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Keep Your Identity Small
Paul Graham · Passages from the same work, in order.
Keep Your Identity Small, Excerpt 1
I finally realized today why politics and religion yield such uniquely useless discussions. As a rule, any mention of religion on an online forum…
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Leadership · Human nature · Growth · Entrepreneur memoirs
Keep Your Identity Small, Excerpt 2
Politics, like religion, is a topic where there's no threshold of expertise for expressing an opinion. All you need is strong convictions. Do…
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Keep Your Identity Small, Excerpt 3
I think what religion and politics have in common is that they become part of people's identity, and people can never have a fruitful argument…
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Leadership · Human nature · Cognition · Entrepreneur memoirs
Keep Your Identity Small, Excerpt 4
When people say a discussion has degenerated into a religious war, what they really mean is that it has started to be driven mostly by people's…
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Keep Your Identity Small, Excerpt 5
More generally, you can have a fruitful discussion about a topic only if it doesn't engage the identities of any of the participants. What makes…
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Leadership · Human nature · Entrepreneur memoirs
Keep Your Identity Small, Excerpt 6
If people can't think clearly about anything that has become part of their identity, then all other things being equal, the best plan is to let as…
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Cognition · Leadership · Human nature · Entrepreneur memoirs