The point of PG is that to properly reason about X you have to look at it "from outside".

A mental conditioning fogs judgement. "Identifications" are mental conditionings that make you lose intellectual freedom.

An example from other authors:

> For instance, modern education often does much damage when young students are taught dubious political notions and then enthusiastically push these notions on the rest of us. The pushing seldom convinces others. But as students pound into their mental habits what they are pushing out, the students are often permanently damaged. Educational institutions that create a climate where much of this goes on are, I think, irresponsible. It is important not to thus put one’s brain in chains before one has come anywhere near his full potentiality as a rational person

~~~ Charlie Munger

Edit:

just like the mental process described by PG has a strong taste of Popper's judgement on "Marx Hegel and Freud" - a consolidated cultural idea -, the warning against "identifications" has had quite strong proponents. One of them (indirectly but encompassing) is over 2500 years old and "quite preponderant".

> A mental conditioning fogs judgement. "Identifications" are mental conditionings that make you lose intellectual freedom.

Freedom and structure are always in contention as yin-yang, and you're completely ignoring the benefits structure can bring. I'd guess OP finds a lot of value in labeling themselves "queer", in that a lot of things that were ambiguous or confusing become clearer.

> ignoring

Yes I was - I was focusing on a different side.

Logic. "X brings fog" and "X brings clarity" are not contradictory, in a normal paraconsistent logic.

But note: if A uses X as a mental experiment for intellectual development, detachment is there: that is the opposite of "identification".

Most people aren't using paraconsistent logic, especially on Internet forums (unfortunately).

Furthermore, the sentence '"Identifications" are mental conditionings that make you lose intellectual freedom" is not really in line with paraconsisent logic. The loss of intellectual freedom comes about from being stuck on a recognized facet of your identity and unable to think of your identity as having a conflicting facet. If people could reason by freely jumping between towers of inferences regardless of the apparent conflict between them, then labeling yourself with identities wouldn't have the downside.

Reminds me of Eckhart Tolle’s themes too such as “you are not your story”

I take he's talking about ideas. Being queer, as I understand it, is not an idea but a fact, like being six feet tall or having blue eyes.

"Queer" is a vague identity with political connotations, by which I mean, the gay people who call themselves "queer" tend to be a lot more woke-leftist than the gay people who don't call themselves "queer". It's absolutely an idea and a constructed identity. The facts of the matter are things like sexual preferences and behaviors, but you don't inherently need to construct an identity around them. On the other hand, sometimes you need to be aware that even if you don't identify yourself, you will be identified by others, which you're going to have to deal with.

I think you've both got the right answer and explained it with a very negative framing.

Gender and Sexual Minority, LGBTQ+, and queer all describe a largely similar set of folks.

Queer arose not from "woke-leftist" spaces, but grew out of 70s and 80s radical gay and trans spaces - groups like the Gay Liberation Front - who were willing to fight back (violently if necessary) against violence and discrimination.

Queer is absolutely a political identity, a framing of ones gender or sexual identity. They intersect with one another. It's not unlike "I eat only plants" vs "I'm vegan", they mean roughly the same thing until you hit contexts where they don't.

I'm not a native speaker, not in the know of the nuances of those terms, just accepted the one you chose.

There's a point that I still don't understand. The article advices to keep identity as a minimum. Not having none, just not including every circumstance or opinion in your identity. The reason is that a fat identity makes you more vulnerable to bias.

Is being queer a fundamental part of your identity? Or is it something subject to change like "being a JavaScript programmer" or something like that?

The place where I was born... that is a fact, I neither can nor want to change that. I consider it a part of my identity but, at the same time, I try to take some distance from it so I can examine my own opinions and decisions.

Even at some moments I wonder what would I think if I had been born elsewhere or if I change nationality. But that doesn't mean I'm going to do that. That runs deep, but being an X programmer, a X-ist, a morning person, if I prefer cats or dogs, a member of NNN generation... that's circumstancial for me.

Whether you're sexually attracted to men or women isn't something that can change, but that doesn't necessarily mean you have to enshrine it as a significant part of your identity. This is actually where the semantic nuances come fully into play. People who identify as queer are consciously choosing to identify as queer. There are gay men and lesbian women who don't identify as queer. Sometimes that's because they don't agree with the radical orientation of the people who do identify as queer, sometimes that's because they don't like the word itself, and sometimes it's because they don't feel a sense of group identity with everyone under the "queer" umbrella.

> Queer arose not from "woke-leftist" spaces, but grew out of 70s and 80s radical gay and trans spaces

I guess "radical" would have been a better choice of terminology than "woke-leftist", but really you're looking at very similar communities that share an ideological heritage and who tend to complain about any terminology people use for them. The term "woke" is new but the basic ideology goes back to 70's radicals as well.

I would add, "woke" is not necessarily a negative label, and indeed was originally used most commonly in a positive sense intended to describe people who were awake to the reality of the world. It's only more recently come to be used a pejorative mocking the original usage.

So the opposite of the reclaimed slur someone mentioned.

I wouldn’t even say it’s all pejorative mockery. Setting aside the negative connotation, I think we all know what ideas and movements the term “woke” refers to, and the people on that side of the discussion haven’t, to my knowledge, agreed to any other nomenclature they would prefer, which means the only people using the term are the ones criticizing the underlying group of ideas and movements, which is where the negative connotation comes from. (And then some of those critics unfairly overgeneralize, similarly with the term “socialist”.)

> not... but

If you act according to your Real Preference RP, then RP is a fact; if you Role-Play, it is also a constraint.

Edit: there is also a notable third position: when you act from a what you judge a Right Position RP - you do what is right. It must be noted because it may look like an "identification", but it is different in important ways.

I'm not sure it is a fact, I mean, these days there are heterosexual people who call themselves queer.

Well, queer encompasses more than just gay and lesbian people.

Non-binary people can be queer, heterosexual trans people can be queer, asexual people can be queer. Same with polyamorous people.

Doesn't that make it not a fact then, if people can just opt in and out to being queer?

I would argue that no identity is a fact. All identities are beliefs on the part of the person doing the identifying. To identify something as X is to express the belief that it is X.

This reminds me a class very long ago, when the teacher wrote two contradictory definitions of style in the blackboard, one saying that style is what the authors have in common with their school, the other saying that style is what the authors have that others don't.

Of course, those were defining two different concepts: the style of a school and the personal style.

To be precise, identity is very easy to define: it's to be you, instead of anyone else. Until someone invents some kind of brain trasplant, it's impossible to transfer consciousness, so your identity is your body, more specifically, your brain. That would include your memories that, although can be erased by trauma or illness, are mostly very strongly rooted.

Outwards, it would expand to your habits, your chemistry, your beliefs. All that can change, but it's difficult. So it's more your personality than your identity.

Then there is "identity" that isn't. More like being part of a group, so it's parallel situation to that of style. You identify yourself with a group, you define yourself as the sum of the groups you include yourself in. Identity is very much about individuality. "Identity" seems to be the opposite: the inabilty to be someone on your own.

Unless we're getting to some deep metaphysical stuff, I don't think I buy that. Yes, some identities are solely based on belief. But others are indeed based on facts: someone might identify as "basketball player" because they play basketball. Or they might identify as "tall" because they are in the top 10% of people for height. The height example might sound silly, but there are people who are somehow "proud" of these sorts of traits that they have no control over.

Certainly the situations can sometimes change: the basketball player might stop playing basketball and no longer identify as such. And I suppose someone who has never played basketball in their life could adopt the identity of "basketball player" if they wanted to, but... that's fine, that would be a case where that particular person's identity is based on a belief (or delusion).

I'm not talking about what the identity is based on. I'm talking about what the identity itself is. I think this is useful to help clarify the difference between "X has the identity Y" and "X is Y" which otherwise seem very similar. The former means that "someone believes (or many people believe) that X is Y".

Literally anyone can be queer. Its a meaningless tag.

Literally anyone can be Christian, but that doesn't make it a useless tag. It's a linguistic and mental shortcut that has utility despite the relative ease of application.

> who call themselves

In which sense? Because 'queer' means "eccentric" - many would describe as that. For that matter, people call themselves "gay" for "joyous".

Incidentally: the queer use of 'queer' predates that of 'gay' (just a piece of trivia).

> For that matter, people call themselves "gay" for "joyous".

Uh... I don't think people do that anymore.

They do, and some will absolutely do (to some it is important to "assess" language) - it really depends on what you mean with "people" (of course I meant a subset).

What happened there is, in the succession of editings I left that 'people' there in a way that happened to be ambiguous. I made a composition error out of inattention.

The subset you're talking about is the union of extremely non-native English speakers and native English speakers over 120 years old.

No. It is not a matter of being «native». It may be your mothertongue of not: it is an approach transversal to all (this class of) languages.

It is the set of those people who intend to speak English, though surely not the language in use among the English. "Currently typical" English does not mean "good" English.

Edit:

On the contrary, «native English speakers» are the one who will follow that: they are the ones supposed to have absorbed more English (and relevant) literature.

I have just checked and I see the terms employed correctly in Joyce, in Wilde, in Chandler, in Hammett, in Paul Johnson, in Niall Ferguson, in Woody Allen, in Spike Milligan.

As absolutely expected: there is the gathering of the Assessors.

Of course queer as "unusual" predates "queer" as gay. :D It's a reclaimed slur. It was a negative label applied to people who ultimately decided to make that negative label a part of their identity.

[Removed chunk because of misunderstanding]

[...] To my info, the first use of 'queer' for "homosexual" is from 1922, and the term was used for "eccentric" for the last five centuries.

('gay' for homosexual was reported as widespread "communitarian" use in medical texts in the 1940's - the use for "promiscuous" is at least four centuries old. In some territories, 'gay girl' still means "prostitute".)

Edit:

I misread your post. Of course, "of course" ""queer" for homosexual" can easily be a "reclaimed slur". There should be no surprise about it.

And your use of 'gay' in «"queer" as gay» is "queer". That is not ""queer" as gay", it is "queer" as "unaligned in sexual orientation", and not necessarily "gay". Just nitpicking on language though.

> In which sense?

Generally in a political sense (related to the gay sense). Someone who does not accept heterosexuality as a norm or default way of being, even though it may something that they personally prefer.

The author may be suffering from a form of blub paradox when it comes to how he identifies, which I would assume include white, male, rich, smart, founder, and writer.

It's easy for him to discard "lesser" identities like "javascript programmer" because that doesn't cost him anything.

> which I would assume include

Wrong assumption. We do not necessarily "identify". All those terms in that list can be fully avoided as identifications. No, it is not normal to be "identified" with any of that.

Would the author say, "I am a ..." and end with any of the above? If so, they identify as that group.

That's what identity is, it's the set of things you consider yourself to be. "I am" and "I consider myself to be" are very simple clauses.

How big or small a part you decide to make your identities part of your personality is up to you, but like, they are still part of your identity.

The idea the author is talking about is explicitly not the "I am..." stuff. The "I consider myself to be..." stuff is what is important to his thesis that the "descriptors you hold dear to your self-image" (which he calls "identity", but I agree that can be an ambiguous term) can blind you to opinions and evidence contrary to what you already believe, and make it difficult (if not impossible) to have honest conversations about things.

I may literally be an average-height, average-build, bald, white man, but I don't consider any of those things to define me; they are not central to my self-image (at least I don't think they are; it's possible I've let some of that creep into my psyche more than I'd like). Yes, they are literally a part of my "identity", but not in the way that is relevant to anything the author is talking about.

No, you are misunderstanding what is meant with "identification" in these texts. The starting point is PG's text.

It is about how "identification" clouds your judgement. If you can just describe yourself ("happen to be male") that is one thing; if when you think of yourself you cannot abstract from some attributes, there is where you have "caged" yourself.

Not sure what your point is? It's okay to be white (or any other ethnicity), and it's okay to be queer - no matter how many people would tell you otherwise. That doesn't mean you have to take either of these and make it the be-all and end-all of your identity. The difference should be obvious - it was surely obvious enough to PG.

He doesn't tell you to stop being x. The title says keep your identity small, implying he knows it's impossible.

I'm not saying this is true, it's obviously not, but what if we lived in a universe where science objectively found that being queer was an actual disease and could be cured with a pill? This is the science and logic in that universe. So in that universe does your identity then preclude you from having a scientific and logical conclusion about being queer? If you didn't have that identity I would say it would be easier to be objective about that topic in that universe?

This is the thing Graham is talking about. I hope you can see the purpose of the (obviously untrue and just hypothetical) example, despite it being negatively related to your identity. I think it's still possible to disassociate a little bit even if it's an intrinsic part of your identity.

Good point. The essay misses examples of what is an inescapable part of one's identity.

To answer other commenters: sometimes being queer can be as obvious to others as your skin color (because you are holding the hand of your partner, because you are at the beginning of a transition, etc...) and, using PG's criteria, is one of those things that other people will discuss without expertise (sometimes very negatively).

And, even if it is not obvious that one is queer, it is one of those topics where showing that you belong to that group (when you can afford it physically and mentally) is important. Both as a signal to other members (to show them that they are not alone) and as a way to normalize your identity (which, in the longer run and as a group effort, helps a lot to reduce bad reactions).

You're also conflating unchangeable characteristics (such as skin color, or sexual orientation) and some feeling of group belonging. We would certainly find it a bit weird if someone felt that they "belonged" in a valued group merely due to, e.g. having light-colored skin, and expressed a need to "show off" that specific fact about themselves to others. That's key to the "identity" distinction PG is making here.

This feels like a false dichotomy: while you cannot change your sexual orientation, you can choose to make it more apparent and it has clear benefits for other lgbtq+ people around you (which, for me, gets it out of the selfish connotations of showing off: wherever you live, being openly gay still carries a non-zero physical risk, you don't do it just for the fun of it).

At the risk of being wildly misunderstood, you can still choose to minimize your "queerness footprint" in public discussions. You can let your experience with that inform your opinions without making it into An Issue that you are queer.

It's not easy, but it's possible and I think a lot of our perception of people "at the top" being uniformly a particular profile is partly a reflection of the fact that people who get good at not making their identity into An Issue are the ones who get more tolerance in public spaces. I think this gets misinterpreted by many people as "That person is not queer" rather than "We don't know. They haven't actually said and it is a private matter anyway."

> You can let your experience with that inform your opinions without making it into An Issue

Right, and that's exactly the point of the article that I think a lot of people aren't getting here. Even the things that you "objectively are" need not be these "core self-image" things that can lead to blind spots and a lack of ability to have reasonable discussion. But it's certainly understandable when something like that does become core, especially when someone has experienced discrimination or oppression because of it.

> I think this gets misinterpreted by many people as "That person is not queer" rather than "We don't know. They haven't actually said and it is a private matter anyway."

I think the "that person is not queer" often comes from a place of frustration that the person "at the top" isn't using their position and status to help normalize being queer (or whatever the marginalized group is). And that not doing that is essentially hiding and trying to fit in (and, further, "denying who they are"), in order to attain and keep those "on the top" benefits and status.

Personally, I think it's not ok to expect someone to become an activist (or at least publicly acknowledge who they "are") just because they have position and status, but I can understand why it's frustrating when someone doesn't.