Do Leopards Really not Change their Spots?

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NOG,

Of course a couple of examples of static personalities don't *prove* anything. They are just examples of how this issue looks from my perspective.

We obviously have different perspectives on leopards and their spots. Anytime you have to *work* at any behavior it is not natural to you and thus is not representative of your 'spots'. No leopard has ever worked at his spot configuration.

A leopard does not change his spots. He can work and change his behavior. (much respect to anyone who can endeavor to change his behavior for a higher cause than his own well being)

I don't 'seem' to link natural (unintentional, relaxed) behavior with what we are...I intentionally equate them. It is what we are...it is our 'spots'. If you transcend your 'spots' through sheer will despite your 'spots' then take full credit for transcending your 'spots'...I applaud you...but don't aver that you have *changed*.

You don't know that there is no genetic configuration that leads to being a thief or a bum...so don't state such...no one knows yet, although I suspect that there are genetic predispositions so strong as to be an insistence to behave as what you are. (your genes determining what you are and thus who you are)

Lastly, don't label anything I type as a cop-out, I don't cop out, I don't approve of cop outs, and don't accept cop outs. If you think I am offering a cop out, then you don't don't understand what it is that I am saying. I would appreciate this courtesy from you.

 

Fair enough, though I generally consider any genetic arguement that isn't backed by hard evidence to be little more than a child's excuse. You're right that I don't know there aren't such genetic factors, though I consider their existence about as likely as pink space unicorns, simply because every society on Earth has thieves and bums, and the numbers of them seem much more dependant on the availability of wealth and the uneven distribution of it than on any kind of breeding factors.

Here's the real thing, and here I think we may have miscommunicated. For one thing, I see natural behavior as still being a psychological product, not a genetic or organic one. They're like habits that we get into as very small children, and habits can be changed, but it takes work. Once changed, however, and often replaced with a new habit, the change is lasting, and doesn't need work to maintain it any more. In fact, it is changing back to the old habit that would require work. All psychological evidence so far (and, to be fair, it's still coming in) tells us that almost all aspects of human psychology are socialized, meaning learned from other humans. If you adopt a child from one race and raise it in the culture of another, it learns all the social aspects of the new culture, without presenting any of the old. Now, it has yet to be established how fixed those factors are, but if they are like habits, then they can be changed, and the act of changing takes work.

 

Your Self is an open-ended system that responds to the environment and evolves over time, and just like biological evolution you cannot go back and re-design the fundamental adaptations that have been made in response to the environmental pressures. Who you are is sort of analogous to a mobius strip, or like when you hold up a mirror infront of another mirror and see a cascade of reflections, since the environment that shapes your Self is not only external, but is also internal as well. I wouldnt go so far as saying that you are born a blank-slate, babies are definitely not blank-slates and have their own personalities present from an early age. I do think that the Self is closely connected with pure consciousness, as in awareness of the environment, which even bacteria display. Perhaps an emmergent property of self-organization maybe???

 

Hah, Nataraja, you are moving well beyond what the science can ascertain. Not to say that you're wrong, but rather that we have no idea if you're right or not.

I would beg to differ on one point, though, and that is that you can't undo past developments. While it's true that you will always have had that development, and the changes it caused can never be entirely undone (ripple effect and all), it is also true that, at least in part, we guide and choose our own development path, and are able to guide it in such a way to counter or even undo certain developments. This is exactly what is done in habbit replacement techniques as well as phobia-aversion therapies. Now, how deeply those particular features go into the "self" or the "personality", we don't know.

 

Yeah I dont know either. I studied cognitive science from a philosophical perspective for a number of years, so the ideas are still in the open. When I did study it at my university it was purely biological, and as the lecturer said 'its for people who love animals more than computers'. Since then it has change to include a lot of computing content, and that has put me off. But, basically what I said is what I got out of studying cognitive science from a philosophical perspective.

 

Hmmm...seems that I have had a personality change. I used to be INFP, but now I am ISTP...strange that...

 

Congratulations. Does this mean you've grown up some?

 

Could be, could be...

INFP is 'The Idealist', which sums me up as a teenager, I was an activist and a rebel, always protesting this and that, had strong feelings about things and deep concerns. Typical hippy guy trying to save the planet and all that.

ISTP is 'The Mechanic', which is interesting because its how I used to be prior to being a teenager. I used to be the kind that would spend all summer either playing with Lego or pulling apart various electronic or mechanical things to see how they worked. Only difference now is that I prefer pulling apart organisms and seeing how they work, technological things dont interest me much anymore. I do find it sad that once Ive pulled apart an organism down to its molecular level I cannot reassemble it, but Im working on changing that.

Hmm...so maybe I did grow up? Or did my personality change entirely? If I went from introverted to extroverted I would think so, but just changing from 'intuitive feeling' to 'thinking and sensing' is maybe isnt enough to qualify as this leopard changing his spots.

 

Since such tests are based on word association, your concept of the meaning behind the word changes slightly as you mature. I don't know of any test which is designed for young adults and so there would be greater error in the results. Based on that, I don't think it unusual to shift from feeling (F) to thinking (T) as you mature -- not to say those people who stay feeling are immature (although my ex was, but we'll not go down that dark and sordid path...).

It is possible you are borderline for S and N -- you should check out INTP as well as ISTP.

 

Actually, if you used to be the "mechanic" type, and now are again, does that count as a regression? Or, since you've progressed to organic systems and accept the challenge of not being able to put them back together (yet), is that growth through regression? I'm just having fun here, there are so many possibilities!

All in all, I don't think that really counts as "changing your spots" as adjusting to the normal but significant changes of maturation. First, your body is flooded with tons of hormones that you've never had before, then the center of control in your brain starts to shift from the emotion center to the logic center, plus you're learning more and more about the world and starting to challenge accepted perspectives the whole time. Change is inevitable.

 

Well, I read up on INTP and it is not really who I am anymore either. I think I went through an INTP phase while I was a philosophy major. Im not sure if being a "mechanic" type as a child and being one again is maturing of sorts, it just feels like soul-searching for who I really am has taken me down many paths, and eventually I ended up where I was originally, just a lot more wiser. Ok...yes its growing up...so I just grew up, makes sense.

Still, I dont feel nearly 30...Im probably mentally still in my early 20s. Im kinda stuck in the 90s too...

Also Im basing all this on this questionare I did on Facebook, so I dont know how accurate it is. All I know is that when I was studying computer engineering back in the 00-01, we had to take personality profiles, and I was INFP, and I didnt like it, so later on I did it again and tried to be different, but I was INFP again. Eventually I accepted it, since I was still at the time a radical socialist hippy etc, full of passion and raw emotion. These days it takes a lot of pushing my buttons to get me to even be angry at someone or something. I think studying philosophy for 3 years helped me put things in perspective, and it also gave me an intense renewal of my passion for anything biological which I had somehow forgotten since I left high school.

Im not sure if peoples personalities do change, but I do think we mature as we get older, see things differently, and things mean different things to us as we get older. Like the music I listened to when I was a teenager made me think of 'raves', 'drugs', and 'dancing like mad all night'...these days I listen to it and think "OMG what was I thinking!?!". It was such immature music, but at the time it was totally where I was at.

 

Everytime I read the title of this thread I think it says shorts, not spots!

 

Of course they can. Common knowledge.