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Keep Your Identity Small (2009)

paulgraham.com

141–150 of 321 posts

Re: Keep Your Identity Small (2009)

#141
post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fun realization I made over the past 18 months or so after 6 years living in USA continuously: When you're white, you can't be an immigrant. This whole time I thought I was a plucky immigrant seeking a better life (economically). Turns out I was and am just white. Still grappling with this. Learning your identity was wrong is very discombobulating. On some level it feels like maybe I've been here long enough that I'v…

Hey there just wanted to say : not everyone in America thinks like this. there is this strange brand of modern racism where people reduce everything down to a race issue even when it is not. Ergo immigrant = not white. Same type of people that will claim that a given communities lack of resources is because it is a black community, ignoring that the community is poor and that there is a white community not 20 miles a…

> I suspect if you make your way closer to the midwest you will meet less of these people, and more people who treat you like just another person and couldn't give a fuck how you identify.

As someone that grew up somewhere in the midwest (which isn't as homogenous as is often implied) and then moved to a stereotypically left-leaning coastal city, this was perhaps true in certain circumstances but definitely not others. I wouldn't bother with smaller towns/villages outside of the largest metropolitan areas (that aren't university towns) unless you want to feel prejudiced by a racial identity that's imposed on you, and reminded of that on a daily basis, but the same is true of these smaller towns in most states as well as countries in the west, in my experience. It's a bit idealistic to say that people in the midwest care less about how you identify if there are instead more that impose their own identity on you.

Re: Keep Your Identity Small (2009)

#142
Debating for ego, group affiliation, job, religion, identity, or simply doubling down on an incorrect position to avoid being wrong

I call these motivational fallacies.

They're not logical fallacies as there's no direct text one can point to as fallacious.

But they're still obstacles to finding the truth.

Re: Keep Your Identity Small (2009)

#143
post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People recommend practices that worked for them. If other people have actually tried (rather than theorising) and found this didn't work for them then of course I'd be interested in hearing about that as well.

This specific “practice” was expressed in response to someone (me) who expressed having tried it, and found it unhelpful and hurtful. It’s not like hiding one’s queerness is a new revelation, it’s commonly associated with being closeted (often out of fear and/or self repression) and with abuse (conversion therapy).

Hiding isn't what's being suggested here. I'm very open about who I'm attracted to and what I'm doing. But I don't define myself by it.

Re: Keep Your Identity Small (2009)

#144
post #7

I reached a similar conclusion after lurking on subreddits of opposite political leaning. I favored the views of one subreddit over another (naturally). Over time, I found that I was blindly believing the comments in my favored subreddit over the other one, only to find that the comments were false or citing unreliable sources. I saw this happen several times, until I stopped lurking on both of the subreddits. I gues…

For those who want a concrete example of this ... I watch material from mainly CNN, Sky Australia and NTD Media. Virtually every big story on CNN in the past 2 years has had some kind of retraction (ie. lying): - corona lab leak considered misinformation until a month ago - first impeachment (orchestrated/funded by Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, and Joe Biden) which failed due to lack of evidence/coverup of a bogus F…

[deleted]

Re: Keep Your Identity Small (2009)

#145
post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This specific “practice” was expressed in response to someone (me) who expressed having tried it, and found it unhelpful and hurtful. It’s not like hiding one’s queerness is a new revelation, it’s commonly associated with being closeted (often out of fear and/or self repression) and with abuse (conversion therapy).

Hiding isn't what's being suggested here. I'm very open about who I'm attracted to and what I'm doing. But I don't define myself by it.

I can’t speak for you and wouldn’t dare. I can only say that when I said verbatim these exact words what I was describing was “passing”. And in similar terms with neurodivergence, “masking”. I wasn’t accepting myself, I was accepting that I had a certain access and aptitude to be someone else for some social purposes. And even then, not really. Just kinda sorta.

Re: Keep Your Identity Small (2009)

#146
post #7

I reached a similar conclusion after lurking on subreddits of opposite political leaning. I favored the views of one subreddit over another (naturally). Over time, I found that I was blindly believing the comments in my favored subreddit over the other one, only to find that the comments were false or citing unreliable sources. I saw this happen several times, until I stopped lurking on both of the subreddits. I gues…

For those who want a concrete example of this ... I watch material from mainly CNN, Sky Australia and NTD Media. Virtually every big story on CNN in the past 2 years has had some kind of retraction (ie. lying): - corona lab leak considered misinformation until a month ago - first impeachment (orchestrated/funded by Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, and Joe Biden) which failed due to lack of evidence/coverup of a bogus F…

I'm sorry that leftists on HN don't understand facts.

Let me know if you have any questions, so you can stop looking sorry.

AMA.

Re: Keep Your Identity Small (2009)

#147
post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, it's a very real difference. Do I think this is an important part of who I am, or a random happenstance? If I were attracted to different people, would that make me a different person, in an important way? Realising/deciding that it wasn't actually important to me what sexuality people perceived me as eliminated a lot of stress and conflict, personally.

>important This term is totally nebulous. What it means to be the "same person but with different features" or a "different person" is just pure meaningless semantics.

Meaning is what we make it. If anything is meaningful then one must start with one's own experiences (and if they only mean something to oneself, well, that's fine too).

Re: Keep Your Identity Small (2009)

#148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For those who want a concrete example of this ... I watch material from mainly CNN, Sky Australia and NTD Media. Virtually every big story on CNN in the past 2 years has had some kind of retraction (ie. lying): - corona lab leak considered misinformation until a month ago - first impeachment (orchestrated/funded by Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, and Joe Biden) which failed due to lack of evidence/coverup of a bogus F…

Is this the same sky news that calls Covid the China Virus and employs known racists and xenophobes to prop up one side of the Australian political landscape? https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2021/feb/24/sky-n...

I skimmed the entire contents of the link your provided. There is no Guardian evidence that Sky is wrong, racist or xenophobic. There is plenty of evidence that the Guardian, CNN, etc. are wrong though as recently reported, the most obvious being that the lab leak is some kind of right-wing "conspiracy theory" - it's actually the most plausible origin of Covid-19.

Covid-19 is from China. Whether you call it the Wuhan, CCP or China virus, it's factual to call it using those terms - that's not racist. In the same way, the press reports variants from Brazil, the UK and India using the name of the country.

I've watched Sky for about a year, and they've never said anything racist.

Can you link to an actual racist comment by Sky or Trump?

Where I come from, calling somebody racist without any proof makes you the racist.

Re: Keep Your Identity Small (2009)

#149
post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, I can’t. Thinking I could and trying to caused me a lot of pain. I am queer. It’s as much an immutable facet of who and what I am as my neurodivergence, or my right-handedness. It shapes me beyond preference in similar ways to those. Why shouldn’t it? If it makes my life better to recognize who I am, why discourage that? Is it harming you or anyone?

> If people can't think clearly about anything that has become part of their identity, then all other things being equal, the best plan is to let as few things into your identity as possible. I can respect that "all other things being equal" does not hold here. There are always tradeoffs. But there are real benefits to not identifying with things (as the essay discusses).

I think what makes me really uncomfortable about this whole discussion, the article and the interaction in the comments, is it’s being discussed like my identity is some dispassionate academic subject, rather than my living experience that isn’t up for debate.

I’m not asking you to respect whether something in some article addresses my identity. I’m telling you I know what it is.

It’s not a balance of tradeoffs. It’s not available for scrutiny by an essay by Paul, or comments from you or anyone.

My contention with the article was that giving myself permission to let my identity expand to include things I hadn’t helped me begin to reckon with the pain of keeping my identity minimal, denying really important things about myself and hurting in the process.

The majority of the responses I’ve gotten have suggested that I should not let those be a part of my identity or have minimized their importance.

I cannot understand why. Why is it in your interest or anyone’s to tell me whether being queer, or non-binary, or autistic should not factor into who I am? Why do you or anyone get to decide whether any of those things should be important parts of me?

Why is it anyone’s business but my own? The only “conflict” here has been people scrutinizing the validity of my identity as I express it.

Re: Keep Your Identity Small (2009)

#150

If people cannot argue fruitfully about questions that are part of their identity (and I agree with this premise), then it follows that for one to win politically (or convert them), the trick is not to convince people that your views are correct, but rather to convince people that their identity is threatened and that them maintaining their current identity (whatever that identity may be—and perhaps vagueness is key…

Identity is used to automate decision making, so less energy is expended on conscious thought, so less time is spent weighing pros and cons of each alternative for every daily decision. If someone is 'dog person' they have routine where they take dog for walks, with positive effects such as exercise, without having to weigh pros and cons each time it is performed. If someone is coffee person, they do not have to weig…

[Serious]I feel I've wasted so much time weighing pros and cons when someone asks me something like what my favorite animal is, because I never really made these things part of my identity.
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