Modified: February 22, 2022
pro-social identity
This page is from my personal notes, and has not been specifically reviewed for public consumption. It might be incomplete, wrong, outdated, or stupid. Caveat lector.(I got this concept from SuccessfulFriend.)
As people grow up and form their identities, they need models, and not just models; they need institutions that can stamp out ready-made identities. If you're a lost, troubled teenager who doesn't know what to do with your life, joining the Marines gives you an identity: a group to belong to, a set of skills, and a sense that you're contributing to society.
Expecting everyone to invent a new, unique identity totally from scratch makes the problem way too hard. Building a coherent identity is a hard design problem; there are a lot of moving parts. We're trying to find seven billion solutions, and committing to use all of them. It'd be easier and better to find, say, 10000 solutions, and then use only the best 100. Good identities are cognitive technology---when we invent them we should strive to get as much use out of them as possible.