Keep Your Identity Small (2009)

This is SUCH &quot;Paul Graham&quot; advice - useful mostly to people who sit on top of a hierarchy of power which does not demand any of their personal attention.<p>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 those systems is limited - but we may be able to increase or decrease our influence through work and engagement. It&#x27;s healthy to reflect on <i>what</i> you are investing your time and energy into and <i>how</i> those investments will impact your life. There is no single right or wrong answer - but you will benefit from forming an opinion!<p>It&#x27;s unhealthy to falsely base your self-worth on giant political movements outside your control - but it&#x27;s equally unhealthy to ignore the impact you experience from the issues of the day. Be reflective in how you associate yourself with things, but no one should pretend that they are not subject to the world (unless, it seems, you&#x27;re at a &quot;Paul Graham&quot; level of wealth and independence).

Since Paul wrote that, people have made so many more things part of their identity, including JavaScript which he points out in the essay was not a particularly identity-charged topic in 2009. With the rise of the frameworks, it has become an identity-charged topic with JS devs now segregated into tribes that insist on using their preferred framework for every webapp they build. It&#x27;s not about assessing the right tool for the job based on evidence or metrics, it&#x27;s about a belief system that the tribe&#x27;s preferred framework is always the right tool for the job.<p>Ultimately I think Paul was right and I think about this essay a lot. The best solution is to make as few things part of your identity as possible. For JS devs, that means you should be more willing to use a different framework from time to time or no framework at all. Decide what to use based on an objective assessment of what the right tool for the job is, not what&#x27;s trendy in your tribe.

It seems to be the thing nowadays to be preoccupied with the notion of your own identity, and I can&#x27;t help but feel like it&#x27;s just navel gazing. Maybe it&#x27;s social media and the culture of self promotion, but I find it pretty hollow and uninteresting.<p>I have a young kid in my family that&#x27;s fixated with gender and sexuality and they said one day &quot;I just want to get diagnosed so I know what I <i>am</i>,&quot; to which I said &quot;It&#x27;s not what you are that&#x27;s important, it&#x27;s what you want to do.&quot; That seemed to be an epiphany for them.

Doesn&#x27;t land for me. I&#x27;m queer, my identity isn&#x27;t huge, but it does include queer.<p>That alone is enough to make some folks want to do violence to me (I have first hand experience with this).<p>Telling me to &quot;stop being x&quot; 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.

I wonder if people ask themselves, &quot;am I a good artifact of criticism?&quot;<p>Obectively, your identity is a set of meaningless reflections you have cohered into a narrative that centralizes your subjective experience. Subjectively, your identity is a story you protect and use a constant process of retroactive continuity to moralize and preserve it.<p>They are both artifacts of language, which is not a substrate or the real that persists when you are gone. Your identity is chosen. The value of an axiom like spiritual faith is that your choice can come from the reflection of something objective, persistent, and compassionate, instead of the reflections and artifacts of the language and meaning you have been presented with - often as a yoke. Be what you choose, not what may have happened, and especially not what someone who wants something from you tells you.<p>If your identity is the artifact of dialectic materialism, you have already accepted that you are a subject, working off an indenture in the name of earthly material justice, in pursuit of redemption from an imaginary critic who will never yield. I believe we have choice. Let one thing into your identity, and the rest becomes obvious, imo.

My view is that having a &quot;small identity&quot; 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 dispositions and prior experiences (aka identity).<p>The danger is when you make the fiction of &quot;not having an identity&quot; a big part of your actual identity, which can make you even more blind to your biases than everyone else.<p>I think a much more productive route to being a more effective thinker is to accept you have an identity just the same as everyone else - and invest time and effort into interrogating what that identity is and what biases and blind-spots it might lead to. This is still far from perfect, of course.

&quot;If people can&#x27;t think clearly about anything that has become part of their identity, then all other things being equal, the best plan is to let as few things into your identity as possible.&quot;<p>No thank you; I do not want to live in a passionless society. Unlike the claims of the article, people can and do have reasoned discussions about both politics and religion.

Maybe better advice is to not take on as identities things that you just took over from other people without questioning. Also know what the other side is thinking before deciding what belongs in your identity and what not. There are things that you should believe because you are you. There are also things that should be firmly rejected. It actually takes a fair bit of living before one knows things definitively. But there is also the danger of being too open minded. One can be so open minded that ones brain falls out...

Author is right, but chosen wrong example.<p>Religion is not a tool, unlike programming language, limited by definition, Religion is Universe, with endless number of variants. Some religions, like protestants, are by definition distributed, they just have not some acknowledged position on many questions.<p>But if we talk about business, this is exact hit, in business, to convince client, you should have narrow offer, which fit this client believes, nothing more.<p>Why so, if you widen offer, because of steel triangle of PM, you have to raise costs, and&#x2F;or lower quality.<p>And yes, I know about smartphones, but my estimation, at least, 10-25% of HN discussions, are about low quality of widened solutions, including smartphones, or about excellence of narrow solutions, like C64, or ST.

Mr. Graham does have a big political identity (on twitter). Sure, he shares more anecdotes about raising his kids than &quot;anti-woke&quot; messages, but it doesn&#x27;t hold up against this essay.<p>His essay might still be right of course.

Train yourself to argue all sides of political - religious questions with equal fervor. However, as the author notes, it&#x27;s not wise to over-identify with the various different positions (that way lies schizophrenia).<p>This used to be something people were trained in as a matter of course, wasn&#x27;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.

Paul Graham predicted the religious wars that produce talking about React and React Native. This includes people that develop using Electron.<p>You cannot possibly fathom to have a productive conversation with them about less resource-hungry, better-performant alternatives.<p>It all basically boils down to: <i>&quot;Who are you to tell me I&#x27;m wrong if React is what puts food on my table?&quot;</i> which is fine in principle, but blinds them on ways to make their job easier and better in so many ways.<p>EDIT: Conciseness and style.

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.

&gt; As a rule, any mention of religion on an online forum degenerates into a religious argument. Why? Why does this happen with religion and not with Javascript...<p>Unfortunately this is not true anymore for JavaScript. People will get into intense arguments over TS vs JS, React, etc and argue from the same position of &quot;faith&quot; or strongly held beliefs rather than logic.

Not labeling myself was something I figured out at 15&#x2F;16. One thing I&#x27;ve never figured out it why people label themselves.

Absolutely. Identification and all the labels you carry are the source of most conflict.<p>Sages of the east have recognized this for thousands of years and seek to dissolve the ego, dissolve all the labels that we think we are.

Thought provoking post, but the idea doesn&#x27;t work. Yes, people are less inclined to get into arguments about specific technical tools if they are not educated about them. Yes, people DO get into arguments about religion even if they aren&#x27;t educated about it. The difference is that religion addresses matters that ARE central to people&#x27;s identity. It addresses choices that EVERYONE must make, and therefore everyone has a stake in it, unlike an arcane programming language that only impacts a few people.

&gt; <i>For example, a discussion about a battle that included citizens of one or more of the countries involved would probably degenerate into a political argument. But a discussion today about a battle that took place in the Bronze Age probably wouldn&#x27;t.</i><p>Might this not be because we don&#x27;t have sufficient information on Bronze Ages battles to know the context behind them? Whereas in a relatively modern-day battle we&#x27;ll know about the primary aggressor, their rationale, etc. which are all a basis for further discussion.

I must have missed it at the time, otherwise I would remember this gem:<p><i>Because the point at which this happens depends on the people rather than the topic, it&#x27;s a mistake to conclude that because a question tends to provoke religious wars, it must have no answer.</i><p>Not sure if it depends on people or interests, probably a combination of both, but there&#x27;s so many of those problems with obvious solutions that are discussed endlessly.

Identity is not &#x27;what I do&#x27;, but &#x27;who I am.&#x27;<p>&#x27;Who I am&#x27; does not include tangents such as what programming language I utilize.<p>&#x27;Who I am&#x27; speaks to the intrinsic nature of me. What my core being considers unalterable and unchanging specifics.<p>Most of the topics here in this thread do not speak to that.

Alternate advice: practice skills of listening, observing, empathy, dialog, sharing, building. These are the skills you will need to deal with people.<p>People can have a difficult time talking about religion, politics, and programming languages because these issues affect their lives. When you say something that threatens another person’s life, expect a strong reaction to that threat. The key to having productive discussions about topics like these is to start with empathy, look for and diffuse threats, and seek a future state that creates space for the needs and goals of all stakeholders.<p>Edit: also, life is a lot more fun when approached with curiosity. Stay curious.

People can change opinion on subjects they learned after ~18 years of age, not so much opinions formed at an early age, which constitute &quot;identity&quot;. Deep layers in the network are hard to relearn.

&gt; I think what religion and politics have in common is that they become part of people&#x27;s identity, and people can never have a fruitful argument about something that&#x27;s part of their identity. By definition they&#x27;re partisan.<p>That is a damn broad brush he is painting with. This is in the nature of &quot;enlightened centrism&quot; BS. Claiming partisans cannot have a fruitful discussion is simply unsupportable.<p>For sure, if neither party has any real knowledge and it&#x27;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.

Imagine a conversation with someone with &quot;believer in x framework, ex y, z&quot; in their Bio and compare your biases with same user but with a handle anon123.

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

This validates why discussions on HN (or even reddit) are more sincere and useful than, say, Quora.

IMHO I am not convinced that gender identity is actually measurable or a knowable thing. I can physically demonstrate whether I am male or female. I can only assume that I think or feel like other males or females based on how other males or females behave or what they tell me they think and feel. Given the fluidity of language I have no guarantee that my interpretation of that is accurate. I have no real way to do an experiment because I cannot choose to be the other gender for a day and compare. Maybe there are more objective measures but they seem somewhat inadequate to me. My real life experience informs me that there are no real defined boundaries and all of us are some mixture of all of the above.