Do different things + follow pareto laws = balance between experiencing self and remembering self

11/22/2024

Experiencing self and Remembering self

• Experiencing self is the you who is reading this right now, hello

• Remembering self is the internal model you have of yourself in any memory

  • the you 5 minutes or 5 years ago
  • I guess also can be described as the you now but in relation to how you view memories

Pareto

80% of consequences come from 20% of causes

Going to extend this here to wager that 80% of what your remembering self constructs comes from 20% of your experiencing self in any given moment

Remembering self doesn't treat all variables the same

Your remembering self has some funky tendencies. It remembers things like amplitude of an emotion more than duration.

Example: in an experiment where people held their hand in semi cold water for 2 minutes vs very cold water for some fraction of 2 minutes, people were more likely to remember the very cold water less favorably.

This goes by the term peak-end rule - since your remembering self assigns higher weights to the peak of an emotion and to the end of an event.

memory compression

Your remembering self also compresses memories. How many times do you go to the same grocery store in a given year? How much do you remember about the 4th time you went vs the 10th?

What about that time you were on vacation and you stepped into some foreign grocery store? I have a pretty decent recollection of the different grocery stores I've stepped into for a total of 5 minutes when I've visited different states/countries.

Hack your remembering self

Figure out how to feel present but also tune in with the observer within you and project that forward into the future. Then from the perspective of the projected-future-observer-you, observe your current experiencing self. This often helps for gaining some time-displaced self awareness.

Now that you're able to tune into your future remembering self in real-time, recognize which 20% of your experience your remembering self is likely to fixate on and optimize that.

The lowest hanging fruit I like to pick here:

• If I'm at an event -> and I believe the peak of the event has already passed -> and I'm ending on a good note -> but I'm dragging myself out to 'make it through the end' --> I realize I can just leave and it'll be all the same to my remembering self

• Seek out different experiences to mitigate memory compression

  • Go to different restaurants rather than repeating old favorites
    • Even if the new one you try is worse than your tried and true favorite, it'll probably still be better for your remembering self
  • Trying to be better about this one currently - Travel to different places at different times of the year/in different years
    • Months where I traveled somewhere new stick out to me and even extends to memories in proximity to the trip
      • 'oh yeah that must've happened in like feb 2021 because that was right before I went to _____'

• If you're experiencing something shitty, but you're past the shittiest part, might be comforting to know that your remembering self won't remember current you as much, so you just gotta get through it

It is a bit odd. I like to focus on the present and allocate maximum mental ram on what I'm doing —

But I also feel the need to reconcile the fact that every moment floats away for my experiencing self and has the potential to persist foreverish for my remembering self.