[MD] Core problemS

[Arlo Bensinger]

[Ron]
I understand what you are trying to say Arlo, Jimmy, whoever you are...

[Arlo]
I "am" who you think I am. By the way, the only person who calls me 
"Jimmy" is my fiance. Let me give you some background on that. My 
father's name was "Arlo", and so since I was a baby to differentiate 
us I was referred to as "Jim". All my life, all through high school, 
I knew my legal name was "Arlo" but I never used it. Never. It was 
like if you found out today that all this time your legal name was 
actually "Harry". It was that alien to me. When I entered college, it 
was just easier to let my professors call me "Arlo", and so people I 
met in classes there knew me as "Arlo". I mostly had them call me Jim 
until one particular "friend" told me she thought "Arlo" was a much 
more unique and exciting name (really!). So I gave it a test run. And 
it took. But what has happened is that everyone who knew me prior to 
1990 calls me "Jim". Everyone who knows me since calls me "Arlo". My 
biker friends I met while with a friend from the "Jim" days, and so 
that was the name that stuck there. Try as I might, I can no more get 
my colleagues at work to think of me as "Jim" as I can get my biker 
friends to think of me as "Arlo". Legally my birth certificate says 
"Arlo", but is that any more "my real name" than "Jim"?

[Ron]
but it's those few who really are who they say they are

[Arlo]
I'd say here what you are pointing to is "continuity over time", and 
not that any aspect of identity is "real" or "false".

Let me problematize this further with two studies.

A few years back, a study was done where university kids were told 
they had to participate in an online forum, but that the "avatar" of 
them would be randomly assigned and unchangeable. Leaving aside 
gender revelations, what this study was that kids who were given an 
avatar they felt "was better looking" than them did nothing in the 
forum to dispute this. But kids who were given an avatar they felt 
was "uglier" were very vocal about saying  "that's not me".

Another study took one female student and had her inteact in three 
different forums, each with a different avatar. One was very 
attractive by social standards. One "plain". And one quite obese. She 
was told to not reveal how she really looked. What they found was 
that others in the forum treated her very, very differently based on 
her avatar. The "ugly" girl's opinions were dismissed, she 
encountered often outright hostility, while the "personae" associated 
with the attractive avatar was treated more kindly and her opinions 
given more respect (if not maybe overly so).

So my question is, would an overweight woman who uses an "attractive" 
avatar be being dishonest? What is "the real her"? The overweight 
body? Or the attractive "self"?