A response to Jamil Elie Bou Kheir's comment on Facebook (presumably jamilbk on HN), because I do not have Facebook:<p>> hello from hacker news. thoughtful article! i think it's not the mere intelligence, beauty, or wealth that defines someone. perhaps it's the reasons and difficulty through which they are achieved. suppose i endure years of hardship and suddenly, in a flash of creativity, uncover a specific life path which i choose to follow. if the journey down that path necessitates an increase in intelligence, then wouldn't that conscious pursuit of intelligence qualify as a viable aspect of my identity? similar points can be raised about beauty and wealth.<p>> accordingly, i think no real identity is assumed when an individual gets these things "for free". enthusiastically expressing one's beauty, intelligence, or wealth that have existed since birth (or a lucky event) is actually rather distasteful... so yeah delete those qualities kthx.<p>You've made negation your identity the same way that others define themselves through beauty, intelligence and wealth. This is neither unique nor particularly useful, and I've found it to be generally unhealthy.<p>Entrench yourself in any region's activist scene and you will be surrounded by this mentality. Despite being a higher level abstraction than beauty, intelligence and wealth, it is equally commoditizable given enough time and positive feedback. For instance, consider the phrase "social capital".<p>The original post does not strike me as a rejection of one end of an axis in favor of its converse. Rather it is a dismissal of the axis itself, of an entire model of thinking, its conclusion resting in rational, subjective passivity. To ascribe any particular aesthetic about how things "should be" or how people "should act" is to miss the point.<p>I would summarize the original post's conclusion thus: stop projecting; question abstractions; remove inconsistencies from the bottom, up.<p>That conclusion invites a plea. We all have a utility function, and it will eventually fail; how do we best extend its (and our) relevance, and do we even want to?