December 3, 2010

Keep Your Identity Small

Paul Graham on the blinding influence of identity.

What’s different about religion is that people don’t feel they need to have any particular expertise to have opinions about it. All they need is strongly held beliefs, and anyone can have those. No thread about Javascript will grow as fast as one about religion, because people feel they have to be over some threshold of expertise to post comments about that. But on religion everyone’s an expert.

Then it struck me: this is the problem with politics too. Politics, like religion, is a topic where there’s no threshold of expertise for expressing an opinion. All you need is strong convictions.

(via marginal revolution)

posted by in humans, psychology | * | 5 comments 

comments

  1. Cindy Scroggins on December 3rd, 2010 at 10:08 am

    On first glance, I thought the title read Keep Your Identity Smell.

  2. Deron Bauman on December 3rd, 2010 at 10:12 am

    That’s real cat urine.

  3. Dave Vogt on December 3rd, 2010 at 10:18 am

    So I guess we should restrict dinner party conversation to javascript and last night’s TV.

  4. Deron Bauman on December 3rd, 2010 at 10:22 am

    Not necessarily.

  5. Daryl Scroggins on December 3rd, 2010 at 10:24 am

    strongly held strongLY held Strongly held strongly Held strongly hel-D

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