I agree with you and I think we're changing at every moment, all the time, but it's usually gradual enough that most people don't notice or care until it manifests as new behavior.
My life is materially the same as it was on Friday but I definitely feel different after events this weekend.
I once read “The Joy of Living” by Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche. It should come with a warning. It broke me for a year. I’m actually grateful for the existential crisis it caused me. But it was a brutal experience at first.
I had a similar experience with Derek Parfit's "Reasons and Persons", but he offers some solace:
‘When I believed [that personal identity is what matters], I seemed imprisoned in myself. My life seemed like a glass tunnel, through which I was moving faster every year, and at the end of which there was darkness. When I changed my view, the walls of my glass tunnel disappeared. I now live in the open air. There is still a difference between my life and the lives of other people. But the difference is less. Other people are closer. I am less concerned about the rest of my own life, and more concerned about the lives of others.
When I believed [that personal identity is what matters], I also cared more about my inevitable death. After my death, there will be no one living who will be me. I can now redescribe this fact. Though there will later be many experiences, none of these experiences will be connected to my present experiences by chains of such direct connections as those involved in experience-memory, or in the carrying out of an earlier intention. Some of these future experiences may be related to my present experiences in less direct ways. There will later be some memories about my life. And there may later be thoughts that are influenced by mine, or things done as the result of my advice. My death will break the more direct relations between my present experiences and future experiences, but it will not break various other relations. This is all there is to the fact that there will be no one living who will be me. Now that I have seen this, my death seems to me less bad.’
I think we could summarize all as follows: _everything_ is inter-connected and hence influences its surroundings and hence everything, indirectly. Some connections (in-brain) are stronger/wider than others (human to human etc).
I read it last year, enjoyed the book, no existential crisis.
I already subscribed to the idea of the self and identity being independent and constructs. A lot of reflection around that and physics in younger years maybe helped.
This technique is likely to be utilized in some government interrogation methods now.
An excellent example of research that maybe shouldn't have been pursued, although it's possible that there are a large number of potential recuperative applications as well that I'm not aware of.
I don't think we should stop learning about ourselves out of paranoia. This sort of research could end up just like many powerful tech before (ex. nukes->green energy)
With those examples though, how would we know ahead of time that they "shouldn't be explored?" They sure looked interesting and maybe even potentially beneficial a couple decades ago.
Now, of course, we know those algorithms warp regular users (and by extension societies). Or... maybe they don't? Some research has suggested that just putting this many people in direct communication with each other is the root cause of the problems we see. There could be other ways to fix those without shutting down the internet. How would we know without more exploration?
What they seem to have identified isn't "the limits of you" so much as a timing parameter the brain uses to decide whether two sensory streams belong together
I think this is still important. How do you define a system? By boundary of communication, where inside system communication is fast, communication with outside is slow and limited. Think ( ( ((CPU) Memory) ((GPU) memory) PC ) Internet ). Your PC is a hierarchy of systems split on boundaries of communication speed. So, it would be proper that a brain identifies what's "inside" the brain in similar way.
Private groups work because reputation is local and memory is long. You can't farm engagement from people you'll talk to again next week. That might be the key
It's sad, yeah. And exhausting. The fact that you felt something was off and took the time to verify already puts you ahead of the curve, but it's depressing that this level of vigilance is becoming the baseline just to consume media safely
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