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Comment by phantom_oracle | Hacker News Reader

> Politics, like religion, is a topic where there's no threshold of expertise for expressing an opinion. All you need is strong convictions.

What I don't get is who/what determines a threshold?

A university degree? 10 years of experience?

As others have rightly pointed out, perhaps there is no such thing as a "threshold of expertise". Any programmer could have 10 years of experience repeatedly cookie-cutting their beginner-level code and never going beyond that. Does that give them the right to be called/known as JavaScript-Ninjas?

Perhaps Grahams identity leans towards anti-establishment/anti-religion/hacker-think, which by proxy of his argument, makes him partisan towards those opinions about religion and politics (see how the snake eats its own tail here?).

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People determine the threshold themselves. Most people won't join in conversations about science or math topics unless they feel like they have a solid grasp of what is being discussed (relative to those around them). However, almost everyone feels like they have valid points to make on religious and political topics regardless of how well educated they are on those topics.

"Identity" in most psychological context generally refers to how a person perceives themselves. It's personal; there is no threshold. You can identify as The Greatest JavaScript Master of All Time and no one can do anything but disagree.

The way I read it, that's precisely the danger this essay is warning about.

When you start identifying as a "JavaScript Developer" you are making JavaScript development a part of who you are. Anything about JavaScript becomes personal. You expose yourself to attacks that aren't even being directed at you. The bigger you inflate your identity the more get hit, until eventually you can't hold a conversation without getting offended about something.

If you can keep these things out of your identity it is much easier to shrug off other opinions about them. You can stay objective and have meaningful conversations about the benefits and consequences of it. Because it's just a thing, it does its thing and gives you something to think about when it doesn't.

Identity is personal: Identity is what you choose to care about. Some things should become part of your identity. Studies find that in most successful relationships partners see each other as part of their own identity. But most things probably don't belong there.

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