Kinda wanted to share this mostly because the ideas in it about the self were kinda jarring to me. THe notion of it being memory to think you are the same person as yesterday to this:
"Likewise, our very selves exist only retrospectively. The word “self” implies a coherence lacking in the pandemonium of the human psyche. “The I that has experiences is fictional, a model that the brain generates,” he says. The concept of self helps you make sense of what you have done but is not to be taken literally.
Knowing so little about ourselves, what hope have we for really knowing anyone else? “When we see somebody for the first time, we have a stereotype,” Bach says. “The stereotype is formed by similar people that we have met in the past, and from which we generalize. If it’s fine-tuned, it’s often largely accurate. When we get to know that person better, we don’t get to know them as themselves, but as a finer-grained stereotype. And it never stops.… We are all space aliens. We are all strangers pretending to be humans, even to ourselves.”"
The odd part is from his website he’s married and has kids which I find odd to square with his view of the self. I guess I’m just not sure what to think about it.