Paul Graham, way back in 2009:
More generally, you can have a fruitful discussion about a topic only if it doesn’t engage the identities of any of the participants. What makes politics and religion such minefields is that they engage so many people’s identities. But you could in principle have a useful conversation about them with some people. And there are other topics that might seem harmless, like the relative merits of Ford and Chevy pickup trucks, that you couldn’t safely talk about with others.
And the key takeaway:
Most people reading this will already be fairly tolerant. But there is a step beyond thinking of yourself as x but tolerating y: not even to consider yourself an x. The more labels you have for yourself, the dumber they make you.
Run a site like OSAlert for almost a decade, and you’ll see this article come to life every single day.
I attach my actual name to each comment. I’m Andrew Clunn. The means I don’t have real anonymity when I say things that are divisive, and if I put my foot in my mouth my name is attached to it. Compare this to the horrific trolling and vile crap that comes from anonymous posters and commenters.
Similarly, I self label as many things. I’m an atheist for example. Yet that didn’t stop me from criticizing the ridiculous Atheism+ movement. I’m a libertarian, but that doesn’t keep me from accepting the truth of humans impacting the climate.
Objectivity is a fine aspirational goal, but you aren’t going to get there by fooling yourself into the notion that you’ve moved beyond the tribal mentalities engrained in our psyche. You have labels and groups you self identify with. Don’t pretend you don’t. Embrace your labels, and recognize that you therefore need to be more vigilant about holding your own tribes accountable. It’s why I respect Bill Maher and John Stossel so much. Not because they arent’ bias, but because they admit to their biases and call out their own audiences as being clearly bias as well, and let people who disagree with them openly argue their points on their shows.
I do not need to strip myself of my identity to have a coherent conversation and debate. And further more, I refuse to.
Personally, I hold the believe that it’s more useful to know your own biases, be aware of them and know where they come from. Objectivity is, indeed, a worthy goal, but if you know your own self and your biases you know how you can be influenced and you can use the insight into where your biases hail from to add to the conversation — even if it’s just to allow others to try and make you re-think your biases.
I’ve seen plenty of people who make an honest-to-God attempt at objectivity, but they’re completely obvious to their own biases and then end up being manipulated and then ridiculed, and the discussion ends up getting derailed fast.
The thing I don’t get is encountering comments that complain that somehow a biased and/or opinionated article doesn’t allow for difference of opinions or whatever.
Have posted, I can^aEURTMt vote up your comment. So I^aEURTMll just leave an, ^aEURoeExactly!^aEUR here.
I agree.
I disagree. A better way to improve myself is to eschew my labels and replace them with a set of beliefs and opinions, hopefully backed by solid reasoning, experience, and facts. Whether or not they happen to align with a specific label would be inconsequential to me.
Also, I don’t need to have a label or be a part of a tribe to hold that tribe accountable.
While it’s a noble notion. IIf you don’t apply the labels to yourself, then others will choose them for you. It’s the sad reality. You can’t avoid labels, try as you might.
One can’t really ever stop other people from labelling you. Even if you want to preempt it by picking a positive label for yourself, if other people have a problem with what you’re saying they’ll relabel you as something else (you’re not a true X, you’re actually a Y etc).
I don’t think trying to find a one word definition to label yourself frees you from that. It just adds something extra that, because you’ve made it part of your identity, you may feel that you need to defend if someone attacks the label you associate with (“gamers aren’t all like that”, “not all men” etc).
And even worse you may feel the need to defend scumbags because even though you don’t agree on many of the important details, the label puts you on the same imagined team when others are attacking the label.
Other will probably apply different labels to you regardless of what labels you have chosen for yourself.
I think being open about your identity in online discussions in laudable in the one sense – but I certainly don’t think we should force or even encourage everyone in that direction.
I like the partial anonymity of avatars/online persona not to troll but – for instance in my own case – my political and social proclivities are also quite libertarian and left leaning too. Perhaps not quite anarchist communist, but certainly social democrat – I believe in partially capitalist systems too of course, I’m a realist – but financial and other regulations need to be stronger where necessary and lower elsewhere.
But I work within sales and marketing now, was scientific R&D — but I could literally scupper a next career move for as simple as espouse my core political stance online too often – if a prospective employer googled me.
This must very hugely common (from a multitude of directions).
Open’s great! Political systems and Large companies should (imho) be FORCED to be…
Individuals – yeah, tiz great ideal. but “time and a place”
“Back in the day” OSAlert used to allow anonymous posting. Frankly, removing that “feature” was the best thing they could have done. In many (most?) cases it meant people having to be accountable for what they say. When you are accountable, you are more likely to think Then comment.
Adurbe,
It’s not black and white. Many of the osnews handles on here today are anonymous in the sense that they don’t reveal a real identity. It’s a question of granularity. Consider these levels of anonymity:
1 Posts associated with legal identity.
2 Posts associated with one or more pseudo identities.
3 Posts associated with time limited identities.
4 Posts associated with no identities.
Osnews fits in #2. Having a pseudo identity establishes continuity in a conversation. Since it’s persistent we get continuity across many discussions.
For #3, I was thinking of “anonymous” wikipedia edits and IRC. These handles are often temporary in nature. It serves to maintain continuity in the scope of an interaction without long term associations. In theory, osnews could randomize our identities for each article. This would eliminate the systematic downvoting and criticism based on identity rather than on content.
If every post was “anonymous” (#4) then it would not be possible to have a general discussion. It would be like firing off unattributed one-off comments on a blog.
Edited 2014-12-04 15:25 UTC
Actually, the chanboards are like that. It produces some of the greatest garbage the human collective can come up with, but there are also plenty of insightful discussions. As everyone is anonymous, you have to focus on the content of a post rather than the reputation and E-fame of the writer’s (nick)name. You simply don’t know who you’re talking to, the focus lies entirely on the debate.
The more anonymous people are, the more extreme the discussion can be, but that is both in a good and in bad way. I think that’s the reward and cost of anonymity.
I actually think your #3 suggestion for OSAlert would be really interesting.
Edited 2014-12-04 16:50 UTC
> More generally, you can have a fruitful discussion about a topic only if it doesn’t engage the identities of any of the participants.
I think it’s rare that we make the decision to actively engage the identity of some other individual online. Most online interaction is anonymous and you don’t have any idea what the “identity” of the other person is anyways. The way it usually works is you or I voice an opinion on a topic and someone reads it and takes it as a challenge to their identity (i.e. takes offense), which compels them to respond in a defensive manner.
It’s virtually impossible to have an opinion on the internet and NOT have someone take it badly. Someone somewhere will inevitably take it personally.
I’m not a fan of labels but I don’t think labels themselves are the main issue. I think the main issue is that people feel compelled to respond to any opinion online that disagrees with their own personal worldview, and any subsequent discussion that results from these responses is almost always ego-driven and ultimately nonconstructive.
If people would put away their personal egos and only respond when they had a legitimate intellectual interest in the discussion, things would be a lot better. Don’t come into a discussion with an axe to grind. Only enter the discussion if you have an honest interest in pursuing the truth.
Also, treating everyone respectfully and with common courtesy can go a long way to taming other people’s egos and making it clear it’s not personal and there’s no reason to be defensive. It’s possible to disagree on very identity-centric topics and still be courteous and respectful to one another.
No labels is a label…
Mind blown
Labels have no real value. The same goes for what people call themselves, by real name or otherwise. If you’re invested in either of those things, you’re choosing to put yourself at a disadvantage. People should focus on truth & fact, where it applies, and be open to alternate points of views to their own.
Andrew Clunn posted a message showing his pride in using his real name to post. My view on that? Who cares. A post by “Andrew Clunn” holds no more and no less credibility than anyone else. Only the ideas & expressions within the post has any potential of substance or value.
Suggesting people give themselves labels in an attempt to keep others from doing it is so pointless. People will label you whether you have pre-labeled yourself or not. My advice is not that people label themselves, or try to avoid being labeled, it’s to not give a shit about labels in the first place since they only serve as a distraction that proves nothing.
And some people are way, WAY too quick to assign labels. For example, after watching the new Star Wars trailer, I was initially confused about there being a black storm trooper, not knowing that they weren’t all clones of Jango Fett in the OT. (Yeah, I’m not an expert on Star Wars lore, so sue me.) Somebody called me a racist
There is an entire group of people always ready to label somebody as an ‘-ist’ or a ‘-phobe’ in order to censor opinions that they don’t agree with.
Edited 2014-12-04 22:18 UTC
https://scontent-b.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-xpf1/v/t1.0-9/10408752_73997…
I’m with you on this one Thom. It may be psych 101 that attacking someone’s identity turns them into an end-stage rabid dog, but this is a principle always worth reminding the readers of your blog
Anonymity.
The way you use 2 or 3 words together.
The particular orthographic mistakes you make.
Your particular dictionaries.
Your particular grammatic.
Your particular discourses.
Your particular worries and disguises.
Nobody is really anonymous this days.
The big boys just have to connect the dots.
Sometimes a single paragraph is enough.
The problem now is not our profile.
Everyone who has a live on-line is profiled.
Anonymity allowed nations to draw their hart for some glorious years. That’s it. It’s over. The world is again to be in the dark. Keep your souls to yourselves. Someone may find you annoying.