16 ms·

The Strength of Us Versus Them

60 points by pmcpinto 9y ago

carsongross 9y ago
The problem, for those of us inclined towards universal humanitarianism, is that ethnocentrism works, evolutionarily speaking: http://jasss.soc.surrey.ac.uk/16/3/7.html http://jasss.soc.surrey.ac.uk/16/3/7.html This is a very tough problem.
- kingmanaz 9y ago
  If ethnocentrism is natural, where is the "problem"?
  - sknuds 9y ago
    Because it's not good and we can do better. Natural disasters are also natural.
    - trophycase 9y ago
      Why isn't it good? Ethnocentricism provides meaning and purpose which is sorely lacking in our relativist, globalist society.
      - RobertoG 9y ago
        Because it's something that evolved for small unsophisticated groups, not for societies with billions of people with nuclear weapons. Probably we all can think of a lot of instinctive behaviours that are a bad idea in what, now, are our normal contexts and that we avoid in a daily basis. Intelligence, unlike evolution, is not blind (or, at least, no so blind).
      - anigbrowl 9y ago
        Relativism merely the philosophical tolerance for doubt, which is the beginning of wisdom. Moral absolutism is an escape hatch for people who don't like doing the hard work of thinking. Ethnocentrism certainly provides some meaning and purpose, but it's a shitty purpose of 'my interests at the expense of those other horrible people' and almost invariably ends in atrocities. Globalism is simply a function of technological advancement, which is not going to go into reverse. We are not giving up instantaneous communications, or high-efficiency containerized shipping, or air travel, or GPS, or any of that other good stuff, despite the urgings of people like Aleksander Dugin. You can have both a globalized society and meaning and purpose: there's a whole cosmos out there waiting to be explored, and the idea that there's more meaning to be had in militarizing the marginal differences between different ethnic groups is bizarre to me.
      - empath75 9y ago
        Well one thing you can always say about nazis is that they had a meaning and purpose.
  - khedoros1 9y ago
    I don't follow. "Natural" isn't a synonym for "beneficial".
    - dwaltrip 9y ago
      E.g. botulism, skin cancer, hypothermia, category 5 hurricanes, asteroids heading towards Earth, and gamma ray bursts are all "natural" phenomenon that I think we all agree are worth trying to avoid or mitigate.
  - NPMaxwell 9y ago
    Whoever crafted this entry for Wikipedia did a nice job: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naturalistic_fallacy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naturalistic_fallacy
  - carsongross 9y ago
    Human ethics transcend nature, where might makes right. Ethics is meaningless if it is "just how it is." That's not to say that nature and natures way can't inform ethics, or to commit to any particular ethical outlook.
    - Amezarak 9y ago
      Some people claim their ethics transcend nature, which is an entirely different. Nobody can explain why their version of the good is right with reference to objective criteria, thereby allowing everyone to come to the same conclusion. Ethics, when not studied from an anthropological perspective, is just religion. Here in reality, you might not feel that might makes right, and I may or may not agree with you, but that's moot when some other ethical outlook out-competes yours via violence, oppression, demographics, or social trends and a thousand years from now someone is reading about your ethical system and laughing at its quaintness, or perhaps shivering a bit with horror. Personally, I regard 'universal humanitarianism' as something of a suicide pact.
      - durge 9y ago
        I hear you, and agree. An individual human being living to increase the fitness of others would be considered extrememly mentally ill, possibly toxic in their inability to sustain themselves. When this is taken to a societal scale (ie many industrialized nations devouring themselves inside out for the benefit of a few at the very top and helping to pull many globally out of poverty) it is seen as somehow a sustainable thing. I'm not here to debate whether or not this is what should be done, but clearly the demographics of this way of being are the human equivalent of 'colony collapse disorder'.
    - blfr 9y ago
      Human ethics transcend nature I don't think that's true. Of course you can come up with ethical systems which transcend nature but the ones that actually get adopted are simply sets and heuristics which make the group benefit the most from "just how it is." Considering that moral attitudes are partially heritable, on a long enough time-scale, ethics that are truly separate from nature are bound to disappear or be relegated to marginal groups of people.
  - kleer001 9y ago
    The problem is the high long term (dozens of generations) cost of favoring short term and small area beneficial strategies for a long period of time (millennia). The problem is kind of like the species level of version of the tragedy of the commons. These different tribes/breeds/races all preferring the short term preference of saving their territory/mate/child/self versus saving the lives (and infinite potential) of their stranger neighbors. The evolution of life shows us the grand benefit of higher and higher levels of organization. Scaling rules. It forces the previously multi-use smaller pieces to over specialize, but the gain are unimaginable as the voyager space probe is to a amoeba.
    - Amezarak 9y ago
      > The evolution of life shows us the grand benefit of higher and higher levels of organization. Scaling rules. It forces the previously multi-use smaller pieces to over specialize, but the gain are unimaginable as the voyager space probe is to a amoeba. It also shows us that complex systems are especially prone to catastrophic systems collapse. Scaling is not a better strategy, it's just a different strategy.
      - golemotron 9y ago
        I agree. That's why I think that universalism is short-sighted. Having many societies with very different cultures might lead to conflict but the alternative is one global society with no alternatives if it becomes dystopian or fails.
    - laretluval 9y ago
      > The evolution of life shows us the grand benefit of higher and higher levels of organization. Multicellular life did not arise from cells being universalist. It arose from cells banding together with their mitotic offspring against other groups of cells. Similarly, the Voyager probe only happened because of us-vs-them competition in the cold war.
      - ktRolster 9y ago
        I'd rather not have another cold war. There are other ways to achieve interstellar probes.
- comstock 9y ago
  It's an interesting review but I think you need more than a few agent-based simulations to be able to broadly claim than ethnocentrism works in real evolutionary systems.
crdb 9y ago
This paper is published during an era where the dominant global empire is founded and (mostly) run on principles opposite to ethnocentrism, at least internally. All of the current POTUS' grandparents were born in Europe, and the previous one's father was Kenyan. The most famous entrepreneur of our generation was born of Syrian parents. The wealthiest self-made woman in America according to Forbes (I did have to Google it), Marian Ilitch, had Macedonian parents. The best strategy in the Iterated Prisoner's Dilemma is tit-for-tat [1]. The winning groups of today have found ways to cooperate-cooperate systematically, overriding the advantages conferred by the behaviour observed in the paper. [1] It gets more interesting when both sides know how the other thinks: https://intelligence.org/files/ProgramEquilibrium.pdf https://intelligence.org/files/ProgramEquilibrium.pdf
- Swizec 9y ago
  The Us vs Them of this day and age is Democratic societies vs Not. The "Free" vs the "Oppressed". And of course there's also the terrorists. They're a strong Them used to excuse all sorts of policies. Ethnocentrism, yeah we care less about that than we used to. We find a different Us vs Them these days. Mostly around ideas you hold to be true.
  - anigbrowl 9y ago
    No, I don't agree. That's the popular ideological line but ethnocentrism is a fact and there are a lot of people trying to revive that as a standard. Ignoring this is facile.
- eevilspock 9y ago
  Not so sure. Walk around New York City, a city that proudly claims to be progressive, and observe how segregated the schools[1] and neighborhoods are, and the color of people being served versus those doing the serving. Those doing well in this social order, per the article, post-facto rationalize this with an essentialist argument: It's a meritocracy, I've earned my nice brownstone (and those I gentrified out didn't), my ability to eat at fancy restaurants (worked in the back by cheap labor of a different color), my cheap pedicures (by Korean immigrants who have no choice but to accept the toxic chemicals[2]), and the cheap nannies for my children (invariably black, hispanic or Filipino women scraping by, spending less time with their own children than the ones of their rich employers, some even moving abroad away from their own kids to give them a "better" life[3]). Normally the reader comments under New York Times articles side with progressive politics, expressing anger at conservatives and Republicans for their self-serving disregard for the poor, for minorities, for women. But if a story points the finger at them[4], these liberal-banner-flying, I'm-with-Her touting New Yorkers, suddenly they start singing the same tune as the conservatives they disdain, justifying their ability to put their kids in the best schools at the expense of the disadvantaged kids, and blaming the families rather than the system that is rigged in their favor from the get-go. Sort by most votes and you have to get to the 15th comment or so for someone to side with the article. One reader had the gall to say: > The good schools all have students that Show up every day Do their homework every night Never miss a test, an assignment or a project Ask for help when they need it Students create study groups on their own to do the work > A woman who did my nails each week told me that her daycare in queens was open 24 hours to support worker schedules and that there were tons of after school tutoring and enrichment programs to fill the gaps for working parents. She worked 7 days a week as did her husband, and she paid for all of these programs...she did it because that is the norm in her community, and most understood that this is the proven path to the middle class. She did all of this while sending money home to her parents in Korea. I am sure her children will be prepared for college. > There is no substitute for working hard everyday and delaying gratification. This is good? That the woman who is doing her nails (see [1] if you haven't already) has to "work 7 days a week as did her husband", no doubt having less time to spend with her own kids, while this woman gets to be pampered in comfort of a pedicurist chair once a week and send her kids to exclusive schools with little effort? The article is spot on about how we so easily switch sides, whatever it takes to maintain our cognitively dissonant views. --- [1] https://www.vox.com/2016/2/16/10980856/new-york-city-schools-segregation https://www.vox.com/2016/2/16/10980856/new-york-city-schools... [2] https://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/10/nyregion/at-nail-salons-in-nyc-manicurists-are-underpaid-and-unprotected.html https://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/10/nyregion/at-nail-salons-i... [3] http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/04/11/the-sacrifices-of-an-immigrant-caregiver http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/04/11/the-sacrifices-... [4] https://mobile.nytimes.com/2017/05/15/opinion/school-segregation-nyc.html https://mobile.nytimes.com/2017/05/15/opinion/school-segrega...
losteverything 9y ago
Not what i thought. Just as good though. U v T works very well in motivation and corporate problem solving. The read reminded me of the birth order book. Tidbits of "factoids" that makes good conversation and can help predict peoples actions and emotions.
nemo1618 9y ago
If millions of years of evolution have reinforced "us vs them" pathways, it's probably a mistake to dismiss them out of hand as a Bad Thing. This article repeatedly implies that snap judgments are bad, presumably because they aren't subject to the rational part of our brain. I think this is part of a broader trend of devaluing the unarticulated aspects of consciousness and promoting rationality as the only valid mode of thought. Also, any discussion of Us vs. Them should reference this article: http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/09/30/i-can-tolerate-anything-except-the-outgroup http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/09/30/i-can-tolerate-anything...
naiveattack 9y ago
Here’s how to use the Us/Them instinct to our advantage. Us is merely what we empathise with and understand, that which is similar to how we identify with ourselves. The “Other” or Them, is farther away on this spectrum. We see that in a more primitive time, when societal groups were based on race and ethnicity, we would identify strongly as so, and also select for it. The brain is very good at “short circuiting” stuff we already know, and engaging with the aberrant parts of incoming information, so the brain scans should merely speak to the familiarity of information and not directly of any underlying bias, even though both may have a common source (i.e. foreign information is the underlying cause, but these variables - brain scans and biases - are merely correlated). In today’s age, we identify based on what we are now seeing as “higher” interests. The intelligent vs the stupid, the skilled vs the incompetent, etc. These are now forming the in and out groups in our collective minds. It must be said though that it would take a significant amount of information about, say, an individual African American skilled person to change them from merely a black person to a skilled person in a White man’s head because one can be inferred trivially by a picture and the other by more time and a deeper understanding. (Take with a pinch of salt :) The point here is that we now understand that society’s interests are better served by selecting for traits that are, in a sense, more objective. Things like skill and intelligence and the ability to contribute positively to the world we live in. By encouraging this selection, we are creating an in-group to which an aspiration is a positive thing, positive here being the same as positive for society. It also means that people are less limited by their biological circumstances, which is an equalising platform. Hard questions remain, such as access to education and information that influences the position of a person with respect to the in-group. But I would argue that this is at least a positive evolution from where we have been. Something also should be said about the ability to take every individual and every circumstance as unique, and be able to help each attain the maximum potential as per your own selected ideals, but this would require a radical individuality and awareness of self, and an extreme ability to understand and communicate with every other person. In this world, there would be no groups. But we’re probably not quite close to this world yet.
- caseysoftware 9y ago
  I would further note that the "Us" and "Them" are different in every scenario throughout your day. When you listen to the news, the line may be drawn based on geographic/state boundaries. When you talk with your coworkers, the lines are based on competitors vs partners. When you bump into that college friend, the lines are based on shared experiences, fields of study, or teams. When you go home and have dinner with your spouse, it's based on blood and marriage. We choose, prioritize, and "optimize" based on all those lines throughout the day. We choose our values and connect and share or divide and compete as appropriate. I was going to say "until we deny the 'Them' resources, there's not a problem" but we want to do that every day right? We want our team to get the best players, our companies to hire the best people, and our work to attract the best customers.. all of those things deny resources to the 'Them' in those scenarios.
caseysoftware 9y ago
There is always an "Us vs Them" (or tribal) mindset and that's not wrong in itself. There are tribes, teams, and companies and as long as resources are limited (aka always), there will need to be a way to prioritize. * It's why you provide for your child first. * It's why you root for your team over those "other guys." * It's why you help your family before worrying about someone else's. * It's why your city, state, or country must worry about things within its own borders first. It doesn't mean the other child is bad, the other family is evil, or some other country is less worthy. It's a matter of "who do I worry about first?" Once those needs are met enough (think Maslow), you will worry about #2.
- empath75 9y ago
  > * It's why you help your family before worrying about someone else's. Do you always? You're always going to buy your kid a $50 video game before you donate to a charity or volunteer at a soup kitchen?
  - caseysoftware 9y ago
    You're choosing to ignore this line: > Once those needs are met enough (think Maslow), you will worry about #2. I know where I stand on your hypothetical but I won't hold you accountable to my values.
- golemotron 9y ago
  The problem is that there are many people in the world who think that these are problems to be fixed - that human nature is fixable. If we change those parts of ourselves we'll become less than human. The better approach is to accept our nature and work with it rather than against it.
  - pron 9y ago
    The better approach is to argue and decide what it is that we want to try and improve rather than decide a priori based on arbitrary heuristics[1]. It is not in human nature to fly, yet many would agree that inventing airplanes was a good idea. This is exactly what politics is for: to collectively decide what goals we should collectively try to achieve. [1]: You see this approach in people who like following a fixed, simple set of rules, rather than exercising fluid judgment. E.g. you'll see some who claim that the line for coercion falls at physical violence, that changing attitudes is "fighting nature" but technology isn't, etc..

60 points by pmcpinto 9y ago

The problem, for those of us inclined towards universal humanitarianism, is that ethnocentrism works, evolutionarily speaking: http://jasss.soc.surrey.ac.uk/16/3/7.html http://jasss.soc.surrey.ac.uk/16/3/7.html This is a very tough problem.

kingmanaz 9y ago
If ethnocentrism is natural, where is the "problem"?
- sknuds 9y ago
  Because it's not good and we can do better. Natural disasters are also natural.
  - trophycase 9y ago
    Why isn't it good? Ethnocentricism provides meaning and purpose which is sorely lacking in our relativist, globalist society.
    - RobertoG 9y ago
      Because it's something that evolved for small unsophisticated groups, not for societies with billions of people with nuclear weapons. Probably we all can think of a lot of instinctive behaviours that are a bad idea in what, now, are our normal contexts and that we avoid in a daily basis. Intelligence, unlike evolution, is not blind (or, at least, no so blind).
    - anigbrowl 9y ago
      Relativism merely the philosophical tolerance for doubt, which is the beginning of wisdom. Moral absolutism is an escape hatch for people who don't like doing the hard work of thinking. Ethnocentrism certainly provides some meaning and purpose, but it's a shitty purpose of 'my interests at the expense of those other horrible people' and almost invariably ends in atrocities. Globalism is simply a function of technological advancement, which is not going to go into reverse. We are not giving up instantaneous communications, or high-efficiency containerized shipping, or air travel, or GPS, or any of that other good stuff, despite the urgings of people like Aleksander Dugin. You can have both a globalized society and meaning and purpose: there's a whole cosmos out there waiting to be explored, and the idea that there's more meaning to be had in militarizing the marginal differences between different ethnic groups is bizarre to me.
    - empath75 9y ago
      Well one thing you can always say about nazis is that they had a meaning and purpose.
- khedoros1 9y ago
  I don't follow. "Natural" isn't a synonym for "beneficial".
  - dwaltrip 9y ago
    E.g. botulism, skin cancer, hypothermia, category 5 hurricanes, asteroids heading towards Earth, and gamma ray bursts are all "natural" phenomenon that I think we all agree are worth trying to avoid or mitigate.
- NPMaxwell 9y ago
  Whoever crafted this entry for Wikipedia did a nice job: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naturalistic_fallacy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naturalistic_fallacy
- carsongross 9y ago
  Human ethics transcend nature, where might makes right. Ethics is meaningless if it is "just how it is." That's not to say that nature and natures way can't inform ethics, or to commit to any particular ethical outlook.
  - Amezarak 9y ago
    Some people claim their ethics transcend nature, which is an entirely different. Nobody can explain why their version of the good is right with reference to objective criteria, thereby allowing everyone to come to the same conclusion. Ethics, when not studied from an anthropological perspective, is just religion. Here in reality, you might not feel that might makes right, and I may or may not agree with you, but that's moot when some other ethical outlook out-competes yours via violence, oppression, demographics, or social trends and a thousand years from now someone is reading about your ethical system and laughing at its quaintness, or perhaps shivering a bit with horror. Personally, I regard 'universal humanitarianism' as something of a suicide pact.
    - durge 9y ago
      I hear you, and agree. An individual human being living to increase the fitness of others would be considered extrememly mentally ill, possibly toxic in their inability to sustain themselves. When this is taken to a societal scale (ie many industrialized nations devouring themselves inside out for the benefit of a few at the very top and helping to pull many globally out of poverty) it is seen as somehow a sustainable thing. I'm not here to debate whether or not this is what should be done, but clearly the demographics of this way of being are the human equivalent of 'colony collapse disorder'.
  - blfr 9y ago
    Human ethics transcend nature I don't think that's true. Of course you can come up with ethical systems which transcend nature but the ones that actually get adopted are simply sets and heuristics which make the group benefit the most from "just how it is." Considering that moral attitudes are partially heritable, on a long enough time-scale, ethics that are truly separate from nature are bound to disappear or be relegated to marginal groups of people.
- kleer001 9y ago
  The problem is the high long term (dozens of generations) cost of favoring short term and small area beneficial strategies for a long period of time (millennia). The problem is kind of like the species level of version of the tragedy of the commons. These different tribes/breeds/races all preferring the short term preference of saving their territory/mate/child/self versus saving the lives (and infinite potential) of their stranger neighbors. The evolution of life shows us the grand benefit of higher and higher levels of organization. Scaling rules. It forces the previously multi-use smaller pieces to over specialize, but the gain are unimaginable as the voyager space probe is to a amoeba.
  - Amezarak 9y ago
    > The evolution of life shows us the grand benefit of higher and higher levels of organization. Scaling rules. It forces the previously multi-use smaller pieces to over specialize, but the gain are unimaginable as the voyager space probe is to a amoeba. It also shows us that complex systems are especially prone to catastrophic systems collapse. Scaling is not a better strategy, it's just a different strategy.
    - golemotron 9y ago
      I agree. That's why I think that universalism is short-sighted. Having many societies with very different cultures might lead to conflict but the alternative is one global society with no alternatives if it becomes dystopian or fails.
  - laretluval 9y ago
    > The evolution of life shows us the grand benefit of higher and higher levels of organization. Multicellular life did not arise from cells being universalist. It arose from cells banding together with their mitotic offspring against other groups of cells. Similarly, the Voyager probe only happened because of us-vs-them competition in the cold war.
    - ktRolster 9y ago
      I'd rather not have another cold war. There are other ways to achieve interstellar probes.
comstock 9y ago
It's an interesting review but I think you need more than a few agent-based simulations to be able to broadly claim than ethnocentrism works in real evolutionary systems.

crdb 9y ago

This paper is published during an era where the dominant global empire is founded and (mostly) run on principles opposite to ethnocentrism, at least internally. All of the current POTUS' grandparents were born in Europe, and the previous one's father was Kenyan. The most famous entrepreneur of our generation was born of Syrian parents. The wealthiest self-made woman in America according to Forbes (I did have to Google it), Marian Ilitch, had Macedonian parents. The best strategy in the Iterated Prisoner's Dilemma is tit-for-tat [1]. The winning groups of today have found ways to cooperate-cooperate systematically, overriding the advantages conferred by the behaviour observed in the paper. [1] It gets more interesting when both sides know how the other thinks: https://intelligence.org/files/ProgramEquilibrium.pdf https://intelligence.org/files/ProgramEquilibrium.pdf

Swizec 9y ago
The Us vs Them of this day and age is Democratic societies vs Not. The "Free" vs the "Oppressed". And of course there's also the terrorists. They're a strong Them used to excuse all sorts of policies. Ethnocentrism, yeah we care less about that than we used to. We find a different Us vs Them these days. Mostly around ideas you hold to be true.
- anigbrowl 9y ago
  No, I don't agree. That's the popular ideological line but ethnocentrism is a fact and there are a lot of people trying to revive that as a standard. Ignoring this is facile.
eevilspock 9y ago
Not so sure. Walk around New York City, a city that proudly claims to be progressive, and observe how segregated the schools[1] and neighborhoods are, and the color of people being served versus those doing the serving. Those doing well in this social order, per the article, post-facto rationalize this with an essentialist argument: It's a meritocracy, I've earned my nice brownstone (and those I gentrified out didn't), my ability to eat at fancy restaurants (worked in the back by cheap labor of a different color), my cheap pedicures (by Korean immigrants who have no choice but to accept the toxic chemicals[2]), and the cheap nannies for my children (invariably black, hispanic or Filipino women scraping by, spending less time with their own children than the ones of their rich employers, some even moving abroad away from their own kids to give them a "better" life[3]). Normally the reader comments under New York Times articles side with progressive politics, expressing anger at conservatives and Republicans for their self-serving disregard for the poor, for minorities, for women. But if a story points the finger at them[4], these liberal-banner-flying, I'm-with-Her touting New Yorkers, suddenly they start singing the same tune as the conservatives they disdain, justifying their ability to put their kids in the best schools at the expense of the disadvantaged kids, and blaming the families rather than the system that is rigged in their favor from the get-go. Sort by most votes and you have to get to the 15th comment or so for someone to side with the article. One reader had the gall to say: > The good schools all have students that Show up every day Do their homework every night Never miss a test, an assignment or a project Ask for help when they need it Students create study groups on their own to do the work > A woman who did my nails each week told me that her daycare in queens was open 24 hours to support worker schedules and that there were tons of after school tutoring and enrichment programs to fill the gaps for working parents. She worked 7 days a week as did her husband, and she paid for all of these programs...she did it because that is the norm in her community, and most understood that this is the proven path to the middle class. She did all of this while sending money home to her parents in Korea. I am sure her children will be prepared for college. > There is no substitute for working hard everyday and delaying gratification. This is good? That the woman who is doing her nails (see [1] if you haven't already) has to "work 7 days a week as did her husband", no doubt having less time to spend with her own kids, while this woman gets to be pampered in comfort of a pedicurist chair once a week and send her kids to exclusive schools with little effort? The article is spot on about how we so easily switch sides, whatever it takes to maintain our cognitively dissonant views. --- [1] https://www.vox.com/2016/2/16/10980856/new-york-city-schools-segregation https://www.vox.com/2016/2/16/10980856/new-york-city-schools... [2] https://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/10/nyregion/at-nail-salons-in-nyc-manicurists-are-underpaid-and-unprotected.html https://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/10/nyregion/at-nail-salons-i... [3] http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/04/11/the-sacrifices-of-an-immigrant-caregiver http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/04/11/the-sacrifices-... [4] https://mobile.nytimes.com/2017/05/15/opinion/school-segregation-nyc.html https://mobile.nytimes.com/2017/05/15/opinion/school-segrega...

losteverything 9y ago

Not what i thought. Just as good though. U v T works very well in motivation and corporate problem solving. The read reminded me of the birth order book. Tidbits of "factoids" that makes good conversation and can help predict peoples actions and emotions.

nemo1618 9y ago

If millions of years of evolution have reinforced "us vs them" pathways, it's probably a mistake to dismiss them out of hand as a Bad Thing. This article repeatedly implies that snap judgments are bad, presumably because they aren't subject to the rational part of our brain. I think this is part of a broader trend of devaluing the unarticulated aspects of consciousness and promoting rationality as the only valid mode of thought. Also, any discussion of Us vs. Them should reference this article: http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/09/30/i-can-tolerate-anything-except-the-outgroup http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/09/30/i-can-tolerate-anything...

naiveattack 9y ago

Here’s how to use the Us/Them instinct to our advantage. Us is merely what we empathise with and understand, that which is similar to how we identify with ourselves. The “Other” or Them, is farther away on this spectrum. We see that in a more primitive time, when societal groups were based on race and ethnicity, we would identify strongly as so, and also select for it. The brain is very good at “short circuiting” stuff we already know, and engaging with the aberrant parts of incoming information, so the brain scans should merely speak to the familiarity of information and not directly of any underlying bias, even though both may have a common source (i.e. foreign information is the underlying cause, but these variables - brain scans and biases - are merely correlated). In today’s age, we identify based on what we are now seeing as “higher” interests. The intelligent vs the stupid, the skilled vs the incompetent, etc. These are now forming the in and out groups in our collective minds. It must be said though that it would take a significant amount of information about, say, an individual African American skilled person to change them from merely a black person to a skilled person in a White man’s head because one can be inferred trivially by a picture and the other by more time and a deeper understanding. (Take with a pinch of salt :) The point here is that we now understand that society’s interests are better served by selecting for traits that are, in a sense, more objective. Things like skill and intelligence and the ability to contribute positively to the world we live in. By encouraging this selection, we are creating an in-group to which an aspiration is a positive thing, positive here being the same as positive for society. It also means that people are less limited by their biological circumstances, which is an equalising platform. Hard questions remain, such as access to education and information that influences the position of a person with respect to the in-group. But I would argue that this is at least a positive evolution from where we have been. Something also should be said about the ability to take every individual and every circumstance as unique, and be able to help each attain the maximum potential as per your own selected ideals, but this would require a radical individuality and awareness of self, and an extreme ability to understand and communicate with every other person. In this world, there would be no groups. But we’re probably not quite close to this world yet.

caseysoftware 9y ago
I would further note that the "Us" and "Them" are different in every scenario throughout your day. When you listen to the news, the line may be drawn based on geographic/state boundaries. When you talk with your coworkers, the lines are based on competitors vs partners. When you bump into that college friend, the lines are based on shared experiences, fields of study, or teams. When you go home and have dinner with your spouse, it's based on blood and marriage. We choose, prioritize, and "optimize" based on all those lines throughout the day. We choose our values and connect and share or divide and compete as appropriate. I was going to say "until we deny the 'Them' resources, there's not a problem" but we want to do that every day right? We want our team to get the best players, our companies to hire the best people, and our work to attract the best customers.. all of those things deny resources to the 'Them' in those scenarios.

caseysoftware 9y ago

There is always an "Us vs Them" (or tribal) mindset and that's not wrong in itself. There are tribes, teams, and companies and as long as resources are limited (aka always), there will need to be a way to prioritize. * It's why you provide for your child first. * It's why you root for your team over those "other guys." * It's why you help your family before worrying about someone else's. * It's why your city, state, or country must worry about things within its own borders first. It doesn't mean the other child is bad, the other family is evil, or some other country is less worthy. It's a matter of "who do I worry about first?" Once those needs are met enough (think Maslow), you will worry about #2.

empath75 9y ago
> * It's why you help your family before worrying about someone else's. Do you always? You're always going to buy your kid a $50 video game before you donate to a charity or volunteer at a soup kitchen?
- caseysoftware 9y ago
  You're choosing to ignore this line: > Once those needs are met enough (think Maslow), you will worry about #2. I know where I stand on your hypothetical but I won't hold you accountable to my values.
golemotron 9y ago
The problem is that there are many people in the world who think that these are problems to be fixed - that human nature is fixable. If we change those parts of ourselves we'll become less than human. The better approach is to accept our nature and work with it rather than against it.
- pron 9y ago
  The better approach is to argue and decide what it is that we want to try and improve rather than decide a priori based on arbitrary heuristics[1]. It is not in human nature to fly, yet many would agree that inventing airplanes was a good idea. This is exactly what politics is for: to collectively decide what goals we should collectively try to achieve. [1]: You see this approach in people who like following a fixed, simple set of rules, rather than exercising fluid judgment. E.g. you'll see some who claim that the line for coercion falls at physical violence, that changing attitudes is "fighting nature" but technology isn't, etc..