Keep Your Identity Small (2009) • Hacker News Board

Re: Keep Your Identity Small (2009)

#291

Post by mkr-hn » Mon, Jun 07, 2021, 4:48 PM UTC

greenail wrote: post #281

If you can remove the participants who "want to be right" and keep the participants "who want to solve the problem" you might be able to have a more productive discussion of difficult issues. The "assume good intensions" mantra also would seem to help as a starting point. This is also somewhat the root of representative government. Not many have the time or talent to really deeply understand these difficult issues an…

That falls apart when most of the representatives are lawyers who don't know anything except how to play the system against itself.

Re: Keep Your Identity Small (2009)

#292

Post by skeeter2020 » Mon, Jun 07, 2021, 4:51 PM UTC

stakkur wrote: post #274

"As a rule, any mention of religion on an online forum degenerates into a religious argument. Why? Why does this happen with religion and not with Javascript or baking or other topics people talk about on forums?" Has Paul never actually read HN or any JS discussion online? Or any forum, really? Case study: my wife, who enjoys spinning wool, watched a (metaphorical) knock-down, drag-out argument about sheep variation…

Usually attributed to academia but applicable to any situation where people personally identify with very specific aspects of the community:

The reason the in-fighting is so viscous is because the stakes are so low.

When you're on the outside it seems very trivial; when you're on the inside it's the most important thing in your world.

Re: Keep Your Identity Small (2009)

#293

Post by greenail » Mon, Jun 07, 2021, 4:52 PM UTC

mkr-hn wrote: post #291

greenail wrote: post #281

If you can remove the participants who "want to be right" and keep the participants "who want to solve the problem" you might be able to have a more productive discussion of difficult issues. The "assume good intensions" mantra also would seem to help as a starting point. This is also somewhat the root of representative government. Not many have the time or talent to really deeply understand these difficult issues an…

That falls apart when most of the representatives are lawyers who don't know anything except how to play the system against itself.

We may have to accept there isn't a perfect solution, only compromises and the lesser of evils. The good news is that we can look at attempts to solve this problem and evaluate the results. If we evaluate representative government in terms of absolute human progress it is hard to argue there is a better system.

A small tweak in the US we could all get behind is term limits for congress.

Re: Keep Your Identity Small (2009)

#294

Post by xtiansimon » Mon, Jun 07, 2021, 5:39 PM UTC

visualradio wrote: post #106

reader_x wrote: post #78

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…

“...so conscious thought can be allocated elsewhere.”

If at all. If you subscribe to thinking in identity-terms for optimization benefits, don’t you get a whole host of other heuristics and shortcuts to ‘conscious thought’?

For one thing, ‘uncertainty’ can be reduced. It’s this or that. And politically, you can turn uncertainty into us/them.

Re: Keep Your Identity Small (2009)

#295

Post by srcreigh » Mon, Jun 07, 2021, 5:40 PM UTC

Disagree. Certain topics are simply not meant to be discussed with the general public.

Regarding those topics, anybody who discusses them publicly is by definition not an expert.

In order to learn about those topics, you'll need to ask some questions in private.

Re: Keep Your Identity Small (2009)

#296

Post by mkr-hn » Mon, Jun 07, 2021, 6:22 PM UTC

QuadrupleA wrote: post #129

There's a spiritual truth here, letting go of ego - I think the world would benefit more from it than just about anything else right now. Not only by reducing pointless religious and political flame wars, but also the vast amount of anxiety and depression based around identity (whether my identity is good enough), social distrust and antagonism from identifying as this group vs that group, etc. Not an easy path, and…

I think learning to gray rock my way through interactions with angry narcissists helped me here. It turns out people who are angry about something expect a certain reaction to their rage, and that rage deflates fast when you don't follow the same script. Ego depression isn't quite the same as getting rid of ego, but it has the same effect.

Re: Keep Your Identity Small (2009)

#297

Post by rrrrrrrrrrrryan » Mon, Jun 07, 2021, 6:30 PM UTC

Izkata wrote: post #287

jasode wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>"I am hungry" in English reads like a statement of identity, whereas "j'ai faim" in French for example means "I HAVE a hunger". The hunger exists but it doesn't define my identity. >This identification is a lie. If you stop drinking coffee and start drinking tea, you are still 100% you, Your analysis of "I am hungry" is incorrect. In this case, the "am" is acting as a linking word and not about identity. See: https:…

This understanding is also closer to Spanish's "ser" and "estar" - both get translated as "am"/"is", but "ser" is for identity and "estar" is for state.

I absolutely love that Spanish uses different words to describe a temporary state vs a permanent state.

"I am sad" absolutely should use a different word than "I am from California," and English gets it wrong by combining the two.

Re: Keep Your Identity Small (2009)

#298

Post by ineedasername » Mon, Jun 07, 2021, 6:39 PM UTC

bawolff wrote: post #171

ineedasername wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or distrust factual claims by people on Reddit until/unless you track things back to primary sources that you can review. Same goes for traditional news.

Primary seems a little extreme, and looking at primary sources in isolation can often be misleading. I think secondary sources (or even tertiary sources) are much more important when it comes to evaluating claims on the internet.

It's not extreme at all. I don't think that's the only thing a person should consider, but it has to be part of the picture. Secondary sources can have their own agenda. Also the simple fact that they have to choose what to include from the primary source means you don't get a complete picture. Even somewhat responsible scientific reporting falls into this trap: They may successfully report that something has a correlation, avoid implying a strong causal link, but then fall flat on their face by failing to realize that it was a low-powered study with very few participants.

Tertiary sources are often reporting on secondary sources: The NYT reports on something that WaPo reports on. Any mistakes or biases present in the secondary source may be amplified & added to. I never read reporting about someone else's reporting without seeking out that first reports. At best, tertiary sources should be taken as commentary/opinion/interpretation.

Non-primary sources are for when you want something explained to you in non-jargon terms or a TL;DR, or you want an expert's opinion on the primary sources etc. A medical study comes out about hear disease, and you want a cardiologist's assessment of the study. Even then, you need to understand who the cardiologist is. The average cardiologist may not be a great source: There are levels of expertise within any community, and I want someone who is at the top of the field. I don't want the average cardiologist's opinion.

The problem is that no one has time to track down primary sources for everything they read/see/hear, or the level of knowledge to evaluate it. I'm fascinated by quantum computing, but I have no chance of understanding primary source research there. I have no choice but to rely on a secondary source or, if possible, the researchers themselves giving a higher level TL;DR.

My rule of thumb is that, absent prior knowledge of bias/agenda/ill-intent, I skeptically take what people say at face value but don't accept it into my own views/opinions/etc unless I've done some digging of my own. If I'm not capable (e.g. quantum physics) of doing that, I simply try harder to get a variety of expert opinions, and avoid presenting anything I say/think as anything other than an outsider's imperfect understanding.

Re: Keep Your Identity Small (2009)

#299

Post by mkr-hn » Mon, Jun 07, 2021, 6:45 PM UTC

dnissley wrote: post #120

Retric wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This isn’t about the big stuff. Queer, non-binary, autistic is a small fraction of your identity. Hell any major allergies should make the cut. It’s the small stuff like considering yourself a Pepsi drinker that causes needless conflict. People buying bandaids have preferences, but it’s not something you’re going to argue about on the internet in all caps.

I disagree. Those things seem big when you first discover them -- there's really nice feeling that comes with finding them out. "Ohhh, I'm X, so that explains why I have preference Y". But some people try too hard, to hang onto the euphoria that came with that discovery. They identify with that experience, and center their lives around it, and group together with others who do the same. They are often threatened by o…

I saw a jokey-serious "transition timeline" photo set where it started with elaborate, carefully done outfits that would put Natalie Wynn's best to shame, then ended with something like "passed out drunk at 3am in a pile of unwashed bras"

You wouldn't know I'm nonbinary from looking at me because I look like any dude walking around with clothes plucked out of the closet at random. Presentation is just not a huge part of the identity to me, even though the stereotype is that presentation is everything.

Re: Keep Your Identity Small (2009)

#300

Post by xtiansimon » Mon, Jun 07, 2021, 9:05 PM UTC

xtiansimon wrote: post #294

visualradio wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

“...so conscious thought can be allocated elsewhere.” If at all. If you subscribe to thinking in identity-terms for optimization benefits, don’t you get a whole host of other heuristics and shortcuts to ‘conscious thought’? For one thing, ‘uncertainty’ can be reduced. It’s this or that. And politically, you can turn uncertainty into us/them.

Add, “curiosity”. That gets in the way of automated/automatic thinking. Always eat the same foods, because what if you don’t like the food you buy/served? Then you go hungry (the classic mother, eat the food I make you or go hungry). Or, you waste other resources.

Automatically you get many other rules and reasoning,

If the food you eat doesn’t upset your stomach, don’t change—-what more do you need?

Why change, it’s all going to the same place in the end.

Unmoved and impenetrable to argument these shortcuts come with other formative logics.