Talk:Identity

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I'm starting to think about the question "What are you?" in a series of blogs and an associated Wiki. This set of identity articles seems to be, at least in part, tied to this line of thinking. The whole idea is, what would you answer if someone walked up to you on the street and asked the simple question, "What are you?" lolllllllll —Preceding unsigned comment added by 58.169.201.17 (talk) 02:46, 31 January 2010 (UTC)


 * To me the question "What are you?" usually means "What kind of thing are you?", in which case I reply something like "I'm a human being, which is a type of great ape, which is a type of primate, which is a type of placental mammal, which is a type of tetrapod, which is a type of vertebrate, which is a type of chordate, which is a type of deuterstome, which is a type of coelomate, which is a type of bilaterate, which is a type of metazoa, which is a type of animal, which is a multi-cellular type of eukaryote, which is an endosymbiosis of several types of prokaryotes, which are cellular forms of life, which are forms of life. I usually get interrupted before I can finish reciting that heirarchy.


 * Sometimes the question means "What specific object are you?", in which case I might answer that I'm the unique person who placed top-five nationwide in the William Lowell Putnam competition while attending the University of Santa Clara, or I'm the first person who implemented the idea of a "programmed text" on a computer, namely frames/pages of information with labeled links connecting each page to other pages, for the purpose of organizing pages of information to form a hierarchy that can be browsed by selecting links from one frame to another.
 * 198.144.192.45 (talk) 03:53, 12 January 2013 (UTC) Twitter.Com/CalRobert (Robert Maas)

Rework
Is it just me, or does this whole page need a rewrite according to MOS:DAB? WLU (t) (c) Wikipedia's rules: simple/complex 13:57, 19 August 2012 (UTC)

What does "identity" actually mean in the phrase "identity theft"?
I'm trying to find out what is the meaning of the word "identity" in the phrase "identity theft". What exactly is that thing which is being stolen when an "identity theft" crime occurs? Like "art theft" refers to a piece of art being stolen, and "auto theft" refers to an automobile is being stolen. Or is "identity theft" a grammatical misnomer, that it doesn't refer to an "identity" is being stolen, that there's no such thing as an "identity" to begin with (in this context), that no theft of anything is occurring? Does "identity theft" really mean nothing more than "impersonation"?

I did Google search for "identity", found many classes of meaning, but no *noun* by itself that sounds like it would fit in that phrase. I found an entry for "identify theft", clicked on it, found the phrase "stealing someone's identity", which is grammatically what I'm asking about. But the link from the word "identity" doesn't link to a page defining that word, rather links to a page on Personally Identifiable Information (PII). On that page there's no mention as to whether the single word "identity" is a synomym for the phrase "Personally Identifiable Information" or not.

This PII page says "PII can also be exploited by criminals to stalk or steal the identity of a person", which makes it obvious that "PII" and "identity" are *not* the same thing, right?

Later the PII page says "The following data, often used for the express purpose of distinguishing individual identity, clearly class as PII under the definition used by the U.S. Office of Management and Budget", which again seems to imply that "PII" is not the same thing as "identity", right?

More confusion, in the table of kinds of PII, it lists "Digital identity". So what does that mean?? This is seriously begging the question, IMO.

More begging the question: "The following are less often used to distinguish individual identity, because they are traits shared by many people." What does "individual identity" mean??

Later "Information which can be used to distinguish or trace an individual's identity, such as their name, social security number, ..." What exactly is this so-called "identity" that is being distinguished or traced??

Later "one or more factors specific to his physical, physiological, mental, economic, cultural or social identity;" The essential word "identity" is muddied, not defined.

Later "A Social Security Number (SSN) without a name or some other associated identity or context information is not SB1386 "personal information", but it is PII. More begging the question what does the word "identity" mean in the first place.

Later "about an individual whose identity is apparent" Again, using the word without defining what it means. What exactly is this **thing** called an "identity" that is apparent??

Later "Just how much extra effort or difficulty would such a step need before we could clearly say that the identity could NOT be "reasonably ascertained" from it?" Again, begging the question what exactly is this thing called an "identity" which people are trying to ascertain??

Later "In forensics, the tracking down of the identity of a criminal, personally identifiable information is critical in zeroing in on the subject." Again, begging the question what exactly is the "identity" which the police are trying to "track down". Apparently it's somehow related to "zeroing in" on the person who committed the crime, but what exactly is this "identity" and what is its relation to the PII and what is its role in the process of "zeroing in"?

Later "In some professions, it is dangerous for a person's identity to become known," Again, what exactly is this thing which is dangerous to be known in this case?

Later "Similar identity protection concerns exist for witness protection programs," Again, what exactly is this thing that needs protection in such cases?

Now following the link to the page titled "Personal identity", it says "Personal identity is the unique numerical identity of persons through time. That is to say, the necessary and sufficient conditions under which a person at one time and a person at another time can be said to be the same person, persisting through time.^ But what does the phrase "numerical identity" mean? That phrase has a link to another WikiPedia page titled "Identity (philosophy)"m which says "In philosophy, identity, from Latin: identitas ("sameness"), is the relation each thing bears just to itself." I don't see **any** way that somebody can steal the philosophical tautology that something is equal to itself??????

This all really needs to be fixed, either link the word "identity" to a different page that directly defines the word "identity", or on the PII page say somewhere that the word "identity" is a synonym for PII (which I rather doubt given the several passages I quoted that seem to say otherwise), or some other resolution to this question-begging that I can't even guess. WikiPedia is supposed to clarify questions like this, not play bait-and-switch and beg-the-question. 198.144.192.45 (talk) 03:06, 12 January 2013 (UTC) Twitter.Com/CalRobert (Robert Maas)

After I posted the above block of questions, I encountered something which gave me more clues and confusion: When you add an e-mail address to a Yahoo! Mail account, and you get e-mail asking you to follow link to confirm, when you do so, on the resultant page that says "Thanks ! Your email address is now verified" there's an option titled "Ready to move on?" with text that says "I would like my profile to be found by others searching on my email address to make me a connection. Your email address will become an Identity for your Yahoo! account if you check the box. Your Identities are all shared with your Connections and you may make them public." which then contains a pseudo-link titled "What is an Identity?" which says: An Identity is a unique identifier that belongs to you, and only you. Your Yahoo! ID is an Identity. You may make any of your verified email addresses Identities. You can add or delete Identities at any time on the Identity Management page. So in what sense does an identifier **belong** to a particular person? Does any state of the USA have a law regarding legal ownership of such an identifier and specifying penalties for theft of such property? If not, WTF is meant by the word "belong"? 198.144.192.45 (talk) 11:57, 7 March 2013 (UTC) Twitter.Com/CalRobert (Robert Maas)

Wikidata item
Currently, as of august 2016, this article points to wikidata item Q3791810, which groups certain pages titled identity (in english, mostly albums or videogames names) in several wikis. As this user pointed out in es-wiki, this is probably wrong, since this article should be linked to the disambiguation pages of the related concept in other languages, like fr:identité, es:identidad or de:Identität (Begriffsklärung). This corresponds to this other item - Q227672. I'm not sure enough to change this myself, and I don't know if there is any policy about this issue on disambig pages (probably not the only case), so I leave here this message.--Echani (talk) 17:52, 3 August 2016 (UTC)

Identity
Identity has a lot of different meanings depending on the person and each person's perspective. Identity has also a lot of ramifications from any point of view that you look at it. The article states several variations of identity and is very informative for everybody to get a wide idea of the meaning of identity even when I believe it could be a little bit more well organized. The biggest strength of the article is the comments from other people, many ideas can be positive to get a personal opinion about the topic, especially when is a very controversial topic as this could be. In general, identity can contemplate different aspects that can vary its meaning. However, is it really only one meaning that can define what identity is? who decides who is right? and why? Vtorresl4 (talk) 04:00, 30 September 2021 (UTC)


 * , it's unclear why you have initiated this discussion - do you have a specific point or suggestion to raise? (See WP:TALK & HELP:TALK.) Laterthanyouthink (talk) 05:32, 30 September 2021 (UTC)