Use Your Identity Carefully

I once talked to a LessWronger who said that he had basically no problems with akrasia, because his image of himself as someone who "had his shit together" prevented him from doing things he knew to be stupid. Unfortunately, I don't have my shit together enough to implement this myself.

Related: Prickles and Goo, which argues that all of us have both "hard" and "soft" parts of our identity, both of which have their own advantages and disadvantages. The hard parts make us more socially salient and push us to achieve change, while the soft parts make us more flexible, more prepared to compromise, and possibly more happy.

Yes, I agree. I strongly suspect it's the main reason why exercise is useful for weight loss. It doesn't burn many calories but it makes you start thinking about yourself as someone who cares about his level of fitness.

So when you are faced with a tempting plate of nachos, you can think to yourself "I am a fitness buff and fitness buffs don't put that kind of junk into their bodies." From a logical perspective it's a silly argument but it does seem to make it easier to resist that kind of temptation.

I suspect that one's self-image is intricately tied to one's worldview, and to change one is to change the other. See yourself as inferior and the world will seem threatening, see yourself as figuring things out and the world will seem like a puzzle, see yourself as a hero and the world will seem to need to be saved.

I have been experimenting with considering myself, in earnest, as very much not identical with the body that types this sentence.

This is easy to rationalize. Like any human, I'm a sum of influences, genetic, memetic and otherwise, that goes back far beyond the birth of this body. However, the urge to anthropomorphize things comes most natural when we consider ourselves. To not do so is behavior typical of some forms of psychopathology, or of mysticism (which would be considered pathological if it wasn't for political opportunism). To experiment with it anyway is quite probably dangerous, and at least a very uncommon thing to do.

I find I can switch fairly fluidly between wildly different self-images. Often (and especially when under stress) I continue to consider myself to be identical with this typing body. Sometimes I consider myself to be some slowly coalescing species-wide ubermind that uses this body and brain as part of its collective thought process, and when I do that I become intensely interested in AI, existential risk, world peace, ecology and evolution. At other times, I feel I'm just the fleeting neural process inside this body that just happens to have taken control of the cognitive and biological faculties, and at those times I tend to focus on cognitive psychology, the neural correlate of consciousness and rationality.

In observable behavior, the most salient effects of this shifting self-image seem to be reduced interest in personal matters, intense philosophical uncertainty and a downright voracious appetite for knowledge to reduce this uncertainty. (I had that appetite before, but it definitely became more intense.)

While a lot of words have been said aiming to alter worldviews, a lot fewer words have aimed to alter self-images. I believe this makes it likely that self-image memes could face less competition than worldview memes, and may exert more powerful effects on behavior, both within and across individual brains.

How did you cultivate your image of yourself?

While personal identification with a label can be constraining, I find that the use of labels for signalling are tremendous. Not only does a label work in the same way as jargon, expressing a complex data set with a simple phrase, but because most labels carry tribal consequences it acts as a somewhat costly signal in terms of identifying alliances. Admittedly, one could develop a habit of using labels which becomes a personal identification, but being aware of such risk is the best way to combat the effects thereof.

Good point. Identity, like most things, is a trade off.

I would just like to point out artists have been living like this for decades.

I don't really think of my identity when I do things. I don't notice it at all.

I just assume I'm always in a calm analytic mode of thinking, even when I subconsciously know that's not the case.

Others view my identity with disgust and immediately dismiss what I have to say. I'm not really sure anything would help bring my point across correctly.

There will always be people who don't have time for you and aren't in a learning mindset, or just don't see you as anything other than an antagonist when you start trying to have a real conversation or suggest new things.

I probably should just avoid those people, and stop trying to convince people in general unless I have a pretty good chance of success, but my entire life is built around convincing others. I'd be happier not having this goal, but I still have it.

I just don't know how to approach a life without standpoints and arguing. It's not something I've built myself for. I don't know where to start and I don't know how to have a good time starting.

It'd be great if there was help for this, or some guiding light for approaching this. I honestly just am lost at this point.

I don't see how we can try to keep our identity on beliefs small. It is good to have a lot of beliefs. If I believe X, then because I should analyze my beliefs from a meta standpoint (Ask things like "What do I think I know?") then I should believe "I believe X," which is the same to me as "I am someone who believes X."

The possible difference I can think of is "I am someone who believes X" has an connotation that this is unchanging over time. But I would not call this keeping my identity small. I would call it keeping my identity fluid.