I’ve thought a lot about a particular subproblem within this ongoing conversation about identity size and fluidity: How to adopt an approriate identity for an activity in a particular domain that you intend to perform for a long time. Scientific and mathematical research are good and sort-of common examples.
My munchkin solution for this subproblem is encouraging the wide adoption of pseudonymous identities for particular tasks, and collective pseudonyms in particular. There are tons of historical examples of pseudonymous authors and such, but the most relevant examples to LessWrong users will be the collective pseudonymous authors Nicolas Bourbaki, who wrote the Elements of Mathematics, among other things; and Blanche Descartes, who proved many theorems about mathematical tessellation.
Note that both names are intended to be humorous. Also, some of the members of the groups in both examples got really involved in the identities. A member of the Descartes group wouldn’t admit that Blanche was fictitious, even in private. The speaker for the Bourbaki group (the man who actually wrote the books and articles, while everyone else reviewed it and did math) had very strict standards for publication and regularly threatened to resign from the group. Some of the group members would try to get a rise out of him intentionally sometimes, by making purposefully naive suggestions. I find it really interesting how differently these people acted compared to the ways that I imagine most mathematicians doing important work.
One way I like to think of it is as a hack that tricks you into maximizing the social status of a fictitious identity instead of your own. It also looks like it’s simply been lots of fun, historically.
Weird but good side effects that I consider plausible in a pseudonymous scientific community:
Passive double-blinding.
May multiply Dunbar’s number by a suitably representative factor of group size (like an average maybe), by tricking individuals into perceiving other groups as individuals, and by tricking groups into responding as individuals.
Academic credentials are not only irrelevant, but impossible. There is no precedent for a pseudonymous collective intelligence obtaining academic credentials. The only way to reliably signal that a member of your group has academic credentials is by revealing their identity and potentially ruining the fun.
I’ve thought a lot about a particular subproblem within this ongoing conversation about identity size and fluidity: How to adopt an approriate identity for an activity in a particular domain that you intend to perform for a long time. Scientific and mathematical research are good and sort-of common examples.
My munchkin solution for this subproblem is encouraging the wide adoption of pseudonymous identities for particular tasks, and collective pseudonyms in particular. There are tons of historical examples of pseudonymous authors and such, but the most relevant examples to LessWrong users will be the collective pseudonymous authors Nicolas Bourbaki, who wrote the Elements of Mathematics, among other things; and Blanche Descartes, who proved many theorems about mathematical tessellation.
Note that both names are intended to be humorous. Also, some of the members of the groups in both examples got really involved in the identities. A member of the Descartes group wouldn’t admit that Blanche was fictitious, even in private. The speaker for the Bourbaki group (the man who actually wrote the books and articles, while everyone else reviewed it and did math) had very strict standards for publication and regularly threatened to resign from the group. Some of the group members would try to get a rise out of him intentionally sometimes, by making purposefully naive suggestions. I find it really interesting how differently these people acted compared to the ways that I imagine most mathematicians doing important work.
One way I like to think of it is as a hack that tricks you into maximizing the social status of a fictitious identity instead of your own. It also looks like it’s simply been lots of fun, historically.
Weird but good side effects that I consider plausible in a pseudonymous scientific community:
Passive double-blinding.
May multiply Dunbar’s number by a suitably representative factor of group size (like an average maybe), by tricking individuals into perceiving other groups as individuals, and by tricking groups into responding as individuals.
Academic credentials are not only irrelevant, but impossible. There is no precedent for a pseudonymous collective intelligence obtaining academic credentials. The only way to reliably signal that a member of your group has academic credentials is by revealing their identity and potentially ruining the fun.