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Admittedly, I don't think there is anything I could reply that will change such a radicalized worldview. But I am going to state three facts: a) my grandfather

Admittedly, I don't think there is anything I could reply that will change such a radicalized worldview. But I am going to state three facts: a) my grandfather immigrated from the U.S. to Mexico, brought the best of his ways with him and adopted the best of ours and was quite successful with that (as are many that make the opposite trip), he ran to Mexico after spending 4 years of so in the U.S. navy at war with people who think much as you do now, b) if you think that the reason Mexico is fucked up is 'backward culture' and not centuries of white colonialism and post-colonial exploitation, I should recommend you read a history book, c) if you carpet nuke China or India, they will nuke right back at you, the U.S. can't conquer the world any more than Nazi Germany could.

TheBobinator 10y ago
America was once a white colony; your argument is factually flawed because you are stuck in the "might makes right" mentality of natural selection. Whenever resources get scarce, nature basically determines anything goes and the strongest survive. In that mentality you believe whatever you want to believe, or whatever is the most convenient to believe, as an instinctual response; effectively because of the context of the situation any action can be rationalized as moral or justified even though it is horribly sub-optimal. If you'd like I could continue this discussion with you, and we can exchange a rich dialogue involving centuries of accumulated racial slurs and stereotypes, and much like masturbation, exhaust ourselves with little actual reward. That would obviously, not be a novel approach. There was a really awesome article on HN awhile ago describing the disconnect we're having. I suggest you read it and approach the immigration discussion as an engineering problem: http://thefutureprimaeval.net/the-overton-bubble/ http://thefutureprimaeval.net/the-overton-bubble/ View this as an engineering problem; You are blinding yourself to finding a more optimal (we'll use the metric of dignified solution for all involved) by not fully understanding the entire problem at hand. Seek to understand the other parties viewpoint. Assume any solution to the engineering problem that results in a loss of life as sub-optimal and any solution that is not executed on a timely basis results in loss of life. Assume you and your current viewpoints are irrelevant, and any ancillary metrics such as "I want a big house and a big family" might also be impossible with a fully optimal solution. It's only when everyone recognized the severity of the problem that any good will can be generated, and that good will is necessary for discovering the problems might not be so unsolvable after-all. But if you're stuck believing whatever you want to believe, well. This post is going to be a great test of HN's scoring system I'll tell you that, the bias should go all over the place.
dukeluke 10y ago
The comment above is flagged so I am unable to understand what they said, but the effect of culture on a society is underrated in my opinion. There is kind of a widespread opinion that all of the advancement of white people is due to racism, yet ignore the fact that Asian Americans have a higher average income and net worth than whites. People of Jewish heritage make up a very small percentage of the population, yet make up a large percentage of the Nobel prize holders. I'm not saying differences are completely because of differences in culture; racism definitely exists. But I wonder what kind of effect that culture truly has on a population.

TheBobinator 10y ago

America was once a white colony; your argument is factually flawed because you are stuck in the "might makes right" mentality of natural selection. Whenever resources get scarce, nature basically determines anything goes and the strongest survive. In that mentality you believe whatever you want to believe, or whatever is the most convenient to believe, as an instinctual response; effectively because of the context of the situation any action can be rationalized as moral or justified even though it is horribly sub-optimal. If you'd like I could continue this discussion with you, and we can exchange a rich dialogue involving centuries of accumulated racial slurs and stereotypes, and much like masturbation, exhaust ourselves with little actual reward. That would obviously, not be a novel approach. There was a really awesome article on HN awhile ago describing the disconnect we're having. I suggest you read it and approach the immigration discussion as an engineering problem: http://thefutureprimaeval.net/the-overton-bubble/ http://thefutureprimaeval.net/the-overton-bubble/ View this as an engineering problem; You are blinding yourself to finding a more optimal (we'll use the metric of dignified solution for all involved) by not fully understanding the entire problem at hand. Seek to understand the other parties viewpoint. Assume any solution to the engineering problem that results in a loss of life as sub-optimal and any solution that is not executed on a timely basis results in loss of life. Assume you and your current viewpoints are irrelevant, and any ancillary metrics such as "I want a big house and a big family" might also be impossible with a fully optimal solution. It's only when everyone recognized the severity of the problem that any good will can be generated, and that good will is necessary for discovering the problems might not be so unsolvable after-all. But if you're stuck believing whatever you want to believe, well. This post is going to be a great test of HN's scoring system I'll tell you that, the bias should go all over the place.

dukeluke 10y ago

The comment above is flagged so I am unable to understand what they said, but the effect of culture on a society is underrated in my opinion. There is kind of a widespread opinion that all of the advancement of white people is due to racism, yet ignore the fact that Asian Americans have a higher average income and net worth than whites. People of Jewish heritage make up a very small percentage of the population, yet make up a large percentage of the Nobel prize holders. I'm not saying differences are completely because of differences in culture; racism definitely exists. But I wonder what kind of effect that culture truly has on a population.