10 ms·

This would be easier if We and Them simply differed in arbitrary preferences. But I fear that when We and Them disagree on basic epistemology, we simply sound

This would be easier if We and Them simply differed in arbitrary preferences. But I fear that when We and Them disagree on basic epistemology, we simply sound crazy to each other. And this irreconcilable difference, if it exists, will eventually always come out if you talk long enough.

quantumofmalice 9y ago
There is a mechanism for dealing with this: secession. A lot of violence will be saved if we start agreeing to amicable divorces. I don't expect us to do that, so, sadly, I expect a lot of violence.
- guelo 9y ago
  If states secede why not parts of a state? Why not cities? Why not neighborhoods. You're pretty much advocating the end of civilization and the return to tribal groupings. But tribal warfare was actually much more violent and unstable than the nation state.
  - andrewflnr 9y ago
    > why not parts of a state? Why not... Because they won't want to. Breaking down at that granular level would be too inconvenient to be worth it, even before considering the issues you laid out yourself. If we all believe that government requires consent of the governed, why structurally require violence to achieve that state? That's the status quo you're defending. Meta: this is how a real-life slippery slope argument and response should go. It's not a fallacy, it's just not always applicable, just like every other concept
  - quantumofmalice 9y ago
    That's a reductio ad absurdum. There are reasonable levels of division well above tribal levels. Singapore is basically a city state, and I don't notice a collapse of civilization there. Territories with strong social identity would maintain political union, territories with weak social identity and severe political disagreements would split. As much as is possible, no one is ruled by people they hate. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subsidiarity https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subsidiarity We are taught this is impossible because the ruling class, who favors ever more centralization, wishes that to be so.
    - RonanTheGrey 9y ago
      I don't understand the downvoting of this comment. What is being described is effectively tribalism. Tribalism worked well for humans for roughly 350,000 years. Then we idiots come along and think that we've got a better way that is already showing its weaknesses and strain after just a couple of thousand years. Really? Maybe, just maybe our ancestors were on to something and there's something we can learn from them. No that couldn't possibly be it.
      - barrkel 9y ago
        Tribalism is red in tooth and claw, it's the culture of might makes right. Technology stops tribalism being a viable or desirable culture today. Tribalism scaled up as technology necessarily permits and forces it be scaled up is fascism.
        RonanTheGrey 9y ago
        Those are some pretty extreme claims that have no basis in fact. I tend to look at the other way around: tribalism becomes viable (again) because of technology. Because of course, today's society is completely free of violence now that we've eliminated tribalism?
      - quantumofmalice 9y ago
        I have noticed that nothing that I say on HN, except for saying that the scientific evidence is that intelligence is mostly genetic and heritable, gets more downvotes more quickly than discussing secession. I think the topic has been successfully in the mind of college educated people, so any mention of it immediately brings to mind both slavery and, somewhat amusingly, fascism. It is too bad. As I said above, I see it as the best way to avoid violence.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
ekr 9y ago
It has little to do with epistemology. The main cause for human conflicts is the fact that we are playing zero-sum games. Humans are constantly fighting/jockeying for status, acquiring resources for themselves, and simply getting ahead of the others. This is in the genome unfortunately.
- dwaltrip 9y ago
  Not all of the important games we play are zero-sum, fortunately.
  - Retra 9y ago
    Political power does seem to be one, and it's a pretty pervasive and contagious one.
    - dwaltrip 9y ago
      I think political power varies widely from negative-sum to positive-sum, depending on the circumstances.
      - vkreso 9y ago
        Exactly. It is nuch more nuanced and dynamical.
- foxylad 9y ago
  Depends on resources. When resources are plentiful, we happily work together to maximise them. But when you're starving, you'll kill your siblings and eat them. With inequality rising, expect more anti-social behaviour.
  - simula67 9y ago
    > With inequality rising, expect more anti-social behaviour. You mean with poverty rising, right ?
dwaltrip 9y ago
Perhaps we should come up with better methods that people can use to critique/improve their own epistemology as needed, and spread the idea that it is highly worthwhile to do so? The mindset that "realizing you are wrong" can be a joy, not something to fear. After reading Kuhn's "Structure of Scientific Revolutions", it seems to me this difficulty could also be described as people operating from different base layer paradigms. E.g. "Natural laws are sufficient to explain everything we see" vs "A supernatural element is needed". Or "Power dynamics are the primary force that steer human activity" vs "There are many important factors to consider".
- whatshisface 9y ago
  >"Natural laws are sufficient to explain everything we see" vs "A supernatural element is needed". Both of those positions share the base epistemology of seeing and explaining, fortunately for discussions between the two very large groups that believe each of them.
  - WalterSear 9y ago
    Except pragmatically, one is a conclusion based on observation and the other is driven by a willful need to make reality meet emotional needs. Religious people, by and large, do not respect observation as much as dogma. There's no commonality to be found with that.
    - deleted 9y ago
      [deleted]
    - nradov 9y ago
      It depends on the religion. The modern Catholic Church now accepts that evolution through natural selection occurs, and they no longer claim that the Earth was created in 6 days a few thousand years ago.
      - dwaltrip 9y ago
        Is that an official position? I knew they were more accepting of it in general.
textor 9y ago
It's natural and sometimes correct to assume that "Them" have an inferior epistemology, or even no explicit and coherent epistemology at all. But far too often I've been appalled by the disregard for optimal procedure that's displayed by people who are most of the time "Us" for me, who can talk meta-epistemology with the same ease "Them" tend to discuss first-order personal conflicts. It's called compartmentalization, I guess. Teaching cognitive biases to offenders only makes them more annoying, in my experience; gives them better weapons to arm their argument-soldiers with. Mapping epistemology to tribal grouping only holds as long as the questions separating tribes appear the most important and one tribe is factually correct. Throw in another set of dividing issues, and you observe redistribution of irrationality. «Isolated demands for rigor, half-sincere yearning for truth: it would seem we're all far too eager to preach virtues we can abuse.» Just a little rhyme Reddit inspired me to the other day.
contravariant 9y ago
The problem with Us vs. Them thinking isn't that there is a group of people that you fundamentally disagree with, but rather that you've constructed a somewhat nebulous "them" which you've ascribed all negative qualities about "them". The way to recognise this is to ask yourself if you can actually name any particular example of the "them" you're arguing against. Because if not, you risk arguing against a straw man you yourself created. We're at the point where whole communities are being erected to argue against a "them", usually with an opposing community arguing against a similarly distorted image of the "us".
- adrianmonk 9y ago
  Perhaps along the same lines, elimination of us vs. them thinking shouldn't be predicated on elimination of all differences. Mainly because it's totally unrealistic to think that will ever happen. Instead, we should be able to move beyond the us vs. them approach to the world without first making sure that the "them" are exactly like"us".
- lucideer 9y ago
  > The way to recognise this is to ask yourself if you can actually name any particular example of the "them" you're arguing against. Unfortunately, I think what can often compound this line of thinking is a willingness to speculatively ascribe qualities to people we've just met in an attempt to put them into a box we can relate to (either positively relate or negatively relate). Asking someone to think of a particular example of "them" might simply lead to an example of someone they've judged on first impressions.
  - contravariant 9y ago
    That's a fair point. I guess the real problem is that any claims about "them" can't really be refuted by anyone. So a better method would be to ask yourself if there's someone who could reject your claims. If not your statements are not falsifiable, which makes debating them somewhat pointless.
jesperlang 9y ago
I just recently read a bit about different ways that human understand and I think there is an interesting point you can make in this 'us vs them' in relation to this. I'm still digesting it but it's a very interesting view of the mind. I will try to keep this short, so bare with the simplifications. The idea is that humans understand in many different types of ways and they are connected/overlapped. These ways are: mythic, romantic, philosophic, ironic and somatic. Mythic understanding comes out of oral culture and brings along with it narrative, fantasy, metaphors, binary structuring, etc. Romantic understanding came out of literacy and brings romantic rationality, humanized knowledge, transcendence within reality, etc. Ironic understanding brings self-reflection, and so on. One type of understanding is not better/worse than the other, they are important in different ways. For those who are interested, check out "The Educated Mind" by Kiearn Egan. So, us-vs-them comes out of a mythic understanding of the world. The gut reaction is often to reject the source from which the bad behaviour comes from completely. But mythic understanding and it's binary structuring (along with fantasy, metaphors, abstract thinking) is crucial for human sense-making. So I don't think we should suppress mythic understanding and all that comes along with it, we need to have a balance between these different ways of understanding. Just imagine how many great things invented started as fantasy and strange metaphors in someones head! That's the epistemological view of it, then you have the political one, that's a totally different beast and so I will end my comment here.

quantumofmalice 9y ago

There is a mechanism for dealing with this: secession. A lot of violence will be saved if we start agreeing to amicable divorces. I don't expect us to do that, so, sadly, I expect a lot of violence.

guelo 9y ago
If states secede why not parts of a state? Why not cities? Why not neighborhoods. You're pretty much advocating the end of civilization and the return to tribal groupings. But tribal warfare was actually much more violent and unstable than the nation state.
- andrewflnr 9y ago
  > why not parts of a state? Why not... Because they won't want to. Breaking down at that granular level would be too inconvenient to be worth it, even before considering the issues you laid out yourself. If we all believe that government requires consent of the governed, why structurally require violence to achieve that state? That's the status quo you're defending. Meta: this is how a real-life slippery slope argument and response should go. It's not a fallacy, it's just not always applicable, just like every other concept
- quantumofmalice 9y ago
  That's a reductio ad absurdum. There are reasonable levels of division well above tribal levels. Singapore is basically a city state, and I don't notice a collapse of civilization there. Territories with strong social identity would maintain political union, territories with weak social identity and severe political disagreements would split. As much as is possible, no one is ruled by people they hate. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subsidiarity https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subsidiarity We are taught this is impossible because the ruling class, who favors ever more centralization, wishes that to be so.
  - RonanTheGrey 9y ago
    I don't understand the downvoting of this comment. What is being described is effectively tribalism. Tribalism worked well for humans for roughly 350,000 years. Then we idiots come along and think that we've got a better way that is already showing its weaknesses and strain after just a couple of thousand years. Really? Maybe, just maybe our ancestors were on to something and there's something we can learn from them. No that couldn't possibly be it.
    - barrkel 9y ago
      Tribalism is red in tooth and claw, it's the culture of might makes right. Technology stops tribalism being a viable or desirable culture today. Tribalism scaled up as technology necessarily permits and forces it be scaled up is fascism.
      - RonanTheGrey 9y ago
        Those are some pretty extreme claims that have no basis in fact. I tend to look at the other way around: tribalism becomes viable (again) because of technology. Because of course, today's society is completely free of violence now that we've eliminated tribalism?
    - quantumofmalice 9y ago
      I have noticed that nothing that I say on HN, except for saying that the scientific evidence is that intelligence is mostly genetic and heritable, gets more downvotes more quickly than discussing secession. I think the topic has been successfully in the mind of college educated people, so any mention of it immediately brings to mind both slavery and, somewhat amusingly, fascism. It is too bad. As I said above, I see it as the best way to avoid violence.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]

ekr 9y ago

It has little to do with epistemology. The main cause for human conflicts is the fact that we are playing zero-sum games. Humans are constantly fighting/jockeying for status, acquiring resources for themselves, and simply getting ahead of the others. This is in the genome unfortunately.

dwaltrip 9y ago
Not all of the important games we play are zero-sum, fortunately.
- Retra 9y ago
  Political power does seem to be one, and it's a pretty pervasive and contagious one.
  - dwaltrip 9y ago
    I think political power varies widely from negative-sum to positive-sum, depending on the circumstances.
    - vkreso 9y ago
      Exactly. It is nuch more nuanced and dynamical.
foxylad 9y ago
Depends on resources. When resources are plentiful, we happily work together to maximise them. But when you're starving, you'll kill your siblings and eat them. With inequality rising, expect more anti-social behaviour.
- simula67 9y ago
  > With inequality rising, expect more anti-social behaviour. You mean with poverty rising, right ?

dwaltrip 9y ago

Perhaps we should come up with better methods that people can use to critique/improve their own epistemology as needed, and spread the idea that it is highly worthwhile to do so? The mindset that "realizing you are wrong" can be a joy, not something to fear. After reading Kuhn's "Structure of Scientific Revolutions", it seems to me this difficulty could also be described as people operating from different base layer paradigms. E.g. "Natural laws are sufficient to explain everything we see" vs "A supernatural element is needed". Or "Power dynamics are the primary force that steer human activity" vs "There are many important factors to consider".

whatshisface 9y ago
>"Natural laws are sufficient to explain everything we see" vs "A supernatural element is needed". Both of those positions share the base epistemology of seeing and explaining, fortunately for discussions between the two very large groups that believe each of them.
- WalterSear 9y ago
  Except pragmatically, one is a conclusion based on observation and the other is driven by a willful need to make reality meet emotional needs. Religious people, by and large, do not respect observation as much as dogma. There's no commonality to be found with that.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
  - nradov 9y ago
    It depends on the religion. The modern Catholic Church now accepts that evolution through natural selection occurs, and they no longer claim that the Earth was created in 6 days a few thousand years ago.
    - dwaltrip 9y ago
      Is that an official position? I knew they were more accepting of it in general.

textor 9y ago

It's natural and sometimes correct to assume that "Them" have an inferior epistemology, or even no explicit and coherent epistemology at all. But far too often I've been appalled by the disregard for optimal procedure that's displayed by people who are most of the time "Us" for me, who can talk meta-epistemology with the same ease "Them" tend to discuss first-order personal conflicts. It's called compartmentalization, I guess. Teaching cognitive biases to offenders only makes them more annoying, in my experience; gives them better weapons to arm their argument-soldiers with. Mapping epistemology to tribal grouping only holds as long as the questions separating tribes appear the most important and one tribe is factually correct. Throw in another set of dividing issues, and you observe redistribution of irrationality. «Isolated demands for rigor, half-sincere yearning for truth: it would seem we're all far too eager to preach virtues we can abuse.» Just a little rhyme Reddit inspired me to the other day.

contravariant 9y ago

The problem with Us vs. Them thinking isn't that there is a group of people that you fundamentally disagree with, but rather that you've constructed a somewhat nebulous "them" which you've ascribed all negative qualities about "them". The way to recognise this is to ask yourself if you can actually name any particular example of the "them" you're arguing against. Because if not, you risk arguing against a straw man you yourself created. We're at the point where whole communities are being erected to argue against a "them", usually with an opposing community arguing against a similarly distorted image of the "us".

adrianmonk 9y ago
Perhaps along the same lines, elimination of us vs. them thinking shouldn't be predicated on elimination of all differences. Mainly because it's totally unrealistic to think that will ever happen. Instead, we should be able to move beyond the us vs. them approach to the world without first making sure that the "them" are exactly like"us".
lucideer 9y ago
> The way to recognise this is to ask yourself if you can actually name any particular example of the "them" you're arguing against. Unfortunately, I think what can often compound this line of thinking is a willingness to speculatively ascribe qualities to people we've just met in an attempt to put them into a box we can relate to (either positively relate or negatively relate). Asking someone to think of a particular example of "them" might simply lead to an example of someone they've judged on first impressions.
- contravariant 9y ago
  That's a fair point. I guess the real problem is that any claims about "them" can't really be refuted by anyone. So a better method would be to ask yourself if there's someone who could reject your claims. If not your statements are not falsifiable, which makes debating them somewhat pointless.

jesperlang 9y ago

I just recently read a bit about different ways that human understand and I think there is an interesting point you can make in this 'us vs them' in relation to this. I'm still digesting it but it's a very interesting view of the mind. I will try to keep this short, so bare with the simplifications. The idea is that humans understand in many different types of ways and they are connected/overlapped. These ways are: mythic, romantic, philosophic, ironic and somatic. Mythic understanding comes out of oral culture and brings along with it narrative, fantasy, metaphors, binary structuring, etc. Romantic understanding came out of literacy and brings romantic rationality, humanized knowledge, transcendence within reality, etc. Ironic understanding brings self-reflection, and so on. One type of understanding is not better/worse than the other, they are important in different ways. For those who are interested, check out "The Educated Mind" by Kiearn Egan. So, us-vs-them comes out of a mythic understanding of the world. The gut reaction is often to reject the source from which the bad behaviour comes from completely. But mythic understanding and it's binary structuring (along with fantasy, metaphors, abstract thinking) is crucial for human sense-making. So I don't think we should suppress mythic understanding and all that comes along with it, we need to have a balance between these different ways of understanding. Just imagine how many great things invented started as fantasy and strange metaphors in someones head! That's the epistemological view of it, then you have the political one, that's a totally different beast and so I will end my comment here.