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Keep Your Identity Small (2009)

paulgraham.com

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Re: Keep Your Identity Small (2009)

#81

Post by leephillips »

Gormo wrote: post #76
leephillips wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I tend to agree with the GP. No matter how strong someone's opinions on, say, the US Iraq invasion are, they're not worth much if they're not grounded in some notion of world history since WWI. "Does a homosexual couple with no knowledge of US marriage law not have a valid opinion on whether they should be allowed to marry?" They have an interest in the marriage laws, but that doesn't make their opinions more interes…

Politics is about "ought", not "is", and policy is entirely about the interaction of people with divergent interests. Your point of view make it seem like there's some objective context for politics in the first place, but there isn't: the entire context in which politics takes place, the substance that defines it, and the objects it pursues are created by people and their interests. Having an interest is having an o…

In light of your points, which I appreciate, perhaps I should recast my point of view this way: a person's opinion about politics is interesting or not (perhaps we could even say valid or not) to the extent that he is able to generalize his interests far enough to place them in a context informed by general principles and relevant domain knowledge, and beyond narrow self-interest. "Virginia should allow Gays to marry because I'm Gay and I want to live in Virginia and get married" is as meaningless, as a political opinion, as me saying "Everyone in the US should give me a dollar because I want a lot of money." Socrates took the hemlock not because he thought it would be good for him personally, but because he thought it was a good thing for citizens to obey the law.

Re: Keep Your Identity Small (2009)

#82

Post by Gormo »

leephillips wrote: post #81
Gormo wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Politics is about "ought", not "is", and policy is entirely about the interaction of people with divergent interests. Your point of view make it seem like there's some objective context for politics in the first place, but there isn't: the entire context in which politics takes place, the substance that defines it, and the objects it pursues are created by people and their interests. Having an interest is having an o…

In light of your points, which I appreciate, perhaps I should recast my point of view this way: a person's opinion about politics is interesting or not (perhaps we could even say valid or not) to the extent that he is able to generalize his interests far enough to place them in a context informed by general principles and relevant domain knowledge, and beyond narrow self-interest. "Virginia should allow Gays to marry…

Any statement that contains the word "should" is inherently a normative claim, which exists outside the scope of empirical data.

When people articulate their own interests - of which they are the most credible experts - and then say "the current policy framework is damaging to my interests/rights", they're articulating a far more valid position than someone who is trying to abstract their own hypothetical understanding of the world into some set of universal principles.

"General principles" don't actually exist - principles only exist in the minds of people, and there are many people, each with his or her own own worldview. Attempting to treat politics as a means of perfecting the world in accordance with putatively universal principles can lead to only one outcome: an escalating cycle of ideological conflict.

The relevant "domain knowledge" here would apply to the proper domain of politics: reconciling the disparate interests of actual people.

> Socrates took the hemlock not because he thought it would be good for him personally, but because he thought it was a good thing for citizens to obey the law.

Then Socrates was as much a victim of his own defective ideals as he was a victim of the Athenian establishment. Law is a tool we use to mitigate and restrain conflicts among actual human beings. If the law is perverted into something that harms the rights and interests of actual human beings, then it shouldn't be called law at all; it becomes merely a weapon, and remains so, no matter what grandiose ideals are appealed to as justification for its excess.

Re: Keep Your Identity Small (2009)

#83

Post by timinman »

icebraining wrote: post #17
timinman wrote: post #11

I think his 'theory' that discussions have more potential to be divisive when they involve our identity is dead on. His advice to 'keep your identity small', follows on from that premise well. Many people let their identity get polluted by what they do for a living to such an extent that they find it very difficult to cope when that is taken from them. I have always been opinionated - I'm analytical and I enjoy formi…

I am a believer, so I don't know if same is true for non-believers. Well, everyone is a non-believer in something that others believe. Assuming you don't believe in, say, Isis, do you think that non-belief becomes part of your identity?

No. I realise that I over-simplified that part by highlighting only two opposites: belief and unbelief. I do realise there are degrees of distinction between belief in a deity and atheism, and there are polytheism and agnosticism as well.

I could have asked a question: for those who don't believe in god(s), is your Atheism a significant feature of your identity?

Re: Keep Your Identity Small (2009)

#84

Post by SomeCallMeTim »

dasil003 wrote: post #14

I like pg's theory here, it's definitely something I try to live by (keeping my identity small), but I think he missed a key observation: Religion (perhaps moreso historically) and especially politics are mine fields because there are so many inputs and so many outputs. That is to say almost any policy decision will affect a lot of people in a lot of different ways. He touches on this by discussing vague and definite…

>It's not just that the bar of having an opinion is low, it's because these decisions actually affect all these people, and all in different ways. The fact that they may not have the expertise or knowledge to know the true affects and are easily manipulated by identity-appealing propaganda just exacerbates the problem, but it's not the root cause.

You make it sound like people end up voting to protect their own interests. A lot of studies show this is frequently not the case: Far more frequently they vote their values, which ends up with a very different result. This is why the Republican "Family Values" theme has been so effective.

>Even if you are the foremost expert on the implications of some political issue and your facts are indisputable, people will still (with good reason) disagree on the merits of those indisputable implications.

George Lakoff talks about two major philosophies in the US that define the Liberal and Conservative movements, respectively. [1] I think he gets to the heart of the disagreement between these two sides, explaining why large groups of poor people, for instance, vote Republican despite this being against their own self interest (workplace safety, minimum wage, workers' rights, etc.).

That said, it seems sometimes that even indisputable facts (dangers of cigarette smoke, seriousness of lead poisoning, and more recently, anthropomorphic climate change and the proven failures of "trickle-down" economics) are frequently politicized such that people end up believing that there's still a debate among experts, and that all politicians are lying to support their own side. Propaganda at its best (or worst, I suppose).

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moral_Politics_%28book%29 or http://www.chelseagreen.com/bookstore/item/elephant

Re: Keep Your Identity Small (2009)

#85

Post by leephillips »

Gormo wrote: post #82
leephillips wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In light of your points, which I appreciate, perhaps I should recast my point of view this way: a person's opinion about politics is interesting or not (perhaps we could even say valid or not) to the extent that he is able to generalize his interests far enough to place them in a context informed by general principles and relevant domain knowledge, and beyond narrow self-interest. "Virginia should allow Gays to marry…

Any statement that contains the word "should" is inherently a normative claim, which exists outside the scope of empirical data. When people articulate their own interests - of which they are the most credible experts - and then say "the current policy framework is damaging to my interests/rights", they're articulating a far more valid position than someone who is trying to abstract their own hypothetical understandi…

Say we are in the US before the Civil War. Since we can't, according to your methodology, insist on the general principle that slavery is wrong (because general principles don't exist) then the proper role of politics, in your view, is to reconcile the interests of the slaveholder and the slaves. The non-slaveholders who want to eliminate slavery don't count, because they don't have a direct interest, in your analysis. They only have an interest in decency, but that is just another general principle. So how to we reconcile these opposing interests? Abolishing slavery would seem to be off the table, because that just benefits one side. Limit the number and severity of beatings?

Re: Keep Your Identity Small (2009)

#86

Post by hawkharris »

Gormo wrote: post #75
dylangs1030 wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Counters to your counters: > 1) Does a homosexual couple with no knowledge of US marriage law not have a valid opinion on whether they should be allowed to marry? No, that couple doesn't have a valid opinion. How could they? They don't understand that marriage is in the United States. That conceptualization of "togetherness" as a couple doesn't exist in their minds. The threshold at which they can form a valid opinio…

> They don't understand that marriage is in the United States. That conceptualization of "togetherness" as a couple doesn't exist in their minds. Can you explain what these sentences mean in clearer language? If you're saying what I think you're saying, then I think you may have it precisely backwards. Those individuals are the only credible experts on the particularities of their relationship, which has little, if a…

You're right to say that the gay couple would be credible experts on their own relationship.

The problem is that people tend to confuse their own personal experience with broader expertise about a subject. For example, the gay couple would not necessarily be credible experts on all, or even most, gay relationships.

Membership in a group doesn't qualify us to speak on behalf of all the group's members; the same is true for issues concerning race, gender, etc.

In other words, everyone is entitled to strong opinions based on personal experience — the "ought" part, as you put it — but they should be careful not to presume that others share their views and experiences.

Re: Keep Your Identity Small (2009)

#87

Post by wittysense »

Please read Wittgenstein. Or Richard M. Hare. Or Gilbert Ryle.

Not all language is truth-functional, and religious language is a language game which consists of no conditions for Assertibility.

Mathematics is a language game in which every "argument" must bear Assertibility conditions, before Truth conditions are discussed.

Please, stop spinning on this topic, thinkers. This has gone on long enough.

Re: Keep Your Identity Small (2009)

#89

Post by Gormo »

leephillips wrote: post #85
Gormo wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Any statement that contains the word "should" is inherently a normative claim, which exists outside the scope of empirical data. When people articulate their own interests - of which they are the most credible experts - and then say "the current policy framework is damaging to my interests/rights", they're articulating a far more valid position than someone who is trying to abstract their own hypothetical understandi…

Say we are in the US before the Civil War. Since we can't, according to your methodology, insist on the general principle that slavery is wrong (because general principles don't exist) then the proper role of politics, in your view, is to reconcile the interests of the slaveholder and the slaves. The non-slaveholders who want to eliminate slavery don't count, because they don't have a direct interest, in your analysi…

> Since we can't, according to your methodology, insist on the general principle that slavery is wrong (because general principles don't exist)

No - we can insist on anything we want. There's just nothing general about it. Our principles are ours, not the universe's.

You've actually picked out a great example: that one generated some absolutely immense conflict.

Maybe most of us share an opinion that we feel so strongly about that we're willing to accept and to engage in that level of conflict in order to ensure that our position dominates. When matters of life and death, freedom and slavery are made into political questions, then the possibility that the political process will succumb to violent conflict certainly increases. Perhaps you feel that the cost is worth it to eliminate slavery or to destroy tyranny, and I'd agree with you. But how many questions is it really worth it for? Can you name a single modern political issue that you'd think was worth a civil war?

I'm merely pointing out that principles aren't general: they belong to people in particular, and when people with conflicting principles attempt to universalize their values in the same space, the result is escalating conflict. For the vast majority of modern political controversies, I prefer the "agree to disagree" approach, finding viable ways for people with incompatible values to live by their own values within their own space, enabling them to peacefully coexist with each other, and to enjoy the benefits of interacting with each other to the extent where and when their values don't conflict.

NB: the example of slavery is actually even more interesting here, because in a famous ruling in 1772 (in a dispute known as Somersett's Case), slavery was determined to have always been illegal under the common law. It took positive law enacted by colonial and, later, state legislatures to legalize it where it historically existed.

Re: Keep Your Identity Small (2009)

#90

Post by Gormo »

hawkharris wrote: post #86
Gormo wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They don't understand that marriage is in the United States. That conceptualization of "togetherness" as a couple doesn't exist in their minds. Can you explain what these sentences mean in clearer language? If you're saying what I think you're saying, then I think you may have it precisely backwards. Those individuals are the only credible experts on the particularities of their relationship, which has little, if a…

You're right to say that the gay couple would be credible experts on their own relationship . The problem is that people tend to confuse their own personal experience with broader expertise about a subject. For example, the gay couple would not necessarily be credible experts on all, or even most, gay relationships. Membership in a group doesn't qualify us to speak on behalf of all the group's members; the same is tr…

> For example, the gay couple would not necessarily be credible experts on all, or even most, gay relationships.

So?

> Membership in a group doesn't qualify us to speak on behalf of all the group's members

The boundaries of groups are usually pretty arbitrary in the first place.

No one is ever speaking on behalf of anyone else, unless that someone else explicitly invited them to do so. When people express their opinions, they're expressing their opinions, so it's likewise an error to interpret one party's opinions as necessarily being those of anyone else.

I agree that no one should presume to speak for others, but this has nothing to do with the notion I'm arguing against here, that being that people's political views must somehow be validated by data in order to be credible.

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