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Keep your Identity Small (2009)

paulgraham.com

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Re: Keep your Identity Small (2009)

#101

Post by mseebach »

dorkwood wrote: post #78
joelrunyon wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But if they instead see themselves as a waiter, a gardener, a musician, and a reader, they'll be less affected when one of those things is attacked. I think what you see in reality (at least these days) is that if ANY of the downsides to any of the identities are pointed out, you'll see people rush to have to defend it. Also, I believe attaching your identity to being a waiter would be doing the opposite of what PG…

What is his suggestion, though, exactly? For a waiter to not consider 'being a waiter' as part of his identity? If we're talking about reality, that strikes me as a fairly unrealistic ask, especially if it's all the waiter does. And I can only really speak from my personal experience. Having a diverse range of interests has given me a protective barrier that I didn't have when I was younger. When I was a teenager, fo…

The idea is about trying to keep seperate the things you do/feel/believe and what you are. For our waiter friend, is the fact that he's a waiter somehow the essence of his being? Or is it a job he does, because one needs a job and this is on balance a pretty good one?

In the latter case, if someone says that waiting is a dead end job, he can much easier say sure, yeah, not many places to go, but the hours are really convenient for my life situation. This is obviously a much more productive (or at least not destructive) outcome.

It's almost impossible to have a productive discussion with someone who is a [ideology]ist, but quite possible to have one with a reasonable person who is of the belief that [ideology] offers some good answers to problems in society.

Re: Keep your Identity Small (2009)

#102

Post by mr_toad »

lamename wrote: post #24
stareatgoats wrote: post #16

Good advice, albeit hard to accomplish. Identity is a core part of political party formation, at least in Europe (together with self-interest and ideology). No doubt it has an important role in marketing as well. I don't see these forces giving up on pulling the identity lever any time soon, it seems to gain importance if anything. However, perceived identity coupled with a sense of oppression, exceptionalism and/or…

Agreed. Humans tend to quickly self-sort into tribes. Sometimes it's fine, sometimes it's fun (sports), sometimes it's exploitable

Not just humans. Other hominids operate at a tribal level.

Obviously there is a survival adavantage to help ensure the genes of your tribe (genetically close relatives) survive.

I can’t help but think that human political ‘tribalism’ is just atavism.

Re: Keep your Identity Small (2009)

#103

Post by austenallred »

TheCoreh wrote: post #89
incompatible wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is an online forum, and despite the mention of religion and Javascript it hasn't yet degenerated into an argument. It seems the rule has exceptions.

Hacker News is an exceptionally civilized forum. But even then: this is not a discussion about JavaScript or religion, this is a discussion about discussions about JavaScript or Religion. So one level of abstraction away, which probably helps avoiding the flame war.

Now let’s try a discussion about ad blockers or net neutrality

Re: Keep your Identity Small (2009)

#104

Post by incompatible »

austenallred wrote: post #103
TheCoreh wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hacker News is an exceptionally civilized forum. But even then: this is not a discussion about JavaScript or religion, this is a discussion about discussions about JavaScript or Religion. So one level of abstraction away, which probably helps avoiding the flame war.

Now let’s try a discussion about ad blockers or net neutrality

Topics that are too controversial get demoted fast. http://www.righto.com/2013/11/how-hacker-news-ranking-really...

Re: Keep your Identity Small (2009)

#105

Post by pasabagi »

tendicular wrote: post #98
walterbell wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When someone self-identifies as a member of profession A, there are relatively quick ways of communicating their level of expertise, e.g. education, place of employment, job title, years of experience. When someone self-identifies as a believer in religion X or political label Y, it is less easy to characterize their experience in the practice (usually harder than knowledge) of the community's exoteric and esoteric p…

when you are being 'cognizant and honest', it is not about labels anymore. sticking with labels is exactly what 'politicking' is all about. 'Communist' is a label. Belief in voluntary mutual help, freedom of thought (i.e. right to know, to have free access to full information), freedom from coercion and manipulation (by deceptive misreporting, or forbidding access to some info, etc.) actually clashes with accepted pr…

I think the point about identifying as a communist, or socialist, or a catholic, for example, is you accept a tradition with its warts. If you wanted to just affiliate with the values, you could say you were an anarchist, or a non-denominational christian, or indeed, just explain what you believe in.

As I see it, the latter is a cowardly choice. To affirm you're a catholic, or a communist, despite the often barbaric history of really-existing-X, is to accept that politics is hard, and that even beliefs that are gentle to the point of being asinine have their dark shadows, and that the only way to counter this is to be aware of them. To say you're a believer in the values, but not to identify yourself with those values as a tradition or history, is to ignore the danger of those values - and to risk re-enacting their failures.

Re: Keep your Identity Small (2009)

#106

Post by dorkwood »

mseebach wrote: post #101
dorkwood wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is his suggestion, though, exactly? For a waiter to not consider 'being a waiter' as part of his identity? If we're talking about reality, that strikes me as a fairly unrealistic ask, especially if it's all the waiter does. And I can only really speak from my personal experience. Having a diverse range of interests has given me a protective barrier that I didn't have when I was younger. When I was a teenager, fo…

The idea is about trying to keep seperate the things you do/feel/believe and what you are . For our waiter friend, is the fact that he's a waiter somehow the essence of his being? Or is it a job he does, because one needs a job and this is on balance a pretty good one? In the latter case, if someone says that waiting is a dead end job, he can much easier say sure, yeah, not many places to go, but the hours are really…

I agree that it would be more productive for the waiter to be able to detach his identity from his job. But to even be able to do that in the first place, he needs to have something else going on. He needs to be so sure of his identity that an insult to his line of work doesn't bother him. But if he's taken the writer's advice, and kept his identity very small, what if he one day realises that whatever he saw himself as was a lie? Now he's in trouble again. And I think that's the danger of the writer's approach: you're always going to have to see yourself as something.

The writer claims that you can't think clearly about any topic that's part of your identity, but I disagree with that. I think the thing that prevents you from thinking clearly is that the topic is tied to such a large part of your being. If you instead grow your identity beyond a single thing, your capacity for outrage becomes diluted.

Re: Keep your Identity Small (2009)

#107

Post by the_gipsy »

I think this is similar to “liking” vs “doing” something, in terms of defining yourself.

Anybody can like something, and build an identity based on taste and opinions. It requires no skill. But doing something is a much deeper way of defining yourself.

Re: Keep your Identity Small (2009)

#108

Post by Torai »

Most people reading this will already be fairly tolerant

I'm fairly intolerant Paul, with the things I deem wrong.

And first thing is, why the fuck are listening to you about Politics and Religion. What is your experience on those area so you can enlighten us. In which forums (nowadays they are called chat groups) have you debated hard, holding your ground. And how many people have you convinced on 1 vs 1 ideological battles.

I'm tired of false prophets. And I get this Paul guy is someone related to the world of software. But someone should steal him the mic when he starts talking about topics he is not experienced enough.

People need to keep their Identity BIG. But they need to realize about the bad things in their cultural heritage, keeping only the good things and erasing or transforming the bad ones. It's simple.

But Paul, if you don't know about how to convince people that is opposing your views then please don't try to make magic 1 liner recipes for everyone. Cause people is dumb, and many of them will blindly follow your command without fully understanding it. The same thing as with Agile methodology and other abstractions (10 commandments for example) that come from many years expertise of one guy with much wisdom, but that at the end, people blindly follow without making them think or test it to see if it's right.

Identity=Ego

And here we have 2009 Paul Graham, with an ego as big as it gets, telling other people not to have an strong ego. So he is denying others the tool that makes individuals be certain about their ideas and possibilities. He is denying others their right to grow.

Re: Keep your Identity Small (2009)

#109

Post by badestrand »

platz wrote: post #67

How can you advocate for your own self-interest politically, if it is not connected to your identity? How would you even decide what policies you want? PG makes it seem like we could simply do politics by creating some ultimate utilitarian function. But then how do you decide what it counts as good? In fact, there is no separating identity from politics, no matter how you try to obfuscate it.

I think you might have a good point, there is no "objectively good" in politics. For example when you consider highly unequal incomes as a problem in society then you will support different measures than when you don't find that problematic at all. For both there is no "real" basis, the measurement for "good" is only your image of how you want the world to be in 100 years and thus entirely subjective.

Re: Keep your Identity Small (2009)

#110

Post by philipps »

I agree that tying one’s convictions to identity and arguing on the basis of identity makes cooperation among individuals with different identities harder. However, I find the suggestion to reduce one’s identity problematic. First, identity plays an important role in developing a sense of community and aides in-group cooperation. And second, it’s worth keeping in mind that it’s easy to underestimate the attachment to identity when one’s own identity happens to be widely-accepted and/or relatively easy to discard.
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