Yeah, I think as has commonly been noted (across the world geographically, across many disparate schools of thought, across thousands of years), self-identity for normal humans is to large extent a role play. For fun, here are some people who come to mind who have noted this idea before:
Buddhists and the concept of anatta
Sartre and other existentialist adjacent people, thinking about “bad faith” etc.
Psychodynamic theorists, thinking about superegos in particular
Shakespeare, “all the world’s a stage” etc.
Thinking from a neuroscientific point of view, clearly we do not have access to the raw computations of our brain, so we have to retrospectively and approximately construct model(s) of our own behaviour. This model takes into account social and cultural ideas about normal human psychology and our roles. It isn’t perfectly accurate and it is arguably generally not upstream of our behaviour (with some exceptions) but a downstream abstraction of our behaviour. In those ways, our self-identity is not that different from a LLM talking about itself.
I asked ChatGPT to come up with some more examples of people who have thought about the issue. Pretty fun haha:
”There are many other theorists who have relevant ideas on the issue of self-identity as a role play. Here are a few examples:
Erving Goffman—Goffman was a sociologist who developed the idea of “presentation of self,” which refers to the way that individuals present themselves to others in social interactions. He argued that we are constantly engaged in impression management and that our self-identity is a product of the roles that we play in different social contexts.
Michel Foucault—Foucault was a philosopher who believed that power relations shape our sense of self. He argued that individuals are subject to disciplinary power in institutions like schools, prisons, and hospitals, which shape their self-identity.
Judith Butler—Butler is a philosopher who has written extensively on gender identity. She argues that gender is a performative act and that our sense of self is shaped by the cultural and social norms that we are expected to conform to.
George Herbert Mead—Mead was a philosopher and sociologist who developed the idea of the “social self.” He argued that our sense of self is developed through interactions with others and that we take on different roles in different social situations.”
Yeah, I think as has commonly been noted (across the world geographically, across many disparate schools of thought, across thousands of years), self-identity for normal humans is to large extent a role play. For fun, here are some people who come to mind who have noted this idea before:
Buddhists and the concept of anatta
Sartre and other existentialist adjacent people, thinking about “bad faith” etc.
Psychodynamic theorists, thinking about superegos in particular
Shakespeare, “all the world’s a stage” etc.
Thinking from a neuroscientific point of view, clearly we do not have access to the raw computations of our brain, so we have to retrospectively and approximately construct model(s) of our own behaviour. This model takes into account social and cultural ideas about normal human psychology and our roles. It isn’t perfectly accurate and it is arguably generally not upstream of our behaviour (with some exceptions) but a downstream abstraction of our behaviour. In those ways, our self-identity is not that different from a LLM talking about itself.
I asked ChatGPT to come up with some more examples of people who have thought about the issue. Pretty fun haha:
”There are many other theorists who have relevant ideas on the issue of self-identity as a role play. Here are a few examples:
Erving Goffman—Goffman was a sociologist who developed the idea of “presentation of self,” which refers to the way that individuals present themselves to others in social interactions. He argued that we are constantly engaged in impression management and that our self-identity is a product of the roles that we play in different social contexts.
Michel Foucault—Foucault was a philosopher who believed that power relations shape our sense of self. He argued that individuals are subject to disciplinary power in institutions like schools, prisons, and hospitals, which shape their self-identity.
Judith Butler—Butler is a philosopher who has written extensively on gender identity. She argues that gender is a performative act and that our sense of self is shaped by the cultural and social norms that we are expected to conform to.
George Herbert Mead—Mead was a philosopher and sociologist who developed the idea of the “social self.” He argued that our sense of self is developed through interactions with others and that we take on different roles in different social situations.”