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Social exclusion fuels extremism in young men

302 points by jseliger 7y ago

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
mjfl 7y ago
This finding is in line with my intuition. Social exclusion triggers an instinct in the male brain: become something, something higher status, or die. It is “evolutionarily accurate” - socially excluded males do not reproduce. Men who are okay with being excluded literally died out. This instinct probably drives productivity around the world, causes men to be startup founders as well as terrorists and school shooters.
- rexpop 7y ago
  If by the "male" brain, you mean the "male-socialized" brain, and not "instinct" but socialization, then we're in agreement. It certainly impugns the societal value of "productivity". > If men were natural-born killers, hardwired by biology and destiny to take life, then there would be no need for patriarchal socialization to turn them into killers. > In patriarchal culture males are not allowed simply to be who they are and to glory in their unique identity. Their value is always determined by what they do. In an antipatriarchal culture males do not have to prove their value and worth. — bell hooks
  - ummonk 7y ago
    No, GP means male brain and instinct. Male-socialized female brains don't act the same way, because they have different instincts.
    - rexpop 7y ago
      You're wrong about brains. https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1035246030500061184.html https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1035246030500061184.html
  - username90 7y ago
    The argument is that men are hard wired to create a splash, not to kill. Murder creates a huge splash, but you can do it in other ways such as saving lives, getting rich, becoming a leader, mastering a craft or furthering human knowledge.
    - watwut 7y ago
      The article is about extremists, not about mass shooters. Most of them wont murder, they do day to day organizing work for few murderers.
      - marvin 7y ago
        But even so, hard though it is to admit for us children of peace-time, being an accomplished killer of «the enemy» is a high-status achievement in itself, in time of war. Enough so that it’s easy to imagine an evolutionary tendency that can be triggered under extreme distress. You just have to go back to WWII (if that!) to find obvious examples of this. Killers such as Richard Winters and Ronald Speirs are celebrated in history and fiction even today, 70 years later. And convicted (male) mass-murderers have a tendency to receive an unexpected amount of attention from certain women, so even from that perspective this seems like an understandable evolutionary adaption. Certainly not morally defensible, but nature doesn’t give a shit. It’s horrifying, but not incomprehensible.
        watwut 7y ago
        What does that have to do with ordinary extremist that is cog in a machine, does no splash whatsoever and have no status whatsoever? And yes, in societies that reward cruelty and killing, cruelty will be high and so will killings. Convicted male mass-murderers and soldiers are not really comparable. Convicted male mass murderers were not all that succesfull in having and keeping girlfriends until caught and locked. Just about only having a lot of children were the ones that run cult too.
        Kaiyou 7y ago
- malcolmgreaves 7y ago
  How is this at all unique to one sex? Any excluded human would die out and not reproduce. Any high quality evidence for your large claim that purports a biological-only difference in social patterns between male and female humans?
  - hdfbdtbcdg 7y ago
    The theory is that females find it much easier to initiate reproduction (although the process is far more work for them once started). Also through large parts of human history females were treated as chattel and weren't subjected to the same pressures as males.
    - BadassFractal 7y ago
      Something about how only one in two males reproduce, but on average every human female has offspring?
      - chii 7y ago
        so this implies that some men reproduce with more women than they "should", thus causing problems?
        hombre_fatal 7y ago
        It refers to the fact that there are men excluded who are left to yearn from the sidelines.
        chosenbreed37 7y ago
        It could also point to the possibility (and in some some cases a confirmed fact) that some men are raising kids that they didn't sire.
  - david-cako 7y ago
    One piece of evidence is that men have a flatter distribution of outcomes and more often than women are falling off either end of the chart, for better and worse. All it takes is a look at those OkCupid studies for rating distributions to see how much larger the difference is between success and failure for men. This problem is not exclusive to men, but affects more men. Women more often have an expectation of mating upwards, and high status women have a similar problem of finding themselves excluded.
- xwdv 7y ago
  I have found myself socially excluded most of my life. I see the world mostly as a hostile place, and easily get a feeling that people do not like me. Though I have obtained a good status in life by some metrics, what good is it if the world is so toxic to me?
  - david-cako 7y ago
    Very good question, and the only justification I can come up with is the opportunity to beam truth out from within. This at some times more than others seems like enough, if no one else takes responsibility. We are hard wired to seek meaning and protect the will.
  - alexis_fr 7y ago
    I’ve sold my first startup and the second is a great success, multimillionaire and I have a Youtube channel talking about men’s issues where dozens of thousands of boys (and benevolent women) learn and talk about men’s issues. But the only people I wanted to be listened by were my family, for support in dealing with women, and that will never happen. I have the exact same vision as you: I can’t work in a company because I feel directly hated by the diversity programs (funnily enough, I hire women). Success and money is not happiness and life is... very ironic sometimes.
    - Roritharr 7y ago
      Not sure why you are downvoted. Thank you for sharing, I don't think you troll as some of my younger employees shared the same feeling of disenfranchisment in their 1:1's. Even if the view of being othered by diversity programs etc. is a little bit skewed, it's definitely having an impact in their psychology, as it's an easy scapegoat for why a raise was not given, a talk got rejected, etc. etc. The actual cases numbers of these things happening must be much much smaller, but that's beside the point, as it's the psychological aspect that's ruining their perception of themselves and what society expects from them.
      - pavlov 7y ago
        If someone's perception of themself is ruined by the notion that they're not the center of the world and people of other backgrounds deserve consideration too, then it sounds like these people need to be exposed to more diversity programs, not less.
- Causality1 7y ago
  Studies on the flattened bell curve for male achievement would seem to support your intuition.
- hos234 7y ago
  Top mind at work here. How can we isolate it and increase world productivity?
  - chii 7y ago
    the old, tried and true way was to introduce slavery. The men work, and work, and after a long enough time, and having worked long enough, is granted a women to reproduce with (and their offspring is also a slave - thus perpetuating the cycle). Modern sensibilities cannot accept this method of increasing productivity.
- throwaway3627 7y ago
  There seems to be a common mania state of irrational exuberance with unrealistic hopefulness. It has many examples: people in love, positive/devout Christians, big-idea startup startup and even residents of Raqqa under the Islamic State playing in the river Tigris, unreasonably hopeful about their future. To bring the point home, unrealistic hopefulness or hopelessness sets a person up for failure. Whether they internalize any resulting failures into bitter anomie and desire for omni/suicide depends on an individual's coping skills, ideology and social support (or lack of each thereof). Combine a lack of hope, opportunities and many negative experiences leads to angry people who take their pain and loneliness, and wish to lash out.
- buboard 7y ago
  I m not entirely convinced if the pressure is evolutionary or social. There seems to be a range of attitudes, from social rejection of the unmarried, to indifference and demographic catastrophe
- dwd 7y ago
  I have a theory (half-formed) that we are seeing the results of our always connected society, and a shrinking crowded world and there's no way to escape. Where a young man could once pack his bags and leave on a grand adventure and start a new life where noone knew him are long gone. He could join the military or sail the seas and see the world and noone cared where he came from and there was no way to know either. But that time is past.
  - Cthulhu_ 7y ago
    I don't believe it is, but it requires one to disconnect from the internet - and their families / social circles. But I get what you mean, it used to be there was no way to contact the people you left behind except for maybe letters or a phonecall from time to time. Nowadays there's a satellite internet connection with the home front when you're deployed out there.
    - dwd 7y ago
      Maybe a one-way trip to Mars could be the way to start a new life if your current situation sucks?
      - crankylinuxuser 7y ago
        Most of the time, when you run from your problems, the problems run just as fast. The problems are with your own state of mind. They are issues you haven't adequately addressed. And no amount of running will get them to 'go away'. I know, cause I had similar, and had to confront them head on. And, I was successful.
        dwd 7y ago
        That is true to an extent, but to solve some problems a change of location can make a difference. Breaking destructive habits is one as they can be triggered by returning to the location where you previously engaged in that activity. Sure, return once you've got a new habit/routine in place and can confidently confront the old.
- _0ffh 7y ago
  I'm sure I once read about a study that indicated something related: The more things I shove into your face that I have (and you don't) the more likely you are to become criminal to get them too.
  - Cthulhu_ 7y ago
    FOMO? It's definitely a thing, a big one is piracy - a feeling that you HAVE to watch e.g. Game of Thrones as soon as possible because else you're missing out on the hype, the ability to talk with people about it, and if you're not fast (or disconnected from social media) you'll get major spoilers hitting you unexpectedly. I mean I haven't watched Endgame yet because my family is still catching up but I've had all of the major plot points already spoiled thanks to my Reddit addiction. That kinda sucks.
- vintermann 7y ago
  A good example of where reaching for biological explanations for behavior is unnecessary, because the logic of the situation already does a perfectly adequate job of explaining the behavior. A woman facing the same pressures is plenty capable of "burning down villages to feel their warmth" too. Maybe a few percent less? Who cares? "We act this way because our ancestors were hunted by sabre-toothed tigers" might sound deep, but what if the sabre-toothed tigers are still around? If so, then maybe it's better to do something about the sabre-toothed tigers, than to expect people to change their behaviour.
sysbin 7y ago
Ahh the Red Queen and the Black Queen hypothesis. We meet again. :)
- qtplatypus 7y ago
  What is the Red Queen and the Black Queen hypothesis?
  - prawn 7y ago
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Queen_hypothesis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Queen_hypothesis
jimbob45 7y ago
>in a group of young Moroccan men living and schooled in Catalonia and vulnerable to radicalization. No one should apply anything from these findings to the US. Although there may be some similarities, those are based on your own experiences and not backed up by a study conducted on boys half a world away.
- lawnchair_larry 7y ago
  I still think they’re on to something, and fundamentally we aren’t that different over here.
- onion2k 7y ago
  I don't think that's a good take. What the study says is that men can be radicalized if they're put in a situation where they're isolated. Using the study to understand that better and apply it to isolated groups anywhere is useful. According to the DoJ, 100% of race-based domestic terrorism in the US in 2018 was committed by radicialized white supremacist terrorists[1]. Having a better understanding of why people join groups like that (eg "are they similarly isolated young men?") helps us stop people joining in the first place. [1] https://www.salon.com/2019/08/09/trumps-doj-hid-shocking-report-on-growing-terror-threat-from-white-supremacists/ https://www.salon.com/2019/08/09/trumps-doj-hid-shocking-rep...
- hombre_fatal 7y ago
  No man should relate to men in other geographic locations? I don't understand. Plenty of us here have encountered some degree of social destitution and know what kind of places that can leave you mentally. Why would this only be limited to a specific group value like jihad and not a broader thread that runs through male psychology? Seems like a perfectly reasonable mount point for HN discussion and empathy. For example, consider social exclusion's role in radicalizing men to adopt these group values: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Men_Going_Their_Own_Way https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Men_Going_Their_Own_Way -- doesn't seem like a stretch. That's basically the next rung on the same ladder I started climbing when I joined PUA usergroups when I was 15, though thankfully some social windfall (meeting my first girlfriend) snapped me out of it.
sadmann1 7y ago
The specifics are complicated but the essence is simple. Men want status so they can reproduce, if they don't have status in the current social systems it is in their interest to change the status quo in hope that they will be higher placed in the new system.
- tjr225 7y ago
  This kind of weird pseudo smart drivel is the kind of stuff that makes me think HN is a toxic, dead space. Why post it?
  - sadmann1 7y ago
    You're getting emotional, I'm not sure what part of my comment made you write such a violent and spiteful response.
- domnomnom 7y ago
  I think you're confusing men with political activists.
- krageon 7y ago
  This kind of armchair biological handwaving isn't doing anyone any favours. It's reductionist and frequently wrong and I have yet to see good studies supporting this with any kind of reproducibility. This is of course the status quo for psychology as a field, so that should surprise none of us.
  - adnzzzzZ 7y ago
    Aren't there many studies that show a very high correlation between income inequality and and increased male on male violence within regions? Those kinds of findings support that idea partly.
- tomhoward 7y ago
  I used to buy into this kind of genetic reductionism, and the notion that we're ultimately just replication bots. But it's neither a proven-factual way of looking at the world, nor a meaningful one. People want all kinds of things, including optimism, purpose, safety, community, connectedness, virtuousness, recognition, transcendence, confidence, and more. Status for reproduction is a part of what people want, but it's not the only or ultimate thing. This just-so narrative is both extremely dull and extremely damaging.
swiley 7y ago
Many people here say that "People shouldn't expect to be able to afford to live in populated areas, poorer people should just move to the country side." I grew up homeschooled in rural America, most people would be better off moving to a different country than moving there. People shouldn't be surprised when isolation (either because of where someone lives or because everyone around them is telling them to stay away) creates horrible people, leaving for university and being around people there is what kept me from going to a pretty horrible place.
- alkibiades 7y ago
  plenty, if not more, people are isolated and depressed in cities
  - goatinaboat 7y ago
    It’s definitely worse, because you get to see all the people having fun and meaningful interactions all around you. If you are physically isolated you can justify it by there simply being no one there but in a city, there’s no escaping having it rubbed in your face.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- alexryan 7y ago
  When I hear "move to the country side" it sounds an awful lot like "move to the back of the bus". The front of the bus is reserved for the genetically superior humans.
  - collyw 7y ago
    Personally I would quite like to move to the countryside, but if you are in any sort of skilled profession, the jobs are usually in the city.
    - randomdata 7y ago
okusername 7y ago
... in muslims who sympathize with jihadist terror groups and play a computer game. No control group. Btw its scary that they asked 500 morrocan muslims in Spain and were able to recruit 38 extremists.
- bufferoverflow 7y ago
  It doesn't surprise me at all. According to the various polls of Muslims themselves, large percentages of them believe all kinds of radical and violent things. https://www.reddit.com/r/atheism/comments/vubyx/only_a_tiny_minority_of_extremists/ https://www.reddit.com/r/atheism/comments/vubyx/only_a_tiny_...
- Animats 7y ago
  Not surprising. 18% of the US population thinks the sun rotates around the earth.
  - 55555 7y ago
    And would you classify that 18% as astrologically extremist or poorly educated?
    - Cthulhu_ 7y ago
      iirc at least 4% of those are trolls - I read about that on HN the other day, forgot what the effect was called and can't find it in my history. But the gist of it is that these numbers are done via polls online and the statistics are poisoned by people filling stuff like "I believe in flat earth" for the lulz.
      - sbierwagen 7y ago
        Lizardman constant. https://slatestarcodex.com/2013/04/12/noisy-poll-results-and-reptilian-muslim-climatologists-from-mars/ https://slatestarcodex.com/2013/04/12/noisy-poll-results-and...
  - buboard 7y ago
im3w1l 7y ago
> Vulnerability was considered to exist among those who expressed willingness to defend the sacred values promoted by jihadist terrorist groups, either by engaging in violent protest and actions, financially supporting nonstate militant groups, joining a nonstate militant group, or fighting and dying on their own. The 38 participants who met this criteria and were interested in participating in the study while maintaining their anonymity were invited to a neuroimaging session. > In this online exclusion game, participants pass the ball to three virtual players, who were given typical local names: Dani, Javi and José. Wonder if the result would have been the same if the virtual players were named Ahmed, Mustafa and Mahmod. Or a mix.
Proven 7y ago
Complete nonsense. By the way, no one has the obligation to be inclusive if they want to be safe.
jonhendry18 7y ago
This is about exclusion of a minority in Europe, not toxic American jerks whose behavior results in them having no friends.
- dead_mall 7y ago
  > toxic American jerks whose behaviour results in them having no friends Scary enough, search for Incels[.]is and you'll find a forum/home dedicated to exactly that behavior.
  - hombre_fatal 7y ago
    Yet, unlike the sacred group value of jihad in the study, it's even more obvious how social exclusion can lead the way to a group identity like incels, which is a bit of a tautology because the incel identity is specifically social exclusion. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incel#Mass_murders_and_violence https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incel#Mass_murders_and_violenc...
- HunOL 7y ago
  Your comment is perfect example. You are willing to protect one group of minorities, but do not want to find out root cause why some members from majority are failing.
- plutonorm 7y ago
  Why are they toxic? They are toxic because they were excluded. So now you shame and exclude them further because they were excluded by someone before you. It's a brutal world we live in.
  - bananocurrency 7y ago
    on what grounds? who is to say that they aren't excluded BECAUSE of their toxic behavior in the first place?
  - faceplanted 7y ago
    > They are toxic because they were excluded That's a massive assumption, I don't honestly agree with the root commenter, but I have worked around young men, and honestly a lot of young men get excluded from young ages because of parental social neglect, i.e. they exclude themselves by exhibiting very antisocial behaviours and then responding badly to the negative response, and no-one intervenes. You see this even into teenage years, a boy picks up behaviour from somewhere, gets a bad response and then doubles down harder and harder unless someone, who may have zero responsibility to do so, steps in and basically acts as an unpaid therapist for an unwilling and sometimes violent and rude patient. I'm sure there's better ways of dealing with isolation than we have now, but you can't just act like they're excluded for no reason whatsoever. There's always a reason, sometimes it's a terrible reason, like being gay or some other "undesirable", but it's almost never arbitrary. The only people who believe it's arbitrary are usually the ones who've done something wrong.
nabla9 7y ago
Muslim extremism in the Europe is mostly 2nd generation problem. Those who move to EU are not drawn to extremism and neither is the third generation. It's those young men whose parents still live in the old culture who are alienated. The old school Muslim radicalism, like MB, was truly ideological and religious/political and so was the first version of AQ. New breed or radicalism rebels against the modernism, but the form it takes, the nihilism and alienation in it indicates that it's too late. They are already internalised the western individualism.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
alexryan 7y ago
IMHO the hiring of Sarah Jeung by the New York Times - a highly respected establishment institution - was a watershed event. It is now socially acceptable to preach hatred of “white male privilege” against poor rural white guys who are NOT genetically privileged and whom are plagued by a growing opioid epidemic and skyrocketing suicide rates. It says to these young boys, not only does your low IQ make you unfit to survive and thrive in this world but we’re going to treat you with contempt because of your skin color. How could any intelligent person be surprised when this results in an increase in mass shootings and other acts of desperation?
- alexryan 7y ago
  Any explanation for the down votes?
  - throwaway3627 7y ago
    Please don't comment about the voting on comments. It never does any good, and it makes boring reading. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
    - alexryan 7y ago
      okay. it's just kind of humorous because choosing to downvote an expressed concerned instead of responding to it might be considered to be a form of "social exclusion" encouraged by the platform which apparently "fuels extremism".
  - nabla9 7y ago
    You inserted very common melodramatic spiel/talkin point.
- hansjorg 7y ago
  Funny thing, if you extended your reasoning and compassion to include the underprivileged in general, not just American white guys, you'd be a leftie. Not all the white guy mass shooters are underprivileged though. How do you explain that?
jiberwarrior 7y ago
Wouldn't this imply that excluding places like T_D and more recently, 8chan, further continue to fuel further extremism in groups that already feel marginalized?
- raverbashing 7y ago
  No, because those places are not there to solve these issues, they are there to entice and use those feelings for political purposes.
- scotty79 7y ago
  It's a tough one. On one hand 8chan is a source for stupid values to sacralize, on the other it lessens social exclusion and staves off extremist behavior.
  - JoeSmithson 7y ago
    How does 8chan stave off extremist behaviour?
    - scotty79 7y ago
      By giving them feeling of belonging somewhere and thus lessening pressure to prove themselves, to get noticed by executing some extremist actions.
      - DanBC 7y ago
        I don't understand how you think that's true when three mass murders are explicitly linked to 8chan.
        adnzzzzZ 7y ago
        Do you understand that two things can be true at the same time even though they sound like they're opposite to one another? It's entirely reasonable to assume that places like that both prevent many people from falling further down a hole of exclusion but also push others further inside.
malvosenior 7y ago
The rise of excluded male extremism has been predicted for some time, but sadly anyone who mentions it usually gets blasted online. I think the “I drink male tears” coffee mugs as sipped by journalists at global media publications* look particularly dangerous and distasteful in this age of mass shootings. Alienating and ostracizing people will only further push them into extremism. It feels like maybe the tide is turning a bit, but so much damage has already been done to our society. At some point people need to stop painting all men with the same brush used to describe the very worst of the worst of them. * https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/mar/13/feminists-do-not-hate-men https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/mar/13/femini...
- hombre_fatal 7y ago
  Steven Pinker pitches a convincing theory of how/why young men self-radicalize due to social exclusion that had me nodding along from my own personal experience. Made total sense and described exactly how I once was tempted to partake when I was younger. I had no idea it was so controversial. Every time I've seen coverage of Pinker, his statements are completely taken out of context and he's spun as some sort of alt-right apologist. These are conversations we need to have. (I first saw him talk about it in his sit-down with Sam Harris.)
  - bschne 7y ago
    Do you have a link / reference to that discussion?
    - 37 7y ago
      Not OP, but here is a link to the Pinker-Harris talk: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ByGC3Vwaio0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ByGC3Vwaio0
  - Reedx 7y ago
    > his statements are completely taken out of context and he's spun as some sort of alt-right apologist. This also happens a lot with Sam Harris, Joe Rogan and anyone who critiques or discusses certain topics. Even though they are obviously not remotely alt-right (indeed they're on the left). It's incredibly frustrating, self-defeating and has a dangerous chilling effect.
innerop 7y ago
Has anyone else observed that when a terrorist act is committed by a person who is either black or muslim, there isn't this kind of deeper search for a root cause on Hacker News or anywhere else. In addition, no one calls it "domestic terrorism" when the terrorist is identified as muslim, even if the person is a naturalized citizen.
- kgraves 7y ago
  At least it’s diverse.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- davinic 7y ago
  This headline is about "young men". No skin color or ethnicity is specified. But have you noticed that when those Muslim attacks happen, societies mobilize and often the results are wars? The US has spent several trillions of dollars fighting Islamic extremism (not to mention the costs of law enforcement focusing on this at the expense of white collar crime, etc) when the data clearly show that white male extremism is by far a bigger threat today. Would you rather we spend money on a war against these extremists, or would you rather we think about and discuss the systemic forces that lead to these results?
  - innerop 7y ago
    "would you rather we think about and discuss the systemic forces that lead to these results?" Why wasn't this question asked every time the media screamed "terrorist attack" when muslims were involved? I agree with you, but my question is why now? better than never? I'm only drawing attention to the systemic racism that you're advocating for society to look into. It can't be more clear when we suddenly wake up after the attackers turn out to be white.
iameli 7y ago
Jesus, this website gets toxic at this time of night. First link I see and we’re demonizing muslims and women and blaming diversity programs for mass shootings and parading out bad evolutionary psychology. The people who post here are disproportionally privileged by society. You wouldn’t know it from reading this thread.
- malvosenior 7y ago
  The study isn’t demonizing anyone. Do you care to refute its findings? Do you have any data to back up that refutation? Slandering people who want to have a conversation about a very real issue in our society doesn’t help anything.
  - iameli 7y ago
    I have no issue with the study. Seems plausible. I do have an issue with, for example, the idea that a diversity program at a company constitutes a mode of social exclusion rather than an attempt to redress historical exclusion. But I seem to find myself standing in a room full of people that take it as self-evident that men are oppressed.
    - username90 7y ago
      > But I seem to find myself standing in a room full of people that take it as self-evident that men are oppressed. Nobody is saying that men are particularly oppressed, just that men irrespective of race has much stronger reactions to it. An example is that women have never in history made a violent rebellion against their male oppressors, but male slaves has done so countless times in every society which kept slaves.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- hombre_fatal 7y ago
  I don't understand what you're reacting to. The top comment (and my comments) are reactions of complete empathy and relatability.
Animats 7y ago
Way too broad a conclusion from a small, specialized sample. This is the kind of study that needs to be replicated in different environments to be useful. It's also not clear, even if this is real, that this effect comes from individual exclusion from a peer group or exclusion of the peer group from the larger society.
durnygbur 7y ago
> The study was conducted with a group of young Moroccan men, but the results could be applied to any other group of young men vulnerable to be radicalized All my encounters with this demography indicates that the're mostly male, closed minded, with very strong opinions on homosexuality, alcohol, or even pork. The very few females of their ethnicity who come to EU are always timid, with hairs covered, responding "I have a boyfriend" on any attempt to interact with them. Their influx causes even more frustration for the native European population which already doesn't have it easy. My personal observation is that women from Germany and Scandinavian countries have some attraction or even feeling of mission towards North Africans and Middle Easteners, trying to socialize with them or even travelling to these regions and more often than not they end up running away if lucky, or cut with machete if not. We (Europeans) are not guilty of radicalizing these people, French and Italians might have some post-colonial obligations towards them though.
- krageon 7y ago
  Young and isolated breeds radicalisation, this is not a new conclusion and one that has previously been observed in Northern European people as well. Their cultural background has no bearing on that fact, regardless of whatever things you might want to say about an entire group of people. The examples that you pulled in are uncalled for and not even vaguely racist.
  - durnygbur 7y ago
    Exists there any radicalization of young immigrants from post-Communist countries? Their emigration is mostly economic, they're not any less lone, isolated, and frustrated in the foreign places they've come to and oftentimes the're similarly a subject to political and religious agitation.
wintorez 7y ago
Social exclusion and alienation fuels extremism and violence, period.
- Cthulhu_ 7y ago
  CAN fuel that, it can also cause depression, isolation, etc. You can't just make an absolute statement like that without looking at the reality - the reality is that while there are a ton of socially excluded and isolated people, only a very small fragment of those become violent.
pferde 7y ago
The world at large doesn't care what you need, only what you can offer. Realizing this (and acting on it) would help vast majority of these "socially excluded young men" to be included instead. There is an excellent article detailing the idea here: https://www.cracked.com/blog/6-harsh-truths-that-will-make-you-better-person/ https://www.cracked.com/blog/6-harsh-truths-that-will-make-y... I wish it was mandatory reading for all youth.
- netsharc 7y ago
  But we teach kids reading, writing and maths because it prepares them for life, and left on their own, kids would just play all day. By the same token we shouldn't leave kids to figure that shit out themselves, but help them get there..
  - pferde 7y ago
    ...hence the last sentence in my above post.
  - michaelt 7y ago
    In some places, if you leave your kid's sex education to the state, they get abstinence-only sex ed - because there are people who genuinely believe that stuff even though it's wrong. There's a risk that, if you ask 'we' to teach this stuff, you're going to get a substantially watered-down message compared to the one in that article - perhaps even one that reverses it. After all, I doubt the "it's what's on the inside that counts" message the article disagrees with would've become so widespread if it didn't resonate with some people.
    - DFHippie 7y ago
      But leaving everyone to raise their kids as they see fit can be unfair to the kids. If public education might let your kids down, learn what it's teaching them. If what they're getting is crap, demand accuracy. They can't hide what they're teaching. If you agitate for science-based education for your kids other kids will get it too and your kids don't have to grow up with neighbors whose parents passively allowed their kids to grow up with a crappy education.
cannedslime 7y ago
Just in men? I recall a young woman here (15 years old at the time) not so long ago, who converted to islam and made a batch of TATP with her boyfriend, planning to bomb her school dance. Don't tell me you get that idea by being the popular girl in school! http://nyheder.tv2.dk/krimi/2017-11-24-kundby-pigen-kendt-skyldig-i-planlaegning-af-terror http://nyheder.tv2.dk/krimi/2017-11-24-kundby-pigen-kendt-sk...
aussieguy1234 7y ago
This research was done on Muslim men. The same would probably also apply to Nazis. For those who don't know, Islamic state/Al Qaeda etc are just the Islamic equivalent of the KKK/Nazis
chpmrc 7y ago
Purely my opinion but can it be that the main issue is just plain old generalization? When someone says "Straight white men still hold the majority of political, economic and social power in the world" they are excluding the vast majority of straight white men. I'm straight, I'm white and I just have a job, like most of us. My boss is a woman. Why shouldn't women (and people in general) worry about hurting my feelings just because there are other straight white men with a lot of money and power? That's just dumb.
- igorkraw 7y ago
  >I'm straight, I'm white and I just have a job, like most of us. My boss is a woman. Why shouldn't women (and people in general) worry about hurting my feelings just because there are other straight white men with a lot of money and power? That's just dumb. Which is why no serious feminist (or gender-egalitarian or menslibber or whatever) should excuse women being bitches. But it doesn't change the fact that >(...) When someone says "Straight white men still hold the majority of political, economic and social power in the world" they are excluding the vast majority of straight white men. they are still, well,correct. It'd be more precise to say "rich straight white...", but the sentiment is true. The "main issue" probably isn't singular, but my take is that a) the dissolution of "soft" power structures (men over women, social view of whites over blacks, straight over LGBTQ+...) will take time to be culturally processed b)activists need to embrace and push the difference between "problematic" and "bad", and push the idea that "good people" can and should be criticized for bad stuff they do, without immediately crucifying them - and the rest of the world will need to learn and embrace that difference, and also learn how to actually listen to people who might be oppressed, the difference between being publicly criticized and "having their life ruined" (there is much more to this, but this would get too long) c) hard structures (job expectations, economic incentives) need to be changed to accommodate the (assumed as desired) new social structures. E.g. the "google memo" guy had a very good point which was very positively received in the (german) feminist circles I hung out in online at the time, namely that maybe we need to enforce "work life balance" in the fields where women are underrepresented, because if the job expectation is to forego a family life, that makes it drastically more likely for women to nope out than men.
mettamage 7y ago
Personal data point: I imagined vividly to be socially excluded at points in my life since that would be my plan B (great plan, I know, I gamble a bit with my life from time to time as I don’t see a better option). And I did notice a few things: - I have nothing to lose anymore - I suddenly have a lot of free time to devote my energy to - My mental state is slightly unstable - I am in a shitty mood I am not religious and do not know much about extreme views (I only know a bit about Buddhism) but I can imagine that extremist religious or ideological views would hyper charge the 4 things I talked about. On another note, if this study would state that these people would become workaholics then I would also believe that. I feel it is the opposite side of the same coin.
- gonzo41 7y ago
  You are totally right about the workaholics. I have energy, destructive or constructive. My environment chooses which way that energy flows. I'm lucky I have a 100 year old house that steals all my time with needing to be fixed otherwise I'd be finding trouble on the weekends. I think a lot of men exist lacking hard physical and mentally demanding work, like working in a factory or on a farm, that can act as an outlet and as a thing to be proud of.
  - johnchristopher 7y ago
    While I agree I want to add, for the sake of the conversation only, that it somehow paints a picture of men as beasts to be tamed (by work, by enrolling, etc.).
    - SmellyGeekBoy 7y ago
      Humans are animals after all, no matter how highly we think of ourselves.
      - mettamage 7y ago
        We are indeed. But I'd argue that some animals are more civilized than you think. Primal behavior is simply partially out of ignorance (that's how it seems to me). Humans are relatively unique in: 1. Language 2. Tool use (thanks to being land-dwellers, two legged, and having opposable thumbs) 3. Having a prefrontal cortex that allows us to inhibit any other instinct we have Other animals have this as well to some degree or another, even all 3 of them. These 3 things combined allow us to sometimes escape our primal nature. But I wonder whether we're alone in that: how about dolphins, elephants and other animals of that sort?
redder2 7y ago
Wow who would have thought, someone give this guys the Nobel price or something. Really groundbreaking, we would not have guessed this in a 1000 years.
buboard 7y ago
Take any fMRI study with a bucket of salt. Especially when the press release generalizes from "frontal cortex imaging of a ball game" to "extremism in young men", with p values near the significance limit. That said, it's an interesting topic for wider discussion.
baud147258 7y ago
I'm pretty sure that social exclusion fuels extremism across all sex and age groups
- buboard 7y ago
  that's probably closer to the truth, and society is structured to exclude men more often.
Millennium 7y ago
This is true as far as it goes, and yet, there are people in this world who will not grow up and function except in the face of overwhelming social pressure. They will not be taught, nor learn on their own -they must be broken- and if they are not, well, this kind of thing is what happens. The answer isn't to stop excluding them, but to strip away the new enablers.
jstewartmobile 7y ago
https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2018.02462/full https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2018.0246... "Extremism" is a value-judgement, not a pathology. Abolitionists were also called "extremists". This is psychology in service of staziism--using questionnaires and fMRI to identify serfs with higher wrongthought potential--rather than diagnosing and treating illness.
luord 7y ago
Not precisely rigorous, but the finding doesn't seem that shocking: ostracize people and they become resentful (so the conventional wisdom goes).
keiferski 7y ago
It continues to amaze me that narrow scientific studies are used to make extremely broad statements that apply to literally hundreds of millions of people [1]. This study was conducted on 500 people of a very specific background in a very specific city and country. Drawing any sort of universal conclusion from that is highly unlikely. This clickbait style of interpreting scientific studies only contributes to the already decreasing public trust in the scientific method. 1. According to this link, there are 600 hundred million men between the age of 15 and 24. https://www.indexmundi.com/world/demographics_profile.html https://www.indexmundi.com/world/demographics_profile.html
- chapium 7y ago
  The news site is the one making broad claims. The research paper notes that there is a correlation which also supports previous research on the topic.
patientplatypus 7y ago
Just as a side note it's always made me extremely sad when we demonize the shooters and terrorists. Of course what they did is terrible. But we should have sympathy with them because they are sick. Love is cheap if it only matters on Hallmark cards and corporate holidays.
- JoeAltmaier 7y ago
  I think the meme that 'all murderers are sick' has been thoroughly debunked? Real ordinary people can decide to do horrific things if they get in the wrong state of mind.
  - sdinsn 7y ago
    I think the difference is that mass murderers kill people just to kill people. While other 'traditional' murderers kill for more material reasons (money, drugs, etc.)
    - CompanionCuuube 7y ago
      "Traditional" murders were are not necessarily for material reasons. "Introduction: Theory of the Culture of Honor is one of the few models in criminology specifically geared toward homicide. It proposes that, in certain societies, men must never show weakness and are required to react violently to any perceived threats to their reputation, thereby increasing their probability of committing a homicide. This has been suggested as the main explanation for the high rates of this type of crime in Brazil, particularly in the Northeast. Underlying this explanation there are complex mechanisms and processes that have yet to be clarified." https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5672109/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5672109/
      - sdinsn 7y ago
        Of course there is a cultural aspect, but Brazil is seriously impacted by organized crime syndicates which operate for money
druvisc 7y ago
Just like unfulfilled gorillas. "Determined to get some attention from the others, Antwary bites into an unedible plant." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YvxDZGMc-Fs&feature=youtu.be&t=1537 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YvxDZGMc-Fs&feature=youtu.be...
EGreg 7y ago
Reminds me of this: https://psy.fsu.edu/~baumeisterticelab/goodaboutmen.htm https://psy.fsu.edu/~baumeisterticelab/goodaboutmen.htm Women have reactions to social exclusion too, but different ones
grabarz 7y ago
I'm curious if there is a correlation between online dating apps popularity and rise of extremism. Any studies?
OnlyRepliesToBS 7y ago
count how many 'you', 'them', 'i', and how many pronouns are being presented to each individual, group by source
lunias 7y ago
Seems pretty intuitive to me. If you can't join them, beat them.
chansiky 7y ago
If you are struggling with social exclusion, and for no good reason, there is a manipulator in the ranks and for whatever reason the people in the group have no capacity to think for themselves. There are billions of people on this earth, many of whom have developed brains. Make your friends with those people, not the ones without the ability to formulate their own opinion.

302 points by jseliger 7y ago

deleted 7y ago

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mjfl 7y ago

This finding is in line with my intuition. Social exclusion triggers an instinct in the male brain: become something, something higher status, or die. It is “evolutionarily accurate” - socially excluded males do not reproduce. Men who are okay with being excluded literally died out. This instinct probably drives productivity around the world, causes men to be startup founders as well as terrorists and school shooters.

rexpop 7y ago
If by the "male" brain, you mean the "male-socialized" brain, and not "instinct" but socialization, then we're in agreement. It certainly impugns the societal value of "productivity". > If men were natural-born killers, hardwired by biology and destiny to take life, then there would be no need for patriarchal socialization to turn them into killers. > In patriarchal culture males are not allowed simply to be who they are and to glory in their unique identity. Their value is always determined by what they do. In an antipatriarchal culture males do not have to prove their value and worth. — bell hooks
- ummonk 7y ago
  No, GP means male brain and instinct. Male-socialized female brains don't act the same way, because they have different instincts.
  - rexpop 7y ago
    You're wrong about brains. https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1035246030500061184.html https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1035246030500061184.html
- username90 7y ago
  The argument is that men are hard wired to create a splash, not to kill. Murder creates a huge splash, but you can do it in other ways such as saving lives, getting rich, becoming a leader, mastering a craft or furthering human knowledge.
  - watwut 7y ago
    The article is about extremists, not about mass shooters. Most of them wont murder, they do day to day organizing work for few murderers.
    - marvin 7y ago
      But even so, hard though it is to admit for us children of peace-time, being an accomplished killer of «the enemy» is a high-status achievement in itself, in time of war. Enough so that it’s easy to imagine an evolutionary tendency that can be triggered under extreme distress. You just have to go back to WWII (if that!) to find obvious examples of this. Killers such as Richard Winters and Ronald Speirs are celebrated in history and fiction even today, 70 years later. And convicted (male) mass-murderers have a tendency to receive an unexpected amount of attention from certain women, so even from that perspective this seems like an understandable evolutionary adaption. Certainly not morally defensible, but nature doesn’t give a shit. It’s horrifying, but not incomprehensible.
      - watwut 7y ago
        What does that have to do with ordinary extremist that is cog in a machine, does no splash whatsoever and have no status whatsoever? And yes, in societies that reward cruelty and killing, cruelty will be high and so will killings. Convicted male mass-murderers and soldiers are not really comparable. Convicted male mass murderers were not all that succesfull in having and keeping girlfriends until caught and locked. Just about only having a lot of children were the ones that run cult too.
        Kaiyou 7y ago
malcolmgreaves 7y ago
How is this at all unique to one sex? Any excluded human would die out and not reproduce. Any high quality evidence for your large claim that purports a biological-only difference in social patterns between male and female humans?
- hdfbdtbcdg 7y ago
  The theory is that females find it much easier to initiate reproduction (although the process is far more work for them once started). Also through large parts of human history females were treated as chattel and weren't subjected to the same pressures as males.
  - BadassFractal 7y ago
    Something about how only one in two males reproduce, but on average every human female has offspring?
    - chii 7y ago
      so this implies that some men reproduce with more women than they "should", thus causing problems?
      - hombre_fatal 7y ago
        It refers to the fact that there are men excluded who are left to yearn from the sidelines.
      - chosenbreed37 7y ago
        It could also point to the possibility (and in some some cases a confirmed fact) that some men are raising kids that they didn't sire.
- david-cako 7y ago
  One piece of evidence is that men have a flatter distribution of outcomes and more often than women are falling off either end of the chart, for better and worse. All it takes is a look at those OkCupid studies for rating distributions to see how much larger the difference is between success and failure for men. This problem is not exclusive to men, but affects more men. Women more often have an expectation of mating upwards, and high status women have a similar problem of finding themselves excluded.
xwdv 7y ago
I have found myself socially excluded most of my life. I see the world mostly as a hostile place, and easily get a feeling that people do not like me. Though I have obtained a good status in life by some metrics, what good is it if the world is so toxic to me?
- david-cako 7y ago
  Very good question, and the only justification I can come up with is the opportunity to beam truth out from within. This at some times more than others seems like enough, if no one else takes responsibility. We are hard wired to seek meaning and protect the will.
- alexis_fr 7y ago
  I’ve sold my first startup and the second is a great success, multimillionaire and I have a Youtube channel talking about men’s issues where dozens of thousands of boys (and benevolent women) learn and talk about men’s issues. But the only people I wanted to be listened by were my family, for support in dealing with women, and that will never happen. I have the exact same vision as you: I can’t work in a company because I feel directly hated by the diversity programs (funnily enough, I hire women). Success and money is not happiness and life is... very ironic sometimes.
  - Roritharr 7y ago
    Not sure why you are downvoted. Thank you for sharing, I don't think you troll as some of my younger employees shared the same feeling of disenfranchisment in their 1:1's. Even if the view of being othered by diversity programs etc. is a little bit skewed, it's definitely having an impact in their psychology, as it's an easy scapegoat for why a raise was not given, a talk got rejected, etc. etc. The actual cases numbers of these things happening must be much much smaller, but that's beside the point, as it's the psychological aspect that's ruining their perception of themselves and what society expects from them.
    - pavlov 7y ago
      If someone's perception of themself is ruined by the notion that they're not the center of the world and people of other backgrounds deserve consideration too, then it sounds like these people need to be exposed to more diversity programs, not less.
Causality1 7y ago
Studies on the flattened bell curve for male achievement would seem to support your intuition.
hos234 7y ago
Top mind at work here. How can we isolate it and increase world productivity?
- chii 7y ago
  the old, tried and true way was to introduce slavery. The men work, and work, and after a long enough time, and having worked long enough, is granted a women to reproduce with (and their offspring is also a slave - thus perpetuating the cycle). Modern sensibilities cannot accept this method of increasing productivity.
throwaway3627 7y ago
There seems to be a common mania state of irrational exuberance with unrealistic hopefulness. It has many examples: people in love, positive/devout Christians, big-idea startup startup and even residents of Raqqa under the Islamic State playing in the river Tigris, unreasonably hopeful about their future. To bring the point home, unrealistic hopefulness or hopelessness sets a person up for failure. Whether they internalize any resulting failures into bitter anomie and desire for omni/suicide depends on an individual's coping skills, ideology and social support (or lack of each thereof). Combine a lack of hope, opportunities and many negative experiences leads to angry people who take their pain and loneliness, and wish to lash out.
buboard 7y ago
I m not entirely convinced if the pressure is evolutionary or social. There seems to be a range of attitudes, from social rejection of the unmarried, to indifference and demographic catastrophe
dwd 7y ago
I have a theory (half-formed) that we are seeing the results of our always connected society, and a shrinking crowded world and there's no way to escape. Where a young man could once pack his bags and leave on a grand adventure and start a new life where noone knew him are long gone. He could join the military or sail the seas and see the world and noone cared where he came from and there was no way to know either. But that time is past.
- Cthulhu_ 7y ago
  I don't believe it is, but it requires one to disconnect from the internet - and their families / social circles. But I get what you mean, it used to be there was no way to contact the people you left behind except for maybe letters or a phonecall from time to time. Nowadays there's a satellite internet connection with the home front when you're deployed out there.
  - dwd 7y ago
    Maybe a one-way trip to Mars could be the way to start a new life if your current situation sucks?
    - crankylinuxuser 7y ago
      Most of the time, when you run from your problems, the problems run just as fast. The problems are with your own state of mind. They are issues you haven't adequately addressed. And no amount of running will get them to 'go away'. I know, cause I had similar, and had to confront them head on. And, I was successful.
      - dwd 7y ago
        That is true to an extent, but to solve some problems a change of location can make a difference. Breaking destructive habits is one as they can be triggered by returning to the location where you previously engaged in that activity. Sure, return once you've got a new habit/routine in place and can confidently confront the old.
_0ffh 7y ago
I'm sure I once read about a study that indicated something related: The more things I shove into your face that I have (and you don't) the more likely you are to become criminal to get them too.
- Cthulhu_ 7y ago
  FOMO? It's definitely a thing, a big one is piracy - a feeling that you HAVE to watch e.g. Game of Thrones as soon as possible because else you're missing out on the hype, the ability to talk with people about it, and if you're not fast (or disconnected from social media) you'll get major spoilers hitting you unexpectedly. I mean I haven't watched Endgame yet because my family is still catching up but I've had all of the major plot points already spoiled thanks to my Reddit addiction. That kinda sucks.
vintermann 7y ago
A good example of where reaching for biological explanations for behavior is unnecessary, because the logic of the situation already does a perfectly adequate job of explaining the behavior. A woman facing the same pressures is plenty capable of "burning down villages to feel their warmth" too. Maybe a few percent less? Who cares? "We act this way because our ancestors were hunted by sabre-toothed tigers" might sound deep, but what if the sabre-toothed tigers are still around? If so, then maybe it's better to do something about the sabre-toothed tigers, than to expect people to change their behaviour.

sysbin 7y ago

Ahh the Red Queen and the Black Queen hypothesis. We meet again. :)

qtplatypus 7y ago
What is the Red Queen and the Black Queen hypothesis?
- prawn 7y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Queen_hypothesis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Queen_hypothesis

jimbob45 7y ago

>in a group of young Moroccan men living and schooled in Catalonia and vulnerable to radicalization. No one should apply anything from these findings to the US. Although there may be some similarities, those are based on your own experiences and not backed up by a study conducted on boys half a world away.

lawnchair_larry 7y ago
I still think they’re on to something, and fundamentally we aren’t that different over here.
onion2k 7y ago
I don't think that's a good take. What the study says is that men can be radicalized if they're put in a situation where they're isolated. Using the study to understand that better and apply it to isolated groups anywhere is useful. According to the DoJ, 100% of race-based domestic terrorism in the US in 2018 was committed by radicialized white supremacist terrorists[1]. Having a better understanding of why people join groups like that (eg "are they similarly isolated young men?") helps us stop people joining in the first place. [1] https://www.salon.com/2019/08/09/trumps-doj-hid-shocking-report-on-growing-terror-threat-from-white-supremacists/ https://www.salon.com/2019/08/09/trumps-doj-hid-shocking-rep...
hombre_fatal 7y ago
No man should relate to men in other geographic locations? I don't understand. Plenty of us here have encountered some degree of social destitution and know what kind of places that can leave you mentally. Why would this only be limited to a specific group value like jihad and not a broader thread that runs through male psychology? Seems like a perfectly reasonable mount point for HN discussion and empathy. For example, consider social exclusion's role in radicalizing men to adopt these group values: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Men_Going_Their_Own_Way https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Men_Going_Their_Own_Way -- doesn't seem like a stretch. That's basically the next rung on the same ladder I started climbing when I joined PUA usergroups when I was 15, though thankfully some social windfall (meeting my first girlfriend) snapped me out of it.

sadmann1 7y ago

The specifics are complicated but the essence is simple. Men want status so they can reproduce, if they don't have status in the current social systems it is in their interest to change the status quo in hope that they will be higher placed in the new system.

tjr225 7y ago
This kind of weird pseudo smart drivel is the kind of stuff that makes me think HN is a toxic, dead space. Why post it?
- sadmann1 7y ago
  You're getting emotional, I'm not sure what part of my comment made you write such a violent and spiteful response.
domnomnom 7y ago
I think you're confusing men with political activists.
krageon 7y ago
This kind of armchair biological handwaving isn't doing anyone any favours. It's reductionist and frequently wrong and I have yet to see good studies supporting this with any kind of reproducibility. This is of course the status quo for psychology as a field, so that should surprise none of us.
- adnzzzzZ 7y ago
  Aren't there many studies that show a very high correlation between income inequality and and increased male on male violence within regions? Those kinds of findings support that idea partly.
tomhoward 7y ago
I used to buy into this kind of genetic reductionism, and the notion that we're ultimately just replication bots. But it's neither a proven-factual way of looking at the world, nor a meaningful one. People want all kinds of things, including optimism, purpose, safety, community, connectedness, virtuousness, recognition, transcendence, confidence, and more. Status for reproduction is a part of what people want, but it's not the only or ultimate thing. This just-so narrative is both extremely dull and extremely damaging.

swiley 7y ago

Many people here say that "People shouldn't expect to be able to afford to live in populated areas, poorer people should just move to the country side." I grew up homeschooled in rural America, most people would be better off moving to a different country than moving there. People shouldn't be surprised when isolation (either because of where someone lives or because everyone around them is telling them to stay away) creates horrible people, leaving for university and being around people there is what kept me from going to a pretty horrible place.

alkibiades 7y ago
plenty, if not more, people are isolated and depressed in cities
- goatinaboat 7y ago
  It’s definitely worse, because you get to see all the people having fun and meaningful interactions all around you. If you are physically isolated you can justify it by there simply being no one there but in a city, there’s no escaping having it rubbed in your face.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
alexryan 7y ago
When I hear "move to the country side" it sounds an awful lot like "move to the back of the bus". The front of the bus is reserved for the genetically superior humans.
- collyw 7y ago
  Personally I would quite like to move to the countryside, but if you are in any sort of skilled profession, the jobs are usually in the city.
  - randomdata 7y ago

okusername 7y ago

... in muslims who sympathize with jihadist terror groups and play a computer game. No control group. Btw its scary that they asked 500 morrocan muslims in Spain and were able to recruit 38 extremists.

bufferoverflow 7y ago
It doesn't surprise me at all. According to the various polls of Muslims themselves, large percentages of them believe all kinds of radical and violent things. https://www.reddit.com/r/atheism/comments/vubyx/only_a_tiny_minority_of_extremists/ https://www.reddit.com/r/atheism/comments/vubyx/only_a_tiny_...
Animats 7y ago
Not surprising. 18% of the US population thinks the sun rotates around the earth.
- 55555 7y ago
  And would you classify that 18% as astrologically extremist or poorly educated?
  - Cthulhu_ 7y ago
    iirc at least 4% of those are trolls - I read about that on HN the other day, forgot what the effect was called and can't find it in my history. But the gist of it is that these numbers are done via polls online and the statistics are poisoned by people filling stuff like "I believe in flat earth" for the lulz.
    - sbierwagen 7y ago
      Lizardman constant. https://slatestarcodex.com/2013/04/12/noisy-poll-results-and-reptilian-muslim-climatologists-from-mars/ https://slatestarcodex.com/2013/04/12/noisy-poll-results-and...
- buboard 7y ago

im3w1l 7y ago

> Vulnerability was considered to exist among those who expressed willingness to defend the sacred values promoted by jihadist terrorist groups, either by engaging in violent protest and actions, financially supporting nonstate militant groups, joining a nonstate militant group, or fighting and dying on their own. The 38 participants who met this criteria and were interested in participating in the study while maintaining their anonymity were invited to a neuroimaging session. > In this online exclusion game, participants pass the ball to three virtual players, who were given typical local names: Dani, Javi and José. Wonder if the result would have been the same if the virtual players were named Ahmed, Mustafa and Mahmod. Or a mix.

Proven 7y ago

Complete nonsense. By the way, no one has the obligation to be inclusive if they want to be safe.

jonhendry18 7y ago

This is about exclusion of a minority in Europe, not toxic American jerks whose behavior results in them having no friends.

dead_mall 7y ago
> toxic American jerks whose behaviour results in them having no friends Scary enough, search for Incels[.]is and you'll find a forum/home dedicated to exactly that behavior.
- hombre_fatal 7y ago
  Yet, unlike the sacred group value of jihad in the study, it's even more obvious how social exclusion can lead the way to a group identity like incels, which is a bit of a tautology because the incel identity is specifically social exclusion. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incel#Mass_murders_and_violence https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incel#Mass_murders_and_violenc...
HunOL 7y ago
Your comment is perfect example. You are willing to protect one group of minorities, but do not want to find out root cause why some members from majority are failing.
plutonorm 7y ago
Why are they toxic? They are toxic because they were excluded. So now you shame and exclude them further because they were excluded by someone before you. It's a brutal world we live in.
- bananocurrency 7y ago
  on what grounds? who is to say that they aren't excluded BECAUSE of their toxic behavior in the first place?
- faceplanted 7y ago
  > They are toxic because they were excluded That's a massive assumption, I don't honestly agree with the root commenter, but I have worked around young men, and honestly a lot of young men get excluded from young ages because of parental social neglect, i.e. they exclude themselves by exhibiting very antisocial behaviours and then responding badly to the negative response, and no-one intervenes. You see this even into teenage years, a boy picks up behaviour from somewhere, gets a bad response and then doubles down harder and harder unless someone, who may have zero responsibility to do so, steps in and basically acts as an unpaid therapist for an unwilling and sometimes violent and rude patient. I'm sure there's better ways of dealing with isolation than we have now, but you can't just act like they're excluded for no reason whatsoever. There's always a reason, sometimes it's a terrible reason, like being gay or some other "undesirable", but it's almost never arbitrary. The only people who believe it's arbitrary are usually the ones who've done something wrong.

nabla9 7y ago

Muslim extremism in the Europe is mostly 2nd generation problem. Those who move to EU are not drawn to extremism and neither is the third generation. It's those young men whose parents still live in the old culture who are alienated. The old school Muslim radicalism, like MB, was truly ideological and religious/political and so was the first version of AQ. New breed or radicalism rebels against the modernism, but the form it takes, the nihilism and alienation in it indicates that it's too late. They are already internalised the western individualism.

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alexryan 7y ago

IMHO the hiring of Sarah Jeung by the New York Times - a highly respected establishment institution - was a watershed event. It is now socially acceptable to preach hatred of “white male privilege” against poor rural white guys who are NOT genetically privileged and whom are plagued by a growing opioid epidemic and skyrocketing suicide rates. It says to these young boys, not only does your low IQ make you unfit to survive and thrive in this world but we’re going to treat you with contempt because of your skin color. How could any intelligent person be surprised when this results in an increase in mass shootings and other acts of desperation?

alexryan 7y ago
Any explanation for the down votes?
- throwaway3627 7y ago
  Please don't comment about the voting on comments. It never does any good, and it makes boring reading. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
  - alexryan 7y ago
    okay. it's just kind of humorous because choosing to downvote an expressed concerned instead of responding to it might be considered to be a form of "social exclusion" encouraged by the platform which apparently "fuels extremism".
- nabla9 7y ago
  You inserted very common melodramatic spiel/talkin point.
hansjorg 7y ago
Funny thing, if you extended your reasoning and compassion to include the underprivileged in general, not just American white guys, you'd be a leftie. Not all the white guy mass shooters are underprivileged though. How do you explain that?

jiberwarrior 7y ago

Wouldn't this imply that excluding places like T_D and more recently, 8chan, further continue to fuel further extremism in groups that already feel marginalized?

raverbashing 7y ago
No, because those places are not there to solve these issues, they are there to entice and use those feelings for political purposes.
scotty79 7y ago
It's a tough one. On one hand 8chan is a source for stupid values to sacralize, on the other it lessens social exclusion and staves off extremist behavior.
- JoeSmithson 7y ago
  How does 8chan stave off extremist behaviour?
  - scotty79 7y ago
    By giving them feeling of belonging somewhere and thus lessening pressure to prove themselves, to get noticed by executing some extremist actions.
    - DanBC 7y ago
      I don't understand how you think that's true when three mass murders are explicitly linked to 8chan.
      - adnzzzzZ 7y ago
        Do you understand that two things can be true at the same time even though they sound like they're opposite to one another? It's entirely reasonable to assume that places like that both prevent many people from falling further down a hole of exclusion but also push others further inside.

malvosenior 7y ago

The rise of excluded male extremism has been predicted for some time, but sadly anyone who mentions it usually gets blasted online. I think the “I drink male tears” coffee mugs as sipped by journalists at global media publications* look particularly dangerous and distasteful in this age of mass shootings. Alienating and ostracizing people will only further push them into extremism. It feels like maybe the tide is turning a bit, but so much damage has already been done to our society. At some point people need to stop painting all men with the same brush used to describe the very worst of the worst of them. * https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/mar/13/feminists-do-not-hate-men https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/mar/13/femini...

hombre_fatal 7y ago
Steven Pinker pitches a convincing theory of how/why young men self-radicalize due to social exclusion that had me nodding along from my own personal experience. Made total sense and described exactly how I once was tempted to partake when I was younger. I had no idea it was so controversial. Every time I've seen coverage of Pinker, his statements are completely taken out of context and he's spun as some sort of alt-right apologist. These are conversations we need to have. (I first saw him talk about it in his sit-down with Sam Harris.)
- bschne 7y ago
  Do you have a link / reference to that discussion?
  - 37 7y ago
    Not OP, but here is a link to the Pinker-Harris talk: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ByGC3Vwaio0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ByGC3Vwaio0
- Reedx 7y ago
  > his statements are completely taken out of context and he's spun as some sort of alt-right apologist. This also happens a lot with Sam Harris, Joe Rogan and anyone who critiques or discusses certain topics. Even though they are obviously not remotely alt-right (indeed they're on the left). It's incredibly frustrating, self-defeating and has a dangerous chilling effect.

innerop 7y ago

Has anyone else observed that when a terrorist act is committed by a person who is either black or muslim, there isn't this kind of deeper search for a root cause on Hacker News or anywhere else. In addition, no one calls it "domestic terrorism" when the terrorist is identified as muslim, even if the person is a naturalized citizen.

kgraves 7y ago
At least it’s diverse.
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davinic 7y ago
This headline is about "young men". No skin color or ethnicity is specified. But have you noticed that when those Muslim attacks happen, societies mobilize and often the results are wars? The US has spent several trillions of dollars fighting Islamic extremism (not to mention the costs of law enforcement focusing on this at the expense of white collar crime, etc) when the data clearly show that white male extremism is by far a bigger threat today. Would you rather we spend money on a war against these extremists, or would you rather we think about and discuss the systemic forces that lead to these results?
- innerop 7y ago
  "would you rather we think about and discuss the systemic forces that lead to these results?" Why wasn't this question asked every time the media screamed "terrorist attack" when muslims were involved? I agree with you, but my question is why now? better than never? I'm only drawing attention to the systemic racism that you're advocating for society to look into. It can't be more clear when we suddenly wake up after the attackers turn out to be white.

iameli 7y ago

Jesus, this website gets toxic at this time of night. First link I see and we’re demonizing muslims and women and blaming diversity programs for mass shootings and parading out bad evolutionary psychology. The people who post here are disproportionally privileged by society. You wouldn’t know it from reading this thread.

malvosenior 7y ago
The study isn’t demonizing anyone. Do you care to refute its findings? Do you have any data to back up that refutation? Slandering people who want to have a conversation about a very real issue in our society doesn’t help anything.
- iameli 7y ago
  I have no issue with the study. Seems plausible. I do have an issue with, for example, the idea that a diversity program at a company constitutes a mode of social exclusion rather than an attempt to redress historical exclusion. But I seem to find myself standing in a room full of people that take it as self-evident that men are oppressed.
  - username90 7y ago
    > But I seem to find myself standing in a room full of people that take it as self-evident that men are oppressed. Nobody is saying that men are particularly oppressed, just that men irrespective of race has much stronger reactions to it. An example is that women have never in history made a violent rebellion against their male oppressors, but male slaves has done so countless times in every society which kept slaves.
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hombre_fatal 7y ago
I don't understand what you're reacting to. The top comment (and my comments) are reactions of complete empathy and relatability.

Animats 7y ago

Way too broad a conclusion from a small, specialized sample. This is the kind of study that needs to be replicated in different environments to be useful. It's also not clear, even if this is real, that this effect comes from individual exclusion from a peer group or exclusion of the peer group from the larger society.

durnygbur 7y ago

> The study was conducted with a group of young Moroccan men, but the results could be applied to any other group of young men vulnerable to be radicalized All my encounters with this demography indicates that the're mostly male, closed minded, with very strong opinions on homosexuality, alcohol, or even pork. The very few females of their ethnicity who come to EU are always timid, with hairs covered, responding "I have a boyfriend" on any attempt to interact with them. Their influx causes even more frustration for the native European population which already doesn't have it easy. My personal observation is that women from Germany and Scandinavian countries have some attraction or even feeling of mission towards North Africans and Middle Easteners, trying to socialize with them or even travelling to these regions and more often than not they end up running away if lucky, or cut with machete if not. We (Europeans) are not guilty of radicalizing these people, French and Italians might have some post-colonial obligations towards them though.

krageon 7y ago
Young and isolated breeds radicalisation, this is not a new conclusion and one that has previously been observed in Northern European people as well. Their cultural background has no bearing on that fact, regardless of whatever things you might want to say about an entire group of people. The examples that you pulled in are uncalled for and not even vaguely racist.
- durnygbur 7y ago
  Exists there any radicalization of young immigrants from post-Communist countries? Their emigration is mostly economic, they're not any less lone, isolated, and frustrated in the foreign places they've come to and oftentimes the're similarly a subject to political and religious agitation.

wintorez 7y ago

Social exclusion and alienation fuels extremism and violence, period.

Cthulhu_ 7y ago
CAN fuel that, it can also cause depression, isolation, etc. You can't just make an absolute statement like that without looking at the reality - the reality is that while there are a ton of socially excluded and isolated people, only a very small fragment of those become violent.

pferde 7y ago

The world at large doesn't care what you need, only what you can offer. Realizing this (and acting on it) would help vast majority of these "socially excluded young men" to be included instead. There is an excellent article detailing the idea here: https://www.cracked.com/blog/6-harsh-truths-that-will-make-you-better-person/ https://www.cracked.com/blog/6-harsh-truths-that-will-make-y... I wish it was mandatory reading for all youth.

netsharc 7y ago
But we teach kids reading, writing and maths because it prepares them for life, and left on their own, kids would just play all day. By the same token we shouldn't leave kids to figure that shit out themselves, but help them get there..
- pferde 7y ago
  ...hence the last sentence in my above post.
- michaelt 7y ago
  In some places, if you leave your kid's sex education to the state, they get abstinence-only sex ed - because there are people who genuinely believe that stuff even though it's wrong. There's a risk that, if you ask 'we' to teach this stuff, you're going to get a substantially watered-down message compared to the one in that article - perhaps even one that reverses it. After all, I doubt the "it's what's on the inside that counts" message the article disagrees with would've become so widespread if it didn't resonate with some people.
  - DFHippie 7y ago
    But leaving everyone to raise their kids as they see fit can be unfair to the kids. If public education might let your kids down, learn what it's teaching them. If what they're getting is crap, demand accuracy. They can't hide what they're teaching. If you agitate for science-based education for your kids other kids will get it too and your kids don't have to grow up with neighbors whose parents passively allowed their kids to grow up with a crappy education.

cannedslime 7y ago

Just in men? I recall a young woman here (15 years old at the time) not so long ago, who converted to islam and made a batch of TATP with her boyfriend, planning to bomb her school dance. Don't tell me you get that idea by being the popular girl in school! http://nyheder.tv2.dk/krimi/2017-11-24-kundby-pigen-kendt-skyldig-i-planlaegning-af-terror http://nyheder.tv2.dk/krimi/2017-11-24-kundby-pigen-kendt-sk...

aussieguy1234 7y ago

This research was done on Muslim men. The same would probably also apply to Nazis. For those who don't know, Islamic state/Al Qaeda etc are just the Islamic equivalent of the KKK/Nazis

chpmrc 7y ago

Purely my opinion but can it be that the main issue is just plain old generalization? When someone says "Straight white men still hold the majority of political, economic and social power in the world" they are excluding the vast majority of straight white men. I'm straight, I'm white and I just have a job, like most of us. My boss is a woman. Why shouldn't women (and people in general) worry about hurting my feelings just because there are other straight white men with a lot of money and power? That's just dumb.

igorkraw 7y ago
>I'm straight, I'm white and I just have a job, like most of us. My boss is a woman. Why shouldn't women (and people in general) worry about hurting my feelings just because there are other straight white men with a lot of money and power? That's just dumb. Which is why no serious feminist (or gender-egalitarian or menslibber or whatever) should excuse women being bitches. But it doesn't change the fact that >(...) When someone says "Straight white men still hold the majority of political, economic and social power in the world" they are excluding the vast majority of straight white men. they are still, well,correct. It'd be more precise to say "rich straight white...", but the sentiment is true. The "main issue" probably isn't singular, but my take is that a) the dissolution of "soft" power structures (men over women, social view of whites over blacks, straight over LGBTQ+...) will take time to be culturally processed b)activists need to embrace and push the difference between "problematic" and "bad", and push the idea that "good people" can and should be criticized for bad stuff they do, without immediately crucifying them - and the rest of the world will need to learn and embrace that difference, and also learn how to actually listen to people who might be oppressed, the difference between being publicly criticized and "having their life ruined" (there is much more to this, but this would get too long) c) hard structures (job expectations, economic incentives) need to be changed to accommodate the (assumed as desired) new social structures. E.g. the "google memo" guy had a very good point which was very positively received in the (german) feminist circles I hung out in online at the time, namely that maybe we need to enforce "work life balance" in the fields where women are underrepresented, because if the job expectation is to forego a family life, that makes it drastically more likely for women to nope out than men.

mettamage 7y ago

Personal data point: I imagined vividly to be socially excluded at points in my life since that would be my plan B (great plan, I know, I gamble a bit with my life from time to time as I don’t see a better option). And I did notice a few things: - I have nothing to lose anymore - I suddenly have a lot of free time to devote my energy to - My mental state is slightly unstable - I am in a shitty mood I am not religious and do not know much about extreme views (I only know a bit about Buddhism) but I can imagine that extremist religious or ideological views would hyper charge the 4 things I talked about. On another note, if this study would state that these people would become workaholics then I would also believe that. I feel it is the opposite side of the same coin.

gonzo41 7y ago
You are totally right about the workaholics. I have energy, destructive or constructive. My environment chooses which way that energy flows. I'm lucky I have a 100 year old house that steals all my time with needing to be fixed otherwise I'd be finding trouble on the weekends. I think a lot of men exist lacking hard physical and mentally demanding work, like working in a factory or on a farm, that can act as an outlet and as a thing to be proud of.
- johnchristopher 7y ago
  While I agree I want to add, for the sake of the conversation only, that it somehow paints a picture of men as beasts to be tamed (by work, by enrolling, etc.).
  - SmellyGeekBoy 7y ago
    Humans are animals after all, no matter how highly we think of ourselves.
    - mettamage 7y ago
      We are indeed. But I'd argue that some animals are more civilized than you think. Primal behavior is simply partially out of ignorance (that's how it seems to me). Humans are relatively unique in: 1. Language 2. Tool use (thanks to being land-dwellers, two legged, and having opposable thumbs) 3. Having a prefrontal cortex that allows us to inhibit any other instinct we have Other animals have this as well to some degree or another, even all 3 of them. These 3 things combined allow us to sometimes escape our primal nature. But I wonder whether we're alone in that: how about dolphins, elephants and other animals of that sort?

redder2 7y ago

Wow who would have thought, someone give this guys the Nobel price or something. Really groundbreaking, we would not have guessed this in a 1000 years.

buboard 7y ago

Take any fMRI study with a bucket of salt. Especially when the press release generalizes from "frontal cortex imaging of a ball game" to "extremism in young men", with p values near the significance limit. That said, it's an interesting topic for wider discussion.

baud147258 7y ago

I'm pretty sure that social exclusion fuels extremism across all sex and age groups

buboard 7y ago
that's probably closer to the truth, and society is structured to exclude men more often.

Millennium 7y ago

This is true as far as it goes, and yet, there are people in this world who will not grow up and function except in the face of overwhelming social pressure. They will not be taught, nor learn on their own -they must be broken- and if they are not, well, this kind of thing is what happens. The answer isn't to stop excluding them, but to strip away the new enablers.

jstewartmobile 7y ago

https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2018.02462/full https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2018.0246... "Extremism" is a value-judgement, not a pathology. Abolitionists were also called "extremists". This is psychology in service of staziism--using questionnaires and fMRI to identify serfs with higher wrongthought potential--rather than diagnosing and treating illness.

luord 7y ago

Not precisely rigorous, but the finding doesn't seem that shocking: ostracize people and they become resentful (so the conventional wisdom goes).

keiferski 7y ago

It continues to amaze me that narrow scientific studies are used to make extremely broad statements that apply to literally hundreds of millions of people [1]. This study was conducted on 500 people of a very specific background in a very specific city and country. Drawing any sort of universal conclusion from that is highly unlikely. This clickbait style of interpreting scientific studies only contributes to the already decreasing public trust in the scientific method. 1. According to this link, there are 600 hundred million men between the age of 15 and 24. https://www.indexmundi.com/world/demographics_profile.html https://www.indexmundi.com/world/demographics_profile.html

chapium 7y ago
The news site is the one making broad claims. The research paper notes that there is a correlation which also supports previous research on the topic.

patientplatypus 7y ago

Just as a side note it's always made me extremely sad when we demonize the shooters and terrorists. Of course what they did is terrible. But we should have sympathy with them because they are sick. Love is cheap if it only matters on Hallmark cards and corporate holidays.

JoeAltmaier 7y ago
I think the meme that 'all murderers are sick' has been thoroughly debunked? Real ordinary people can decide to do horrific things if they get in the wrong state of mind.
- sdinsn 7y ago
  I think the difference is that mass murderers kill people just to kill people. While other 'traditional' murderers kill for more material reasons (money, drugs, etc.)
  - CompanionCuuube 7y ago
    "Traditional" murders were are not necessarily for material reasons. "Introduction: Theory of the Culture of Honor is one of the few models in criminology specifically geared toward homicide. It proposes that, in certain societies, men must never show weakness and are required to react violently to any perceived threats to their reputation, thereby increasing their probability of committing a homicide. This has been suggested as the main explanation for the high rates of this type of crime in Brazil, particularly in the Northeast. Underlying this explanation there are complex mechanisms and processes that have yet to be clarified." https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5672109/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5672109/
    - sdinsn 7y ago
      Of course there is a cultural aspect, but Brazil is seriously impacted by organized crime syndicates which operate for money

druvisc 7y ago

Just like unfulfilled gorillas. "Determined to get some attention from the others, Antwary bites into an unedible plant." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YvxDZGMc-Fs&feature=youtu.be&t=1537 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YvxDZGMc-Fs&feature=youtu.be...

EGreg 7y ago

Reminds me of this: https://psy.fsu.edu/~baumeisterticelab/goodaboutmen.htm https://psy.fsu.edu/~baumeisterticelab/goodaboutmen.htm Women have reactions to social exclusion too, but different ones

grabarz 7y ago

I'm curious if there is a correlation between online dating apps popularity and rise of extremism. Any studies?

OnlyRepliesToBS 7y ago

count how many 'you', 'them', 'i', and how many pronouns are being presented to each individual, group by source

lunias 7y ago

Seems pretty intuitive to me. If you can't join them, beat them.

chansiky 7y ago

If you are struggling with social exclusion, and for no good reason, there is a manipulator in the ranks and for whatever reason the people in the group have no capacity to think for themselves. There are billions of people on this earth, many of whom have developed brains. Make your friends with those people, not the ones without the ability to formulate their own opinion.