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Comment by neoveller | Hacker News Reader

I don't think you are wrong in your overall point. My post was an analysis of the social evolution of self-expression. That was its direction. Your points relate to the actual utility of having no identity. The merits of your points (while anonymous) exist, but I would argue that they could not exist if not for the experiences derived under a rigid identity, perhaps not even without the experiences derived from having an identity on the web anywhere. How do you know that you care about identity or UPP or not if you did not experience both the "have" and "have not" have not at some point? Your opinion comes out of the in-between, and knowing both ways.

Edit: upvote for your throwaway, new account to prove your point. I imagine it would not have preceded a real account that you care about.

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I think you wrote an article that kind of ignored the real point of controversy, which is whether UPP is actually valuable. Does having a rigid identity tend to magnify the reactions of people to the things you do an say? Yes, absolutely. Your article almost wholly pertains to arguing that it does, but that's not what people would disagree with you about. They would disagree on whether UPP is desirable at all. As far as I can tell from your definition of UPP, it's little more than an accumulated distortion of logical merit based on superficial characteristics. The distortion may be to your material advantage, but I still do not see why it is desirable.

Edit: I don't actually have a "real" account. HN may not support anonymity, but signing up and posting doesn't require email confirmation, so I make a new account about every other article I choose to post a comment on.

Correct. I wrote a post which avoided controversy by analyzing the social evolution of identity instead of taking a stance on the issue which cannot be backed by a model. To make this relevant, I involved Moot's point and showed how it is moot when taken together with the model. Is UPP good or bad, desirable? In relation to who? The answer changes depending on who responds to the output of UPP. Personally, I find UPP desirable because it has the potential to shake things up. I'm a big fan of shaking things up, but not the extent where it removes foundations and collapses a working system.

Whether it is desirable would depend on your values and objectives. I fail to see why UPP is desirable to anyone except the person who wants more accolade for a particular statement or action than it actually deserves. I do not think that an admirable desire.

Your UPP is what enabled you to make an account just to respond to this thread. Maybe we're unclear on definitions here. UPP facilitates the desire to make comments whether read by anyone or not, because it is made so abundant by technology as to devalue it as social currency in the first place. Regardless, it adds or subtracts from the UPP of people who took the time to read it (namely my own), and caused a reaction at the expense of my own. It's a force and currency, not an issue.

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