Otto Kretschmer

This specific way of reacting to feelings of humiliation clearly exists in the population, it wasn't swept out by either natural or sexual selection. The second one is particularly odd since a relationship with a narcissist is literally a nightmare.

Change your tone. I simply used the first word that came to my mind, I have no will to spend half an hour on perfecting the OP so it sounds properly. I have other, more pleasant things to do.

It's existence makes no sense to me. Narcissitm is a reaction to having a fragile, insecure ego full of shame, the organism reacts by building a grandiose false ego that then tries to bury the fragile true one as deep as possible. But why precisely does such a bizarre process take place? Why invent such a messy, flawed psychological solution when simply dialing up the activity in the Prefrontal Cortex (to dampen the overactive amygdala) would be enough? The individual in question would end up being much more resilient and at the same time dramatically less toxic to other people in their environment.

Yes, I am a materialist, although I consider most religious beliefs harmless at least. When it comes to promoting scientific thinking, a certain British gentleman is both much more motivated and much more skilled at this than I am. 😀

Recently I debated Buddhists and Hindus about certain metaphysical beliefs of theirs. I have great respect for both religions and their self-cultivation methods, I just disagree with the supernatural stuff. Their key argument was that my skepticism is meaningless because science was wrong before and when the germ theory was created, scientists initially rejected it (which is largely true). How would you guys counter it? Those two discussiosn were the first time I've debated religionists for over a decade.

@TheVat Farewell. @Phi for All or @swansont this thread should be closed.

Regarding the OP: ... Nothing. A truly omniscient God would possess the knowledge of all possible universes, including ones he did not create and ones he has no power over. Regardless of how many universes he converts to his faith, there is always going to be infinite number of universes populated by entities that don't worship him.

This statement is true but ultimately quite meaningless - medicine is flawed too, yet if you had pneumonia, you would very much prefer it to be treated by modern antibiotics than by bloodletting. Yes, people are flawed but some are vastly more flawed than others. The core fact stands - I am not willing to put any work into my personality improvement. Not even a nanosecond. I don't want to put any amount of effortful work. And I don't want to want. What I want is completely effortless self-reincarnation with memories of my old self being kept as abstract data with no emotional weight.

To elaborate - I'd like to live in a world in which people would read about SSRIs and say: "Did people really try to cure themselves with this!? Did they really think that increasing serotonin level all across the brain in order to cure some vague, unspecific "depression" is going to work? It's so bizarre, it's like trying to charge an EV by throwing lightning strikes at it, just ridiculous!" I'd love to use technology to transform myself into a functionally different person - no more similar to my old self than a genetically unrelated individual. And I'd like to look at my old self with zero emotional baggage, no more sad or ashamed than a typical person is about the fact they once didn't have a driver's licence. This is a degree of change no drug or therapist of 2025 AD can offer to me and I cannot ofer it to myself either.

Right - But @Phi for All's analogy makes sense from the point of view of current psychiatry. By 2040-45 current methods will likely be as obsolete as [rescribing "fresh air" for tuberculosis is today. It's this future psychiatry that I'd like to use.

@TheVat @Phi for All I would try the currently available methods (psychotherapy, mindfulness etc.) but I am not sure of the results, the structural and functional abnormalities in my brain might be too severe for the currently available methods to be effective, I might as well put a lot of work for essentially nothing. If effective (proven) neuromodulation techniques were available, I would need just enough willpower to sit down and have a beam blasted at my skull.

I never choose my personality, hence I am under no obligation to work on improving it. The method of change has to: Work. Not require any effort on my part (people who need a heart surgery don't have to do surgery on themselves and people with infections don't have to consciously fight the infection so people with mental health issues shouldn't be required to put any effort either) Be effective regardless of my will (it should work even if I absolutely didn't want it to work)

I'm asking for two reasons: 1. Neuromodulation is a fast developing field. 10 years from now it should be completely mainstream and used for a myriad of psychiatric issues 2. This matter is of personal relevance to me (due to my low affective empathy) I am not well versed in this topic but I do know that affective empathy involves the Anterior Cingulate Cortex, the Anterior Insula and some part of the Prefrontal Cortex but I can't say which one. Advanced neuromodulation will be (in the next 10-15 years) a perfect toll for me if it works since it has the potential of causing significant personality changes without me having to do any kind of work. With regards.

Note that just because someone with Antisocial PD is not a violent criminal doesn't mean they're harmless - in corporate environment they cause massive losses to both companies and workers alike, for various reasons - increased risk taking, corruption/fraud, lower shareholder trust, poor mental health of workers due to toxic work environment etc.

The issue with ASPD folks is that they simply don't feel broken at all. Humans need to feel bad becuase of their actions in order to feel the need for change, ASPD people don't feel that. This is due to two things: Their amygdala is severely underactive. This causes a profound lack of fear, sadness, guilt, remorse etc. The amygdala-PFC connection is broken, causing an inability to learn from mistakes and punishment.

Introversion-extraversion is not about being shy but about where one draws energy from - introverts are energized by solitude and their internal life, extraverts are energized by social interaction and general interaction with the outside world. Since the distribution is Gaussian, the most common type are actually ambiverts who can draw energy from both.

Genetics is not the whole thing, there is also epigenetics which is how genes are expressed - and I am interested in how exactly culture and upbringing influences this. As a somewhat extreme example, people with PTSD don't have their genome changed by trauma, the genome remains the same but the epigenetics changes.

Fortunately, I would not put anyone through this even if I could despite my own flawed personality. As a side note, psychodelics interest me a lot, especially their long term positive effects on personality.

(The following is a purely hypothetical scenario) What about subjecting an extrovert to 10-12 months of NKVD level torture? A year of unimaginable suffering that one has no way to escape and being flooded with extreme levels of cortisol all the time would profoundly reshape even the most jolly fellow. Their reward system would become practically dead and they would live overwhelmingly in their internal world. They would be, for all practical purposes, an introvert.

Can it be patched online for free? Any docu from BBC is worth it.

I am not aware of any studies specifically about population level personality differences. Thus, I consider the evidence to be merely anecdotal in nature. :)

Anectodal evidence at least suggest that differences in personality exist even at national level - famously, southern Europeans (Italians, Spaniards, Greeks etc.) are known to be loud and talkative while Nordics (Danes, Norwegians, Swedes, Finns, Icelanders) are known to be reserved, less sociable and more direct in their communication style, though the evidence is just anectodal AFAIK.

By the way, some conscious genetic sculpting of society is already taking place, albeit at an earlier stage - in Denmark genetic screening for Down syndrome is universal and over 90% of embryos with Down syndrome are aborted. This might expand to other disorders in the future.

"Was running" or "had been running", not "has been running" since he no longer runs anything.

Harrop's main point is not to make FMT available right now for everyone as some kind of super treatment but to make researchers use better donors in trials, with @SFBayFMT5 pointing out the caveeats of his approach.