At a very fundamental (but perhaps not useful) level, it’s to communicate with people how to treat you and what to expect of you.
This might happen in some ways inside one mind (for example, if you have a self-image of being “a reliable person”, that might help you think about how to be on time). But I suspect that usually happens when something is going wrong, because usually you can just think about the ideas themselves without needing to go meta.
What are the rival ideas about why we adopt identities? (I assume there’s some background here I’m unfamiliar with.)
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.
As a toy model, imagine that people are playing iterated Prisoners’ Dilemma game, and imagine that for whatever reason, people typically defect. Not always, but most of the time. You think that this is stupid, and that repeated cooperation would be better. But of course repeated cooperation requires the other person to cooperate too, and the other person’s expectation is that you will most likely defect (because that’s what an average person does). How will you convince them otherwise?
It is not enough to say right before the turn “hey, I am going to cooperate, and I hope that you will too, because this would establish a mutually beneficial long-term cooperation”. Sure, it sounds convincing, but everyone is trying to say some convincing shit right before the turn, to convince the other person to cooperate; and them most of these people are going to defect. So most people will not be convinced.
You have to make a public statement in advance: “I am going to cooperate with everyone who has never defected against me. I am saying this publicly, so that you can keep records on my behavior, and verify with each other that I never broke my rule.”
And if you succeeded to catch people’s attention, and if they keep watching your behavior… and if after a while everyone sees that you really do follow your rule… now people have a selfish incentive to cooperate with you.
This “I am the kind of person who never defects first” is a simple form of identity. It is something you do in general (i.e. it is not an ad-hoc argument made up for a specific situation), and that is what makes it credible. Some people will argue that keeping your options open is always better for you, but as long as others see you as a person who keeps all options open, this is not going to work.
At a very fundamental (but perhaps not useful) level, it’s to communicate with people how to treat you and what to expect of you.
This might happen in some ways inside one mind (for example, if you have a self-image of being “a reliable person”, that might help you think about how to be on time). But I suspect that usually happens when something is going wrong, because usually you can just think about the ideas themselves without needing to go meta.
What are the rival ideas about why we adopt identities? (I assume there’s some background here I’m unfamiliar with.)
[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.
Identity is a way to signal your commitments.
As a toy model, imagine that people are playing iterated Prisoners’ Dilemma game, and imagine that for whatever reason, people typically defect. Not always, but most of the time. You think that this is stupid, and that repeated cooperation would be better. But of course repeated cooperation requires the other person to cooperate too, and the other person’s expectation is that you will most likely defect (because that’s what an average person does). How will you convince them otherwise?
It is not enough to say right before the turn “hey, I am going to cooperate, and I hope that you will too, because this would establish a mutually beneficial long-term cooperation”. Sure, it sounds convincing, but everyone is trying to say some convincing shit right before the turn, to convince the other person to cooperate; and them most of these people are going to defect. So most people will not be convinced.
You have to make a public statement in advance: “I am going to cooperate with everyone who has never defected against me. I am saying this publicly, so that you can keep records on my behavior, and verify with each other that I never broke my rule.”
And if you succeeded to catch people’s attention, and if they keep watching your behavior… and if after a while everyone sees that you really do follow your rule… now people have a selfish incentive to cooperate with you.
This “I am the kind of person who never defects first” is a simple form of identity. It is something you do in general (i.e. it is not an ad-hoc argument made up for a specific situation), and that is what makes it credible. Some people will argue that keeping your options open is always better for you, but as long as others see you as a person who keeps all options open, this is not going to work.