Here’s one of the standard posts on Overcoming Bias with a theory of identity, which I think just agrees with and fleshes out the first sentence of your comment (with more emphasis on the ‘useful’). OB has a whole tag for ‘identity’ with a bunch of interesting nuggets.
If you’re looking for discussions of the philosophical notions of identity and the implications of quantum mechanics (which you weren’t) then that’s a wholeother list, but Three Dialogues on Identity is a possible place to start.
(Obviously you don’t have to read them all to write posts getting your own thoughts in order. Though I would love to see someone write a thoughtful summary of the collective ideas and arguments in these posts with quotes—no need to add anything new, just distillation work. Perhaps we should also turn them into a sequence on identity.)
Edit: There’s a large class of posts on identity and tribalism/politics by people like Bryan Caplan and SSC that I didn’t include, largely because they generally didn’t have ‘identity’ in the title and so didn’t come up as quickly in search.
[quick link search]
Here’s one of the standard posts on Overcoming Bias with a theory of identity, which I think just agrees with and fleshes out the first sentence of your comment (with more emphasis on the ‘useful’). OB has a whole tag for ‘identity’ with a bunch of interesting nuggets.
Paul Graham’s essay Keep Your Identity Small is a classic on this topic, and a quick googling finds these responses by LWers: Keep Your Identity Large, Keep Your Identity Fluid, Use Your Identity Carefully, Strategic Choice of Identity, Obvious Identity Fail. See Kaj Sotala’s The Curse of Identity, and GothGirl’s Three More Ways Identity Can be a Curse. If you’re looking for clickbait, there’s One Weird Trick to Manage Your Identity That Doctors Don’t Want You To Know by the well-known self-promoter Gleb Tsipursky (okay I changed the title slightly). There was also some discussion of identity in the recent post Explicit and Implicit Communication.
If you’re looking for discussions of the philosophical notions of identity and the implications of quantum mechanics (which you weren’t) then that’s a whole other list, but Three Dialogues on Identity is a possible place to start.
(Obviously you don’t have to read them all to write posts getting your own thoughts in order. Though I would love to see someone write a thoughtful summary of the collective ideas and arguments in these posts with quotes—no need to add anything new, just distillation work. Perhaps we should also turn them into a sequence on identity.)
Edit: There’s a large class of posts on identity and tribalism/politics by people like Bryan Caplan and SSC that I didn’t include, largely because they generally didn’t have ‘identity’ in the title and so didn’t come up as quickly in search.