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Keep Your Identity Small (2009)

paulgraham.com

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Re: Keep Your Identity Small (2009)

#141

Post by kelnos »

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…

What a weird take. None of this has anything to do with wealth or class. It's about avoiding making arbitrary things so dear to you that you are unable to question anything about them, or even have productive, honest discussions about them.

Your "good version" doesn't really make sense to me, and seems to have nothing to do with what the article is about.

Re: Keep Your Identity Small (2009)

#142

Post by kelnos »

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…

You can also just not take a stance on many things. I feel like a lot of the things we feel strongly about, and often end up as parts of our identity, just... don't really matter. For things where you do need to take a stance, perhaps because there's a decision that needs to be made, there's still a difference between holding a loose opinion (that you allow to be challenged, and are willing to change your mind in the face of new evidence or a better argument), and making that opinion a part of your very core (where you will just stand firm and ignore all criticism).

Re: Keep Your Identity Small (2009)

#143

Post by kelnos »

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.

Unless we're getting to some deep metaphysical stuff, I don't think I buy that. Yes, some identities are solely based on belief. But others are indeed based on facts: someone might identify as "basketball player" because they play basketball. Or they might identify as "tall" because they are in the top 10% of people for height. The height example might sound silly, but there are people who are somehow "proud" of these sorts of traits that they have no control over.

Certainly the situations can sometimes change: the basketball player might stop playing basketball and no longer identify as such. And I suppose someone who has never played basketball in their life could adopt the identity of "basketball player" if they wanted to, but... that's fine, that would be a case where that particular person's identity is based on a belief (or delusion).

Re: Keep Your Identity Small (2009)

#144

Post by grwthckrmstr »

conjecture - The more things in life people adopt as their identity, the greater the surface area for one to be triggered?

I still find it funny to meet friends who are hardcore football or cricket fans and watch them lose their mind if I said a single not-very-positive word about their favourite teams.

Re: Keep Your Identity Small (2009)

#145

Post by kelnos »

mgrthrow wrote: post #80
mdp2021 wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> which I would assume include Wrong assumption. We do not necessarily "identify". All those terms in that list can be fully avoided as identifications. No, it is not normal to be "identified" with any of that.

Would the author say, "I am a ..." and end with any of the above? If so, they identify as that group. That's what identity is , it's the set of things you consider yourself to be. "I am" and "I consider myself to be" are very simple clauses. How big or small a part you decide to make your identities part of your personality is up to you, but like, they are still part of your identity.

The idea the author is talking about is explicitly not the "I am..." stuff. The "I consider myself to be..." stuff is what is important to his thesis that the "descriptors you hold dear to your self-image" (which he calls "identity", but I agree that can be an ambiguous term) can blind you to opinions and evidence contrary to what you already believe, and make it difficult (if not impossible) to have honest conversations about things.

I may literally be an average-height, average-build, bald, white man, but I don't consider any of those things to define me; they are not central to my self-image (at least I don't think they are; it's possible I've let some of that creep into my psyche more than I'd like). Yes, they are literally a part of my "identity", but not in the way that is relevant to anything the author is talking about.

Re: Keep Your Identity Small (2009)

#146

Post by aeturnum »

kelnos wrote: post #141
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…

What a weird take. None of this has anything to do with wealth or class. It's about avoiding making arbitrary things so dear to you that you are unable to question anything about them, or even have productive, honest discussions about them. Your "good version" doesn't really make sense to me, and seems to have nothing to do with what the article is about.

It's generally the wealthy and the high class who can pick and choose how much they feel the impact of politics. Most people don't get to choose how large "their identity" is - as others will put them into groups and make decisions based on those groups. This way of engaging with it - which is perfectly sensible from his point of view - it just applies to very few conversations (though, of course, how upset we should get about javascript is one of them).

Re: Keep Your Identity Small (2009)

#147

Post by kelnos »

DoreenMichele wrote: post #127
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.

At the risk of being wildly misunderstood, you can still choose to minimize your "queerness footprint" in public discussions. You can let your experience with that inform your opinions without making it into An Issue that you are queer. It's not easy, but it's possible and I think a lot of our perception of people "at the top" being uniformly a particular profile is partly a reflection of the fact that people who get…

> You can let your experience with that inform your opinions without making it into An Issue

Right, and that's exactly the point of the article that I think a lot of people aren't getting here. Even the things that you "objectively are" need not be these "core self-image" things that can lead to blind spots and a lack of ability to have reasonable discussion. But it's certainly understandable when something like that does become core, especially when someone has experienced discrimination or oppression because of it.

> I think this gets misinterpreted by many people as "That person is not queer" rather than "We don't know. They haven't actually said and it is a private matter anyway."

I think the "that person is not queer" often comes from a place of frustration that the person "at the top" isn't using their position and status to help normalize being queer (or whatever the marginalized group is). And that not doing that is essentially hiding and trying to fit in (and, further, "denying who they are"), in order to attain and keep those "on the top" benefits and status.

Personally, I think it's not ok to expect someone to become an activist (or at least publicly acknowledge who they "are") just because they have position and status, but I can understand why it's frustrating when someone doesn't.

Re: Keep Your Identity Small (2009)

#148

Post by tasty_freeze »

> I think what religion and politics have in common is that they become part of people's identity, and people can never have a fruitful argument about something that's part of their identity. By definition they're partisan.

That is a damn broad brush he is painting with. This is in the nature of "enlightened centrism" BS. Claiming partisans cannot have a fruitful discussion is simply unsupportable.

For sure, if neither party has any real knowledge and it's just identity at stake, then it will be fruitless. If the people involved care only about ego preservation and not learning, then it will be fruitless. But someone can be partisan, knowledgeable, and able to discuss things rationally.

Re: Keep Your Identity Small (2009)

#149

Post by 0thgen »

aeturnum wrote: post #146
kelnos wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What a weird take. None of this has anything to do with wealth or class. It's about avoiding making arbitrary things so dear to you that you are unable to question anything about them, or even have productive, honest discussions about them. Your "good version" doesn't really make sense to me, and seems to have nothing to do with what the article is about.

It's generally the wealthy and the high class who can pick and choose how much they feel the impact of politics. Most people don't get to choose how large "their identity" is - as others will put them into groups and make decisions based on those groups. This way of engaging with it - which is perfectly sensible from his point of view - it just applies to very few conversations (though, of course, how upset we should…

you are loading a tremendous amount of extra stuff into what's being said here. is that the right move?

Re: Keep Your Identity Small (2009)

#150

Post by saxonww »

tasty_freeze wrote: post #148

> I think what religion and politics have in common is that they become part of people's identity, and people can never have a fruitful argument about something that's part of their identity. By definition they're partisan. That is a damn broad brush he is painting with. This is in the nature of "enlightened centrism" BS. Claiming partisans cannot have a fruitful discussion is simply unsupportable. For sure, if neith…

He didn't say they couldn't discuss things rationally, he said they couldn't have a fruitful argument.

I'm not sure what he meant by this, but to me a fruitful argument is one where one or more sides learn something, and/or one party changes another's mind on a subject.

Very often, with religion and politics especially, everyone's already made up their minds. They know the right answer. There's certainly no chance that they're mistaken. Regardless of how rationally the topic is being discussed, there's no learning going on, it's just a performative recital. IMO it's better just not to get involved in conversations like these (I'm personally bad at this, though).

I think that all pg is saying here is that it's better to be open-minded.

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