<story><title>The ‘Real You’ Is a Myth</title><url>https://theconversation.com/the-real-you-is-a-myth-we-constantly-create-false-memories-to-achieve-the-identity-we-want-103253</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>Fri21Sep</author><text>I disagree. I&amp;#x27;ve been keeping a journal for more than 10 years (started when I was 14 and am 25 now), where I report important events and more importantly reflect on them, and also on general concepts. Reading old entries can be very enlightening.&lt;p&gt;What comes out of it is that events are the &amp;quot;data&amp;quot;, while personality&amp;#x2F;identity is the &amp;quot;software&amp;quot;. The data is various, but the software is the same. The consistency of reasoning between now and then is incredible. When I read the setup of an old recounting, I start reacting to it while reading it from the point of view of my now-self, and then I see that the reflection of my old-self on this event to be very consistent with that. It&amp;#x27;s naive, uninformed and a bit rebellious (probably because of teenagehood), and sometimes because of that it completely misses the point, but the direction of reflection is the same. It&amp;#x27;s not alien, it makes sense.&lt;p&gt;We&amp;#x27;re reacting to events by using our software on related data. The value of experience entirely lies in the data, which can sometimes create entire shifts in perspective, but the software is the same. If you read an old journal you&amp;#x27;ll see that most reactions are the same, and for those which differ you can point out exactly what piece of data was missing in comparison to today&amp;#x27;s perspective.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>scarecrowbob</author><text>I wonder if you&amp;#x27;ll change your view on this as you age.&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;m 40.  I&amp;#x27;ve been through 2 divorces and 3 full-on professional careers (academics, music, and programming).  I have a 17-year-old son.&lt;p&gt;Although I can probably think out the evolution of my &amp;quot;software&amp;quot;, it&amp;#x27;s really hard to think of my current releases as having a whole lot of backwards compatibility with that 0.0.1 version.  If I had to give it a number, I&amp;#x27;d say I&amp;#x27;m somewhere around release 6.4.3.&lt;p&gt;:D&lt;p&gt;Personally (and this is just my conclusions, not one I expect other folks to come to), my views and strategies for working with the world are so removed from 25-year-old me that I have little problem saying that I am almost not the same person.&lt;p&gt;Certainly, my &amp;quot;software&amp;quot; has so many revisions to essential functionality that it&amp;#x27;s hardly recognizable as the same collection of code: there is very little overlap between how I reasoned about things when I was 25 and now, and I feel like that&amp;#x27;s not just a matter of &amp;quot;data&amp;quot; aggregation.  My conclusions is that the software isn&amp;#x27;t, in fact, the same.&lt;p&gt;I feel like it&amp;#x27;s more that I&amp;#x27;ve fundamentally revised the software on a number of levels to the point where there are so many essential differences the identity isn&amp;#x27;t even consistent.</text></comment>
<story><title>The ‘Real You’ Is a Myth</title><url>https://theconversation.com/the-real-you-is-a-myth-we-constantly-create-false-memories-to-achieve-the-identity-we-want-103253</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>Fri21Sep</author><text>I disagree. I&amp;#x27;ve been keeping a journal for more than 10 years (started when I was 14 and am 25 now), where I report important events and more importantly reflect on them, and also on general concepts. Reading old entries can be very enlightening.&lt;p&gt;What comes out of it is that events are the &amp;quot;data&amp;quot;, while personality&amp;#x2F;identity is the &amp;quot;software&amp;quot;. The data is various, but the software is the same. The consistency of reasoning between now and then is incredible. When I read the setup of an old recounting, I start reacting to it while reading it from the point of view of my now-self, and then I see that the reflection of my old-self on this event to be very consistent with that. It&amp;#x27;s naive, uninformed and a bit rebellious (probably because of teenagehood), and sometimes because of that it completely misses the point, but the direction of reflection is the same. It&amp;#x27;s not alien, it makes sense.&lt;p&gt;We&amp;#x27;re reacting to events by using our software on related data. The value of experience entirely lies in the data, which can sometimes create entire shifts in perspective, but the software is the same. If you read an old journal you&amp;#x27;ll see that most reactions are the same, and for those which differ you can point out exactly what piece of data was missing in comparison to today&amp;#x27;s perspective.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>nabla9</author><text>Things you write down into your journal have already been under psychological screening mechanism described in the article. 
You  don&amp;#x27;t write down things that don&amp;#x27;t seem relevant to you or things you don&amp;#x27;t remember when writing it down. You are creating  personal narrative and documenting it.&lt;p&gt;Another screening happens when you are reading your own journal. We are not objective readers and we add and remove things into what we read.</text></comment>