Tom_McCabe2 comments on Which Parts Are "Me"? - Less Wrong

30 Post author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 22 October 2008 06:15PM

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Comment author: Tom_McCabe2 23 October 2008 02:41:12AM 2 points [-]

"As far as my childhood goes I created a lot of problems for myself by trying to force myself into a mold which conflicted strongly with the way my brain was setup."

"It's interesting that others have shared this experience, trying to distance ourselves from, control, or delete too much of ourselves - then having to undo it. I hadn't read of anyone else having this experience, until people started posting here."

For some mysterious reason, my younger self was so oblivious to the world that I never experienced (to my recollection) a massive belief system rewrite. I assume that what you're referring to is learning a whole bunch of stuff, finding out later on that it's all wrong, and then go back and undoing it all. I don't think I ever learned the whole bunch of stuff in the first place- eg., when I discovered atheism, I didn't really have an existing Christian belief structure that had to be torn down. I knew about Jesus and God and the resurrection and so forth, but I hadn't really integrated it into my head, so when I discovered atheists, I just accepted their arguments as true and moved on.