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You can be opposed to whatever you like. Voicing your sentiment will, however, shine a light upon your understanding of the world. Maybe you could ask "Why do p

You can be opposed to whatever you like. Voicing your sentiment will, however, shine a light upon your understanding of the world. Maybe you could ask "Why do people think that I'm a bad person if I'm against mass immigration?" Assuming this comes closer to your request, I will try to answer that. But I will have to digress a bit, so please bear with me. I have the feeling that how you see the world is very much characterised by whether you are (what I call) an inclusionist or an exclusionist. Let me explain what I mean by that. Since we're on HN, I will use an analogy that might be up your alley. In CS, there is something called local search [1] for optimisation problems. The basic idea is: let's say, we have a number of states and we want to find the best one. And let's say, we have a method of determining how "good" a state is. A simple approach would be to start at some state, look around at the neighbour states and pick the better one. Then we move to that state and look around again. And so on, until we're at a state that is surrounded by only less or equally "good" states. The problem with this method is that we might end up in a local maximum or on a plateau, but we're stuck there forever. To get past that, we can choose a random state now and then. This is what simulated annealing [2] does or the mutation in genetic algorithms [3]. Even though at times we might be distracted from the best state right in front of us by following serendipity, this strategy is overall superior to the myopic, greedy strategy. This is an interesting insight: by including something into our consideration that is most likely worse than what we already have, we achieve an overall better strategy. This is not very intuitive. Let's keep that in mind. This concept can be applied to (we're leaving the realm of science here, but being scientific wasn't the point in the first place) our world view in general. Let's call it the inclusionist view, while the opposite would be the exclusionist view. The exclusionist would prefer everyone to stick to the generally accepted way of life, while the inclusionist sees the need to allow deviation from the norm. Since the insight from above is not very intuitive, the inclusionist might think that whoever is for making an end to deviation and all for following the one true normative way must be a myopic exclusionist who is too single minded to grasp the bigger picture. If you're in the inclusionist camp, you will have had a lot of frustrating conversations with exclusionists who will insist that going with the most likely less "good" option is stupid and you're a beady eyed, gullible philanthropist. While you might come to the conclusion that the exclusionist is a myopic, uneducated, neanderthal. If you have witnessed many political discussions, a certain pattern emerges, and you get the impression that the racists, nazis, fascists, philistines are all the outcome of exclusionism. Now, let's go back to the original topic. Immigration is one of those topics where the views of inclusionists and exclusionists play a role. Everything is kind of fine as long as the numbers are small and the places of origin for immigrants are not too outlandish. But when someone calls for caps or selective admittance or anything else to quickly deal with "mass immigration", the inclusionist smells an exclusionist. Someone who did not grasp, the inclusionist assumes, the greater ramifications of applying broad selections, etc. The inclusionist will also be wary of not allowing the exclusionist to make too much ground, because he suspects the same shortsightedness that goes with racism. So, this is basically why you get a negative response if you use certain words or raise topics in a certain way. I have no idea, in which camp you are or if either camp actually exists, but maybe this might provide a glimpse into the slightly elitist mindset of oh so sophisticated people like me. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Local_search_(optimization) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Local_search_(optimization) [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simulated_annealing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simulated_annealing [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genetic_algorithm https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genetic_algorithm

guard-of-terra 10y ago
Frankly, I no longer have this nagging need to be considered "a good person". I've witnessed too many biases in how people tell good people from bad, they make outright errors, even worse, they refuse to acknowlege their errors, refuse to learn. Now, it's enough for me to bring my point across. > Everything is kind of fine as long as the numbers are small and the places of origin for immigrants are not too outlandish However, a) the numbers of immigrants are huge, and b) places of origin of said immigrants are worrysome. Therefore it seems that your sentiment does not apply. I was content too when numbers were tolerable. That was long past. > "caps or selective admittance or anything else to quickly deal with "mass immigration"," Here you can't see why the problem arose. The need to deal with immigration arose long ago, maybe 15 years ago, maybe 10. Nothing were done by policy makers or "inclusionists" or who you call them. They left doors wide open, even after it was obviously leading to social stress. Fast forward 10 years, they've lost all their cred with me. The time for slow and correct measures was 10 years ago and they weren't implemented. So obviously now I'm pro-quick solutions. And inclusionists can think all they want. They ignored my concerns for too long for me to listen to them now. They rejected dialogue first. They were also calling names like you can't help yourself not to. UPD: "You can be opposed to whatever you like." - people will also vote on referendums and elections whatever they like, don't come worried then.
- AnonymousPlanet 10y ago
  To be honest, my digressions were so long that, once I reached the topic of immigration, I kind of started glossing over the details. The entire point, however, wasn't to discuss finer points of immigration, but give a bigger picture of the mindsets that are at work here and in other topics. > And inclusionists can think all they want. They ignored my concerns for too long for me to listen to them now. They rejected dialogue first. They were also calling names like you can't help yourself not to. Well, I tried to provide you with a bigger picture, explaining on what grounds dialogue might have been rejected. You asked a general question and I thought you were genuinely interested in talking about the topic on a higher level. But apparently you're just here to go through the same thoughts again and again.
  - 10y ago

guard-of-terra 10y ago

Frankly, I no longer have this nagging need to be considered "a good person". I've witnessed too many biases in how people tell good people from bad, they make outright errors, even worse, they refuse to acknowlege their errors, refuse to learn. Now, it's enough for me to bring my point across. > Everything is kind of fine as long as the numbers are small and the places of origin for immigrants are not too outlandish However, a) the numbers of immigrants are huge, and b) places of origin of said immigrants are worrysome. Therefore it seems that your sentiment does not apply. I was content too when numbers were tolerable. That was long past. > "caps or selective admittance or anything else to quickly deal with "mass immigration"," Here you can't see why the problem arose. The need to deal with immigration arose long ago, maybe 15 years ago, maybe 10. Nothing were done by policy makers or "inclusionists" or who you call them. They left doors wide open, even after it was obviously leading to social stress. Fast forward 10 years, they've lost all their cred with me. The time for slow and correct measures was 10 years ago and they weren't implemented. So obviously now I'm pro-quick solutions. And inclusionists can think all they want. They ignored my concerns for too long for me to listen to them now. They rejected dialogue first. They were also calling names like you can't help yourself not to. UPD: "You can be opposed to whatever you like." - people will also vote on referendums and elections whatever they like, don't come worried then.

AnonymousPlanet 10y ago
To be honest, my digressions were so long that, once I reached the topic of immigration, I kind of started glossing over the details. The entire point, however, wasn't to discuss finer points of immigration, but give a bigger picture of the mindsets that are at work here and in other topics. > And inclusionists can think all they want. They ignored my concerns for too long for me to listen to them now. They rejected dialogue first. They were also calling names like you can't help yourself not to. Well, I tried to provide you with a bigger picture, explaining on what grounds dialogue might have been rejected. You asked a general question and I thought you were genuinely interested in talking about the topic on a higher level. But apparently you're just here to go through the same thoughts again and again.
- 10y ago