Keep Your Identity Small (2009)
paulgraham.com
paulgraham.com
I think the good version of this advice is: actively evaluate what is important to you and what you can do to maintain and further it. We are all involved, to one degree or another, in systems and processes larger than ourselves. By definition, our influence on those systems is limited - but we may be able to increase or decrease our influence through work and engagement. It's healthy to reflect on what you are investing your time and energy into and how those investments will impact your life. There is no single right or wrong answer - but you will benefit from forming an opinion!
It's unhealthy to falsely base your self-worth on giant political movements outside your control - but it's equally unhealthy to ignore the impact you experience from the issues of the day. Be reflective in how you associate yourself with things, but no one should pretend that they are not subject to the world (unless, it seems, you're at a "Paul Graham" level of wealth and independence).
Your "good version" doesn't really make sense to me, and seems to have nothing to do with what the article is about.
I frankly don't care that Graham is rich and influential and maybe has an easier time of controlling what he thinks of himself than other people do. "Keep things out of your identity" is useful advice, even if some people will unavoidably find that harder to do because of their social/economic status.
And I disagree that it applies to very few conversations. This can easily apply to the big stuff, like what some people are talking about in other threads on this post, when it comes to dealing with issues that affect marginalized groups. I think people like that are a fine example of when it can be hard to keep things out of your identity. As much as your identity (I prefer "core self-image", which I think is clearer) is your choice, often external factors will pressure you into choosing in certain ways. But I think it does harm discussions about those topics when people have made it such a core part of themselves that they can't see what kinds of persuasion other people would respond best to. I unfortunately see that sort of thing pretty often.
Put another way: yes, Graham is probably the kind of person for whom it is not hard to set his own identity without all that much outside pressure. He's rich and influential. Other people will get put into boxes and groups by others who are more powerful than they are. And these less-powerful people will have a harder time keeping those things from seeping into their own identities. But that doesn't change the (IMO) correctness of Graham's message that it is useful to resist that pressure, even if it's harder for some people to do so.
> I finally realized today why politics and religion yield such uniquely useless discussions. and If people can't think clearly about anything that has become part of their identity[...]
To view discussions where people get upset as "useless" reflects a certain hierarchy of the purposes of discussion and the goals of inquiry. The same is true for prioritizing the kind of impassioned discussions that Graham is talking about here. His advice is good (Paul Graham is not dumb!) if you feel the same way and value this kind of high minded dispassionate discussion.
Perhaps what I should have said is that I believe most people do not feel they suffer when they experience (and voice) the emotional weight of conversations. They suffer because they feel unseen and unheard in those conversations - the conflict is a symptom, not the disease. There's nothing wrong with wanting people to discuss things they care deeply about dispassionately - but there's nothing right about it either. It reflects a certain hierarchy of values and goals that are, again, "very Paul Graham." It sounds like those values are very you too! Which is fine!
This advice will make you better able to engage in the way that Paul Graham wants to engage! I certainly agree with that. But I do not think it is "better" in a particularly universal way.
Shouldn't we all value that type of discussion? After all, it's most likely to lead to the objectively correct answers to questions about facts, and optimal answers to questions about policies.
I'm visually impaired, to the point of being legally blind. Due to some kind of flaw in my development, my optic nerves didn't fully develop (optic nerve hypoplasia), so my visual acuity is far enough below normal that, for example, I can't drive a car, I can only read print up close unless it's huge, and I use a white cane (and often, let's be honest, a sighted guide) to get around in unfamiliar environments.
Should people like me exist? I think if it had been feasible in 1980 to detect the flaw in my development and abort me before my family could develop any emotional attachment to me, it would have been morally acceptable, and perhaps even optimal, to do so. Of course, that wasn't feasible back then, but if our technological development continues, it will be someday, and we, including people like me, will need to consider the moral question rationally, even dispassionately.
Of course, disabled people like me can live full, happy lives, and many do. But it's not guaranteed that we all will. Though my own circumstances are pretty good (in some ways, very fortunate), there are aspects of me, beyond the original impairment, that could objectively be considered suboptimal. There are totally blind people who are much better at navigating unfamiliar environments and living independently than I am. For whatever reasons, attempts to teach me those skills in my childhood and adolescence didn't work very well. To some extent it might even be my own fault. If I hadn't had the natural aptitude and curiosity for programming, and the privileged circumstances to be able to develop that skill (e.g. a family computer when I was 8 years old and ample leisure time for playing with it), I might be far worse off now. Considering how high unemployment is among working-age blind people, I got very lucky. Many of us, even in developed countries, are not so lucky.
In some ways I'm a walking stereotype. I'm musically talented, though I don't make my living from that. I do make my living from being a programmer working on accessibility for people like me. When I read Eric Raymond's "Why I Hate Identity Politics", I wish that my blindness were as incidental to my identity as his cerebral palsy is to his identity. Attempts in my childhood and adolescence to make me well-adjusted and well-rounded, i.e. "normal", weren't very successful. Of course, that could just mean I'm a nerd, but in some contexts, that could be considered an additional handicap.
Even those of us who have mastered all the right skills are often thwarted by gaps in accessibility. The assumption that everyone can see is everywhere. Correcting that assumption, and doing the hard work to make a UI accessible to disabled people, is a never-ending job. That may be job security for a few of us, as long as someone is willing or compelled to pay for it. But in the meantime, people fail to get a job, or even lose a job that they already had, due to an inaccessible application, or even a whole category of such applications. On a smaller scale, people are frequently frustrated while trying to accomplish simple tasks due to gaps in accessibility.
So, to get back to the loaded moral question I raised above, I think it stands to reason that, to modify a popular saying, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of training and accommodation.
Of course, for those of us that already exist, the latter is still necessary. How much accommodation we should require is another question, though. I'm willing to consider that, beyond a certain point, it's simply unreasonable to expect the whole rest of the world to accommodate a minority like the one that I belong to. I don't know where that cutoff point is, but I lean toward the view that our tools, such as screen readers, should do everything they can to adapt to the world as it is, rather than requiring everyone else to change the way they do things just for us.
Ultimately I think Paul was right and I think about this essay a lot. The best solution is to make as few things part of your identity as possible. For JS devs, that means you should be more willing to use a different framework from time to time or no framework at all. Decide what to use based on an objective assessment of what the right tool for the job is, not what's trendy in your tribe.
When I am not around, I have been described to people as "A DevOps guy" or "A Network Guy". People then treat me accordingly. But, being human (or an approximation thereof), I am not just one thing.
Obligatory Monty Python scene: https://youtu.be/KHbzSif78qQ
I just like to solve problems. Sometimes it's builds and deploys, sometimes it's the network, and sometimes it's the car in the driveway. Give me a few, I'll figure something out.
Nothing criminal, of course, but in the sense that I'll get the job done whatever it takes.
Many seem to be unable or unwilling to figure out anything that is outside of their happy path through the day.
Probably a bit cowardlike but people really love to put other people in boxes and for a lot of people working in tech means "oh so you're one of those super nerdy people that is naively optimistic about technology, is socially stunted, loves infantile pop culture and has zero sense of aesthetics" as an example.
And not that there is anything wrong with being that type of person (i also have some of those traits) there is very limited elasticity in peoples image of you after you've told what you work with, at least in Scandinavia where "you are your career".
I have a friend who works on movie productions and everyone always seem to find it amazing and extrapolate all kinds of positive stuff about him, while the opposite can happen with tech and unless i also make some weird underhanded disclaimers like "I'm actually also really into x genre of music and have played since i was a kid" or "well i actually love reading obscure literature", "i actually really like travelling, that's why this career was so great for me" people will just assume i do nothing besides program 24/7 - hyperbole yes but still.
Can anyone relate?
Hello!
for once I'm glad to be the opposite to the usual trope.. but I feel you it is tiring to be interrogated over the location of my non-existent funko-pop cache just because I write code. Even saying "I swear I don't write Js" doesn't protect you these days.
Indeed that is true of most kinds of identity. People will ascribe you racial and gender identities which may or may not match the ones you wish to claim for example.
It's not really about "the right tool for the job". It's about protecting and promoting the tribe's investment.
But if talk about business, I remember Ford's phrase: "develop product, which will fit expectations of 80% of your clients; 10% will just change mind; 10% will pay additional money for customization".
I've used React, Vue, Elm, Vanilla JS, and some legacy JQuery in production over my last three years of work (along with Next, Nuxt, Gatsby, Hugo, and many others).
I thought that would make me a well rounded candidate with an understanding of different trade offs and an ability to pick up new things. Now that I'm looking for a new job though it seems like most places are looking to hire someone 100% React dev, and my history of framework diversity has become more of a liability than an asset somehow.
I have a young kid in my family that's fixated with gender and sexuality and they said one day "I just want to get diagnosed so I know what I am," to which I said "It's not what you are that's important, it's what you want to do." That seemed to be an epiphany for them.
Some say that we have an identity crisis in part because of our liberal, existentialist, non-committal notions of "freedom". It's also what drives much of the opportunism of FOMO and ADHD. The very notions of sacrifice, commitment, suffering for a good, and devotion repel us (whatever "commitments" we do have are merely emotional phantasms, changing as the wind blows). We reject our familial, communal, ethnic, national, religious commitments -- even commitment to the truth as such -- which we have come to detest as "restrictive" or "oppressive" in favor of a misguided notion of "autonomy"...except that this "autonomy" is achieved precisely by rejecting all that helps us understand who we are from different angles and at varying depths. We become socially alienated and cut off from tradition as such, saddled now with the responsibility of figuring it all out ourselves. What a Herculean task!
Of course, nature abhors a vacuum. The irony is that the abolition of authority and tradition only predisposes us to the tyranny of power. (Incidentally, that's how "community organizing" works: it foments animosity against legitimate authority and its legitimate exercise and then uses it to unseat that authority, whether personal or in the form of tradition, not to "free" people from the real or imagined tyranny of that authority, but to remove what is an obstacle to the power of the dictator who outstrips any of the abuses of his predecessors.) Nobody is easier to control than an ignorant, irrational, atomized human being enslaved to his emotions and to his desires, in a state of fear, disorientation, and disregulation. A man has as many masters as he has vices, spake Augustine.
It is little wonder that, given this crippled and desiccated state, we look for our "identities" in superstition and petty nonsense and in what remains, what is base, as if we were trying to divine the future from tea leaves. We think that the kernel of the "true self" lies hidden in what is base, not in human nature as a whole and what it is ordered toward. Reason is a liar. The orgasm is our beatific vision. Consumption is our creed. Emotion is our revelation.
That alone is enough to make some folks want to do violence to me (I have first hand experience with this).
Telling me to "stop being x" is a bad vibe when x is something intrinsic about me AND the anti x folks hate me just for existing. I just want to live my life.
If you act according to your Real Preference RP, then RP is a fact; if you Role-Play, it is also a constraint.
Edit: there is also a notable third position: when you act from a what you judge a Right Position RP - you do what is right. It must be noted because it may look like an "identification", but it is different in important ways.
In which sense? Because 'queer' means "eccentric" - many would describe as that. For that matter, people call themselves "gay" for "joyous".
Incidentally: the queer use of 'queer' predates that of 'gay' (just a piece of trivia).
Uh... I don't think people do that anymore.
What happened there is, in the succession of editings I left that 'people' there in a way that happened to be ambiguous. I made a composition error out of inattention.
It is the set of those people who intend to speak English, though surely not the language in use among the English. "Currently typical" English does not mean "good" English.
Edit:
On the contrary, «native English speakers» are the one who will follow that: they are the ones supposed to have absorbed more English (and relevant) literature.
I have just checked and I see the terms employed correctly in Joyce, in Wilde, in Chandler, in Hammett, in Paul Johnson, in Niall Ferguson, in Woody Allen, in Spike Milligan.
As absolutely expected: there is the gathering of the Assessors.
[...] To my info, the first use of 'queer' for "homosexual" is from 1922, and the term was used for "eccentric" for the last five centuries.
('gay' for homosexual was reported as widespread "communitarian" use in medical texts in the 1940's - the use for "promiscuous" is at least four centuries old. In some territories, 'gay girl' still means "prostitute".)
Edit:
I misread your post. Of course, "of course" ""queer" for homosexual" can easily be a "reclaimed slur". There should be no surprise about it.
And your use of 'gay' in «"queer" as gay» is "queer". That is not ""queer" as gay", it is "queer" as "unaligned in sexual orientation", and not necessarily "gay". Just nitpicking on language though.
Generally in a political sense (related to the gay sense). Someone who does not accept heterosexuality as a norm or default way of being, even though it may something that they personally prefer.
Non-binary people can be queer, heterosexual trans people can be queer, asexual people can be queer. Same with polyamorous people.
Of course, those were defining two different concepts: the style of a school and the personal style.
To be precise, identity is very easy to define: it's to be you, instead of anyone else. Until someone invents some kind of brain trasplant, it's impossible to transfer consciousness, so your identity is your body, more specifically, your brain. That would include your memories that, although can be erased by trauma or illness, are mostly very strongly rooted.
Outwards, it would expand to your habits, your chemistry, your beliefs. All that can change, but it's difficult. So it's more your personality than your identity.
Then there is "identity" that isn't. More like being part of a group, so it's parallel situation to that of style. You identify yourself with a group, you define yourself as the sum of the groups you include yourself in. Identity is very much about individuality. "Identity" seems to be the opposite: the inabilty to be someone on your own.
Certainly the situations can sometimes change: the basketball player might stop playing basketball and no longer identify as such. And I suppose someone who has never played basketball in their life could adopt the identity of "basketball player" if they wanted to, but... that's fine, that would be a case where that particular person's identity is based on a belief (or delusion).
Gender and Sexual Minority, LGBTQ+, and queer all describe a largely similar set of folks.
Queer arose not from "woke-leftist" spaces, but grew out of 70s and 80s radical gay and trans spaces - groups like the Gay Liberation Front - who were willing to fight back (violently if necessary) against violence and discrimination.
Queer is absolutely a political identity, a framing of ones gender or sexual identity. They intersect with one another. It's not unlike "I eat only plants" vs "I'm vegan", they mean roughly the same thing until you hit contexts where they don't.
There's a point that I still don't understand. The article advices to keep identity as a minimum. Not having none, just not including every circumstance or opinion in your identity. The reason is that a fat identity makes you more vulnerable to bias.
Is being queer a fundamental part of your identity? Or is it something subject to change like "being a JavaScript programmer" or something like that?
The place where I was born... that is a fact, I neither can nor want to change that. I consider it a part of my identity but, at the same time, I try to take some distance from it so I can examine my own opinions and decisions.
Even at some moments I wonder what would I think if I had been born elsewhere or if I change nationality. But that doesn't mean I'm going to do that. That runs deep, but being an X programmer, a X-ist, a morning person, if I prefer cats or dogs, a member of NNN generation... that's circumstancial for me.
I guess "radical" would have been a better choice of terminology than "woke-leftist", but really you're looking at very similar communities that share an ideological heritage and who tend to complain about any terminology people use for them. The term "woke" is new but the basic ideology goes back to 70's radicals as well.
A mental conditioning fogs judgement. "Identifications" are mental conditionings that make you lose intellectual freedom.
An example from other authors:
> For instance, modern education often does much damage when young students are taught dubious political notions and then enthusiastically push these notions on the rest of us. The pushing seldom convinces others. But as students pound into their mental habits what they are pushing out, the students are often permanently damaged. Educational institutions that create a climate where much of this goes on are, I think, irresponsible. It is important not to thus put one’s brain in chains before one has come anywhere near his full potentiality as a rational person
~~~ Charlie Munger
Edit:
just like the mental process described by PG has a strong taste of Popper's judgement on "Marx Hegel and Freud" - a consolidated cultural idea -, the warning against "identifications" has had quite strong proponents. One of them (indirectly but encompassing) is over 2500 years old and "quite preponderant".
Freedom and structure are always in contention as yin-yang, and you're completely ignoring the benefits structure can bring. I'd guess OP finds a lot of value in labeling themselves "queer", in that a lot of things that were ambiguous or confusing become clearer.
Yes I was - I was focusing on a different side.
Logic. "X brings fog" and "X brings clarity" are not contradictory, in a normal paraconsistent logic.
But note: if A uses X as a mental experiment for intellectual development, detachment is there: that is the opposite of "identification".
Furthermore, the sentence '"Identifications" are mental conditionings that make you lose intellectual freedom" is not really in line with paraconsisent logic. The loss of intellectual freedom comes about from being stuck on a recognized facet of your identity and unable to think of your identity as having a conflicting facet. If people could reason by freely jumping between towers of inferences regardless of the apparent conflict between them, then labeling yourself with identities wouldn't have the downside.
It's easy for him to discard "lesser" identities like "javascript programmer" because that doesn't cost him anything.
Wrong assumption. We do not necessarily "identify". All those terms in that list can be fully avoided as identifications. No, it is not normal to be "identified" with any of that.
That's what identity is, it's the set of things you consider yourself to be. "I am" and "I consider myself to be" are very simple clauses.
How big or small a part you decide to make your identities part of your personality is up to you, but like, they are still part of your identity.
It is about how "identification" clouds your judgement. If you can just describe yourself ("happen to be male") that is one thing; if when you think of yourself you cannot abstract from some attributes, there is where you have "caged" yourself.
I may literally be an average-height, average-build, bald, white man, but I don't consider any of those things to define me; they are not central to my self-image (at least I don't think they are; it's possible I've let some of that creep into my psyche more than I'd like). Yes, they are literally a part of my "identity", but not in the way that is relevant to anything the author is talking about.
To answer other commenters: sometimes being queer can be as obvious to others as your skin color (because you are holding the hand of your partner, because you are at the beginning of a transition, etc...) and, using PG's criteria, is one of those things that other people will discuss without expertise (sometimes very negatively).
And, even if it is not obvious that one is queer, it is one of those topics where showing that you belong to that group (when you can afford it physically and mentally) is important. Both as a signal to other members (to show them that they are not alone) and as a way to normalize your identity (which, in the longer run and as a group effort, helps a lot to reduce bad reactions).
I'm not saying this is true, it's obviously not, but what if we lived in a universe where science objectively found that being queer was an actual disease and could be cured with a pill? This is the science and logic in that universe. So in that universe does your identity then preclude you from having a scientific and logical conclusion about being queer? If you didn't have that identity I would say it would be easier to be objective about that topic in that universe?
This is the thing Graham is talking about. I hope you can see the purpose of the (obviously untrue and just hypothetical) example, despite it being negatively related to your identity. I think it's still possible to disassociate a little bit even if it's an intrinsic part of your identity.
It's not easy, but it's possible and I think a lot of our perception of people "at the top" being uniformly a particular profile is partly a reflection of the fact that people who get good at not making their identity into An Issue are the ones who get more tolerance in public spaces. I think this gets misinterpreted by many people as "That person is not queer" rather than "We don't know. They haven't actually said and it is a private matter anyway."
Right, and that's exactly the point of the article that I think a lot of people aren't getting here. Even the things that you "objectively are" need not be these "core self-image" things that can lead to blind spots and a lack of ability to have reasonable discussion. But it's certainly understandable when something like that does become core, especially when someone has experienced discrimination or oppression because of it.
> I think this gets misinterpreted by many people as "That person is not queer" rather than "We don't know. They haven't actually said and it is a private matter anyway."
I think the "that person is not queer" often comes from a place of frustration that the person "at the top" isn't using their position and status to help normalize being queer (or whatever the marginalized group is). And that not doing that is essentially hiding and trying to fit in (and, further, "denying who they are"), in order to attain and keep those "on the top" benefits and status.
Personally, I think it's not ok to expect someone to become an activist (or at least publicly acknowledge who they "are") just because they have position and status, but I can understand why it's frustrating when someone doesn't.
Obectively, your identity is a set of meaningless reflections you have cohered into a narrative that centralizes your subjective experience. Subjectively, your identity is a story you protect and use a constant process of retroactive continuity to moralize and preserve it.
They are both artifacts of language, which is not a substrate or the real that persists when you are gone. Your identity is chosen. The value of an axiom like spiritual faith is that your choice can come from the reflection of something objective, persistent, and compassionate, instead of the reflections and artifacts of the language and meaning you have been presented with - often as a yoke. Be what you choose, not what may have happened, and especially not what someone who wants something from you tells you.
If your identity is the artifact of dialectic materialism, you have already accepted that you are a subject, working off an indenture in the name of earthly material justice, in pursuit of redemption from an imaginary critic who will never yield. I believe we have choice. Let one thing into your identity, and the rest becomes obvious, imo.
The danger is when you make the fiction of "not having an identity" a big part of your actual identity, which can make you even more blind to your biases than everyone else.
I think a much more productive route to being a more effective thinker is to accept you have an identity just the same as everyone else - and invest time and effort into interrogating what that identity is and what biases and blind-spots it might lead to. This is still far from perfect, of course.
I believe this essay argues that one should make a conscious choice to avoid tribe affiliation (even if that affiliation is only in your own head) in order to be a better thinker.
Maybe the real answer is both, though - try to consciously avoid tribal thinking, but also acknowledge that it's likely to creep in anyway, and be aware when it does.
Bad framing. More like, "be aware that you may have unchecked sides". There is a difference.
An "identity", in this context, is structurally more like a "loop" into a "role-playing referencing". It is not just that "such is the inner form of the function", but that the "function took extra assumptions intentionally".
Intellectual care is a basic intellectual duty, it works in the said "current state" framework, and if leaning into checking the risks of "identity" can be formulated as «"be aware that you may have unchecked sides"». That does not mean that "anyone would have an attachment to a perspective" - they may just have a de facto, flexible perspective, without the cageing attachment.
No thank you; I do not want to live in a passionless society. Unlike the claims of the article, people can and do have reasoned discussions about both politics and religion.
Religion is not a tool, unlike programming language, limited by definition, Religion is Universe, with endless number of variants. Some religions, like protestants, are by definition distributed, they just have not some acknowledged position on many questions.
But if we talk about business, this is exact hit, in business, to convince client, you should have narrow offer, which fit this client believes, nothing more.
Why so, if you widen offer, because of steel triangle of PM, you have to raise costs, and/or lower quality.
And yes, I know about smartphones, but my estimation, at least, 10-25% of HN discussions, are about low quality of widened solutions, including smartphones, or about excellence of narrow solutions, like C64, or ST.
His essay might still be right of course.
We'll make heaven a place on earth.
This used to be something people were trained in as a matter of course, wasn't it? There were debate clubs, things like that. Now people are often just trained to regurgitate stale talking points, off the offically approved list provided by the appropriate authority figure.
You cannot possibly fathom to have a productive conversation with them about less resource-hungry, better-performant alternatives.
It all basically boils down to: "Who are you to tell me I'm wrong if React is what puts food on my table?" which is fine in principle, but blinds them on ways to make their job easier and better in so many ways.
EDIT: Conciseness and style.
On the one hand you have the supposed positive effects of accepting identities of the in-group, but you have to be very careful about how you structure and interpret these, because as you've inadvertently pointed out, what you're often really getting is access to social networks and resources. you also have to be very careful to interpret the positive outcomes of such if they're part of groups that actively discriminate, target or persecute out-member groups. gays, foreigners, races, genders other-identies can also be shown to often have negative effects using similar methods, and of course naive methods do find significantly worse outcomes amongst many life measures from such groups (which is not really surprising, because the in-group often treats them like shit).
but studies have also shown consistent positive effects from dropping identities. i.e. stopping identifying with criminal groups, removing limiting beliefs and cognitive barriers associated with identities, and positive associations with Buddhist-esque religions and practices associated with traditionally non-identity building beliefs and practices (meditation, anatman, western psychological methods and treatments associated- derived from such etc).
personally, I fall on the less identity side of things, just speaking as someone on the side of the unique position of being involved with statistics, religion, economics, and psychology.
Unfortunately this is not true anymore for JavaScript. People will get into intense arguments over TS vs JS, React, etc and argue from the same position of "faith" or strongly held beliefs rather than logic.
Labels are useful for finding community. This becomes more essential the less popular or the more marginalized you or parts of you are.
I can see how labels are useful for finding community. One potential negative of using labels to find a community is that labels can be exclusive. For example, a label like "LGBTQ+" may exclude people who do not identify as part of that community, even if they have similar experiences or interests. This can create a sense of exclusion and may prevent people from finding the support and connection they are looking for.
Boy, girl, man, woman. Success, failure, virgin, slut, ice queen. Creep.
I'm sure you've labeled others with at least one and possibly been labeled with one you weren't happy about that didn't fit your identity. There are so many more and you use them without thinking.
If you decide to self label as a 'creep' or 'success' then it's relevant to this thread's discussion. If people just decide to label you as a 'creep' or 'success' then it's not relevant.
You're missing the point of the article by discussing given labels.
Queer is not the same as LGBTQ+ (queer is more overly political). My identity is both given and self selected.
Does that make you intolerant, ot is it semantic wordplay used to confuse and befuddled?
Edit: Just noticed, PG said it better, unsurprisingly. FTA:
> There may be some things it's a net win to include in your identity. For example, being a scientist. But arguably that is more of a placeholder than an actual label—like putting NMI on a form that asks for your middle initial—because it doesn't commit you to believing anything in particular. A scientist isn't committed to believing in natural selection in the same way a biblical literalist is committed to rejecting it. All he's committed to is following the evidence wherever it leads.
Sages of the east have recognized this for thousands of years and seek to dissolve the ego, dissolve all the labels that we think we are.
It is either revealing of the visiting patterns of HN members, or.
People who make this assumption got a rude shock around the time of the ISIS attacks, when they found that some people who grew up in French housing estates behaved in extremely strange and troubling ways.
Ideas have consequences, and religion is the set of ideas about the matters of utmost consequence. These ideas are inherently part of people's identity.
In the essay, identity is associated with a particular religious/political/social perspective on the human condition, not the human condition itself. Keeping identity small is basically converging on "being human"-- the choices everyone must make as you note -- without the false certainty that comes with loyalty to a religious/political/social identity.
Might this not be because we don't have sufficient information on Bronze Ages battles to know the context behind them? Whereas in a relatively modern-day battle we'll know about the primary aggressor, their rationale, etc. which are all a basis for further discussion.
Because the point at which this happens depends on the people rather than the topic, it's a mistake to conclude that because a question tends to provoke religious wars, it must have no answer.
Not sure if it depends on people or interests, probably a combination of both, but there's so many of those problems with obvious solutions that are discussed endlessly.
'Who I am' does not include tangents such as what programming language I utilize.
'Who I am' speaks to the intrinsic nature of me. What my core being considers unalterable and unchanging specifics.
Most of the topics here in this thread do not speak to that.
It's visible in language. People often use the term "I am a java programmer" rather then "I am a programmer who uses java".
The topics in this thread don't speak to it because it's implicitly implied.
People can have a difficult time talking about religion, politics, and programming languages because these issues affect their lives. When you say something that threatens another person’s life, expect a strong reaction to that threat. The key to having productive discussions about topics like these is to start with empathy, look for and diffuse threats, and seek a future state that creates space for the needs and goals of all stakeholders.
Edit: also, life is a lot more fun when approached with curiosity. Stay curious.
The truly challenging question here is HOW do you have a truly productive discussion around these topics. Graham is right. The ONLY way is for someone to give up his identity. True dispassion. That is the only time when someone can truly discuss these hard topics "productively". There is literally no other way.
Your method involves sort of dancing around the controversial topic and having useless but amicable discussions. I think your advice leads to unproductive conversations and it's also really obvious knowledge that everyone is somewhat aware about.
But I'm happy to hear other peoples opinions! We can agree to disagree.
That is a damn broad brush he is painting with. This is in the nature of "enlightened centrism" BS. Claiming partisans cannot have a fruitful discussion is simply unsupportable.
For sure, if neither party has any real knowledge and it's just identity at stake, then it will be fruitless. If the people involved care only about ego preservation and not learning, then it will be fruitless. But someone can be partisan, knowledgeable, and able to discuss things rationally.
I'm not sure what he meant by this, but to me a fruitful argument is one where one or more sides learn something, and/or one party changes another's mind on a subject.
Very often, with religion and politics especially, everyone's already made up their minds. They know the right answer. There's certainly no chance that they're mistaken. Regardless of how rationally the topic is being discussed, there's no learning going on, it's just a performative recital. IMO it's better just not to get involved in conversations like these (I'm personally bad at this, though).
I think that all pg is saying here is that it's better to be open-minded.
I still find it funny to meet friends who are hardcore football or cricket fans and watch them lose their mind if I said a single not-very-positive word about their favourite teams.
I find the opposite to be true.
The more things you adopt as part of your identity, the less you're affected when one of those things gets criticized. For example, if you're mostly a gamer, and someone says gaming is stupid, then you're automatically very hurt, since 90% of who you are was just insulted.
However, if gaming is only 10% of what you are, then you're not as affected. The myriad facets of your identity diffuse any incoming attacks. In my opinion, we should be striving to grow our identities, not shrink them.
I'm going to say an example that's not true but it's just to demonstrate a point.
For example if I say "All women are stupid." If you identify as a woman you get offended and emotionally compromised. You assume the person who said it is wrong and you leave.
If you don't identify as a woman and you aren't offended by the statement at all.... perhaps you can do an objective and open minded study to get to the bottom of the question.
An objective person can look at the data and realize that on the bell curve of IQ... men and woman have the same average but men have a thicker tail on the far ends of both sides of the curve. This says that the small population of extremely intelligent people and extremely stupid people are mostly men. By not having pride you can be more objective and see this nuance.
Graham is talking about pride and identity and how it effects your objectivity and bias and intelligent analysis. He is not referring to the actual meaning and definition of identity.
The dark side of lacking identity and being objective is that while I illustrate a rosy conclusion (that is also true) here, not all conclusions are rosy. It is very possible that for certain scenarios the data shows results that are not politically correct. What if the data shows that women are truly stupider? What then?
By trying to simplify a definition of identity into something specific or plucking out a single identity trait (any trait) which cannot be defined precisely (emacs vs vim, declarative vs functional, race, intelligence, flavor, color etc) we lose information and end up in never ending ratholes of discussion. People start relying on personal experiences and feelings (subjective info) which makes the discussion personal and more often than not useless.
My take from the author is Keep It Simple Stupid.