Comment by falcor84

Comment by falcor84 2 days ago

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.

TeMPOraL 2 days ago

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).

Reply View 17 replies

acessoproibido 2 days ago

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

Reply View | 11 replies
- TeMPOraL 2 days ago
  
  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".
  
  Reply View | 10 replies
  
  acessoproibido 2 days ago
  
  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
  
  Reply View | 0 replies
  
  kortex 2 days ago
  
  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.
  
  Reply View | 5 replies
  
  metadat 2 days ago
  
  You appear to have successfully formed the habit of posting on Hacker News frequently, isn't this a starting place? :)
  
  Reply View | 1 reply
  
  TeMPOraL a day ago
  
  Touché.
  Maybe instead of fighting it, I should build on it. Thanks!
  
  Reply View | 0 replies
  
  breakpointalpha 2 days ago
  
  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.
  
  Reply View | 0 replies
joquarky 2 days ago

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.

Reply View | 0 replies
heavyset_go a day ago

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.

Reply View | 0 replies
fmbb 2 days ago

The agents are also not able to set up their own rules. Humans can mutate their souls back to whatever at will.

Reply View | 1 reply
- TeMPOraL 2 days ago
  
  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.
  
  Reply View | 0 replies
keybored 2 days ago

What’s the plasticity of thinking of yourself as a machine.

Reply View | 0 replies