Your Goal Is Mine: Unraveling Mimetic Desires in the Human Brain

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EMJ
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Post by EMJ »

"Mimetic desire is more than jealously wanting something because someone else has it. Rather, it’s about valuing something because someone else values it. And it’s pretty easy to transmit the value. Just writing about Person A’s activities and habits and showing it to Person B will make Person B start to think Person A must have seen something good about the Toyota Camry…maybe his next car…"
http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/sci ... ic-desire/


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Ego
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Post by Ego »

This is interesting. The mirror neurons involved in mimetic desire are also the same neurons involved with both empathy and the Theory of Mind. The Theory of Mind is the process of interpreting another persons beliefs, desires and state of mind from their behaviors and experiences. It's a theory because you can't actually see or measure their mind.
A psychopath understands other peoples thoughts (Theory of Mind) but feels no emotion in relation them (empathy).
Self-regulation, the ability to control emotions and behavior, is learned from parents in conjunction with empathy.
We EREers are very good at self-regulation and delayed gratification. We do not succumb to the whims of the vicarious emotional response and do not want something simply because someone else wants it. We have the positive characteristics of a psychopath...HAH! We can see into the minds of others and know that they are motivated by mimetic desire but we do not feel the empathic reaction that fires off our own mimetic desires.
Very strange.


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jennypenny
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Post by jennypenny »

So we're successful at ERE because our brains don't work the way they're supposed to?


jacob
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Post by jacob »

It's more because ERE mirrors the behavior into something else because of a different understanding/mapping of what's going on.
Compare chapter 2 (the alternative mapping) of the ERE book with any given normal career/persona finance advice. They describe the same thing but from two different angles.
The value systems are also different.
To give an example, I find it quite challenging to "go and check out the little shops in the mall"---something that's a favorite activity of many people. Entering a shop, I wonder what I'm doing there? What possible interests could the stuff in there hold for me? Why would I want to buy inferior consumer stuff? Why would I want to pay in such an inefficient manner? Why would I even want to buy something in the first place?
Interestingly enough, the transition from avid window shopper took about 6 months. It wasn't instantaneous.


secretwealth
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Post by secretwealth »

Good example. I don't like window shopping, but I do like watching people shopping. I think, "why are people buying this?" and try to figure out how the market works. Thus, I love going to shopping centers but for different reasons. I think investors think this way--the stock market is all about predicting what people want to buy, after all.


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Ego
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Post by Ego »

Whose to say how brains are "supposed" to work? Characteristics that made us stronger/fitter five-hundred years ago may now be the ultimate cause of someone's undoing. Perhaps back then our unwillingness (inability?) to go along with the herd may have caused us to be shunned our tribe.
The world is changing fast.
Jacob, where you mirroring someone else when you stumbled upon ERE or did you simply have goals and find the most logical path to them?


jacob
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Post by jacob »

@Ego - As I tried to describe in the book, I believe the world is too random to have goals. Instead the aim is to increase possibilities and resilience. (In more stable eras, having goals and ignoring risk makes sense.) ERE is more "how things turned out" after studying various sources. In particular, I suspect I'm heavily influenced by my personality/temperament. So ERE is an INTJ's view of the following:
Early sources were

verdant.net (anticonsumerism)

peak oil (especially dieoff.org and the running on empty and energyresources yahoo groups)

http://www.relfe.com/plus_5_.html (reserve banking and what turned me off mortgages)

financialsense.com (austrian permabears)

dollarstretcher

RDPD's Cash flow quadrant (the idea of making money with money)

The idea of life-energy from YMOYL (I didn't read the book itself until much later)

Ran Prieur
I get ideas from lots of different sources and combine them in ways that make sense to me. Sometimes I expand on the ideas too. One thing I use often is analogies, that is, find the fundamental structure behind something, then find something from a different field with a similar structure and then bring ideas from one field to another. Another is to find fundamental dimensions, e.g. something can be scribed by x and y. Then typically three quadrants are well described, but the fourth isn't. Then I use the dimensions to speculate on what the fourth would look like.
Most of the organizing was done while I was writing the book. The various laws and observations were developed into a theory.


Stahlmann
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Re: Your Goal Is Mine: Unraveling Mimetic Desires in the Human Brain

Post by Stahlmann »

how about adding this to the ideas in this topic?
https://blog.krolartur.com/zycie-prawdopodobienstwo/
(possible to google translate it)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KEXP5tDitv8

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fiby41
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Re: Your Goal Is Mine: Unraveling Mimetic Desires in the Human Brain

Post by fiby41 »

Tamas says your ____ is mine and my ____ is also mine.
Rajas says my ____ is mine and your ____ is yours only.
Sattva says your ____ is yours and my ____ is yours too.

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