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Keep Your Identity Small (2009)

paulgraham.com

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Re: Keep Your Identity Small (2009)

#131

Post by doc_gunthrop »

ACow_Adonis wrote: post #118
nateoearth wrote: post #103

Counterpoint: a strong sense of identity is a crucial ingredient for a meaningful life. Studies have consistently shown that actively religious people are happier that their non-religious counterparts. Identities can grant access to social networks, epitomized in conventions attracting thousands of people who gleefully share an identity (e.g., DEF CON for hackers). Etc.

counter-counterpoint: studies (that is to say the modern ritual of writing papers about spuriously finding statistical correlations using language and processes specific to your academic tribe) have consistently found positive effects of both. 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, bec…

Counterpoints and counter-counterpoints mentioning all these "studies" and yet not a single concrete example is given. It's a shame when online discussion and debate devolves into "here's my point just take my word for it".

Re: Keep Your Identity Small (2009)

#132

Post by philwelch »

nicoburns wrote: post #122
philwelch wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Queer arose not from "woke-leftist" spaces, but grew out of 70s and 80s radical gay and trans spaces 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 a…

I would add, "woke" is not necessarily a negative label, and indeed was originally used most commonly in a positive sense intended to describe people who were awake to the reality of the world. It's only more recently come to be used a pejorative mocking the original usage.

I wouldn’t even say it’s all pejorative mockery. Setting aside the negative connotation, I think we all know what ideas and movements the term “woke” refers to, and the people on that side of the discussion haven’t, to my knowledge, agreed to any other nomenclature they would prefer, which means the only people using the term are the ones criticizing the underlying group of ideas and movements, which is where the negative connotation comes from. (And then some of those critics unfairly overgeneralize, similarly with the term “socialist”.)

Re: Keep Your Identity Small (2009)

#133

Post by photochemsyn »

Train yourself to argue all sides of political - religious questions with equal fervor. However, as the author notes, it's not wise to over-identify with the various different positions (that way lies schizophrenia).

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.

Re: Keep Your Identity Small (2009)

#134

Post by narag »

nicoburns wrote: post #125
hypoqtech wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Doesn't that make it not a fact then, if people can just opt in and out to being queer?

I would argue that no identity is a fact. All identities are beliefs on the part of the person doing the identifying. To identify something as X is to express the belief that it is X.

This reminds me a class very long ago, when the teacher wrote two contradictory definitions of style in the blackboard, one saying that style is what the authors have in common with their school, the other saying that style is what the authors have that others don't.

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.

Re: Keep Your Identity Small (2009)

#135

Post by acatnamedjoe »

mdp2021 wrote: post #92
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.

I don't understand the point you're making here. Please could you elaborate.

Re: Keep Your Identity Small (2009)

#136

Post by yuuu »

mdp2021 wrote: post #66
yuuu wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> For that matter, people call themselves "gay" for "joyous". Uh... I don't think people do that anymore.

They do, and some will absolutely do (to some it is important to "assess" language) - it really depends on what you mean with "people" (of course I meant a subset). 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.

The subset you're talking about is the union of extremely non-native English speakers and native English speakers over 120 years old.

Re: Keep Your Identity Small (2009)

#137

Post by morelisp »

the_gipsy wrote: post #65

Mr. Graham does have a big political identity (on twitter). Sure, he shares more anecdotes about raising his kids than "anti-woke" messages, but it doesn't hold up against this essay. His essay might still be right of course.

Heaven hates what it hates, who knows the reason why? Therefore even the sage treats some things as difficult. The way of heaven excels in overcoming though it does not contend, in responding though it does not speak, in attracting though it does not summon, and in laying plans though it appears slack.

Re: Keep Your Identity Small (2009)

#138

Post by ethanbond »

fouroneone wrote: post #83
ethanbond wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your ultimate objective should be thriving, ideally for you and as many people and creatures as you can afford to account for. Truth is valuable because since the enlightenment period it has seemed to be extremely valuable in securing thriving. If you instead are picking Truth and Lack Of Bias over, for example, a rich social life, I’d suggest you are putting the cart before the horse. I hope you find your place with…

Oh, It's completely too late for me. I cannot unbelieve what I believe. I already live a life of lies. Nobody knows what I believe and I lie to seem normal and socialize-able. I also don't hold any strong desire to "implement" my beliefs. It's just a perspective.. I am an observer with opinions and I don't care to be any sort of activist. I largely agree with your last post. However it's too late. I no longer believe…

I’ll leave you with this my friend. I don’t think you should feel lost or too far gone :)

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/pragmatism/

Re: Keep Your Identity Small (2009)

#139

Post by mcbishop »

aeturnum wrote: post #120

This is SUCH "Paul Graham" advice - useful mostly to people who sit on top of a hierarchy of power which does not demand any of their personal attention. 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 thos…

I think that not feeling personally attacked when someone expresses an opposing opinion... is helpful regardless of one's class status.

Re: Keep Your Identity Small (2009)

#140

Post by narag »

fourfivefour wrote: post #117
narag wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe that the answer you seek is in the article. You're too attached to a sick mindset. It's better to stop overthinking and doing something that have more pleasant effects (for you) than writting long-winded comments here. Or maybe not.

I don't think you read my comment or the article carefully. The extreme end of that article, giving up all your identity is my "sick mindset". That is the ultimate conclusion. You might as well not comment if you're not going to read anything. I don't care for you comment otherwise. Better for you to start actually thinking and stop mistaking that for "over thinking", because your reply indicates you haven't.

...giving up all your identity is my "sick mindset".

So drop it already. The article isn't about "the extreme end" anyway. There's a middle ground between being a soulless robot and a sheep, isn't there?

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