Transformation: In a Moment & Forever
Introduction: Vampire Dilemma
It is practically undeniable that people grow and change — are transformed — because of their life experiences. According to the philosophy professor Laurie (L.A.) Paul, some experiences, life-changing experiences, result in so much transformation that we can neither know how that experience will change us nor remember how we were before the transformation:
We’re going to pretend that modern-day vampires don’t drink the blood of humans; they’re vegetarian vampires, which means they only drink the blood of humanely farmed animals. You have a one-time-only chance to become a modern-day vampire. You think, “This is a pretty amazing opportunity, do I want to gain immortality, amazing speed, strength, and power? But do I want to become undead, become an immortal monster and have to drink blood? It’s a tough call.” Then you go around asking people for their advice and you discover that all of your friends and family members have already become vampires. They tell you, “It is amazing. It is the best thing ever. It’s absolutely fabulous. It’s incredible. You get these new sensory capacities. You should definitely become a vampire.” Then you say, “ Can you tell me a little more about it?” And they say, “You have to become a vampire to know what it’s like. You can’t, as a mere human, understand what it’s like to become a vampire just by hearing me talk about it. Until you’re a vampire, you’re just not going to know what it’s going to be like.” — L.A. PAUL
What Dr. Paul posited was the human experience of transformation, specifically, the dilemma of life-changing transformations, that is:
The question you need to ask yourself is how could you possibly make a rational decision about whether or not to become a vampire? You don’t know, and you can’t know what it’s like. You can’t know what you’d be choosing to do if you became a vampire, and you can’t know what you’re missing if you pass it up. — L.A. PAUL
Basically, Paul states that we both cannot predict or reflect on our feelings about choosing to go through a transformative experience or who we will be after or reflect on who were before a transformative experience.* It’s as if we have traded an old self for a new one — become an entirely different person.
*(Technically, Paul says that others who have already transformed into the future identity we are considering could not provide a perspective that would reflect a best decision for the person we are today, but I’d argue it’s the same.)
Introduction: Hot-Cold Empathy Gap
What isn’t as intuitive is that particular before and after states can put you into such different frames of mind that you still cannot understand the “other” person you were or understand how this “other” person came to the thoughts and feelings they held previously. George Loewenstein, a professor of psychology and economics, noticed this phenomenon when running a study where he had subjects predict if they could submerge their hand in ice-water for a minute: He found that 1) most people overestimated how long they could keep their hands in the water 2) despite failing the task the first time, proceeded to overestimate their abilities a second time after being asked again later. This phenomenon became known as the hot-cold empathy gap.
Prior research has shown that people mispredict their own behavior and preferences across affective states. When people are in an affectively “cold” state, they fail to fully appreciate how “hot” states will affect their own preferences and behavior. When in hot states, they underestimate the influence of those states and, as a result, overestimate the stability of their current preferences. The same biases apply interpersonally; for example, people who are not affectively aroused underappreciate the impact of hot states on other people’s behavior. — George Loewenstein
The hot-cold empathy gap affects how we view both ourselves and others; I will focus on the former. Loewenstein’s research demonstrated that we make different decisions and predicting different outcomes depending on one’s emotional state, which can lead to consequential outcomes:
Usually when we think about empathy, we think about how we relate to other people. George’s insight is that we regularly lack empathy for ourselves when we are in a different emotional state. When we’re angry, we can’t imagine being calm. When we are tranquil, it’s hard to imagine being so angry that we could hurt someone. The hot-cold empathy gap can also be caused by physiological states. When we are really hungry, all our resolutions about healthy eating evaporate. When we are full, it’s easy to forget what it felt like to be hungry. We imagine that we will stick to salads the next day. The hot and cold in the hot-cold empathy gap are a shorthand. — Shankar Vedantam
Note how similar the consequences of transformative experiences (not being able to imagine what it’s like to be a different version of yourself) and hot/cold states (failing to imagine how you will behave in different emotional states) are. To me, this implies that if you were able to successfully revert back to being a human after being a vampire, you will have a completely different outlook on that first transformative experience and wonder why you ever thought any of the “perks” of being a vampire appealed to you. Without embodied memory of the context that made you the person you were, the decisions and thought made at the time are unknowable.
Possible Objections
I can imagine some folks will point out that a change in identity is not the same as a change in emotional state. For one, the former constitutes a fundamental ie. “transformative” change while the latter does not. It is true that emotions change frequently, even within a single day (or hour for that matter). I don’t think this detail matters though. If anything, the fact that one can become so different from the effects of fleeting emotional states demonstrates that people are more susceptible to ignorance and apathy than they believe.
Why I’m Thinking About This
I personally don’t believe anything is impossible. I don’t think any event can be so transformative as to prevent someone from returning to their old self. Rather, it’s just difficult to become exactly the same person one used to be; probability-wise, it’s just more likely one would “revert” to a flavor of their former self.
Paul and Loewenstein both eloquently explain the real-world consequences of their phenomenon of focus; I recommend reading what they have to say in the sources. For me, I find it humbling and troubling that we humans are likely to find ourselves, maybe even beating ourselves over, some decision or action that makes us think, “I don’t remember why I did that. I don’t know what I was thinking.” And repeatedly!
The takeaway is we change, through long-term transformation and short-term fluctuations, and these changes come with different thoughts and behaviors. One of the best pieces advice I’ve heard that can help us cope with this shortcoming was:
Don’t be so hard on yourself about a regretful past, believing you could have done better. More likely than not, you did the best you could with what you knew.
The thoughts, and feelings, we had in a moment that have led to our current self and current decisions. There was no better decision, no “should’ve” we should agonize over.
