Short version is that you should keep your epistemic identity small. Avoid things like “I am <political faction>”, because they will make you think <beliefs associated with the political faction> regardless of evidence.
But you should choose your instrumental identity consciously. (See also: use your identity carefully.) Things like “I am the kind of person who does X” communicate to your System 1 that you want to do X.
This requires some more thought on how to keep these two separate; how to prevent the kind of failure where identifying as “someone who does X” makes me believe that “I do X”… even if I actually don’t, or only do rarely. It probably help to keep records on how often you do X, so that your beliefs come from the records, not the identity itself, but I am not sure whether this is the entire answer, or I missed something important.
Made me think about “keep your identity small” and epistemic vs instrumental rationality.
Short version is that you should keep your epistemic identity small. Avoid things like “I am <political faction>”, because they will make you think <beliefs associated with the political faction> regardless of evidence.
But you should choose your instrumental identity consciously. (See also: use your identity carefully.) Things like “I am the kind of person who does X” communicate to your System 1 that you want to do X.
This requires some more thought on how to keep these two separate; how to prevent the kind of failure where identifying as “someone who does X” makes me believe that “I do X”… even if I actually don’t, or only do rarely. It probably help to keep records on how often you do X, so that your beliefs come from the records, not the identity itself, but I am not sure whether this is the entire answer, or I missed something important.