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wedrifid comments on Rationality Quotes June 2012 - Less Wrong
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When I read the opening line I guessed he was going to go in the opposite direction - as Paul Graham probably would have.
I can see uses to both ways of simplifying one's relationship with the rest of the universe.
Aren't Graham and Dennett talking about different things entirely? Dennett is trying to help us understand better how materialism is compatible with having free will and a conscious self; his prescription here is to avoid a common pitfall, that of dismissing all "upwards" processing of perception and all "downwards" action-starting signals as "mechanical computing, not part of the self" and locating the Cartesian self at the zero-extension intersection of these two processes. It is better to think of the self as extended in both directions. When Graham says "keep your identity small", he is talking about a different sense of "identity" and "small", roughly "do not describe yourself with labels because you might become overly invested in them and lose objectivity and perspective".
I now want to make up bumper stickers that read "What Would Paul Graham Do?"
Granted, I want to do other things that preclude doing so even more.
Wanting to associate your identity with a person, in part because they have a very good argument for why you shouldn't associate your identity with things, and then doing something more important instead... there's something almost poetic or ironic about it.
Poetic? Nice call.
On the plus side at least it indicates that they aren't so caught up in affiliation that we aren't able to ignore his dogmas when it isn't useful to us.
This is only tangentially related, but:
It's probably really important to notice when you feel a desire to signal affiliation with someone or something by purchasing paraphernalia or, e.g., getting a bumper sticker. Wanting to signal that you like something generally means that your identity has expanded to include that thing. This, of course, can be both a symptom and a cause of bias (although it isn't necessarily so). See also all this stuff. Or, more concisely: "I want to buy a bumper sticker/t-shirt/pinup calendar/whatever" should sound an alarm and prompt some introspection.
(I'm not trying to imply that you have a bias towards Paul Graham, just making a general statement.)
Yeah, I agree with (at least the core of) this.
Of course, that's why you what to identify with Paul Graham.
Looking briefly at a few sites specializing in custom bumper stickers, I estimate you could probably make and pay for some in half an hour to an hour. Do you want to do those other things that badly?
You know, it's actually a really good question.
I think what's true here, now that I'm considering it for more than five seconds, is that I don't actually want to do this at all, I just think it's a funny idea and wanted to share it, and I chose "I want to X" as a conventional way of framing the idea... a habit I should perhaps replace with "It would be funny to X" in the spirit of not misrepresenting my state to no purpose.
Yes, I figured as much. :)
How would Paul Graham approach it?
http://paulgraham.com/identity.html