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Keep Your Identity Small (2009)

paulgraham.com

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Re: Keep Your Identity Small (2009)

#91

Post by fouroneone »

mch82 wrote: post #58

Alternate advice: practice skills of listening, observing, empathy, dialog, sharing, building. These are the skills you will need to deal with people. 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 disc…

There are cases where someones entire life is founded on a lie and that no productive discussion is possible. Sure you can "discuss" these topics amicably but they always end up "agreeing to disagree". Nothing was changed, the needle wasn't moved.. the discussion was useless and unproductive.

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.

Re: Keep Your Identity Small (2009)

#92

Post by mdp2021 »

acatnamedjoe wrote: post #10

My view is that having a "small identity" is basically impossible in any practical sense. Many issues are inherently subjective, and even for issues that are (philosophically speaking) objective, actual human individuals rarely have the time or the access to data to form a genuinely objective view. We all use heuristic thinking, all the time, which is inevitably massively biased by all kinds of things related to our…

> accept you have

Bad framing. More like, "be aware that you may have unchecked sides". There is a difference.

Re: Keep Your Identity Small (2009)

#93

Post by nestorD »

zozbot234 wrote: post #86
nestorD wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good point. The essay misses examples of what is an inescapable part of one's identity. 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).…

You're also conflating unchangeable characteristics (such as skin color, or sexual orientation) and some feeling of group belonging. We would certainly find it a bit weird if someone felt that they "belonged" in a valued group merely due to, e.g. having light-colored skin, and expressed a need to "show off" that specific fact about themselves to others. That's key to the "identity" distinction PG is making here.

This feels like a false dichotomy: while you cannot change your sexual orientation, you can choose to make it more apparent and it has clear benefits for other lgbtq+ people around you (which, for me, gets it out of the selfish connotations of showing off: wherever you live, being openly gay still carries a non-zero physical risk, you don't do it just for the fun of it).

Re: Keep Your Identity Small (2009)

#94

Post by mdp2021 »

midhhhthrow wrote: post #67

Absolutely. Identification and all the labels you carry are the source of most conflict. 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.

Interestingly, the parent was posted two hours ago and I find it near the bottom.

It is either revealing of the visiting patterns of HN members, or.

Re: Keep Your Identity Small (2009)

#95

Post by fouroneone »

strangattractor wrote: post #90

IMHO I am not convinced that gender identity is actually measurable or a knowable thing. I can physically demonstrate whether I am male or female. I can only assume that I think or feel like other males or females based on how other males or females behave or what they tell me they think and feel. Given the fluidity of language I have no guarantee that my interpretation of that is accurate. I have no real way to do a…

Paul is more talking about pride and identity. He's not talking about full embodiment or awareness of what identity is.

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?

Re: Keep Your Identity Small (2009)

#96

Post by mdp2021 »

fouroneone wrote: post #91
mch82 wrote: post #58

Alternate advice: practice skills of listening, observing, empathy, dialog, sharing, building. These are the skills you will need to deal with people. 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 disc…

There are cases where someones entire life is founded on a lie and that no productive discussion is possible. Sure you can "discuss" these topics amicably but they always end up "agreeing to disagree". Nothing was changed, the needle wasn't moved.. the discussion was useless and unproductive. The truly challenging question here is HOW do you have a truly productive discussion around these topics. Graham is right. The…

You are missing an important point of the poster: you have to abandon cageing self-prejudice - but at the same time, a similar operation should done one the image of the other. Give up identities (self-side) and give up prejudice (other-side).

Re: Keep Your Identity Small (2009)

#97

Post by fouroneone »

mgrthrow wrote: post #30

Doesn't land for me. I'm queer, my identity isn't huge, but it does include queer. 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.

He doesn't tell you to stop being x. The title says keep your identity small, implying he knows it's impossible.

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.

Re: Keep Your Identity Small (2009)

#98

Post by narag »

mgrthrow wrote: post #78
philwelch wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Queer" is a vague identity with political connotations, by which I mean, the gay people who call themselves "queer" tend to be a lot more woke-leftist than the gay people who don't call themselves "queer". It's absolutely an idea and a constructed identity. The facts of the matter are things like sexual preferences and behaviors, but you don't inherently need to construct an identity around them. On the other hand,…

I think you've both got the right answer and explained it with a very negative framing. 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…

I'm not a native speaker, not in the know of the nuances of those terms, just accepted the one you chose.

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.

Re: Keep Your Identity Small (2009)

#99

Post by fouroneone »

imchillyb wrote: post #46

Identity is not 'what I do', but 'who I am.' '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.

No it's interconnected. What you do is tied to who you are.

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.

Re: Keep Your Identity Small (2009)

#100

Post by trees101 »

Thought provoking post, but the idea doesn't work. Yes, people are less inclined to get into arguments about specific technical tools if they are not educated about them. Yes, people DO get into arguments about religion even if they aren't educated about it. The difference is that religion addresses matters that ARE central to people's identity. It addresses choices that EVERYONE must make, and therefore everyone has a stake in it, unlike an arcane programming language that only impacts a few people.
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