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Titles are the ultimate compressors. "Professor" or "VP of Sales" communicates entire volumes. Super shorthand. To communicate free-agent life content equivalent to "I am a professor at X university" (3 seconds) would take me like 3 minutes.
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"Professor" communicates a whole pattern. It says you have a certain pie chart of activities. It says you publish in certain ways, and supervise other people in certain ways. I do very similar things but I have to explain all of it because most people don't know any of it.
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The weakness of young self-descriptors like "blogger" is that they are not tight. They refer to about 100x broader scope of life patterns than say "professor"
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I need a compact way to introduce myself. When I introduce myself as "blogger and consultant" and people later find out everything hiding under there, they sometimes react like I've been misleading or putting a false humility posture. No, I just don't have a compression.
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Replying to
"Then there were those three years where I worked interpreter/calculator mashups. Um...there was a lot more to it than that, but that's the best I can do."
Replying to
In this context (titles, occupations), institutions also create barriers to entry, occupational licensing requirements, strict prerequisites. This is what gives many of these titles the ability to act as short-hand, because they imply a particular kind of power.
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