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I was never at risk of self-essentializing a “big” Indian identity. India in the 80s when I was growing up was a sad joke. Big-identity Indians were (and largely still are) insecure buffoons with entire identity built on a somewhat overstated claim to having invented the zero.
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(exaggerating a bit for effect there...) I was briefly at risk of becoming fully “westernized” and becoming a fully gone-native western thinker with a wog epistemology. I do think 90% in English, but I’d say only ~30-50% of my thought patterns are classical western ones).
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I was *very* briefly at risk of becoming a STEM supremacist (for about 3 months in the summer of 1993, between getting accepted at IIT, a big hubris booster, and discovering upon getting there how ordinary my STEM talents were in that cohort).
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When I got interested in non-STEM topics, I was coming off 15y in the STEM world, exiting with 3 mediocre degrees, mediocre track record (including a deadpooled product, 6 meh patents, and a dozen meh publications), and a small but secure identity/confidence. No Elon Musk but ok.
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I was never a STEM supremacist because I didn’t win enough to get an inflated sense of myself that way. But I won enough that it was enough to immunize me against the intimidation and contempt defenses against dirty barbarian STEMmie attention on lofty humanist questions.
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Interestingly there is nothing like wog epistemology (“brown sahib” Indian —> European going native) for STEM —> HSS. I’ve never met a STEMMie so in awe of critical theory that they accept access to HSS discourses with deferential gratitude and abandonment of subversive impulses.
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So, tldr of my 2 immigration stories: I never self-essentialized as Indian or wog-Westerner, or as STEMMie doerist or HSS critical-theory supremacist. This has been the reward for a spectacularly mediocre 22-year adult career along all conventional vectors of accomplishment.
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The consolation of mediocre success at life’s games around big prizes is an identity too small to obscure your view of where and how your feet are on the ground. Immigration story #1 makes me incapable of ethnonationalist sentiment on *any* side that might accept me as a member.
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Immigration story #2 makes me incapable of being either a Singularitarian worshipping at the altar of Roko’s basilisk OR a desperate humanist worshipping at the altar of the “indomitable human spirit” and writing really bad takes on AI illustrated by Terminator stock photos.
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But to bring it back full circle (I went from general idea about views of rivals to nation/species level examples down to personal) the point of my original “ladder of assertions” tweet is that “success epistemologies” are “big frozen identity” epistemologies and are unsatisfying
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Everybody I know operating with a success epistemology based on attachment to a big, self-essentialized identity seems to be unhappy about it, even as they strut about performing confidence and satisfaction in how they view the world. Their world view is more wall than window.
Replying to
Underneath the performance: something between frantic denial and deep depression. My reaction to the performance peppered with obvious tells that it is not the felt reality underneath is usually some flavor of “methinks the derper doth protest too much”.
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I have my own dissatisfactions, denials, and depressive responses to life, but thankfully being attached to the ladder of assertions about others abilities is not one of the sources. Which is good because it allows my worldview to be more window than wall, and I like a good view.
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