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Describing any action as a vote about your future identity is a way of thinking about the world. It makes sense within the particular framework this article is presenting, but it is not a universally held belief, and it's not self-evidently true. It's a metaphor. Here's an example: if you choose not a rob a bank 10,000 times, that's 10,000 votes for not being a bank robber. Then if you choose to rob a bank just one time, you're suddenly a bank robber. 10,000 to 1, the number of votes doesn't actually matter. That's a silly example, but what it means is that your identity isn't always the result of a bunch of small decisions. Often there's just one "vote", and that is the decision you make, the action you take. One objection to this may be "but being a bank robber isn't who you are, it's just something you did." If so, I wonder how to square that with the example of becoming more of a smoker by smoking more cigarettes? Can I vote not to be a smoker, even if I smoke a lot of cigarettes? Or to be less of a smoker by smoking more cigarettes? That doesn't make sense to me. Anyway, hope this clarifies my objection: "actions are votes about who you will become" is a metaphorical explanation, not a literal one, so that comment way upthread is not patently false in my opinion, even if it's arguable. |