Keep Your Identity Small (2009)

This is why I hate "-ism"/"-ists"-labels, because everyone seems to have a different opinion of what particular "-ism" words means. To use an example, Bernie Sanders' "socialism" is about sharing the wealth, meanwhile a lot of his opponents would argue because of the same word, it means he wants to install a Chinese-style dictatorship, or even worse, since it's a word that comes up in "Nazi", this style of fascism is also what Bernie wants.

If someone says they're a Black Live Matters supporter, depending on your leanings you might perceive them as wanting more social justice, or as a sympathizer of gangs that burned local businesses. I suppose, then you can decide whether you trust them or not. The problem is, they're probably not an anarchist that likes burning buildings, but your classification might have put them in that box in your mind, and since you disagree with anarchism (oh, look, another -ism), you conclude dialog with that person is impossible, just because they identified themselves as something...

I think that was a better example in 2009.

Or as this Bertrand Russel quote : “What is wanted is not the will to believe, but the will to find out, which is the exact opposite.”

I have a slightly different view of ego though. For me ego is a tool that no doubt had some evolutionary purpose. When my "ego is pumped" I tend to be highly active, motivated, confident and able to solve problems (or hunt for food in evolutionary terms) but once those problems are solved, the ego can be discarded for a time.

From doing stand-up comedy, when you "bomb" (the audience doesn't laugh) it's extremely traumatic for the ego. I look at it now that afterwards I need to "reboot my ego" and in doing so, some ideas or things that I saw as part of my identity get discarded in the process. At this point, having bombed quite a few times, it feels like an accelerated learning process and it becomes less traumatic the less invested I am in my identity.

Meanwhile - connected to the article - what's interesting to me is I think most people have a "tell" (poker term) when they are over-invested in some identity or idea, and that's when they say "I believe X" or "I believe Y". In my experience that's an indicator that they have accepted some conclusion or point of view, without having examined all the evidence that makes the conclusion valid. I think we'd do better with encouraging people to say "I don't know" more often than "I believe" e.g. "What happens after we die?" ... "I don't know" seems better than "I believe we go to Heaven"

> There are certainly some political questions that have definite answers, like how much a new government policy will cost.

Well sure, how much a new government policy will cost does have an answer. It's not knowable before you implemenent the policy. I bet you there's someone in this thread that will argue, with facts, that a $15 minimum wage will boost the economy and increase tax revenue. I bet there's someone who can argue the reverse. I bet both sides will be able to cite both partisan and "non-partisan" organisations to back up their argument.

I'm not sure what PG was saying there was true in 2009 (post Obamacare) but certainly it doesn't hold up now.

I also don't think that intransigent discussion on the issue would be the result of threatening identities, but instead based on people's values and assumptions about human nature which largely cannot be definitively proven right or wing.

This translates into code too - there are people I'm not going to argue with about their code, because I value simplicity and velocity in development whilst they're far more interested in optimizing every single line to the nth degree. I think what they're doing is bad engineering, but I'm not going to change their value system.