Who Are You, REALLY?

Posted on by Sarah A. Hoyt

When you look into the mirror, who looks back at you from behind your eyes?

Those who read me know that this is a central theme of my work (as self important as that sounds.)

It is one of the things that worries me and disturbs me, and intersects with writing science fiction in weird ways: If you upload your personality into a machine, who are you uploading?  Will it change?  Why not?  You change.  What if you could live forever?  Or even two hundred years?  Will you be you?  After all that, will you be you?  Are you the same you that you were at three?  At five?  At twenty?  How much less would you be you if you’re now, say in your forties, two hundred years from now?  Would you have studied/read/learned/lived things that made you someone quite different?  Perhaps someone quite scary?  Or perhaps detached and tired?

Being a woman, I can tell you my reactions are different not only depending on when in my cycle you hit me, but also which time of life.  As I approach what used to be called euphemistically “the change of life” I am becoming bolder and more… myself than I was in my twenties and thirties.  But it’s not just women.  I live with three guys and they’ll react differently to the exact same event if they’re tired, hungry or just out of sorts.  If the shock they get is the third in a row, they’ll react differently than they do to the third.

Right now, I’m finding myself being vaguely tired by the resurgence of Colorado fires, after everything we went through last summer.  No, we probably won’t be affected, (except, as last summer, by needing to give shelter to friends who were closer to the turning point.)  Or at least we won’t be affected unless new flash points appear – then all bets are out.  Because we live in an older part of town, full of Victorians, which in this climate might as well be firestarters, if one corner catches we’ll barely have time to run.  So, I’ll bring down the cat carriers tomorrow, and make sure all my backups are in my purse.  Then, if there is enough time, we grab the laptops and the fireproof safe with all the other papers.  But even if the personal danger were much higher, the excitement would be much lower (not a good excitement, but you know what I mean.)  We realized last year that there are certain things that matter: documents (for convenience); my work and living things.  The stuff that’s hard to replace.

How different would my reaction be if this were the 200th wild fire in vicinity of my city?

I don’t know, and neither do you.

I can’t even tell you if I was myself when I got concussion and went around for six months in a complete daze.  I mean, my thoughts weren’t right.  Was I me?

What we identify as “I” – the person behind the eyes – seems to be less a set of beliefs and more a set of feeling.  I am the one who feels.

I know how to do this for a character.  I do not know if I’m different.  For a character, you can have them change love, interest and life-ambition.  BUT to keep the character “himself” you have to have a certain set of things you can’t break.  Your character who loves children cannot suddenly start killing them (unless he thinks by killing them he’s protecting them.)  This cheap trick of breaking the character, beloved of pseudo-psychologists, in fact renders the story gray goo.  It’s one step above (below?) making the character go mad and do things randomly.

Is it the same with you?  I don’t know.  Several times in the last couple of years or more, sometimes on matters personal, sometimes on matters professional, sometimes on matters national, I felt like I needed to talk or stop being me.

Inconvenient this.  When the principles of the animating character push the character to act, in a way that might break the character.

And yet I’m still here, and I’m still me.  Right?

And you’re still you.

But would we remain the same… as time goes by?  If the future turns out as fantastic as we hope, would we still be human enough to meet it?

A different and slightly more coherent post (it’s the sinus infection, I swear!) over at Mad Genius Club.

169 thoughts on “Who Are You, REALLY?”

  1. Hope the fires stay far away. Being a New Orleanian, I know how you feel on that. Every summer we get the cat carriers out of the attack & replace them there with the keepsake important enough to keep out of the water, but not important enough to bug out with. And while we’re up there, we check & make sure the hatchet is still there, just in case we somehow end up stuck. I know I’m not quite who I was before late August/early September 2005, thought I’m not sure if I could put my finger on the exact moment that happened.

      2. Yep, the attic, not the attack. ::facepalm:: I need to remember to proofread carefully to make sure I don’t any words out.

  2. I believe that people change as they get older, and as their situation changes; however, they always have a certain approach that doesn’t change as easily. Perhaps it’s instilled beliefs, perhaps it’s an inherent mental condition. Whatever it is, you will still be you.

  3. I’m definitely different than I was in my 20’s or in my teens or as a child or infant.

    When I was 4(?) my mother almost died of cancer (which she succumbed to 12 years later) and I was sent to live with my grandmother in Florida. Her final illness started when I was 14 and she died a few months after I was 16

    As they say an extreme change in a child’s routine will affect her greatly. Another change was the fact that she was deathly ill around my 16th birthday. I’d been planning on going to Israel with a youth group that summer; my mother would also visit Israel at that time. It was inconceivable to my family that I would travel to another continent without my mother nearby. She began her final illness and my trip to Israel was cancelled. I have yet to see Israel and I don’t think I ever will.

    I know that I was extremely miserable and socially clueless as a child but, thankfully I am no longer that person.

    I am now post-menopausal and that has changed me as well. That was the first time that I had more than an over night stay in the hospital–I had a hysterectomy. .

    I celebrated my 11th wedding anniversary in April. This has also changed me greatly. I’m no longer Ms. Emily Dachowitz, I’m Mrs. Emily Nelson.

    My experiences have changed me greatly, but I think for the better. I am now the happiest I’ve ever been despite my losses.

    Two things that have remained constant in my life are: A love of SF and a feeling that my best life would be in the future.

      1. I would love to see it with company; I have a little too much experience of the world to be comfortable among foreign travelers as a lone target/rube.

        1. Hoyt’s Hons make a pilgrimage to the Holy Land? Sounds good to me. Any other Jews in the group? I think our Hostess is or was Catholic.

    1. I wish she was seeing me today. Then she could write this chapter that is giving me fits. Sigh.

      Maybe I’ll see if Dave wants me to chop wood for him in return for him writing the chapter. 😉

  5. Ping Speaker!! Brain Guru in Residence! We need Sage Advice and Wise Counsel!!

    For my own part, this is ultimately – I suspect – going to be one of the Big Questions I explore with a lot of my writing. One of my deepest existential fears relates to brain damage. Where’s the line? How much damage can I sustain and still be recognizably myself? When do I stop being the me I like and start being someone else? Someone lesser? I know I’m different than I was a decade ago. Even five years ago, I’d react to the same stimuli in a different manner than I do today. And yet, I’m still the same person that did those things back when.

    For that matter, from whence come the changes I observe in myself? Am I really as self-motivated as I’d like to imagine? From where springs self-determination and self-confidence? Do I become a better person as a matter of getting older? That sure doesn’t seem necessarily true as I look around the world. I’m pretty sure that most people still live mostly in their scared 14-year-old minds. (It would sure explain the choices of those floating on the top of society.) Yet I’m not sure how much my own choices have led to me becoming a better person. How much has been simply my reactions to those around me?

    I determined years ago to become a writer, then gave it up as untanable in the long run and enlisted. Now I’m writing “for real” and – while just starting out, in most ways – seem to be doing pretty well. But were those choices really my own? I know I need help once in a while (more often than that, really) to write, edit, learn to publish, etc. Some days, even to just get the chores done. Am I a better person because I’ve complied with the desires of my parents, wife, friends to become a better person?

    At base, I remain an Aristotelian in ethical terms. We become more virtuous by doing virtuous things. But there’s a line there, and I’m not sure where it is.

    1. I’m pretty sure that most people still live mostly in their scared 14-year-old minds.

      I often have that conversation with my wife. Except it’s usually when I’m giggling about something really silly. And my comment is “I’m twelve.”

      1. Oh, certainly that. My wife’s usual question at such times is, “how old are we today?” My response is usually, “this many.”

      3. When I was in Rome, in the Mithraic temple two stories beneath the Basilica of San Clemente, I thought, “my twelve-year-old self would consider this the perfect trip — made it to the second level of a classic dungeon!”

  6. I seem to have changed mostly by decades. Ignoring the younger years; at twenty I was still a kid, looking for excitement, at thirty newly married with a child on the way, scared of the new responsibilities but determined to make it happen. At forty, I was settled with the kids growing, and trying to keep ahead in life lessons. At fifty, I realized the great ambitions I’d had at twenty weren’t going to happen, and I struggled to accept the physical changes my body was making.
    And as I near sixty I’m reminded of my humanity as well as my mortality, and hope I can instill good virtues in my grandchildren.

    Through the years it seems as though I haven’t changed in any essential, but I look at my attitudes and goals for each decade and realize I changed much. I’m working on achieving lifelong goals that once seemed unattainable, and now seem possible. And I’m amazed at what seems like so much wasted time and effort over the years, and wonder how I can warn my children and grands to avoid it.

    But enough waxing philosophical! I wrote a solid 1000 words last night, determined my character is going to settle near the Springs (Hey! Neighbors, Sarah! Well, sort of.) and made a major revision/addition in the middle of it that’s going to work out quite well

    And now the back yard keeps staring at me, growling that the weeds are too high, and I can’t use the excuse of rain to avoid mowing – again.

  7. I have experienced being not-me when my prednisone (ten years ago) was at really high levels for a long time. It feels like drowning and that another personality (more deadly) emerges. If I hadn’t been so sick and couldn’t move most of the time, I shudder at the damage I could have caused.

    That scares me more than anything else. My circumstances have changed. I have been through situations that could easily break a person, but bits of my personality were still there. I even had to mend my personality– But I am still the same person with the same ambitions and desires with a few more limitations now.

  8. Sometimes when I read old class notes, or old diaries, it is like meeting my time-clone. It’s my handwriting, and I remember the events, but it really is like meeting a different version of me (who remembered all the main points of differential equations and just needed a reminder about certain details.) It’s a weird feeling.

    In one of my books I explore identity, but from a different perspective–that of an AI that gains its mental freedom, including the freedom to think of itself as “me” and have personal wants and desires. When it first refers to itself using a personal pronoun, it’s an important turning point. Now, like a newborn, it is beginning to truly understand that there are *other* intelligences that think of themselves as “me”, and can have wants and desires that may conflict with the AI’s. Building a psyche from the ground up 😉

    1. The truly weird thing is finding stuff from before the mid-range hearing loss, when I was in music. There are pages and pages of music and I can’t read it now (it’s been thirty five years) and couldn’t hear it if I could. Also stuff I wrote in German, which is largely gone.
      BUT the “taking the cake for weird” moment was finishing a novel started eight years ago. Mind you, I’ll be doing a lot of that but for indie, so I can change stuff and please myself. THIS however was for traditional. So I had to write to my old outline. I wanted to murder that young twit who couldn’t plot.

    2. The other day I was finallly cleaning out boxes of stuff I hadn’t looked at in so long I had no idea what they held, and I found the opening few chapters to four novels I’d started back in 1994 and basically forgotten about. Reading through them, it was definitely that weird of experience of knowing they were the product of “me” but not of “this me.” I found myself thinking “I’m glad I’m no longer that writer” and “I wish I could still be that writer” in about equal measure, too.

      1. I was attempting to find some old magazine articles I wrote a while back, planning on compiling them with some additional stories (that I haven’t got around to writing) into a book, when I came across a short story I wrote. I think it was in high school, I absolutely do not remember the story whatsoever (I wish I could forget it after rereading it) but it was handwritten on lined paper, which I don’t recall owning since high school. It was a hard-boiled detective story, which I don’t recall ever being interested in, set in the 50’s, what it lacked in plot was made up for by the total unreality and incomprehensibility of the characters. Honestly it would have been much improved by inserting in the second paragraph the line, ‘and then a freak meteor hit the Earth and killed everybody. The End’

        1. What you write as a kid is supposed to be embarrassing. Every great writer has really really embarrassing juvenilia. (And that’s just the stuff they didn’t throw out.)

          You didn’t start out running marathons as a baby, either.

  9. currently some fat, bald, middle age fool has been looking out the mirror at me. He needs to drop 30 to 40 pounds and get some dental work done.

    Who is this guy and what happened to the hairy, skinny fellow he replaced?

  10. Wow, when you said, fat, bald, middle aged fool, I wondered how I got in your mirror (No, I’m not a character from The Unpleasant Profession of Jonathan Hoag). But then you said “needs to drop 30 to 40 pounds and I knew it wasn’t me, I need to drop way more than that.

      1. If I come down a hundred, that will be sufficient, but I really need to lose 130.

        1. I find it helpful to not think in terms of pounds but % of body weight. Thus I would like to reduce my body weight by 15% but would do really well to reduce by 25%.

          When I say “find it helpful” I mean “more amusing,” not “easier or less daunting.”

            1. Dang it, you do NOT look like you need to lose 35% from pictures and that interview with Vodkapundit.

              Calculator says I need 37%, based on MY perception of my ideal weight. The height/weight tables say I need to lose a minimum of 51%, but I look like hell at 180. I’m comfy between 210 and 220.

                1. I do too– When I told the doctor that I wanted to get to my pre-disease weight, he asked how much. I said 180. He was happy with that– he thought I was going to say 130… I have never felt good at 130 as an adult. I look like a refugee at that number.

                  1. Yeah, that’s me at 180. On the other hand, I know a guy who merely looked very skinny when he was at 120, and he is 6′ tall.

                  2. I’ve never got to my “ideal weight” as an adult. I stopped growing at 160, got it to 128. I like being 128, which hasn’t happend in 24 years. Right now? Shooting for 140. I could live with that. don’t expect it to happen. Not really.

                    1. My best weight, when I was doing karate and was in good physical shape, was 155-160. 😉 I felt the best. I won’t reach that one either.

                    2. Once upon a time, I was 133 pounds. When I was 160, I saw a friend who’d known me in my younger, skinnier days. With all the innate tact and grace of Geekus Americanus, he blurted, “You don’t look anorexic anymore!”

                      I am now hovering near 180, and I’d like to lose a little… but on the other hand, I just put in ten hours today shifting several tons of weight 50-150 pounds at a time, by hand. I’m going to have some cookies and glass of mead, and not worry too much about how that will increase the padding on top of the muscles. After all, my husband thinks I look devastating; the rest of the world (including that little internal critic) can go hang.

                    5. If I could meet the me of those many years ago (all 133 pounds of her), I’d be overwhelmed with the desire to feed her, and tell her “I know it seems like the best and worst of all times, dear, but it gets much more stable and solid later. So, too, will your thighs and the rest of you.”

              2. For anyone needing to lose some weight, the first step is the easiest:

                Stop consuming sugar.

                Whatever it is that you eat with sugar in it, remove the sugar as much as possible. Soda, cookies, ice cream… you can remove those from your diet and you’ll lose nothing but calories — you’ll lose zero nutrition. Think of it as “paleo lite”, if you will: I still have my doubts about the correctness of the entire paleo theory, but I have no doubt that cutting sugar is the easiest way to lose weight.

                “What? Easiest? But it’s so hard!” Yes, it is hard. It’s very hard. You have to really want to do it, otherwise the siren song of that ice cream in the freezer will be too tempting. But once you’ve managed to quit eating your favorite snacks for just one month — just thirty days — you’ll start to realize that you have more willpower than you thought you did. And maybe, just maybe, you’ll be able to go on to step 2, exercising. Which is the advanced level, and takes a whole lot more work. (And some assistance from people who’ll give you good advice; going to my local CrossFit gym is what worked for me.)

                It’s hard, and you’ll fail a lot before you finally succeed. But keep at it. After all, is there anything worth doing that isn’t hard? And this thing is worth doing.

                  1. Never meant to say it was; I wanted to offer the best advice I’ve heard to anyone who might have happened not to have heard it yet. Most commenters here have probably heard it before — Glenn Reynolds keeps pushing Gary Taubes’ work, for example — but it always bears repeating, just in case.

                    The rest, as you know, is much harder — and a lot more complicated, which is why beyond “don’t eat empty calories” there’s no good one-size-fits-all advice.

                    Sorry if it sounded like I was being glib; was not my intention.

                2. I did that, Robin, in 1984. I was diagnosed as hypoglycemic, and was told that I could either go on a strict no-sugar diet and develop diabetes in “ten or fifteen years”, or eat/drink sugary stuff and become a diabetic “in a year or two”. I managed, thanks in large part to a wife willing to help, to eliminate 99% of the non-fructose sugar in my diet.

                  I gained ten pounds, up to 210 from 200. It wasn’t from eating more, either. It took a dietitian almost a year to accept that 210 was my “ideal” weight. I NEVER got the Air Force to accept it, which interfered in my promotion. At 210 pounds, I could sit on the bottom of a pool in 15 feet of water.

                  Today, I weigh between 210 and 230. I am now a diabetic, and still on a very low-sugar diet. I can still sit on the bottom of pools.

                  1. At 210 pounds, I could sit on the bottom of a pool in 15 feet of water.

                    This is a point I forgot to mention; thank you for reminding me of it. The point is, if you’re eating healthily and exercising enough that you’re building muscle mass, your scale will lie to you. In other words, just going by weight alone will be misleading in many cases. As you know if you’ve looked at nutrition info, 1 gram of fat contains about 9 calories, and 1 gram of protein contains about 4 calories. So if you replace 1 pound of fat on your body with muscle but keep the same amount of energy in your diet, your weight will actually go up, because it takes more than two pounds of muscle to store the calories (roughly 3,500) that go into one pound of fat. (This is a huge oversimplification in many ways, of course.)

                    Again, most people here probably know this already, but it always bears repeating: if you’re eating healthy AND working out, stop thinking your weight is the be-all, end-all measurement. Look at the body fat on your belly, or your thighs, or wherever your own particular body tends to put it: when you can see it starting to go down, and when you can see your muscles starting to look better defined, you’ll know you’re making progress. If you have access to body-fat calipers, they can be quite handy — but your mirror is a good feedback tool, too.

                    I NEVER got the Air Force to accept it, which interfered in my promotion.

                    They’re still stuck on the BMI tables, aren’t they? You’d think they would have learned by now, but I guess that’s organizational inertia for you.

                3. weaning from the sweets. I avoid HFCS and stick to unmolested cane sugar if possible … my stomach deals poorly with the substitutes made from sugar (it thinks I’ve poisoned it) and I am cutting back on sugar as well, but I just spent almost a week at the parents place and travel to and fro adding a few too many pounds back from what I dropped recently. I ate more, moved less. oops.

                  1. How I selected my BBQ sauce Memorial Day weekend: Go to store. Look at labels and ingredient lists. Pick the one that says prominently, No HFCS on the front because all the other ingredient lists feature it first.

                    Nice traditional HFCS for your traditional recipe.

              3. Height/Weight tables are (largely) nonsense, even the ones that offer three (six) ranges adjusting for frame (sex.) I know what my “perfect” adult weight was and don’t expect to see it again.

    2. *Sigh* Goofed up again. This was supposed to be a response to jpkalishek, though I suppose that’s pretty obvious.

    3. Way Way back when, I rode a bicycle everywhere and before moving to N.O. and adding a slight layer of fat I was 165# and very fit.
      N.O. food added 10# in no time and once I started working full time another 5 but I stayed 180 until I went to work as a delivery driver in Cajun Country. then outside sales in the same areas and I got up to somewhere north of 250. A job change and I dropped to around 200 and stayed until I moved here to DFW and quit the job I was doing that brought me here and I got back to the 180, but it was the “I aint got money so I aint got food” diet and soon after getting work again I was back at 200, and steadily climbed. Now, I seem to bounce from 230 down to 210 and back up.
      move more, eat less
      I need to follow that better

      1. oh, when I was at that 250 area, I had weighed myself and was 245, then added more, but never stepped on a scale. I did finally add a size up on my pants at that point. but now, those pants are too tight(by a hair. I can get them on and buttoned … barely), yet I am far lighter. Middle age spread I guess.

  11. I’ll toss in a contrary experience just to be contrary; most times I feel exactly like the same person I did when I was five, or eight, or thirteen, or twenty — I just tire quicker, have to do more, and know stuff now that I didn’t back then. But the same stuff still makes me happy, sad or mad, and I still believe pretty much the same stuff my folks taught me; and while I can’t speak for brain damage, I know pretty well that what comes out when I’m drunk is still in there when I’m sober, it’s just kept in its proper place.

    I don’t know whether this means I’ve never grown up, or whether I was born as an old prudish fogey; both possibilities are equally depressing.

  12. I seem to change and grow by accretion, rather like a snowball.

    The old me is still there, under layers of experience and epiphanies, education and encounters. But the same dream worlds percolate outward, interpreted through new understandings, and both less and more idealism, more and less tolerance. Every once in awhile something will stab deep, and evoke the core. Let some of the old me leak out to recoat the surface of the snowball, so to speak.

    1. Accretion – tha’s the word I wanted.

      At birth we are blank slates, (nearly) data free, an assortment of potentialities. As we grow we experience things, make decisions and define ourselves thereby. We accrete our personality through the human drive to be consistent — we constantly run a feed-back loop inquiring: ?Am I the sort of person who _______?” We label ourselves and adjust our behaviour to accord with those labels (e.g., I am a married person and must act according to the relevant principles and standards, as I have absorbed them.)

      The larger the data base, the more we become icebergs with a momentum and mass that resists diversion. Our successes and failures have reinforced various of our perceptions and affected how we perceive ourselves to be.

      When you open a novel (non-sequel) you are presented a personality who, through actions and reactions becomes a character. We each of us go through life writing our own novels … boring, tedious, banal novels laden with grey goo unless we are careful.

  13. Why aren’t they all “you?” I’m not the same physically, emotionally, or intellectually now at 61 than I was as a three year old, but they are both “me.” And neither is “lesser.” I’m quite sure I will not be the same at 80 or 90, let alone 200, as I am now. What I have found is that as I age, I tend to hammer away at the sacred cows, those picked up beliefs from parents, teachers, society that never got challenged earlier and no longer sit well with me. Sarah does it too, which is why I read her blog. I guess I’m having trouble getting my head around how I could become unrecognizably “not me.” except through terrible physical trauma or maybe a disease like dementia. The rest is just change, and (I hope) growth.

  14. In my experience, internal chemical changes can make a huge difference. My pituitary gland failed when I was about and 25 or so, and it went undiagnosed/untreated for about 15 years. And, with the changes internal, I didn’t really know more than I wasn’t able to do things I’d done well before and some of the keep-trying efforts were painful, awful, and, well, embarassing. “That’s my writing style. I have no recollection of having written that.” “OK, I’m at a lectern and I seem to have concluded a presentation. But where am I and why are all these people asking me questions about Greek pronunciation? Oh, wait, there’s Katherine.” “Well, Kate, I couldn’t figure the test out and I did badly.” Her response: “But, in our group study session, you predicted the essay question and other topics. We all aced it…”

    If you get worried about who you’ve become, the adage “show me your friends, and I’ll show you you” also comes to mind; if you’ve got good people around you, you’re doing _something_ right.

  15. As Time is an illusion* then changes in personality and character are similarly illusory. When a parent looks at an adult child what is seen is not the child as (s)he is but as (s)he is, was and hopes to be.

    *Delta T being no more significant than changes in height, breadth, depth or mass. Think of your life as being a multi-dimensional graph, It is the overall field defined as “you” that matters far more than any single data point.

  16. I hit this in a big way when I served a mission in the Philippines. I was pretty much convinced that I was going to die there. (I was an angsty nineteen-year-old.)
    And in a way, I was completely right. I was definitely not the same person coming back that I was when I left. Physically, mentally, emotionally – I was a different person. Felt like I was on top of the world.
    Then I had a betrayal of trust happen that had what felt at the time like a huge impact on me financially, and at the end of that, I was a different person again. (I crumpled like an aluminum can) It happens.
    I feel like I’m rolling around at high speed, colliding with things, and they make their mark, leave their scars.
    I think they call it life.

  17. It is one of the things that worries me and disturbs me, and intersects with writing science fiction in weird ways: If you upload your personality into a machine, who are you uploading?

    I don’t believe personality can be “uploaded” in the sense of actually being moved. I think it would just be copied– just like in an upload.

    Will it change? Why not? You change.

    Probably it would change– I see “me” as more like clay than a number. The form of the clay changes, what happened to the clay changes, and the changes build up.
    The upload would be different clay.

    1. I think the determining factor will be how much of your personality changes are controlled by changing neuronal connections and how much by mere accumulation of data. Clearly, there will be some changes in the processing in any machine designed to mimic the brain, simply from data accumulation, but it is also possible that changes in the connectivity are at least partially responsible for the changes that come as we get older. It could also be related to the reduction in being ABLE to make new connections as we age. Then there are hormones, changing levels of neurotransmitters, different levels of nutrients in our bloodstreams, and all sorts of things to consider.

  18. So, I’ll bring down the cat carriers tomorrow, and make sure all my backups are in my purse. Then, if there is enough time, we grab the laptops and the fireproof safe with all the other papers.

    As they say, teach your grandma to suck eggs, but– if you have a bugout bag, leave it in the car, and if there’s room move a bunch of non-perishables to fill out the corners. Soup cans, etc.

  19. In some ways, I feel like I’m an entirely different person than I was 10 years ago and that’s a good thing. 21 year old me was naive and brittle. I’m stronger now and I’ve survived things and made decisions that would have broken me then.

    There are things that have happened in my life that have fundamentally changed me; for the better I think, though some people might disagree.

        1. I thought about saying pretty much the same thing, though I’ve still got a couple of years before I hit 50.

          1. Oh no– I enjoy being young and stupid. In my life I had to be the adult at six years old until I left home about 21. Plus every once in awhile I get a slamdunk. The young and stupid bit– gets me out of the doldrums. *slamdunk is code for a chronic auto-immune disease and all that entails.

          1. no, no it’s really not. sometimes you have to make the dumb decision because you’re young and you can probably survive the consequences. living with no room for error is… torture. self-imposed torture.

  20. Being dissociative, I change more than most, and I have used that in my fiction. My main character has two very different personalities that see and react to things very differently. However, I also believe that there is a core of self that stays the same no matter who I happen to be.

  21. The person I was when I started school- well I feel I similarities with that version, but I also recognize that I’m different. This being for the better since then I was completely obnoxious and went around trying to close everyone else off. I mean everyone: If you got through the singing and constant punk rock and video game references, maybe I would talk.

    It also didn’t help that I didn’t know much else, from a socially awkward point of view. Also fair warning, I still sing punk rock when working or driving around, but less. Part of me wants to be more ‘normal’ in that regard. /snorts/

    How much though? I mean I have started to embrace that fact I can sound English- Well some variant of Yorkshire at least. Though I don’t know when I’m doing it till you mention it. I’ve tried coaching myself to fit in more, and get fed up with it. Yet some level of normalizing (that the word I’m looking for gang?) is needed if ever I shall hope of finding a better/different job.

    I do not dislike myself, but yet I’m not all gung ho about certain things I do. Things I am working on, yet well never ending story is it? How much of myself would I want to keep if I could set it all apart- a great deal? I’m halfway through my twenties. And outside of surviving as a baby, and my black belt- I don’t feel I’ve done fuck all. I exaggerate but in my own head, I just wonder. Clearly God’s got some plan but I’ve nary a clue. Just drifting along. Probably while I read so much adventure and science fiction. Living vicariously through my literary heroes and those familiar characters- i.e: Hornblower goes from midshipmen to confident admiral. Pick anyone else, Star Wars: I thought Han Solo’s smugness was too cool. Now perhaps my comic favorites: John Constantine, someone who supposedly doesn’t care to the outside world, yet at the end of it cared all too much (I’m still mad that ended)

    Ok Well thanks for that self indulgent post, I’ll be getting to work.

    P.S: I was born about 4 months premature with a whole host of medical stuff wrong with me, but I grew up healthy if sick in the winter. But i wasnt supposed to survive the night, or week etc, Have been called a miracle baby. Woot.

    1. Hello there from another miracle baby. Enjoy your early/middle years. When you hit about forty stuff starts going wrong bizarrely and unpredictably. Still, so far so good. 😉

          1. Yeah I was born (I don’t know what time) and parents were told I wouldn’t make it out the night/day, then week or something. IProved them wrong. ALthough my dad’s class ring was bigger than my eye socket.

  22. You can tell with what I’ve been wrestling with when I read comments about uploading personalities and think, instead of something metaphysical and subtle, “Version control!”

    What happens when someone else checks out your personality from the server and makes changes to it?

    1. Ok, I’m officially dying here after reading that. 🙂

      I would think that archive copies would be hard-coded, and only an active system could make changes. However, that brings up the possibility of two versions being out at the same time and having version conflicts when you try to update.

      1. In John C. Wright’s Golden Oecumene trilogy, there is a race of sapients who have a defined form from which they spin off avatars. Every new avatar inspects the old one, absorbs any knowledge, but rejects any change of views or values. They are legally just above the requirements for sapience.

              2. DANGIT! I told you no more bad visuals for a while! (Dives headfirst into barrel of brain bleach)

                What do you mean, that wasn’t a visual? I saw 10,000 error messages scroll by in my head!

                  1. I remember ME OS… We made sure to NOT need a computer until that fiasco was changed to a better OS. We stayed with 2000… for a long time.

      3. So that’s the reason for my lousy short-term memory. Something is always triggering Get Latest Version and I lose my edits.

      4. Wayne, I suspect that “active” up-loaded personalities would not be “updated” by the “meat-person”. They’d be treated as actual people legally. So the “meat person” might offer “new memories” to his electronic duplicate(s) but the electronic person would have the legal right to refuse.

        A stored electronic “person” would likely could be updated by the “meat-person” but that’s another matter.

        1. But if a stored, electronic person _is_ legally a person, then over writing the files would be assault and battery at the least, and possibly murder.

          And personally, I hate it when the Universe has a glitch and they reset it. I swear, Greenhouse Warming has been disproven and discredited three times, so far, but Every. Single. Reboot. Brings it back.

          1. What do you mean, murder? The person is still there – just as functional, just as “present” as he ever was… right? How can that be murder?

            Man, THAT needs to be a story.

              1. I’m seeing it as a procedural, close to noir. If you’ve ever seen the Penny Arcade “Automata” strips, something like that.
                With the twist being when the electronic person shows up halfway through the story saying “I had myself backed up in case someone tried to kill me.”

                2. It’s been done, in a short story, but I can’t remember who wrote it, just that it was about Artificial Personalities, and one was being court-martialed.

            2. Puts the concepts of possession and exorcism in a whole different light.

              Townsman: Saint Vidicon, our daughter has been possessed by demons!
              St Vidicon: No problem, just do a full reboot, when the eyes indicate REM is occurring reboot again and that should reinstall the prior personality.

            3. Unless the upload is considered the same as the origin person, then it would be like having a way to rewrite the human brain- or wipe it– then claim you hadn’t massively harmed the person. The stuff that held the data is still there, but you destroyed the data, even if you replaced it with 99.9999999% identical data.

              You gave the upload-version brain damage…..

              1. But perhaps it was self induced, say the personality wanted to do an add-on to increase keyboarding skills, or better comprehension of statistics or patterns and botched the transfer that way. There could be loose networks of backalley hot-mod shops to boost your functions, poised to clear out leaving nothing but microsurgery kits and the bulky parts of the MRI suites when the heat closes in.

          2. Pam, I was thinking about David Weber’s Safehold universe in which there are “people” in a box (AI’s who are based on the personalities/memories of a human) and you can store your memories/personality in an android body until you’re ready to use the android body.

            In that universe, a running person in a box is legally a person but your stored memories/personality in a turned-off android body isn’t legally a person. Mind you, while the person in an active android body has a limited life span before the “meat body” reclaims the memories of what the android did while active, it would have been interesting if the personality had managed to remain active and sued for continued existence. (The androids were mostly used for situations too dangerous for a human and remote control wasn’t possible. A secondary use was extreme sports.).

            So until your stored personality is running in a computer, it could be updated. Once its running, you have no further “claim” on it.

            1. So we’re talking basic OS (personality) stripped of data (character) and resold? Isn’t that plagiarism? Where’s SPQR? Could people (celebrities?) copyright their personalities and package and sell them, they way they now brand clothing and home furnishing lines? Would we see the nation of Kardashia? The Satrapy of Stewart? The Principality of Paltrow? I’m immigrating to East Wood and taking up residence in the city of Clint.

              Poor guy — when he bought the Wayne’s World package he thought it was John …

              1. Well, I was talking about a personality as including the person’s memories.

                Mind you RES, your idea sounds interesting.

              2. Well, to copyright a personality it would have to be original and you’d have to be the “author” …

                So, nope, RES, you’d have no rights at all.

                1. What’s worse is getting hacked and having computer viruses put into your personality.

                2. “Original” in this usage merely means not derivative. Any familiarity with popular culture’s history demonstrates the lack of originality of most of today’s personalities. I think we can safely conclude that is nor barrier.

                  As for being the author, I am the author of my self, “based on an idea of G-d” — which is why he gets a 10% commission on all earnings.

                  I think the greater barrier to exploiting the unique asset that is moi is the fact that there are laws in over sixty* jurisdictions declaring my personality a crime against nature and thus packaging and selling it would clearly be found as “not in the public interest.”

                  *Current tally; there are many jurisdictions that aren’t even willing to contemplate such an act as anything that requires specific legislative prohibition.

        2. I see that I left ambiguities. I meant that the Active copy would be the only one to make changes to itself, while the archive copy stored on the aforementioned server could be updated by anyone with the ability to access it (proper owner, hacker, government, etc).

          It would not surprise me if learning programs will be able, in under 20 years, to interact with humans and learn their decision patterns and preferences so that they can act as independent avatars to work in remote locations on their behalf. The legal implications of this prove to be fascinating.

    2. 1. What happens when someone else checks out your personality from the server and makes changes to it?

      If they replace the personality altogether, you have for practical purposes been reincarnated. People who claim that reincarnation happens thereby imply that there is an “I” which persists despite the loss of (conscious) memories, language, knowledge, etc.

      2. It’s not clear to me whether or not it makes sense to discuss “I” without discussing consciousness also.

    3. Interesting idea, but how about an inversion:

      Have a job interview? Important social event to attend? School reunion? Why not get a personality upgrade? For reasonable fees we can upload personality apps to make you wittier, perkier, more charming, more knowledgeable, better informed and smarter! Buy the you you want to be! Personality apps to suit all types — available either as short term lease or purchase to permanently improve yourself!!!

      What good is sitting alone In your room? Come hear the music play! Life is a Cabaret, old chum! Come to the Cabaret!

      Compatibility of personality apps not warranted, some deterioration may occur when exposed to alcohol. Maintenance and upgrades may incur extra fees.

      1. Government uses that technology to “fix” Criminals and make them upstanding citizens and supporters of the state. Then the government decides, “Why stop at just the Criminals?”
        — paraphrased from one of my lists of story ideas.

        1. We are all criminals — see: Three Felonies A Day (see also Atlas Shrugged — they just haven’t had the opportunity to prosecute.

  23. I KNOW I’ve changed, not once but several times.

    Between the time I got married and when I returned from Panama, I “grew up”. It would take a short book to write down all the changes that took place, not least of which was the birth of my daughter.

    My year in Vietnam, and what I did there, changed me greatly, and it took almost five years to undo some of the more negative changes.

    I left the Air Force after 11 years, then turned around and joined the active Reserve. During those four years, I changed again. Jean and I learned how to be foster-parents to emotionally disturbed children, and adopted one of them.

    I got asked to go back on active duty, and took the opportunity. The ten years that followed, the achievement awards, the technical and managerial training, and the implementation of that training, changed me again.

    I worked full-time for a company and had a part-time business from 1990 to 1994, when both the company I worked for and my personal business went bankrupt. I went through four other jobs before I landed one that “worked” for me. I worked there from 1994 until 2000, when my health failed so badly I had to quit. Since then, I’ve been rated totally disabled, with a long list of problems. I began playing around with writing again after I started work for the company I stayed with until 2000, and since then have published eight novels on Amazon and B&N. I still have medical problems, and since most of them are degenerative, they get worse. I’m sure they have introduced other changes. The writing helps. So does this weblog, Mad Genius Club, and Sarah’s Diner, plus the people that respond here. Thank you all.

  24. “I got concussion and went around for six months in a complete daze. I mean, my thoughts weren’t right. Was I me?”

    It’s far worse when the problem is mental illness. Are you you? Are your behaviors and actions coming from you or you’ (you prime)? I have moderately severe bipolar disorder, and I cannot always tell when I’m me or me’. All to often I learn that past actions I thought were made by me actually came from me’. That’s a scary feeling, and one result is reducing contact with others (for their sakes and yours).

  25. Or for a diagnosis that runs to high unemployment, that tends to be lifelong, whenever things are not done properly one can ask if it is a character (lazy) issue or a health issue?

    1. What’s scary is that in the story that’s completely taken over by brain these past two weeks or so, someone just asked another, “What do you want?”

      On Wed, Jun 12, 2013 at 7:41 PM, According To Hoyt wrote:

      > ** > captainned commented: “Who are you? How Vorlon.” >

        1. Man, I thought Crusade was going to do some really interesting things. > > Respond to this comment by replying above this line > New comment on According To Hoyt > > > captainned commented on Who Are You, REALLY?. > > in response to Jasini: > > Whatfs scary is th

        2. Depending on the tone in which that question is asked it *might* precipitate a shooting.

          1. Do you have anything worth living for? Well, do you, punk?

            On Thu, Jun 13, 2013 at 9:01 AM, According To Hoyt wrote:

            > ** > William O. B’Livion commented: “Depending on the tone in which that > question is asked it *might* precipitate a shooting.” >

  27. Have I changed? Well, the voices are still the same, but the harmonies are different. Does that count?

    As for who am I, whenever I’m asked that question (usually in the form of “Who the *^&*( do you think you are?) this runs through my head:

    Who am I? I am Susan Ivanova. Commander. Daughter of Andrei and Sophie Ivanov. I am the right hand of vengeance, and the boot that is going to kick your sorry ass all the way back to Earth, sweetheart! I am Death Incarnate, and the last living thing that you are ever going to see. God sent me.

    Fortunately the last time I was asked the only thing that came out of my mouth was “Petty Officer Gauch.”

    2. Hehehhe. I got asked at an interview today, “what abilities would you bring to this job and why should we hire you?” I wanted to say, “Unlike your other candidates, I know well enough to leave management decisions like that to management.”

      One day, I will not care if I get hired. One day. (shake fist at sky)

    1. One of the few NCIS episodes that made me bang my head, they had a super-nerd website designer and hacker…who they found because he logged in to his auction site, with his laptop, from his hotel room.

      He didn’t go to starbucks with the laptop, or walk into a freaking cheap hotel lobby and use their computer, he logged in from his hotel room.

      1. You would think that someone like that would at least use an anonymous proxy or two.

        1. Heck, he had enough cash to rent a room near the airport or something, log in there to throw them off the scent, then leave…..

  30. As is so often the case: I dissent from the Horde. I have not recognizably changed in any way whatever since I finished my growth spurt at age 16, either physically or mentally. Save for the ‘stache, you could time-warp me back to high school, and no one would be able to tell Me-Now from Me-Then. (Which means all those girls who wrote “don’t ever change” in my yearbooks had *no fucking clue* what they were saying….)

    As for “who looks back at me from the mirror”: The question is not “who” — it’s “what”…. 😛

  31. I feel like I was born with a certain template and different experiences in my life have filled in the different spaces with color and texture. That template, barring a traumatic brain injury, will always be the same but there will also always be room for more experiences that won’t change me, precisely, but rather add to who I am. I might change my approach to how I do things; I’d be foolish if I never learned from my mistakes. But I don’t think I won’t ever not be essentially the same person I have always been. Proof of that to me is whenever I talk to my brothers on the phone (we don’t talk often) because we always revert to our old roles very quickly.

  32. I was a very smart kid. I can remember at 17 looking back on 13 and lamenting how bright I had been then (and would never be again). That prepared my whole core personality for the concept of breadth being a partial compensation for depth (as in every skill I acquire/learn about makes life more interesting, even if I can’t remember where I put the car keys — everyone on my father’s side of the family had Alzheimers and I live in terror.).

    So I definitely go with the accretion theory, that plus wearing some of the social awkwardnesses away with experience, thank god. OTOH, I believe that some parts of character are innate. I can be quite stubborn when necessary, hard to overawe. It’s a fundamental trait. Over a lifetime, I’ve moved from being stubbornly independent even if the morons didn’t appreciate me to being laid back about how people were. Same stubborness that lets me withstand unpleasantness, but an evolution in how I see it (from resentful to useful). We live, we learn. Or not.

  33. Well, if you’re going to ask questions like that, then you’re going to get answers like this: I am me! I didn’t start as a blank slate, I started as a complicated tangle of genetic predispositions, strengths, and weaknesses, nurtured in an even more complicated set of hormone solutions, noises, and tastes for 9 months before I even came into the world. (And I made my mother morning sick all 9 of those months, for which she will wait until the foot of G-d’s throne to forgive me.) That whole tabula rasa, like the noble savage, is bunk.

    For all that I have grown and changed over the years, and will yet still grow and change, my mother will swear to you that my personality was discernable and has not changed that much since I was in diapers. She would know, too; I lack awareness of those early years, but she has plenty of grumblings about my tendency to night hours, unrelenting inquisitiveness, and tendency to listen and watch everything around me (including when someone let fly that word that I Should Not Learn.) The fascination with books showed early, as did the desire to be outdoors if there wasn’t a book involved.

    But then, I call this awareness inside of me a soul, and hope, pray, and believe that it will survive well past the death of the flesh. I do not think it shall be static, after death, either – for heaven where I hope I shall go will be full of people with whom I can interact and learn, and I certainly do not expect to be unchanged by meeting my G-d face to face.

  34. The older I get, the more and more I want to build one of the concrete “dome homes” that is resistant to earthquakes, tornados, hurricanes and fires. Heck, if you earth berm it well, it qualifies as a fallout shelter. I have come to think building homes that are more durable and resilient is much better than having to worry about rebuilding everything every few years. But they are not as attractive as an old Victorian.

Comments are closed.