We constantly lie to ourselves and to each other about why we like and do the things that we do. Split brain experiments prove a hemisphere will simply make something up, lacking some key information provided only to the other hemisphere, and you will honestly believe the made-up explanation is correct.
Your entire identity, hobbies, likes and relationships are a construct of your environment, genes and randomness. I personally feel that "Being who you are", "Staying true to yourself" etc, are very negative things to tell someone, that we tell each other like crabs in a bucket. You absolutely can and should shape your identity around what type of person you want to become in the future. You can objectively look at your likes and behaviors and decide to replace them. If you're on the spectrum, like I suspect a lot of HN readers are, in some ways it's even easier to take this kind of detached view of yourself. Personally, I used to really like X, it was a core part of my identity. One day I simply decided to not do X anymore, I didn't like the people doing X and I didn't see any successful people in my orbit, and I replaced it with Y & Z. It changed the type of people I was around, it changed my career path, and my core personality. Just like you can choose to work on your computer, house, you car, etc. you can choose to work on your identity, personality and likes. There is no one true yourself, just many different versions and possibilities.
> I personally feel that "Being who you are", "Staying true to yourself" etc, are very negative things to tell someone
I think life advice is much more case-by-case than we tend to acknowledge.
Maybe Person A needs to stop being so hard on themselves, stop conforming to other people's expectations for once, and just live life the way they want to live it. But maybe Person B needs to take a good hard look at their life choices, and understand that they've been hurting themselves and the people who love them. Maybe Person C needs to take a risk every once in a while, learn to think outside the box. But maybe Person D needs to get their affairs in order and start following through on long-term plans. Maybe Person E is too nice, and Person F isn't nice enough.
Some people need to hear "be who you are." Other people need to hear the opposite.
Most super-simplified advice like "be who you are" is actually just people repeating the instructions that led them to their growth experiences, but it's not the actual growth experience.
I used to hate those as a young person. They always sounded trite, cliché. Now I recognize them for what they are - pointers to experiences. Pointers in the programming sense. You just won't get a piece of folk wisdom until you've lived through a situation to which it applies, and then thought about it and perhaps did some introspection. But after that, that proverb becomes a concise and convenient way to communicate to others who also get it, "hey, the situation will likely evolve this way", or "consider applying this pattern of reasoning to the situation".
The best proverbs are phrased in such a way to at least point you in the right direction if you don't understand them. But in the end, you can't skip experiencing the subject of the proverb yourself.
This describes exactly my viewpoint of religion. I grew up with a Christian background but at young age (I remember questioning it at the age of 5-6) decided I wouldn't devote my life to it. Nowadays, I recognize many of the lessons shared/taught through these stories, and I wonder if my children are going to be better off with or without them. At the very least, they'll still get similar lessons from Disney.
Growing up in charismatic Christianity I don't think the baggage is worth whatever modest bits of advice are there. It seems to me like looking trying to strain potable water from a thoroughly polluted lake.
Nobody is going back and verifying their growth experiences were actually a good idea though. I enjoy pointing out that there is no globally dominant religion - who whatever the most correct spiritual outlook is we know most people have it wrong.
Given how few people achieve meaningful success or happiness under their own steam it seems fundamentally risky listening to their advice. Most people are playing status games - there are a lot of losers and no winners in status games these days. The world is too big.
> Your entire identity, hobbies, likes and relationships are a construct of your environment, genes and randomness.
...
> You absolutely can and should shape your identity around what type of person you want to become in the future.
If your entire identity is shaped by the things you listed above, how is the "type of person you want to become" not also a product of those same things? That is, how are your wishes independent yet your identity contingent?
I do believe your wishes and even your knowledge of the space of what is possible is a product of exactly those things.
My wish to change and then taking an action to change is a function of the environment and everything that came before, probably I read or heard about it somewhere. Similarly, perhaps by me writing about it here a neuron will flip in someone else's mind that the way "they are" is not immutable, and that they can take an active role in molding their own personality and likes.
I think the "type of person you want to become" is not static. It changes as you attempt to become it. It changes because you learn more about yourself and the universe _as_ you try to change.
So while your knowledge and perception of the universe is always imperfect, it can also always improve. Pursuit of your better self is the means by which you both improve yourself and your knowledge of what that better self is.
I used to be a pretty picky eater and wouldn't eat things because I thought I didn't like them. This didn't change until I started to intentionally try things that were new, or that I thought I didn't like. Turns out, a lot of stuff is really good, and me not liking them was based in lack of experience, not in my actual taste!
I absolutely believe picky eating is a learned behavior. The wide varying cultural differences in food already tells us there's nothing biologically innate about the preferences.
Toddlers will observe their parents facial expressions and behaviors even as they're being served. If you scrunch your nose when giving them broccoli, they won't like it. If you incentivize eating it, they learn they're not "supposed" to like it. At the other extreme, if the parents fight for the last piece of broccoli the kid will happily join in, in my direct experience. Somehow we have convinced our toddler that broccoli is the best thing ever and lollipops will break her teeth and should be avoided :D Your reaction to hearing about this kind of "conditioning" is also no doubt a product of your own environment.
For things like sour or spicy which may be unpleasant at first, repeated and consistent small exposure over time changes their preferences almost without fail. Millions of Korean kids loves Kimchi as a staple, if you could replicate that environment your kid would too.
> Toddlers will observe their parents facial expressions
> and behaviors even as they're being served.
I did an experiment with this. When my daughters were around 4 and 6 I introduced them to Shproti, a small canned fish, as a desert. I would only let them eat it on special occasions, and only if they were well behaved. For probably five years they would reject ice cream in favour of these canned fish if given the chance.
I do not know who broke to them the secret, but now the little one does not like them anymore. The older still eats the fish with me, but of course no longer as a desert.
This hasn't been my experience with our twin toddlers and 5 year old. What they like is all over the place. We don't force or bribe them to eat anything - we put their options on their plate (usually around 4 things) and let them eat whatever they want. Everything they eat my wife and I eat, and we don't make things we don't like to eat.
Usually only around half of what we serve them will be eaten by all 3 kids. What they don't eat I generally eat for lunch the next day.
There are also some completely random habits. Take asparagus for example. One toddler won't eat the tips.
Right. As weird as it sounds I think you have to "practice" liking certain foods.
I used to hate ginger but drinking ginger kombucha, which has a ginger taste but isn't overwhelming, slowly acclimated me to the taste of ginger. A few months later and I actually liked ginger.
I can still see why I use to hate it but it's just...more palatable now.
The more I looked into flavors (bitter, salty, sour, sweet, umami) I realized I almost always had issues with sour. Not anymore.
> Right. As weird as it sounds I think you have to "practice" liking certain foods.
We do. The taste buds of young children are attuned to liking sweet. Milk is sweet (lactose), and poisonous foods are usually not, so its of evolutionary use. As is switching teeth.
From what I read, it takes about 10 times till a child likes something they disliked before. Force feeding leads to trauma though; so we provide our child with options and encourage her to sample. One particular quote I use (translated from Dutch): "you don't know yet how it tastes. If you try it you'll find it out. Maybe you're missing out?" I want to stimulate her curiosity because its a trait I like (in both her parents). She won't get an alternative food though, and she will be allowed her desert regardless.
As for sour, we combine yogurt (sour) with custard (vanilla, sweet) at times. The balance is more in favor of the latter for the child; parents eat a more sour version. From my memory I disliked bitter as child (some vegetables are abundant with that taste). Now I drink coffee black daily, and love bitter vegetables, as long as the taste is combined with herbs, spices, pepper, and other flavors such as sweet/sour/salty/umami (while respecting the bitterness as being the dominant taste).
Well, acquired taste is absolutely a thing, as probably anybody who likes coffee, beer, red wine, or a thousand other things can readily attest to. We're hardwired to like energy-rich food, most other things are learned.
I'm a bit surprised this came as a revelation to you. People in my social context all knew that tastes are acquired. And liking certain things was seen as a sign of maturity, leading people to brag about liking stuff before they actually did.
Also, one's tastes can change over time. In my case I had never considered that possibility until it happened to me. As a kid, I would not touch salad with a 10 foot pole. But at one point in early adulthood I tried one and actually enjoyed it. A bit later I realized that what I really like are a lot of savory, acidic flavors (salsa, mustard, tomato sauce, vinegar), which of course includes many salad dressings.
I completely agree. I recently made a similar change; the removal of the cognitive dissonance between "I'm a person who likes X and not Y, but I admire people who like Y and not X" was refreshing and invigorating.
On a side note, it's interesting to meta-analyze the strategy and realize that the kind of person you want to become is also shaped by the same factors. However, I find I have a much better chance at arriving at a "correct" or "best" aim by objectively analyzing identities other than my own, and then changing my own to match, than by simply following my own random impulses.
I remember reading about a study from long ago where they asked people their opinions on smoking and then had some start a smoking habit. Afterwards, the opinion on smoking was much more positive for those who had started smoking. Nicotine's addictiveness explains the continued habit, but the opinion change came from our fluid preferences and post-hoc rationalizations.
They've had people rate various prizes by desirability. Then the person receives a prize of lesser desirability. Later, when asked again the person will rate the item they received higher. It is reasoned that the person's psyche would rather increase the desirability of what they did receive rather than accept that they received something that "sucks".
However that is the cynical take we are compelled to choose because of what we know and think of smoking.
Taking only the study itself into consideration, one could easily argue that the participants "knocked it before they tried it", i.e. by taking up smoking they realized how nice it actually is.
I am not trying to revive 60's tobacco propaganda, but I would say for a lot of personality/opinion/habit/preference changes in general this explanation is very likely (and far less sinister)
No, smoking is great. If it didn’t cause disease, everyone should smoke. It feels good, it looks cool, it’s social but not clingy, and it calms you down. The biggest problem with America today is we all need a smoke break but look at social media instead.
Genes, Environment, and Randomness covers a lot of causes!
Staying true to yourself is not a good idea if you have an inaccurate self-image. It will cause great harm.
On the other hand you can’t in fact shape your identity around arbitrary desires about who you want to be.
There are constraints to what is possible for you become, especially if you care about being happy.
Knowing and respecting those constraints can be seen as a more positive interpretation of “being true to oneself”. Interpreting it this way, there is no ‘one true identity’, but there is definitely a sense of who you are, and who you it’s better not to try to be.
> "Being who you are", "Staying true to yourself" etc, are very negative things to tell someone
I disagree with this though I think I understand how the lack of nuance in "be yourself" can allow it to be easily misinterpreted.
> I used to really like X, it was a core part of my identity. One day I simply decided to not do X anymore, I didn't like the people doing X and I didn't see any successful people in my orbit, and I replaced it with Y & Z.
This is basically the textbook definition of "Being who you are" or "Staying true to yourself"
The "Textbook definition" point you made is quite confusing.
"Being who you are" means that you keep your values static and shape your decisions around those, unless there is some additional nuance to this.
The GP is making a point that you need to make a clear assessment of yourself - in particular your actions, your deficiencies and strengths and identify values to adopt which could make a positive impact to your life. That's not the the same thing according to me, unless I misinterpreted what you intended.
> There is no one true yourself, just many different versions and possibilities
At the anecdotal, personal experience level, I noticed that many of the people I met in college who were depressed or otherwise somehow stuck were stuck “looking for themselves” to the point that I decided the cliche that we should all find ourselves should be considered harmful. There was just so many of these people out there.
Around that same time I came to believe, as a countervailing measure if anything, that to the extent possible, in the absence of other direction or desire, people should do what they are good at. Being good at something and doing it feels good and will in time become what you like and “who you are.” You’ll be good at it, and everything will be great. If you’re not good at anything, the challenge, then, is to find something you’re good at. But drifting from thing to thing trying to find yourself is way harder and less reliable, and I think this is because as this article says, there is no yourself to find.
I think, ironically, you and the people who recommend "being yourself" are trying to say almost the same thing you are, and for the same reasons.
Because we are so much at the whim of our environment, it can work against you to follow someone else's advice, because the advice is based on seemingly similar but different experiences, and the best thing you can do is to act mindfully in every moment, which is what "being yourself" is about, in my opinion.
Acknowledging that you are in big part of your environment, and that you are the product of the combined imprint of life's experiences, you try to act in the best possible way you know how, given the combination of all of your experiences up to that moment, rather than some kind of answer you tried to prepare ahead of time, because that time was in the past, and your combined experiences now exceed those you had when making that plan in the past.
> Split brain experiments prove a hemisphere will simply make something up, lacking some key information provided only to the other hemisphere, and you will honestly believe the made-up explanation is correct.
That is one of the most disturbing facts that nobody ever talks about. And the fact that it was experimentally showed decision is made before we are aware of it.
And it takes a huge swing at what we believe to be our agency/free will etc. Its not far fetch to consider that we could possibly be a mere passengers in a meat bodies convinced that we are in control.
> They set each block far apart, so the babies had to crawl to one or the other—a random choice.
That’s...not what “random” means. That is, if anything, a factor that makes the choice less likely to be random. The greater commitment of resources that needs to be made, intuitively, the less likely the decision is to be made randomly.
That they are “equally bright and colorful” (even if that is objectively true) doesn't mean that there is no basis for preference, just that how bright and colorful they are isn't the basis.
This might go without saying, but please don't assume too much about whether the research makes sense based on this article. University press releases about research publications are almost always terrible and inaccurate.
As I summarized in another comment (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24801879), the researchers showed fairly convincingly that choice-induced preference change can cause an effect that is opposite to what you would expect if the original choice was based on individual preference.
This is a basic finding in experimental economics (Thaler comes to mind, but it's been a while). I remember an experiment showing this in my first class in '03 which we used as a case study for many, many lectures that followed. That it also holds for babies is quite cool. It's innate that we have strong preferences for things we have in our hands! Even if exactly it getting in our hands is totally random.
Edit: Endowment effect with one famous experiment with mugs from Kahneman (1990). That's the one we replicated in class. Pretty cool come to think of it to use a famous experiment as a first introduction to the field.
Note that the endowment effect does not exist when the value of the object in question is well understood. This makes perfect sense; in the words of something I read recently about the working of financial markets, "if somebody wants to trade with you, your first thought should be 'what does he know that I don't?'"
> Even if exactly it getting in our hands is totally random.
But only if (we think) it's our own doing, right? Because (per another comment - I haven't paid to read the study) they didn't see the same effect if they gave the babies the toy.
Don't usually make this kind of post, but I had this conversation 8 years ago and was just thinking about it a couple of days ago.
One of the most powerful cognitive concepts I learned growing up was that of arbitrariness, which allows you to step back and see things at a general level, rather than case-by-case. It's unfortunate that, I agree, many people would say "random" to mean the same thing, because I think the difference between arbitrary and random is significant and useful to know.
Now I don't understand how the experiment works at all. You can't make the choice for them; and you can't be sure their choices are random. They may have preferences before the experiment, based on whatever. The conclusion that the act of choosing changes their preference seems impossible to prove.
Per an earlier study (which may or may not have weathered the replication crisis, I'm not sure) they proved it for adults with anterograde amnesia (inability to form new memories).
If memory serves:
They had patients sort paintings by preference, told them they could have a copy of whatever they ranked 2nd or 3rd (of course they'd pick the one they ranked 2nd), told them (falsly) they'd be mailed their copy, came back in a week and had them rank the same paintings again. More often than should be explained by chance, patients would rank what had been 2 as 1 or what had been 3 as 4 or 5; their preferences for these paintings changed in the direction of their choice, despite choosing freely and even though they didn't remember making the decision.
That sounds like a lousy thing to do to someone with amnesia. I hope they got copies of paintings in the end, even if they don't remember how they got them.
Heh, I'm really undecided on the morality of inconsequentially lying to someone who can't remember it, but I certainly hope they were appropriately rewarded for their participation in the study whether or not that includes paintings.
Other's have already questioned the randomness of the original choice, however whether random or not, there is some logic in continuing to do something that had a good outcome. Even if it's just that the particular soft toy didn't eat me, explode, or cause Mommy to be cross at me.
Right, it's a kind of bandit problem where you need to choose between exploration and exploitation. Continuing to use the toy that's working is not a bad solution.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multi-armed_bandit
I don't understand from the article how they knew the baby's initial choice was random. What if the baby originally selected that toy because they preferred it?
They could be drawn to the toy's color, or shape, or any number of other things.
> Specifically, we found that after selecting from two equally attractive objects, infants subsequently devalued the initially unchosen object. We ruled out the possibility that this reflects a desire for novelty or any intrinsic preference
among the options.
The experimental design that allowed them to do this is simple, but pretty clever. The original version of the experiment is based on first letting the baby choose between toys A and B, and then demonstrating that if A was chosen, the baby prefers a new toy C over B. (All of the toys were equally likely to be preferred by a control group.)
Since it's not possible to know whether the initial choice was random or based on individual preference, they did a modified version of this experiment. After the baby is shown the first two toys, they are placed under boxes and secretly swapped. Despite originally having chosen B, the baby instead gets to interact with A. In this case, the babies still fairly consistently choose C (the new toy) over B (the one they originally preferred but didn't get to interact with).
And as the press release does mention, simply giving a baby a toy randomly chosen by the experimenter doesn't cause the same effect. So the reasonable inference is that the actual experience of making a choice (or at least having the illusion of doing so) reduces one's attachment to the option that wasn't chosen.
Thank you. It makes me sad that HN commenters rush to dismiss research because they had one idea in 5 seconds and didn't consider that the professionals working for months might have already thought of that.
The experiment still seems flawed, why can't the results be explained by "Some babies dislike certain toys and prefer new toys over those they dislike."
The fact that all the toys were equally preferred by a control group is an unconvincing control since individuals have different preferences.
It's swap methodology is also unconvincing. Why couldn't the baby simply be avoiding a toy that was effectively taken away?
> why can't the results be explained by "Some babies dislike certain toys and prefer new toys over those they dislike."
It actually is explained this way in the paper: "If infants do exhibit choice-induced preference change, they should prefer the novel toy and avoid the previously unchosen toy."
The thing is, they are not only testing for this "obvious" conclusion. Each subsequent experiment tries to invalidate the previous one's conclusions. They thought of 4 experiments, and maybe even more could be done.
> It's swap methodology is also unconvincing. Why couldn't the baby simply be avoiding a toy that was effectively taken away?
This is a good reasoning — if the infants are aware of the swap, their thinking could be "I chose that and didn't get it, now I don't like it / don't want it anymore". Even then, it still points to the same direction: the infants are changing their preferences based on their first choice, now rejecting something they wanted but didn't get.
I follow the logic, but I'm not sure homo economicus axioms about the transitivity of preferences necessarily applies to babies. (They also attempted to rule out infants just preferring novel toys, but I'm not sure 58% vs 70% is that decisive a difference for n<50, especially when you acknowledge you've excluded more than a third of the participants in some of the trials for not choosing or bursting into tears!)
I can imagine my brother's wife having fun testing with their daughter though :D
If the secret swapping wasn't as secret as the experimenters thought, these results seem consistent with the babies having a stable, random preference order among the blocks.
Otherwise, it does seem like they've demonstrated (something like?) choice induced preference change in babies, and it's additionally interesting that it can be tricked that way.
You mean the initial labeling happens (without loss of generality) such that the baby has always chosen A? That's not the swapping I was discussing.
I meant this bit:
> After the baby is shown the first two toys, they are placed under boxes and secretly swapped. Despite originally having chosen B, the baby instead gets to interact with A.
If the baby actually tracks the swapping (probably unlikely), then I think it's not the case that they "originally [chose] B" - unless (quite possible) I am misunderstanding something, which is why I seek clarification.
Since you posted the actual paper link I figured I would leave this here (https://osf.io/mfzg4/) The Open Science project page, they have some of their initial thoughts before the experiment as well as some data. Always interesting to poke around.
I'm having trouble understanding your description of the experiment. How does selecting C over B, after initially preferring B, support the thesis that random choices become preferences? Shouldn't the baby select B over C to support that thesis?
The idea is that the baby selected the box they believed contained B, but it actually contained A. Apparently the baby concluded that since they had opened the box that they chose, they must have chosen the toy inside, and they now like A better and B worse.
I wonder if there's an aspect of the experimental design that's left out of the linked article. For example, could the toys have been hidden behind some sort of shield, so that the baby couldn't see what color they were picking until they got to the shield?
Otherwise, there doesn't seem to be any basis for concluding that the initial choice was random.
"In follow-up experiments, when the researchers instead chose which toy the baby would play with, the phenomenon disappeared entirely. If you take the element of choice away, Feigenson said, the phenomenon goes away."
Interesting experiment, and I think this effect can quickly get reinforced by parents (or grandparents / other family). Your kid picks a book a few times, next thing you know the parents are emphasizing IS THIS YOUR FAVORITE BOOK? There's a themed birthday party with the characters. That becomes part of the child's identity.
I've found it helps to not hold any of your kids preferences static. If they like something now, don't assume they will still like it 2 weeks from now. Consciously give them the space to change their mind.
This does show something interesting about how choice alters preference, but it doesn’t seem to generalize to the title at all.
The experimental setup doesn’t have ecological validity as a model for babies typical environments.
The experimenters had to go out of their way to manufacture a situation in which the choice produced a random result.
This is a clever experiment that produces a useful result about choice strengthening preference.
It doesn’t however generalize into the idea that our preferences are a consequence of mere randomness.
1. In the absence of the contrived situation, choices will reflect the genetic predispositions of the baby, coupled with what is afforded by the environment.
2. If someone acts to create a contrived situation for the baby, then preferences will be systematically biased by that contrivance.
Neither of these are surprising statements, although the experiments results confirm (or can be deduced from) #2.
The random case doesn’t actually occur outside the laboratory, and if it did, it would be just a special case of #2.
So, “who we are is just a product of random choices we made as babies” is not a good interpretation of this result because babies actually don’t make random choices unless you put them in a special laboratory situation.
This reminds me of the Mere Exposure Effect[0], a psychological phenomenon by which people tend to develop a preference for things merely because they are familiar with them.
Randomness is very underrated, I imagine because it's uncomfortable for us humans to admit to something other than a nice causal story and free will.
Marvin Harris, known for his work on Cultural Materialism, writes in his books how such and such tribe are as they are, like more peaceful or belligerent due to differences in their environments, and a lot of hypothesis make sense but he ties himself in a knot trying to explain why two tribes in the Amazon that are neighbours, with the same diet etc and one is very aggressive and one is peaceful.
I thought maybe by pure chance one aggressive man got to power with violence and then he and his descendants imposed that culture. Same thing with many beliefs in cultures.
I guess I'd just call it 'learning'. Now they know about the choice they made; of course they value it over an unknown (the choice(s) not made).
The human animal is characterized by this: learning from a single example. For better and worse. Its the reason we created civilization; its the reason we believe in witchcraft and the lottery.
E.g. walk into a chimp's domain with a screwdriver, fool with the screw on an outlet cover, set the screwdriver on the floor and leave. The chimp may wander over, may pick up the screwdriver, might chew on it.
A 3-year-old human will go straight to the screwdriver and jam it into the socket.
I'm not sure anything new was shown by this experiment.
This is the fuzziest part of my human experience. Why do I like X and not Y? Why do some people like hot peppers and other people do not?
When we are children, we don't have much innate fear. We don't fear falling down too much, but we can learn to fear it if we get hurt. As a kid, you can learn how to fall down without getting hurt; your head isn't so far off the ground, your bones are not brittle yet. As an adult if you fear falling down, you will almost certainly hurt yourself when you fall. If you didn't go down that path as a kid, you may never take up skiing, or mountain biking, or other sports.
Let's assume that the baby has a perfect ordered ranking of blocks, 3 > 2 > 1, but that the experimenter doesn't know what it is.
There's three scenarios for what the new, third block is: 1, 2 or 3.
If it's 2 or 3, then the rejected block in the first round has a score of 1, and so we'd expect. So we'd only expect the baby to switch in a third of the cases, as opposed to 50% of the cases where the blocks are assumed to be equal.
"However, in the critical test trial that followed, 16 of 21 infants (76.2%) chose the new block (block C; Fig. 1)"
I can't work out the p-value vs. 66% compared to 50%, though...
They aren’t switching though. They are given a choice between A&B then if they choose A they are given a choice between B&C. The choice between B&C should be 67/33 but instead it’s around 75/25 and the authors claim this is because in not choosing B the baby decided they liked B less. The evidence for this claim is that if an adult makes the first choice for the baby then the 2nd choice is 50/50.
Draw three independent random variables a,b,c~U[0,1].
In the first experiment, let the baby pick between a and b: of course E[a|chosen]>1/2; E[b|unchosen]<1/2. Since a,b,c are independent, E[c]=1/2.
Why are they (journalist/researcher (?)) surprised that in the 2nd round the baby chooses c over b?
[Of course, if you force the baby to pick either b or a in the first round, she will be equally likely to pick c or not in the second round]
There's a scene in Kim Stanley Robinson's 2312 that I think about often:
Habits begin to form at the very first repetition. After that there is a tropism toward repetition, for the patterns involved are defenses, bulwarks against time and despair.
He [Wahram] was very aware of this, having lived the process many times; so he paid attention to what he did when he traveled, on the lookout for those first repetitions that would create the pattern of that particular moment in his life. So often the first time one did things they were contingent, accidental, and not necessarily good things on which to base a set of habits. There was some searching to be done, in other words, some testing of different possibilities. that was the interregnum, in fact, the naked moment before the next exfoliation of habits, the time when on wandered doing things randomly. The time without skin, the raw data, the being-in-the-world.
I think it's a form of hysteresis. There's probably an evolutionary advantage to making a choice and sticking with it, if there isn't a huge advantage to one or the other, than to bouncing back and forth uncertainly. It saves time.
Just some random speculation, but how do we know the choices are random?
Moreover, I think there's an element of competence being enjoyable. If I start to learn a hobby and experience little successes along the path to competence, that will reinforce it as something that I want to do. Eventually you'll get good at it, or at least for very young children better at it than anything else you can do, and again, competence is enjoyable.
There's also possibly an element of a sunken cost fallacy. You've spent x amount of time or resources on some thing, so you start to justify to yourself why it's worthwhile to pursue or to have done.
An attempt at an explanation: value is what we in fact act to gain or keep, from the simplest to the most complex objects or relations; what we have previously gained or kept is automatically recorded as a value in our mind; and thus will be emotionally perceived as a preference in the future. Some values can be and are deliberately chosen, but many are not.
I wonder if this gives science a bad name, studying a thing that really seems quite obvious.
When a baby picks a toy and finds that causes no harm but actually fun, doesn't it make sense that they would pick the same thing the next time over something different and new and unfamiliar which might not cause fun but might in fact be dangerous?
I have often wondered if this can relate to whether someone is ‘good at math’
What if how it works is: we each see some math problems and symbols and make a guess as to how it works. If we are right, we decide we are good at math. If we are wrong we decide we are bad at math. Identity forms, then it is hard to revise your self assessment.
If we nudge an idea into a babies head, this would seem to make the choice a bit less random.
Say we play a video of another child paying on a scooter. Then we put the scooter near the child. Will the child be more likely to copy what they have seen in the video?
For many years I've wondered if the extremely close 50/50 splits we so frequently see in politics isn't because randomness (in some way) is playing a role.
First: Do you not consider it interesting that a given effect can be already observed in earlier development stages?
Second: Why do you argue against a made-up straw man "replication crisis worrier"? The crisis is based on a large percentage of studies, including foundational ones, being not yielding the same results when done again. This is not a notion you can throw out by reciting a single counter example (whose existence no one even denies?!)...
When I go to a restaurant and I don't outright dislike their food I am inclined to go there again even though there might be better places in the city.
Also obvious is that even truly random selections would be repeated because we are creatures of habit/pattern. Not sure what is novel in this study other than it confirms a pretty expected outcome.
They raise that possibility when discussing Experiment 3:
> Recall that in the induction trial, approximately equal numbers of infants chose each block—there was no systematic preference for any particular block. But what if all infants had their own idiosyncratic but consistent object preferences? ...
Then they sort of test that hypothesis in Experiment 4, by making the infants choose a block in the induction trial but then giving them the block they had not chosen – and even in this case the infants, in the next step of the trial, tend to reject the block they didn't get in the induction trial, which in this case was the block they had initially chosen. This needs to be combined with the previous findings, such as those from Experiment 2, in which the experimenters gave the infants a block, and Experiment 3, in which the infants' choice is blind (they din't know what was inside each box) — in these cases, the infants didn't show the same rejection tendency for the block they didn't get as in Experiments 1 and 4.
Probably, but it's smart to be specific with what you've actually measured/observed. This study is specifically observing babies, and if we want to assert that this is true of all people, we should do experiments that include non-babies.
Your entire identity, hobbies, likes and relationships are a construct of your environment, genes and randomness. I personally feel that "Being who you are", "Staying true to yourself" etc, are very negative things to tell someone, that we tell each other like crabs in a bucket. You absolutely can and should shape your identity around what type of person you want to become in the future. You can objectively look at your likes and behaviors and decide to replace them. If you're on the spectrum, like I suspect a lot of HN readers are, in some ways it's even easier to take this kind of detached view of yourself. Personally, I used to really like X, it was a core part of my identity. One day I simply decided to not do X anymore, I didn't like the people doing X and I didn't see any successful people in my orbit, and I replaced it with Y & Z. It changed the type of people I was around, it changed my career path, and my core personality. Just like you can choose to work on your computer, house, you car, etc. you can choose to work on your identity, personality and likes. There is no one true yourself, just many different versions and possibilities.