"I gained this kind of reflectivity when I was barely able to even think and I did not know how to use it wisely. One of my first memories is relentlessly purging my early childhood personality shortly after I discovered how to perform the trick then panicking and rebuilding a new self any sort of stuff laying around. Still think that rampant self-modification left scars on my mind that are still there today. Emotional distance did increase the more I examined, altered and experimented with this and eventually caused some really painful side effects. Eek."

Yes, yes, yes.

I'm liking my analogy with "the Way" more and more. I was unsure about it at first.

This is an awesome and freaky topic.

"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."

Haha... this is indeed kind of weird to see. I am very familiar with this experience.

"Seriously I am mildly uncomfortable with even referring to myself as 'I' these days because I try to keep very careful record of which factors influence my mind and how they influence me and after I add all this up it seems pretty clear to me that I do not exist."

That's a great insight. Few people have this extreme maxed-out reflectivity. One person I think of is Michael Wilson.

It's actually hilarious in a kind of horrible way to watch people screw it up. Like having some extreme reflectivity but not maxing it out, or somehow it doesn't work right. Hard to explain, but I guess your example works:

"For most of my youth and teenage years I was this weird wanna-be artist anti-rationality, anti-science stereotype that was stuck in a sophistic nightmare for years. Luckily I can look back on that cringe in horror."

Kind of relates to what Jordan said:

"When I was a teenager I had a concept I referred to as "the double edged sword of apathy". It was precisely the concept that separating oneself from certain aspects of oneself (which at the time I called fostering apathy) is a destructive tool which can be either positive or negative. Care must be taken not to slice your own arm off."

" 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. "

That's not exactly how I would describe it. It's more like perfecting the Way. "If you speak overmuch of the Way you will not attain it." But if you totally ignore the Way, then you are just blasting off in the wrong direction.

"Jef, if you want to argue further here, I would suggest explaining just this one phrase "functional self-similarity of agency extended from the 'individual' to groups"."

I am very much appreciating your hard line here.

" Mathew C: "And the biggest threat, of course, is the truth that the self is not fundamentally *real*. When that is clearly seen, the gig is up."

Spot on. That is by far the biggest impasse I have faced anytime I try to convey a meta-ethics denying the very existence of the "singularity of self" in favor of the self of agency over increasing context. I usually to downplay this aspect until after someone has expressed a practical level of interest, but it's right there out front for those who can see it. "

I think you are misinterpreting things here. I would call it a false dichotomy.

"more recently, in preparing for the possibility that someone else may have to take over from me"

Why?

"I strongly suspect that a major part of science's PR problem in the population at large is people who instinctively believe that if knowledge is given away for free, it cannot be important."

FREE??? If only it were free...

So weird... This theme has been in my thoughts today and recently...