15 ms·

Keep Your Identity Small (2009)

• grwthckrmstr 4y ago
  conjecture - The more things in life people adopt as their identity, the greater the surface area for one to be triggered? I still find it funny to meet friends who are hardcore football or cricket fans and watch them lose their mind if I said a single not-very-positive word about their favourite teams.
  • dorkwood 4y ago
    > The more things in life people adopt as their identity, the greater the surface area for one to be triggered? I find the opposite to be true. The more things you adopt as part of your identity, the less you're affected when one of those things gets criticized. For example, if you're mostly a gamer, and someone says gaming is stupid, then you're automatically very hurt, since 90% of who you are was just insulted. However, if gaming is only 10% of what you are, then you're not as affected. The myriad facets of your identity diffuse any incoming attacks. In my opinion, we should be striving to grow our identities, not shrink them.
• tasty_freeze 4y ago
  > 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 about something that's part of their identity. By definition they're partisan. That is a damn broad brush he is painting with. This is in the nature of "enlightened centrism" BS. Claiming partisans cannot have a fruitful discussion is simply unsupportable. For sure, if neither party has any real knowledge and it's just identity at stake, then it will be fruitless. If the people involved care only about ego preservation and not learning, then it will be fruitless. But someone can be partisan, knowledgeable, and able to discuss things rationally.
  • saxonww 4y ago
    He didn't say they couldn't discuss things rationally, he said they couldn't have a fruitful argument. I'm not sure what he meant by this, but to me a fruitful argument is one where one or more sides learn something, and/or one party changes another's mind on a subject. Very often, with religion and politics especially, everyone's already made up their minds. They know the right answer. There's certainly no chance that they're mistaken. Regardless of how rationally the topic is being discussed, there's no learning going on, it's just a performative recital. IMO it's better just not to get involved in conversations like these (I'm personally bad at this, though). I think that all pg is saying here is that it's better to be open-minded.
• deleted 4y ago
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• EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK 4y ago
  People can change opinion on subjects they learned after ~18 years of age, not so much opinions formed at an early age, which constitute "identity". Deep layers in the network are hard to relearn.
• kethinov 4y ago
  Since Paul wrote that, people have made so many more things part of their identity, including JavaScript which he points out in the essay was not a particularly identity-charged topic in 2009. With the rise of the frameworks, it has become an identity-charged topic with JS devs now segregated into tribes that insist on using their preferred framework for every webapp they build. It's not about assessing the right tool for the job based on evidence or metrics, it's about a belief system that the tribe's preferred framework is always the right tool for the job. Ultimately I think Paul was right and I think about this essay a lot. The best solution is to make as few things part of your identity as possible. For JS devs, that means you should be more willing to use a different framework from time to time or no framework at all. Decide what to use based on an objective assessment of what the right tool for the job is, not what's trendy in your tribe.
  • deleted 4y ago
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  • RajT88 4y ago
    In tech, people ascribe you an identity as much as you claim one yourself. When I am not around, I have been described to people as "A DevOps guy" or "A Network Guy". People then treat me accordingly. But, being human (or an approximation thereof), I am not just one thing.
    • throw827474737 4y ago
      Come on, the dentist is also the dentist... taking those titles to personally imo is a too big identitiy to start with. We know you are all individuals ;)
      • cableshaft 4y ago
        Yes, we're all individuals! Obligatory Monty Python scene: https://youtu.be/KHbzSif78qQ https://youtu.be/KHbzSif78qQ
      • quickthrower2 4y ago
• deleted 4y ago
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• fourfoursix 4y ago
  • urban_alien 4y ago
  • ethanbond 4y ago
    “I am observing from an objective position” is the surest sign of a deeply compromised thinker.
    • BlueTemplar 4y ago
      Yeah, while I would in theory applaud the example of "scientist" that Graham gave, let's not delude ourselves, it's quite vulnerable to exactly this kind of failure mode. Some other examples : scientism, "angry atheism", "rationalism" (mostly for the arrogant and historically opposite meaning for that last one)...
      • fourfoursix 4y ago
    • fourfoursix 4y ago
      Except that, that quotation is a fabrication. It was never stated by me, nor was it stated in the article. It is also logically flawed. If there exists in this world someone who was truly objective. Would they know they're objective? Knowing if oneself is objective or not is in itself an objective calculation. If that person was truly objective, then the answer is yes, he would know. But I get your point, there are many who think they are "objective" but they are not. Mind you, one test for objectivity is to see whether your thoughts are the result of parroting cultural norms or if they arise from objective thinking. If your thoughts are objective there is no rule that such thoughts should imitate cultural norms. One will notice that ones opinions are "different" so to say. My points pass those tests. It doesn't mean I am "objective" but it is evidence for it.
• acatnamedjoe 4y ago
  My view is that having a "small identity" is basically impossible in any practical sense. Many issues are inherently subjective, and even for issues that are (philosophically speaking) objective, actual human individuals rarely have the time or the access to data to form a genuinely objective view. We all use heuristic thinking, all the time, which is inevitably massively biased by all kinds of things related to our dispositions and prior experiences (aka identity). The danger is when you make the fiction of "not having an identity" a big part of your actual identity, which can make you even more blind to your biases than everyone else. I think a much more productive route to being a more effective thinker is to accept you have an identity just the same as everyone else - and invest time and effort into interrogating what that identity is and what biases and blind-spots it might lead to. This is still far from perfect, of course.
  • kelnos 4y ago
    You can also just not take a stance on many things. I feel like a lot of the things we feel strongly about, and often end up as parts of our identity, just... don't really matter. For things where you do need to take a stance, perhaps because there's a decision that needs to be made, there's still a difference between holding a loose opinion (that you allow to be challenged, and are willing to change your mind in the face of new evidence or a better argument), and making that opinion a part of your very core (where you will just stand firm and ignore all criticism).
  • AbrahamParangi 4y ago
    Your identity is not fully in your control but not fully out of it either. One can make a conscious choice to “find a tribe” or to not do that. I believe this essay argues that one should make a conscious choice to avoid tribe affiliation (even if that affiliation is only in your own head) in order to be a better thinker.
    • acatnamedjoe 4y ago
      I guess I'm arguing that a conscious choice not to find a tribe just leads to unconsciously finding a tribe instead. Maybe the real answer is both, though - try to consciously avoid tribal thinking, but also acknowledge that it's likely to creep in anyway, and be aware when it does.
• nothrowaways 4y ago
  This validates why discussions on HN (or even reddit) are more sincere and useful than, say, Quora.
• gardenhedge 4y ago
  Not labeling myself was something I figured out at 15/16. One thing I've never figured out it why people label themselves.
  • Kye 4y ago
    "I don't label myself" - person who labels self with not labeling self. Labels are useful for finding community. This becomes more essential the less popular or the more marginalized you or parts of you are.
    • gardenhedge 4y ago
      You could, in theory, make a label out of not labeling yourself but that isn't what we're talking about. I can see how labels are useful for finding community. One potential negative of using labels to find a community is that labels can be exclusive. For example, a label like "LGBTQ+" may exclude people who do not identify as part of that community, even if they have similar experiences or interests. This can create a sense of exclusion and may prevent people from finding the support and connection they are looking for.
      • Kye 4y ago
        LGBTQ+ (and variations) are more category than label. We combine our powers because we're all too tiny to deal with all the labels and violence foisted upon us alone. Whether you can choose one of the labels is a matter of debate within the category. For most of us, it's like breathing air for the first time: "oh, I'm not alone in this. Other people feel this way, and they've fought all these battles so I don't have to start from 0." To choose it without that experience is kind of weird, but I don't personally have a problem with it in most cases.
        • mgrthrow 4y ago
          A hundred percent this. I'm not a lesbian, but I'm going to the mat if needed to protect lesbians. We protect us.
        • 4y ago
• nothrowaways 4y ago
  Imagine a conversation with someone with "believer in x framework, ex y, z" in their Bio and compare your biases with same user but with a handle anon123.
• mgrthrow 4y ago
  Doesn't land for me. I'm queer, my identity isn't huge, but it does include queer. That alone is enough to make some folks want to do violence to me (I have first hand experience with this). Telling me to "stop being x" is a bad vibe when x is something intrinsic about me AND the anti x folks hate me just for existing. I just want to live my life.
  • narag 4y ago
    I take he's talking about ideas. Being queer, as I understand it, is not an idea but a fact, like being six feet tall or having blue eyes.
    • mdp2021 4y ago
      > not... but If you act according to your Real Preference RP, then RP is a fact; if you Role-Play, it is also a constraint. Edit: there is also a notable third position: when you act from a what you judge a Right Position RP - you do what is right. It must be noted because it may look like an "identification", but it is different in important ways.
    • hypoqtech 4y ago
      I'm not sure it is a fact, I mean, these days there are heterosexual people who call themselves queer.
      • mgrthrow 4y ago
        Well, queer encompasses more than just gay and lesbian people. Non-binary people can be queer, heterosexual trans people can be queer, asexual people can be queer. Same with polyamorous people.
        • tekla 4y ago
          Literally anyone can be queer. Its a meaningless tag.
• narag 4y ago
  I must have missed it at the time, otherwise I would remember this gem: Because the point at which this happens depends on the people rather than the topic, it's a mistake to conclude that because a question tends to provoke religious wars, it must have no answer. Not sure if it depends on people or interests, probably a combination of both, but there's so many of those problems with obvious solutions that are discussed endlessly.
• ivanmontillam 4y ago
  Paul Graham predicted the religious wars that produce talking about React and React Native. This includes people that develop using Electron. You cannot possibly fathom to have a productive conversation with them about less resource-hungry, better-performant alternatives. It all basically boils down to: "Who are you to tell me I'm wrong if React is what puts food on my table?" which is fine in principle, but blinds them on ways to make their job easier and better in so many ways. EDIT: Conciseness and style.
• imchillyb 4y ago
  Identity is not 'what I do', but 'who I am.' 'Who I am' does not include tangents such as what programming language I utilize. 'Who I am' speaks to the intrinsic nature of me. What my core being considers unalterable and unchanging specifics. Most of the topics here in this thread do not speak to that.
  • fouroneone 4y ago
    No it's interconnected. What you do is tied to who you are. It's visible in language. People often use the term "I am a java programmer" rather then "I am a programmer who uses java". The topics in this thread don't speak to it because it's implicitly implied.
• hypoqtech 4y ago
  > For example, a discussion about a battle that included citizens of one or more of the countries involved would probably degenerate into a political argument. But a discussion today about a battle that took place in the Bronze Age probably wouldn't. Might this not be because we don't have sufficient information on Bronze Ages battles to know the context behind them? Whereas in a relatively modern-day battle we'll know about the primary aggressor, their rationale, etc. which are all a basis for further discussion.
  • j-bos 4y ago
    There's plenty of context for Roman battles and those discussions rarely degenerate into shouting matches, compare with [insert modern conflict here]. Even for today's conflicts, many of the shouters demonstrate a personal lack of context.
• burritas 4y ago
  It seems to be the thing nowadays to be preoccupied with the notion of your own identity, and I can't help but feel like it's just navel gazing. Maybe it's social media and the culture of self promotion, but I find it pretty hollow and uninteresting. I have a young kid in my family that's fixated with gender and sexuality and they said one day "I just want to get diagnosed so I know what I am," to which I said "It's not what you are that's important, it's what you want to do." That seemed to be an epiphany for them.
  • lo_zamoyski 4y ago
    Poor kid. He's been subjected to what amounts to child abuse. Sadly, that is the norm. Some say that we have an identity crisis in part because of our liberal, existentialist, non-committal notions of "freedom". It's also what drives much of the opportunism of FOMO and ADHD. The very notions of sacrifice, commitment, suffering for a good, and devotion repel us (whatever "commitments" we do have are merely emotional phantasms, changing as the wind blows). We reject our familial, communal, ethnic, national, religious commitments -- even commitment to the truth as such -- which we have come to detest as "restrictive" or "oppressive" in favor of a misguided notion of "autonomy"...except that this "autonomy" is achieved precisely by rejecting all that helps us understand who we are from different angles and at varying depths. We become socially alienated and cut off from tradition as such, saddled now with the responsibility of figuring it all out ourselves. What a Herculean task! Of course, nature abhors a vacuum. The irony is that the abolition of authority and tradition only predisposes us to the tyranny of power. (Incidentally, that's how "community organizing" works: it foments animosity against legitimate authority and its legitimate exercise and then uses it to unseat that authority, whether personal or in the form of tradition, not to "free" people from the real or imagined tyranny of that authority, but to remove what is an obstacle to the power of the dictator who outstrips any of the abuses of his predecessors.) Nobody is easier to control than an ignorant, irrational, atomized human being enslaved to his emotions and to his desires, in a state of fear, disorientation, and disregulation. A man has as many masters as he has vices, spake Augustine. It is little wonder that, given this crippled and desiccated state, we look for our "identities" in superstition and petty nonsense and in what remains, what is base, as if we were trying to divine the future from tea leaves. We think that the kernel of the "true self" lies hidden in what is base, not in human nature as a whole and what it is ordered toward. Reason is a liar. The orgasm is our beatific vision. Consumption is our creed. Emotion is our revelation.
• wankle 4y ago
  "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 few things into your identity as possible." No thank you; I do not want to live in a passionless society. Unlike the claims of the article, people can and do have reasoned discussions about both politics and religion.
• motohagiography 4y ago
  I wonder if people ask themselves, "am I a good artifact of criticism?" Obectively, your identity is a set of meaningless reflections you have cohered into a narrative that centralizes your subjective experience. Subjectively, your identity is a story you protect and use a constant process of retroactive continuity to moralize and preserve it. They are both artifacts of language, which is not a substrate or the real that persists when you are gone. Your identity is chosen. The value of an axiom like spiritual faith is that your choice can come from the reflection of something objective, persistent, and compassionate, instead of the reflections and artifacts of the language and meaning you have been presented with - often as a yoke. Be what you choose, not what may have happened, and especially not what someone who wants something from you tells you. If your identity is the artifact of dialectic materialism, you have already accepted that you are a subject, working off an indenture in the name of earthly material justice, in pursuit of redemption from an imaginary critic who will never yield. I believe we have choice. Let one thing into your identity, and the rest becomes obvious, imo.
  • floppydiskette 4y ago
• mch82 4y ago
  Alternate advice: practice skills of listening, observing, empathy, dialog, sharing, building. These are the skills you will need to deal with people. People can have a difficult time talking about religion, politics, and programming languages because these issues affect their lives. When you say something that threatens another person’s life, expect a strong reaction to that threat. The key to having productive discussions about topics like these is to start with empathy, look for and diffuse threats, and seek a future state that creates space for the needs and goals of all stakeholders. Edit: also, life is a lot more fun when approached with curiosity. Stay curious.
  • fouroneone 4y ago
    There are cases where someones entire life is founded on a lie and that no productive discussion is possible. Sure you can "discuss" these topics amicably but they always end up "agreeing to disagree". Nothing was changed, the needle wasn't moved.. the discussion was useless and unproductive. The truly challenging question here is HOW do you have a truly productive discussion around these topics. Graham is right. The ONLY way is for someone to give up his identity. True dispassion. That is the only time when someone can truly discuss these hard topics "productively". There is literally no other way. Your method involves sort of dancing around the controversial topic and having useless but amicable discussions. I think your advice leads to unproductive conversations and it's also really obvious knowledge that everyone is somewhat aware about. But I'm happy to hear other peoples opinions! We can agree to disagree.
    • mdp2021 4y ago
      You are missing an important point of the poster: you have to abandon cageing self-prejudice - but at the same time, a similar operation should done one the image of the other. Give up identities (self-side) and give up prejudice (other-side).
    • selimthegrim 4y ago
      Is this not Jungian disintegration/disindividuation?
• simne 4y ago
  Author is right, but chosen wrong example. Religion is not a tool, unlike programming language, limited by definition, Religion is Universe, with endless number of variants. Some religions, like protestants, are by definition distributed, they just have not some acknowledged position on many questions. But if we talk about business, this is exact hit, in business, to convince client, you should have narrow offer, which fit this client believes, nothing more. Why so, if you widen offer, because of steel triangle of PM, you have to raise costs, and/or lower quality. And yes, I know about smartphones, but my estimation, at least, 10-25% of HN discussions, are about low quality of widened solutions, including smartphones, or about excellence of narrow solutions, like C64, or ST.
• the_gipsy 4y ago
  Mr. Graham does have a big political identity (on twitter). Sure, he shares more anecdotes about raising his kids than "anti-woke" messages, but it doesn't hold up against this essay. His essay might still be right of course.
  • morelisp 4y ago
    Heaven hates what it hates, who knows the reason why? Therefore even the sage treats some things as difficult. The way of heaven excels in overcoming though it does not contend, in responding though it does not speak, in attracting though it does not summon, and in laying plans though it appears slack.
    • the_gipsy 4y ago
      The say heaven is a place of love? We'll make heaven a place on earth.
• midhhhthrow 4y ago
  Absolutely. Identification and all the labels you carry are the source of most conflict. Sages of the east have recognized this for thousands of years and seek to dissolve the ego, dissolve all the labels that we think we are.
  • mdp2021 4y ago
    Interestingly, the parent was posted two hours ago and I find it near the bottom. It is either revealing of the visiting patterns of HN members, or.
• cjfd 4y ago
  Maybe better advice is to not take on as identities things that you just took over from other people without questioning. Also know what the other side is thinking before deciding what belongs in your identity and what not. There are things that you should believe because you are you. There are also things that should be firmly rejected. It actually takes a fair bit of living before one knows things definitively. But there is also the danger of being too open minded. One can be so open minded that ones brain falls out...
• strangattractor 4y ago
  IMHO I am not convinced that gender identity is actually measurable or a knowable thing. I can physically demonstrate whether I am male or female. I can only assume that I think or feel like other males or females based on how other males or females behave or what they tell me they think and feel. Given the fluidity of language I have no guarantee that my interpretation of that is accurate. I have no real way to do an experiment because I cannot choose to be the other gender for a day and compare. Maybe there are more objective measures but they seem somewhat inadequate to me. My real life experience informs me that there are no real defined boundaries and all of us are some mixture of all of the above.
  • fouroneone 4y ago
    Paul is more talking about pride and identity. He's not talking about full embodiment or awareness of what identity is. I'm going to say an example that's not true but it's just to demonstrate a point. For example if I say "All women are stupid." If you identify as a woman you get offended and emotionally compromised. You assume the person who said it is wrong and you leave. If you don't identify as a woman and you aren't offended by the statement at all.... perhaps you can do an objective and open minded study to get to the bottom of the question. An objective person can look at the data and realize that on the bell curve of IQ... men and woman have the same average but men have a thicker tail on the far ends of both sides of the curve. This says that the small population of extremely intelligent people and extremely stupid people are mostly men. By not having pride you can be more objective and see this nuance. Graham is talking about pride and identity and how it effects your objectivity and bias and intelligent analysis. He is not referring to the actual meaning and definition of identity. The dark side of lacking identity and being objective is that while I illustrate a rosy conclusion (that is also true) here, not all conclusions are rosy. It is very possible that for certain scenarios the data shows results that are not politically correct. What if the data shows that women are truly stupider? What then?
    • strangattractor 4y ago
      I went to the gender thing primarily because much of the discussion seemed centered on that. But in general I would say my identity is comprised of many more things other than my gender. By trying to simplify a definition of identity into something specific or plucking out a single identity trait (any trait) which cannot be defined precisely (emacs vs vim, declarative vs functional, race, intelligence, flavor, color etc) we lose information and end up in never ending ratholes of discussion. People start relying on personal experiences and feelings (subjective info) which makes the discussion personal and more often than not useless. My take from the author is Keep It Simple Stupid.
• trees101 4y ago
  Thought provoking post, but the idea doesn't work. Yes, people are less inclined to get into arguments about specific technical tools if they are not educated about them. Yes, people DO get into arguments about religion even if they aren't educated about it. The difference is that religion addresses matters that ARE central to people's identity. It addresses choices that EVERYONE must make, and therefore everyone has a stake in it, unlike an arcane programming language that only impacts a few people.
  • trees101 4y ago
    There could be a hidden assumption behind Graham's idea, which is that everyone (that matters) shares his beliefs. Often in the West, secular liberalism is the assumed religion and news articles, books, conversations all implicitly assume it. To people completely immersed in this paradigm, religion is merely external decoration, like a costume, that is exterior to an assumed identical core belief. People who make this assumption got a rude shock around the time of the ISIS attacks, when they found that some people who grew up in French housing estates behaved in extremely strange and troubling ways. Ideas have consequences, and religion is the set of ideas about the matters of utmost consequence. These ideas are inherently part of people's identity.
  • tshadley 4y ago
    > The difference is that religion addresses matters that ARE central to people's identity. It addresses choices that EVERYONE must make In the essay, identity is associated with a particular religious/political/social perspective on the human condition, not the human condition itself. Keeping identity small is basically converging on "being human"-- the choices everyone must make as you note -- without the false certainty that comes with loyalty to a religious/political/social identity.
• nateoearth 4y ago
  Counterpoint: a strong sense of identity is a crucial ingredient for a meaningful life. Studies have consistently shown that actively religious people are happier that their non-religious counterparts. Identities can grant access to social networks, epitomized in conventions attracting thousands of people who gleefully share an identity (e.g., DEF CON for hackers). Etc.
  • ACow_Adonis 4y ago
    counter-counterpoint: studies (that is to say the modern ritual of writing papers about spuriously finding statistical correlations using language and processes specific to your academic tribe) have consistently found positive effects of both. On the one hand you have the supposed positive effects of accepting identities of the in-group, but you have to be very careful about how you structure and interpret these, because as you've inadvertently pointed out, what you're often really getting is access to social networks and resources. you also have to be very careful to interpret the positive outcomes of such if they're part of groups that actively discriminate, target or persecute out-member groups. gays, foreigners, races, genders other-identies can also be shown to often have negative effects using similar methods, and of course naive methods do find significantly worse outcomes amongst many life measures from such groups (which is not really surprising, because the in-group often treats them like shit). but studies have also shown consistent positive effects from dropping identities. i.e. stopping identifying with criminal groups, removing limiting beliefs and cognitive barriers associated with identities, and positive associations with Buddhist-esque religions and practices associated with traditionally non-identity building beliefs and practices (meditation, anatman, western psychological methods and treatments associated- derived from such etc). personally, I fall on the less identity side of things, just speaking as someone on the side of the unique position of being involved with statistics, religion, economics, and psychology.
    • doc_gunthrop 4y ago
      Counterpoints and counter-counterpoints mentioning all these "studies" and yet not a single concrete example is given. It's a shame when online discussion and debate devolves into "here's my point just take my word for it".
• naet 4y ago
  > As a rule, any mention of religion on an online forum degenerates into a religious argument. Why? Why does this happen with religion and not with Javascript... Unfortunately this is not true anymore for JavaScript. People will get into intense arguments over TS vs JS, React, etc and argue from the same position of "faith" or strongly held beliefs rather than logic.
• aeturnum 4y ago
  This is SUCH "Paul Graham" advice - useful mostly to people who sit on top of a hierarchy of power which does not demand any of their personal attention. I think the good version of this advice is: actively evaluate what is important to you and what you can do to maintain and further it. We are all involved, to one degree or another, in systems and processes larger than ourselves. By definition, our influence on those systems is limited - but we may be able to increase or decrease our influence through work and engagement. It's healthy to reflect on what you are investing your time and energy into and how those investments will impact your life. There is no single right or wrong answer - but you will benefit from forming an opinion! It's unhealthy to falsely base your self-worth on giant political movements outside your control - but it's equally unhealthy to ignore the impact you experience from the issues of the day. Be reflective in how you associate yourself with things, but no one should pretend that they are not subject to the world (unless, it seems, you're at a "Paul Graham" level of wealth and independence).
  • mcbishop 4y ago
    I think that not feeling personally attacked when someone expresses an opposing opinion... is helpful regardless of one's class status.
  • kelnos 4y ago
    What a weird take. None of this has anything to do with wealth or class. It's about avoiding making arbitrary things so dear to you that you are unable to question anything about them, or even have productive, honest discussions about them. Your "good version" doesn't really make sense to me, and seems to have nothing to do with what the article is about.
    • aeturnum 4y ago
      It's generally the wealthy and the high class who can pick and choose how much they feel the impact of politics. Most people don't get to choose how large "their identity" is - as others will put them into groups and make decisions based on those groups. This way of engaging with it - which is perfectly sensible from his point of view - it just applies to very few conversations (though, of course, how upset we should get about javascript is one of them).
• photochemsyn 4y ago
  Train yourself to argue all sides of political - religious questions with equal fervor. However, as the author notes, it's not wise to over-identify with the various different positions (that way lies schizophrenia). This used to be something people were trained in as a matter of course, wasn't it? There were debate clubs, things like that. Now people are often just trained to regurgitate stale talking points, off the offically approved list provided by the appropriate authority figure.