> a narrative machine that creates who we are using words.
That's a really interesting thought that I'll have to spend some more time with. It makes me think of an experiment I heard about[0] with people who had lobotomies. The split brain leads to one side having verbal facilities, and each side having one eyeball sensory perception. They showed the non-verbal eyeball a sign that said something like "stand up", and most patients did. When then asked why they stood up, they had unrelated answers, like "my legs were stiff". So the idea that we just create narratives as post-hoc explanations of our actions is pretty compelling.
[0] I really wish I could find the reference to the experiment, but my google-fu is failing me and I don't recall where I read about it.
That's a really interesting thought that I'll have to spend some more time with. It makes me think of an experiment I heard about[0] with people who had lobotomies. The split brain leads to one side having verbal facilities, and each side having one eyeball sensory perception. They showed the non-verbal eyeball a sign that said something like "stand up", and most patients did. When then asked why they stood up, they had unrelated answers, like "my legs were stiff". So the idea that we just create narratives as post-hoc explanations of our actions is pretty compelling.
[0] I really wish I could find the reference to the experiment, but my google-fu is failing me and I don't recall where I read about it.