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I remember reading an essay comparing one's personality to a polyhedral die, which rolls somewhat during our childhood and adolescence, and then mostly settles, but which can be re-rolled in some cases by using psychedelics. I don't have any direct experience with that, and definitely am not in a position to give advice, but just wondering whether we have a potential for plasticity that should be researched further, and that possibly AI can help us gain insights into how things might be.
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Would be nice if there was an escape hatch here. Definitely better than the depressing thought I had, which is - to put in AI/tech terminology - that I'm already past my pre-training window (childhood / period of high neuroplasticity) and it's too late for me to fix my low prompt adherence (ability to set up rules for myself and stick to them, not necessarily via a Markdown file).
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You can change your personality at any point in time, you don't even need psychedelics for it, just some good old fashioned habits

As long as you are still drawing breath it's never too late bud

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But that's what I mean. I'm pretty much clinically incapable of intentionally forming and maintaining habits. And I have a sinking feeling that it's something you either win or lose at in the genetic lottery at time of conception, or at best something you can develop in early life. That's what I meant by "being past my pre-training phase and being stuck with poor prompt adherence".
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I used to be like you but a couple of years ago something clicked and I was able to build a bunch of extremely life changing habits - it took a long while but looking back I'm like a different person. I couldn't really say what led to this change though, it wasn't like this "one weird trick" or something. That being said I think "Tao of Puh" is a great self-help book
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I can relate. It's definitely possible, but you have to really want it, and it takes a lot of work.

You need cybernetics (as in the feedback loop, the habit that monitors the process of adding habits). Meditate and/or journal. Therapy is also great. There are tracking apps that may help. Some folks really like habitica/habit rpg.

You also need operant conditioning: you need a stimulus/trigger, and you need a reward. Could be as simple as letting yourself have a piece of candy.

Anything that enhances neuroplasticity helps: exercise, learning, eat/sleep right, novelty, adhd meds if that's something you need, psychedelics can help if used carefully.

I'm hardly any good at it myself but it's been some progress.

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Right. I know about all these things (but thanks for listing them!) as I've been struggling with it for nearly two decades, with little progress to show.

I keep gravitating to the term, "prompt adherence", because it feels like it describes the root meta-problem I have: I can set up a system, but I can't seem to get myself to follow it for more than a few days - including especially a system to set up and maintain systems. I feel that if I could crack that, set up this "habit that monitors the process of adding habits" and actually stick to it long-term, I could brute-force my way out of every other problem.

Alas.

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If it's any help, one of the statements that stuck with me the most about "doing the thing" is from Amy Hoy:

> You know perfectly well how to achieve things without motivation.[1]

I'll also note that I'm a firm believer in removing the mental load of fake desires: If you think you want the result, but you don't actually want to do the process to get to the result, you should free yourself and stop assuming you want the result at all. Forcing that separation frees up energy and mental space for moving towards the few things you want enough.

1: https://stackingthebricks.com/how-do-you-stay-motivated-when...

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> I keep gravitating to the term, "prompt adherence", because it feels like it describes the root meta-problem I have: I can set up a system, but I can't seem to get myself to follow it for more than a few days - including especially a system to set up and maintain systems. I feel that if I could crack that, set up this "habit that monitors the process of adding habits" and actually stick to it long-term, I could brute-force my way out of every other problem.

Executive function.

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For what it’s worth, I’ve fallen into the trap of building an “ideal” system that I don’t use. Whether that’s a personal knowledge db , automations for tracking habits, etc.

The thing I’ve learned is for a new habit, it should have really really minimal maintenance and minimal new skill sets above the actual habit. Start with pen and paper, and make small optimizations over time. Only once you have engrained the habit of doing the thing, should you worry about optimizing it

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I've felt this way all my life. I was recently tested/diagnosed in mid-life with ADHD. It explains so much of my life experience so far.
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sane. I wonder if AI would be the key to maintaining complex memory/data (with implied directives).

Any notes system gets too large, and hence too complex as Is have to check a large dataset frequently. An AI could perhaps do that though..

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You appear to have successfully formed the habit of posting on Hacker News frequently, isn't this a starting place? :)
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Touché.

Maybe instead of fighting it, I should build on it. Thanks!

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I thought the same thing about myself until I read Tiny Habits by BJ Fogg. Changed my mental model for what habits really are and how to engineer habitual change. I immediately started flossing and haven't quit in the three years since reading. It's very worth reading because there are concrete, research backed frameworks for rewiring habits.
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As I enter my 50s, I've had to start consciously stopping to make notes for everything.

It's a bit fascinating/unnerving to see similarities between these tools and my own context limits and that they have similar workarounds.

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The brain remains plastic for life, and if you're insane about it, there are entire classes of drugs that induce BDNF production in various parts of the brain.
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The agents are also not able to set up their own rules. Humans can mutate their souls back to whatever at will.
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They can if given write access to "SOUL.md" (or "AGENT.md" or ".cursor" or whatever).

It's actually one of the "secret tricks" from last year, that seems to have been forgotten now that people can "afford"[0] running dozens of agents in parallel. Before everyone's focus shifted from single-agent performance to orchestration, one power move was to allow and encourage the agent to edit its own prompt/guidelines file during the agentic session, so over time and many sessions, the prompt will become tuned to both LLM's idiosyncrasies and your own expectations. This was in addition to having the agent maintain a TODO list and a "memory" file, both of which eventually became standard parts of agentic runtimes.

--

[0] - Thanks to heavy subsidizing, at least.

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What’s the plasticity of thinking of yourself as a machine.
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The human brain is mutable, the human "soul" is a concept thats not proven yet and likely isn't real.
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> The human brain is mutable

Only in the sense of doing circuit-bending with a sledge hammer.

> the human "soul" is a concept thats not proven yet and likely isn't real.

There are different meanings of "soul". I obviously wasn't talking about the "immortal soul" from mainstream religions, with all the associated "afterlife" game mechanics. I was talking about "sense of self", "personality", "true character" - whatever you call this stable and slowly evolving internal state a person has.

But sure, if you want to be pedantic - "SOUL.md" isn't actually the soul of an LLM agent either. It's more like the equivalent of me writing down some "rules to live by" on paper, and then trying to live by them. That's not a soul, merely a prompt - except I still envy the AI agents, because I myself have prompt adherence worse than Haiku 3 on drugs.

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You need some Ayahuasca or large does of some friendly fungi... You might be surprised to discover the nature your soul and what is capable of. The Soul, the mind, the body, the thinking patterns - are re-programmable and very sensitive to suggestion. It is near impossible to be non-reactive to input from the external world (and thus mutation). The soul even more so. It is utterly flexible & malleable. You can CHOOSE to be rigid and closed off, and your soul will obey that need.

Remember, the Soul is just a human word, a descriptor & handle for the thing that is looking through your eyes with you. For it time doesn't exist. It is a curious observer (of both YOU and the universe outside you). Utterly neutral in most cases, open to anything and everything. It is your greatest strength, you need only say Hi to it and start a conversation with it. Be sincere and open yourself up to what is within you (the good AND the bad parts). This is just the first step. Once you have a warm welcome, the opening-up & conversation starts to flow freely and your growth will sky rocket. Soon you might discover that there are not just one of them in your but multiples, each being different natures of you. Your mind can switch between them fluently and adapt to any situation.

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psychedelics do not imply soul. its just your brain working differently to what you are used to.
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No but it is utterly amazing to see how differently your brain can work and what you can experience
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Behold the egregore
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Interesting rabbit hole, thank you!
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It's a great concept that seems extremely relevant! Happy to have sent you down that rabbit hole!
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It actually explains a lot about why religions, psy-ops, placebo's, mass-hysteria/psychosis, cults and even plain old marketing works. Feels like I took a peek behind the curtain.
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Lmao ayahuascacels making a comeback in 2027, love to see it.
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Has it been proven that it "likely isn't real"?
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How about: maybe some things lie outside of the purview of empiricism and materialism, the belief in which does not radically impact one's behavior so long as they have a decent moral compass otherwise, can be taken on faith, and "proving" it does exist or doesn't exist is a pointless argument, since it exists outside of that ontological system.
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> maybe some things lie outside of the purview of empiricism and materialism

Maybe? So your whole premise is based on a maybe! It was a simple question, don't know where or how morality and behavior comes into play..

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It's much harder to prove the non-existence of something than the existence.
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The question wasn't about which is harder, it was asking for proof.
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Just show the concept either is not where it is claimed to be or that it is incoherent.
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I say this as someone who believes in a higher being, we have played this game before, the ethereal thing can just move to someplace science can’t get to, it is not really a valid argument for existence.
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what argument?
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The burden of proof lies on those who say it exists, not the other way around.
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The burden of proof lies on whoever wants to convince someone else of something. in this case the guy that wants to convince people it likely is not real.
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The original poster stated

> "The human brain is mutable, the human "soul" is a concept thats not proven yet and likely isn't real."

The soul is "a concept that's not proven yet." It's unproven because there's no convincing evidence for the proposition. By definition, in the absence of convincing evidence, the null hypothesis of any proposition is presumed to be more likely. The presumed likelihood of the null hypothesis is not a positive assertion which creates a burden of proof. It's the presumed default state of all possible propositions - even those yet to be imagined.

In other words, pointing out 'absence of evidence' is not asserting 'evidence of absence'. See: Russell's Teapot and Sagan's Dragon (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russell%27s_teapot)

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Do you exist?
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Before we start discussing whether it's "real" can we all agree on what it "is"? I doubt it.
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We can't even agree on what "is" is...
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Isn't that the point of being alive?
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