Comments on: The illusion of consistency

By: hellblazer

hellblazer — Tue, 08 Jan 2013 04:13:13 +0000

Dmitri at 40, see JSE (ahem) at 18.

By: PatrickinIowa

PatrickinIowa — Mon, 07 Jan 2013 18:23:53 +0000

Tony, at #38. Not an analytic philosopher, at all. (One of the things that I mark as a major change since my college years FWIW.)

Still, thanks for the reason to read Parfit someday. And thanks for the reference. I intend to read it, but who knows?

By: Katherine

Katherine — Mon, 07 Jan 2013 16:48:16 +0000

But it’s also when you really, really don’t want a b-grade artist doing the work…

You’ve not truly experienced the uncanny valley until you’ve seen a badly done human face tattoo. A particularly dadly drawn Mel Gibson As Mad Max will never fade from my memory. Shudder.

By: Harald Korneliussen

Harald Korneliussen — Mon, 07 Jan 2013 15:40:52 +0000

Somebody might want to promote that Qumodoque article (that has been linked twice in comments now) to the body of this post – it’s really a more interesting read than the original article.

By: Nick

Nick — Mon, 07 Jan 2013 14:34:34 +0000

FWIW though, the only tattoos I really like are of people. There’s something so uncannily lifelike about a human face drawn on a 3D canvas of actual living skin. But it’s also when you really, really don’t want a b-grade artist doing the work…

By: Nick

Nick — Mon, 07 Jan 2013 14:32:46 +0000

Kind of getting off-topic, but I’m intrigued by the idea of the *me* tattoo.

Once upon a time they denoted the group (the tribe, the crew of a ship, the soldiers in a unit overseas, your mother or your children who passed).

Post-modernity strikes again?

(Tip to those thinking of getting a tattoo – spend your money on a good haircut instead!)

By: Phil

Phil — Mon, 07 Jan 2013 12:45:19 +0000

There’s a very fine line between “this is so *me*! it’s great!” and “oh God, that’s so *me*…” – not to mention “that was so me”, “was that really me?” and “honesty compels me to admit that was me”. Which is why I’ve never got a tattoo, and in fact why I’ve never got an iPod – a few years ago I had the perfect quote lined up for the free engraving, when I fell into a (mostly exogenous) depression and the first sentiment above flipped into the second. Maybe I’ll just get my name on it (although that really would be *me*…).

By: Jim Buck

Jim Buck — Mon, 07 Jan 2013 08:42:54 +0000

Frith Street Tattoo ( opposite Ronnie Scott’s) is the place to see how futile attempts to black out the past can be. Everyone who works out front is heavily decorated; and many also sport big patches of ink-black skin—-presumably censoring a souvenir of someone’s past incompetency; tattoos rashly enacted are heavily redacted.

By: Greg

Greg — Mon, 07 Jan 2013 08:11:10 +0000

The expectation of possible, if not probable regret is weirdly built in to the experience of getting a tattoo. When I got my single tattoo at age 19 it was at least partly in order to give future me a permanent reminder to get over myself.

Committing to a tattoo is a pretty existential moment. When the needle’s inked and the hairy bloke looks you in the eye and says “ready?”, you have to face up to the fact that the version of you that’s sitting there in the chair hoping that this is a good idea, will soon simply not exist. And you have to be OK with that.

By: Jim Buck

Jim Buck — Mon, 07 Jan 2013 08:05:06 +0000

Forget that tenner you say I borrowed off you. Whoever that was has moved away; it was not me.

By: Meredith

Meredith — Mon, 07 Jan 2013 05:51:05 +0000

One thing I admire about tattoos is their courageous Dasein.

By: clew

clew — Mon, 07 Jan 2013 04:36:04 +0000

“I wish I were what I was when I wanted to be what I am now.”

By: Andrew C

Andrew C — Mon, 07 Jan 2013 04:12:14 +0000

I realised about 2 years ago that I was still listening to music from my teens (70s) and not enjoying it at all. I downloaded a couple of thousand songs from one of those sites where musicians put up their songs freely (betterpropaganda in this case, plus others), put this massive playlist of music running through my headphones at work for months. Did not skip music I didn’t like either.

After 2 years, I love rap and hip-hop, French disco and black metal, obscure indie American and Canadian bands, dreamy jangle-pop, African popular music, electronic, ambient, industrial, Deftones, Debussy, Jelly-Roll Morton, art, art-rock, post-industrial…and when I listen to led Zeppelin or Queen I cry with boredom ( perversely I’m fond of disco which at the time I hated).

Long story short, you can indeed change your musical tastes, by simple constant exposure to difference. Presumably, a lot of our personal quirks (that we fondly call our “personalities”) are equally malleable.

By: Dmitri

Dmitri — Mon, 07 Jan 2013 02:26:46 +0000

It’s possible that there’s a math mistake at the root of all this, see

http://quomodocumque.wordpress.com/2013/01/05/do-we-really-underestimate-how-much-well-change-or-absolute-value-is-not-linear/

By: Hermenauta

Hermenauta — Mon, 07 Jan 2013 00:23:36 +0000

Actually _ now I remember _ this is a long standing debate in psychology:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Person-situation_debate