| Paul is more talking about pride and identity. He's not talking about full embodiment or awareness of what identity is. I'm going to say an example that's not true but it's just to demonstrate a point. For example if I say "All women are stupid." If you identify as a woman you get offended and emotionally compromised. You assume the person who said it is wrong and you leave. If you don't identify as a woman and you aren't offended by the statement at all.... perhaps you can do an objective and open minded study to get to the bottom of the question. An objective person can look at the data and realize that on the bell curve of IQ... men and woman have the same average but men have a thicker tail on the far ends of both sides of the curve. This says that the small population of extremely intelligent people and extremely stupid people are mostly men. By not having pride you can be more objective and see this nuance. Graham is talking about pride and identity and how it effects your objectivity and bias and intelligent analysis. He is not referring to the actual meaning and definition of identity. The dark side of lacking identity and being objective is that while I illustrate a rosy conclusion (that is also true) here, not all conclusions are rosy. It is very possible that for certain scenarios the data shows results that are not politically correct. What if the data shows that women are truly stupider? What then? |
By trying to simplify a definition of identity into something specific or plucking out a single identity trait (any trait) which cannot be defined precisely (emacs vs vim, declarative vs functional, race, intelligence, flavor, color etc) we lose information and end up in never ending ratholes of discussion. People start relying on personal experiences and feelings (subjective info) which makes the discussion personal and more often than not useless.
My take from the author is Keep It Simple Stupid.