This feels like a success story of pursuing peace and prosperity through elevation of a Dark Lord.
(I’m guessing appeals to identity are responsible for a significant share of misguided, unconsidered conviction. Putting this force to a good use makes it harder to defend against it with general injunctions like keeping identity empty.)
I do get that “Keep your identity small” is good advice, in general. But I think that not all identities are created equal, e.g.:
“I eat healthy food” vs. “I am a vegetarian”
or
“I keep fit” vs. “I am a cyclist”.
The second element of each of those pairs is much riskier thant the first one because it can hinder updating on new information (new studies about the benefits of different diets or about different exercise methods).
And since identity can be an effective (albeit somewhat dangerous) tool to shape one’s behaviour it could make sense to look a bit deeper into which types of identities are more and which are less problematic for your world view.
Therefore I would not see all types of identiy as a Dark Lord.
I think my answer to Vladimir would be along these lines. I definitely see the issues with identities. Even more when they come from others people, as mentioned for example here or here. Yet I do believe that building identities yourself is a good step forward. As is not having too specific an identity.
That being said, I probably agree that playing with identities is partly a dark art. But somehow, it seems to me the most reliable way to build these automatic system 1 responses the way we want them.
I’m pretty sure that trying not to have an identity just means that your brain will identify as the sort of superior person who is above having identities, in much the same way that claims to not care about status are basically claiming to have status higher than everyone who cares about status.
I imagine that there might be meditative or other practices to shut off or disconnect the brain bits that care about identity and status, but mere conscious avoidance of anything related to identity or status is just defining another kind of identity and status, with the same detrimental effects on reasoning… while also foregoing any practical benefits that otherwise could have been obtained. A bit like going into a restaurant, paying for the food, and then not eating it because it was too expensive. If you’re going to foot the bill either way, you might as well get some nutrients out of it.
(Also, the Dark Lord comment kinda sounds like an appeal to identity, i.e. “don’t be the kind of foolish person who bargains with dark lords”, and an implied humblebrag that you can achieve your goals without needing to do this sort of thing, and thus are higher status than the post author or anyone who might find the post helpful. Even if those things weren’t your intent, even if your brain didn’t include them in the message on purpose behind your back, some, if not most of the recipients of your message have brains that will take it that way, because that’s just how ubiquitously insidious the status-and-identity hardware is.)
You write a lot of good content, so I think it’s likely that you are making a good point here. However, I don’t understand it at all and am finding this comment like trying to climb a smooth wall—I can’t even get started. Then again, I am relatively new to this community. If you have time, I’d be thankful (get it?? I ate so much I don’t want to move) if you could rewrite it with your definitions and assumptions made explicit.
Draco had observed that if the two prisoners had been Death Eaters during the Wizarding War, the Dark Lord would have killed any traitors.
Harry had nodded and said that was one way to resolve the Prisoner’s Dilemma—and in fact both Death Eaters would want there to be a Dark Lord for exactly that reason.
The idea is that coordination can be enforced by a central authority such as a Dark Lord, moving the situation closer to the Pareto frontier, but having a Dark Lord is terrible for other reasons, including as a source of risks that are hard to accurately anticipate.
This is intended as an analogy to the post’s story of employing identity in order to regularly exercise. The use of identity in reasoning is analogous to a Dark Lord in that it’s a terrible cognitive movement that seems natural, perhaps a psychological adaptation. As a straightforward example, it’s things like “What do you think causes global warming?” “I’m a Pastafarian. Pastafarians consider the decline in the number of pirates to be the cause of global warming. Therefore I believe that global warming is caused by there not being enough pirates.” The problem is that the question doesn’t get to be considered on the object level, it immediately goes to simulacrum level 3. In actual practice, it’s not at all straightforward, the arguments in support for a position that won’t be considered on object level come naturally and without a framing that makes the problem apparent.
One way of getting rid of the problem is to keep an eye on topics that trigger this movement, asking to affirm consistency instead of clarity of inference, and try to kick such topics out of your identity. There doesn’t seem to be much of a point in having anything as part of one’s identity in this sense, so the goal of the exercise is to eventually get rid of everything that plays that role, making identity empty.
This feels like a success story of pursuing peace and prosperity through elevation of a Dark Lord.
(I’m guessing appeals to identity are responsible for a significant share of misguided, unconsidered conviction. Putting this force to a good use makes it harder to defend against it with general injunctions like keeping identity empty.)
I do get that “Keep your identity small” is good advice, in general. But I think that not all identities are created equal, e.g.:
“I eat healthy food” vs. “I am a vegetarian”
or
“I keep fit” vs. “I am a cyclist”.
The second element of each of those pairs is much riskier thant the first one because it can hinder updating on new information (new studies about the benefits of different diets or about different exercise methods).
And since identity can be an effective (albeit somewhat dangerous) tool to shape one’s behaviour it could make sense to look a bit deeper into which types of identities are more and which are less problematic for your world view.
Therefore I would not see all types of identiy as a Dark Lord.
I think my answer to Vladimir would be along these lines. I definitely see the issues with identities. Even more when they come from others people, as mentioned for example here or here. Yet I do believe that building identities yourself is a good step forward. As is not having too specific an identity.
That being said, I probably agree that playing with identities is partly a dark art. But somehow, it seems to me the most reliable way to build these automatic system 1 responses the way we want them.
I’m pretty sure that trying not to have an identity just means that your brain will identify as the sort of superior person who is above having identities, in much the same way that claims to not care about status are basically claiming to have status higher than everyone who cares about status.
I imagine that there might be meditative or other practices to shut off or disconnect the brain bits that care about identity and status, but mere conscious avoidance of anything related to identity or status is just defining another kind of identity and status, with the same detrimental effects on reasoning… while also foregoing any practical benefits that otherwise could have been obtained. A bit like going into a restaurant, paying for the food, and then not eating it because it was too expensive. If you’re going to foot the bill either way, you might as well get some nutrients out of it.
(Also, the Dark Lord comment kinda sounds like an appeal to identity, i.e. “don’t be the kind of foolish person who bargains with dark lords”, and an implied humblebrag that you can achieve your goals without needing to do this sort of thing, and thus are higher status than the post author or anyone who might find the post helpful. Even if those things weren’t your intent, even if your brain didn’t include them in the message on purpose behind your back, some, if not most of the recipients of your message have brains that will take it that way, because that’s just how ubiquitously insidious the status-and-identity hardware is.)
You write a lot of good content, so I think it’s likely that you are making a good point here. However, I don’t understand it at all and am finding this comment like trying to climb a smooth wall—I can’t even get started. Then again, I am relatively new to this community. If you have time, I’d be thankful (get it?? I ate so much I don’t want to move) if you could rewrite it with your definitions and assumptions made explicit.
The punchline is a reference to chapter 33 of HPMoR:
The idea is that coordination can be enforced by a central authority such as a Dark Lord, moving the situation closer to the Pareto frontier, but having a Dark Lord is terrible for other reasons, including as a source of risks that are hard to accurately anticipate.
This is intended as an analogy to the post’s story of employing identity in order to regularly exercise. The use of identity in reasoning is analogous to a Dark Lord in that it’s a terrible cognitive movement that seems natural, perhaps a psychological adaptation. As a straightforward example, it’s things like “What do you think causes global warming?” “I’m a Pastafarian. Pastafarians consider the decline in the number of pirates to be the cause of global warming. Therefore I believe that global warming is caused by there not being enough pirates.” The problem is that the question doesn’t get to be considered on the object level, it immediately goes to simulacrum level 3. In actual practice, it’s not at all straightforward, the arguments in support for a position that won’t be considered on object level come naturally and without a framing that makes the problem apparent.
One way of getting rid of the problem is to keep an eye on topics that trigger this movement, asking to affirm consistency instead of clarity of inference, and try to kick such topics out of your identity. There doesn’t seem to be much of a point in having anything as part of one’s identity in this sense, so the goal of the exercise is to eventually get rid of everything that plays that role, making identity empty.
GOT IT. Great prose. Thank you.