identity limits our options in exchange for making it easier to coordinate by making us more predictable
when we meet someone we observe their appearance & behavior to infer their agent strategy, start running them in simulation, predicting their reactions as part of choosing our own social moves, playfully interacting to ground and validate the new subentity living in our mind
we develop our own identity by feedback, comparison, seeing ourselves through the eyes of the various sub-entities we host... hearing our parents' voices telling us who we are, feeling our own agreement or refusal to be that person. our expectations become our behavior become…
also reduces cognitive load 🤔 we develop habits- rote routines we run again and again, but identity is more abstract / generalizes better to prune our decision tree for novel situations
and consciousness is a trauma response & debugger, not needing to be self aware is more efficient, tanha creates breakpoints