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Keep Your Identity Small

paulgraham.com

81–90 of 267 posts

Re: Keep Your Identity Small

#81

A scientist isn't committed to believing in natural selection in the same way an evangelical Christian is committed to rejecting it. I disagree, I'm an evangelical Christian and I don't reject it.

Yeah, that statement bothered me to. People seeming to assume that just because a vocal minority of a group believe something, that all members of the group believe the same thing. This especially includes people who's expressed ideology hopes to avoid prejudice and bigotry. Thought I don't think PG, really thinks all Evangelicals are YECs. at least I hope he doesn't.

Re: Keep Your Identity Small

#82
post #20
post #5

I think we can also observe that the topics people weakly identify with are common topics for small talk e.g. weather, movies, pets etc.

Perhaps all that saves these kinds of conversations from spiraling into "religious wars" is peoples' recognition that these things are arbitrary and ridiculous to get upset about. For instance, I am a dog person and my girlfriend is a cat person. Occasionally, we start to debate the relative merits of each. And there may in fact be one which is in general "better"; after all, most people would agree that dog ownershi…

As an extension to what you are saying. Politics and Religion are, in fact, important. Whether or not we give millions to this are that cause, whether there is some kind of afterlife, these are important questions and so people should get involved in them. I think that there is something wrong with people who choose not to. This is not to say that people should be rude or irrational about these topics, but that they should put the thought into them so that they can discuss them rationally, and act on their conclusions in a productive fashion.

That said, I think that HN is generally the wrong place to have these debates. These topics, when treated fairly, require a lot of space and time to flesh out fully, and a tech news forum isn't properly equipped to do that. In addition, they distract from the valuable discussion for which this place is good.

Re: Keep Your Identity Small

#83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can't argue against religion with logic or facts, if that were possible religion would have died a long time ago. As far as everyone is concerned, all opinions pretty much are equally valid, whether they actually are or not doesn't seem to matter.

One can argue against (a) religion with logic and facts. With logic: one can exhibit contradictions in religious doctrines. (If there are any.) With facts: for example geological/fossil evidence can be used to argue against creationism. (The best one can do in trying to put forward 'facts' is to put forward what is well supported by the available evidence, and better supported than known alternatives. So, here for ex…

Obviously I meant successfully, that was clearly implied by the second half of the sentence.

Re: Keep Your Identity Small

#85

Its posts like this and Paul's "How to Disagree" that remind me of an idea that I keep coming back to again and again. I've often wondered what would be possible in terms of designing a website that aims to moderate debate in a way that leads to new ideas and conclusions and attempts to negate as many of these types of effects as possible. Some formal system, that the users would have no choice but to follow, that be…

To go into a bit more detail of this likely pipe dream...

One approach could be to have a group of site moderators who make it their mission to, as Paul said, keep their identities as small as possible and simply judge the logic and biases of peoples arguments.

Perhaps their vote is what locks in a statement to be taken as true or false and then everyone has to then play by the rule of accepting their judgment on the matter for future debates.

In a similar way that scientific research builds on the work that was done before it to make progress, standing on the shoulders of giants type stuff, the conversation could be mapped to show these towers of progress grow as people logically move from "if A is true then B must be true..." and so on.

Perhaps the debate branches at points of contention and goes off down different paths.

The idea being that anyone can join in and quickly get up to speed as to where the conversation is up to by looking at the map of statements that have been dealt with so far.

If someone wants to reopen the debate around some statement and attack the foundation of one of these towers and bring it crashing down then they can.

Of course an enormous element of this will be based on the subjective judgment of the moderators. It can't be entirely based on pure logic but if it is useful and leads to new and interesting things then who cares...

Even if it succeeded in removing a lot of the crap around a debate and focus precisely on the points that people differ on so they can be attacked directly I think that would be a useful thing.

My idea for making this somewhat enjoyable and stand a chance of people participating in it would be to make it game like in some way.

Anyway, its all pretty out there stuff I know, but I'll no doubt continue to think about anyway...

Re: Keep Your Identity Small

#86
post #70

Until I moved to San Francisco ten years ago my identity was wrapped up in my home region of my home state. SF was where I finally let it go. I can perfectly remember the moment I realized I could. How exhilarating that was! And it started a landslide. I'll bet I don't have 10% the identity I did back then. (It helped that I had long before figured out that when people speak of "X pride" or "Proud to be X", it means…

> This is such a ridiculously brilliant essay.

Um.. I think that's going a bit far. Interesting take on well known fact that people who identify heavily with something aren't very rational about being challenged on it, but "ridiculously brilliant", I think not.

Re: Keep Your Identity Small

#87
Identity as a person is much more widely present than identity in terms of religion, programming language, economic stance, nationalism or culture, Imagine someone makes a critical statement about your personal character, The way we respond to it is obviously different from a generic statement. Whether or not, one tries to look at the statement as it is, there is usually also a powerful psychological response which is triggered and this will too often also be the basis for action. As one forms various identities, conversations about these new topics will lead to the same response.

The interesting question is how is this 'minimizing of identity' to be done? One idea i've heard is the following, Usually this psychological response happens in the background, the unconscious so to speak, Instead one can be try to be aware of it, not just abstractly but live. Watching a reflexive response and its influence on action at the same time as it happens.

Re: Keep Your Identity Small

#88
post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're right. That's why I was careful to qualify it with "all other things being equal." In general identity gives you strength while making you stupid. This can sometimes be a good trade, especially in stressful situations. E.g. I think this is one reason people in the US are so much more religious than they were when I was a kid. People who 30 years ago might have been skeptical of preachers are now thinking that…

Just for some context, are people much more religious than when you were a kid? I had figured this was a relatively stable number. Or maybe you were referring to how fervent people have become with their religious views? I'm curious about the actual trend of religiosity, and I'm somewhat skeptical of anecdotal data (for the very reasons in your article). What is the general trend from someone who's been following thi…

are people much more religious than when you were a kid?

Yes. It was very noticeable when I went back to Pittsburgh recently. When I was a kid, people went to church, but it didn't spill over into everyday life. They did it more as a matter of form. Now people's conversation is filled with religious references. Someone who 30 years ago would have said "we have two children" now says "we've been blessed with two children."

Re: Keep Your Identity Small

#89
post #70

Until I moved to San Francisco ten years ago my identity was wrapped up in my home region of my home state. SF was where I finally let it go. I can perfectly remember the moment I realized I could. How exhilarating that was! And it started a landslide. I'll bet I don't have 10% the identity I did back then. (It helped that I had long before figured out that when people speak of "X pride" or "Proud to be X", it means…

> This is such a ridiculously brilliant essay. Um.. I think that's going a bit far. Interesting take on well known fact that people who identify heavily with something aren't very rational about being challenged on it, but "ridiculously brilliant", I think not.

Interesting take on well known fact that people who identify heavily with something aren't very rational about being challenged on it

A few others on the same topic: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_True_Believer

http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Industrial_Society_and_Its_Fut...

http://www.google.com/search?q=eysenck+psychology+of+politic...

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