiousness and/or negative emotion ["neuroticism"] - and further knowing if that's the case it usually merely means it will simply to take to master than the average, so then to learn to be more patient with yourself.

P.S. Are they still producing new seasons of Silicon Valley?

Re: You are what you read, even if you don't always remember it

#148

Post by csomar »

piloto_ciego wrote: post #84
NERD_ALERT wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Free will hasn’t been proven. It’s up in the air how much is predetermined, and how to even define “free” in the context of free will. Even if we do have free will it’s still influenced to some degree by our biology.

My Diogenes answer would be to walk across the room and slap you: “if I didn’t chose to do it you cannot be angry at me.” That’s tongue and cheek sure, but the point I feel stands. Free will is certainly constrained, and our material and biological conditions do matter - there’s no amount I can will to make myself fly, but they are not necessarily as rigid of constraints as many would have you believe. We can overcom…

> We can overcome our biology, our predilections, and many of our shortcomings. We have to consciously choose to do so though.

Hmm, no we can't. And the few people who seemingly can do that, it's because their biology/environment allowed that. So kind of circling back to determinism. Free will is a myth that's used to lock people up.

If you slap someone in the face, we'll lock you up somewhere because we don't know if you'll do it again. It doesn't matter if there is free will or not. Society has decided to put annoying elements in a huge bastille and call it a day.

Re: You are what you read, even if you don't always remember it

#149

Post by edanm »

daniel_reetz wrote: post #33
y04nn wrote: post #25

Don't forget that you are the result of all the past sensory interactions that you experienced in your whole life, people you interacted with, books you read, advertisements, songs, news headlines, etc. Even if you think you don't remember them, at one point in your life it was processed by your brain and may have changed some posterior decisions you made, thus making you what you are now. Since I realized this, I am…

Hmm. The experiences that changed and benefited me most were least predictable. As a result, I try to manage experiences less, and choose the unknown more. But in the spirit of what you've said, I try to avoid doing dumb, damaging, or boring things twice.

That's a good point. I'm a big reader - and I have lists of thousands of books I want to read. But one reason I semi-on-purpose still pick up random books that I stumble across and look fun, even if they're less "optimally chosen" by me, is exactly so that I sometimes stumble on things I would otherwise miss.

Or maybe just, like many readers, I love buying new books almost as much as reading them, and this is just an excuse to buy more... :)

Re: You are what you read, even if you don't always remember it

#150

Post by card_zero »

mysecretaccount wrote: post #79
sitkack wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You only have free will in so much as what environments you put yourself in the long term. Our immediate actions are outside of our consciousness.

If we are not in control of our immediate actions, how can we have any sort of meaningful "free will"?

I never understand what people are asking when they debate free will. It's a brain's process. Everybody's got one. Your brain's process isn't necessarily lovely to you, and doesn't necessarily do what you (the brain process) admire, like, or prefer. It's subject to outside influence and isn't perfectly under it's own control, because it's a cranky machine and goes wrong a lot. Some parts of it conflict with other parts. It's slow, and bad at monitoring itself. What do expect, magic? It's still yours, however unfair it may be to be stuck with it. So you have free will, whoopee.
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