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One of the most disappointing things that I have learned is that most people hold opinions in order to be part of some group. If someone is a member of a group,

One of the most disappointing things that I have learned is that most people hold opinions in order to be part of some group. If someone is a member of a group, it is almost not worth listening to their arguments, especially arguments in support of views held strongly by that group. They are arguing in order to maintain their group membership, not to find the truth. It appears this is true of academic and scientific disciplines as much as anywhere else.

agumonkey 4y ago
Yes. And if someone knows books or discussions about this topic I want the names. Its such a strong force in social structures. Stating your truth is rarely possible, you better sing along and talk down in smaller sub groups later.
- christophilus 4y ago
  Read anything Charlie Munger writes on the topic. He said something to the effect of “A year in which you fail to kill at least one of your cherished ideas is probably a failed year.” Anyway, he has a lot to say on the subject and on incentives and human psychology broadly.
  - AstralStorm 4y ago
    Nice platitude, but sometimes cherished ideas are actually true. A better way to phrase it would be a year when you don't challenge your idea is probably a failed year. It might still win the challenge.
    - bombcar 4y ago
      I think the idea is you have many cherished ideas, and so many are actually false that you shouldn't have much difficulty killing one. Or, another way of looking at it, your knowledge of so many areas is superficial and a deep dive into any one would let you know how you weren't even wrong, as the saying goes. You can find people doing it in any HN thread about almost anything - often shows up as "why didn't they just do X". A non-domain expert with a "obvious solution" is almost always missing something major.
  - agumonkey 4y ago
    stuff like psychology of misjudgement ?
- seneca 4y ago
  This is a large chunk of "The Elephant in the Brain", though it's present as an example of the wider thesis. The overall topic of the book is that people basically always lie about their motivations, including to themselves. I highly recommend reading it.
- ler0ix 4y ago
  https://youtu.be/QWkWeZOQZI8 https://youtu.be/QWkWeZOQZI8 Jordan Peterson’s zebra story
  - agumonkey 4y ago
    I think peterson is crazy but some of this story was fun
    - ler0ix 4y ago
      I’m curious why you think he’s crazy.
- robswc 4y ago
  Not really books but did some undergrad research on the topic. http://stephendavies.org/writings/mitterederEtAl.pdf http://stephendavies.org/writings/mitterederEtAl.pdf We referred to it as "issue alignment" but its gone by other things, IIRC. Basically, in theory, one could end up supporting positions that would make 0 sense outside the context of "well, I support "X" cause "team green" supports "X." I've seen it happen often online, a lot less IRL.
- gmnash 4y ago
  https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/02/27/why-facts-dont-change-our-minds https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/02/27/why-facts-dont... Three mentioned in the article: * Enigma of Reason * The Knowledge Illusion * Denying to the Grave
- suoduandao2 4y ago
  Everything handwaving freakoutery (it's a blog) publishes on egregores I found highly relevant and entertaining. Actually, everything contemporary mentioning egregores is probably relevant - they're also called 'AI autocults', but the concept existed long before group communication became enmeshed with computer infrastructure - though the dynamics are different now than in enlightenment-era Europe, and the pre-Newtonian assumptions of the older publications throws most modern readers off.
romeros 4y ago
I think it is the other way around. When people are part of a group the view of the group becomes their own. Most of the thoughts that you think aren't really your own. It is simply a script written by the society around you. For example: Someone born and brought up in the West would think that children don't owe anything to their parents because it was their parent's choice to have them. While someone born and brought up in the East would think that they owe everything to their parents because they gave them the gift of life and because of all the sacrifices they made for their kids. You can't convince someone in the West to think anything otherwise than that stated above. They are utterly convinced that that is is truth and likewise the reverse for someone born and brought up in the East.
- sillyoldfart 4y ago
- ch4s3 4y ago
  > You can't convince someone in the West to think anything otherwise than that stated above. That isn’t at all a uniform view in the West. I grew in a community where people expressed a great deal of what might be called filial piety. Not everyone held or maintained that belief though.
- themitigating 4y ago
  But not everyone holds that view based on where they live. So how do you those are the prevalent views?
- rfrey 4y ago
  That was kind of a ... weird example. I don't think I've asked many people in my circle if they think they "owe" anything to their parents, but by their actions I'd say 90% of them do think they owe a lot to them, and have a profound duty to care for them as they age. I live in Canada, but I can't imagine it's that much different in the US.
themitigating 4y ago
Why did you point out academics and scientific disciplines specifically even though you said it happens everywhere?
- labster 4y ago
  Read the article.
anonporridge 4y ago
"People don't have ideas. Ideas have people." https://wearehostsformemes.com/ https://wearehostsformemes.com/
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
scifibestfi 4y ago
In fact that's how many get into the elite group and jockey for position within it. "Think about what it takes to claw your way into America’s elite strata. Unless you were born into the upper-middle class, your surest route is to pursue an elite education. To do that, it pays to be exquisitely sensitive to the beliefs and prejudices of the people who hold the power to grant you access to the social and cultural capital you badly want. By setting the standards for what counts as praiseworthy, elite universities have a powerful effect on youthful go-getters." "As the senior assistant director of admissions at Yale recently observed, “for those students who come to Yale, we expect them to be versed in issues of social justice. We encourage them to be vocal when they see an opportunity for change in our institution and in the world.” Picture yourself as an eager high schooler reading these words, and then jotting down notes. You absorb, assuming you hadn’t already, what it takes to make your way in contemporary elite America. And as you grow older, you lean into the rhetorical gambits that served you so well in the past. You might even build a worldview out of them." https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2018/08/the-utility-of-white-bashing/566846/ https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2018/08/the-utilit...
- markdown 4y ago
  > for those students who come to Yale, we expect them to be versed in issues of social justice. We encourage them to be vocal when they see an opportunity for change in our institution and in the world. Would you want anything less in an academic institution? That's the entire point of places of higher learning.
  - BuyMyBitcoins 4y ago
    I consider this meaningless fluff, or at the very least trite marketing. It reminds me of management that claims to welcome criticism with open arms and then proceeds to pay lip service to concerns while changing nothing.
  - ekianjo 4y ago
    Social justice is not an innocent word. It is charged with a political agenda.
lapcat 4y ago
> If someone is a member of a group, it is almost not worth listening to their arguments, especially arguments in support of views held strongly by that group. Who isn't a member of a group? We're all members of a number of groups. It's refreshing that Kahneman honestly admits that he doesn't change his mind either, and his tastes were formed when he was relatively young. He's not putting himself above the rest of humanity. He could easily say, "Well I'm a famous and distinguished scientist, so obviously my beliefs are rational, unlike everyone else", but he doesn't.
- ekianjo 4y ago
  > who isn't a member of a group? We're all members of a number of groups. Not everyone is brainwashed to accept group think no matter in what cirles they have to evolve in. There are individuals and then there are the parrots who mindlessly repeat what the group says.
  - nelsondev 4y ago
    https://xkcd.com/610/ https://xkcd.com/610/
    - ekianjo 4y ago
      nice strawman that has nothing to do with the point being made
  - drekk 4y ago
    Being aware of cognitive biases doesn't render you immune to them. Others shape and inform our beliefs about the world just as our own experiences do. You might be a "rational, fully self-realized, and atomized" individual but your behaviors and thoughts are certainly influenced by those around you. Here's a simple example: https://dictionary.apa.org/social-facilitation https://dictionary.apa.org/social-facilitation
- didericis 4y ago
  The issue isn't group membership. It's what's being prioritized. If you prioritize truth over group membership, you are more likely to see your own flaws, the flaws in others, and prevent yourself from making catastrophic errors in your inevitable ignorance. If you prioritize group membership over truth, you are more likely to fall prey to lies that have only short term benefits for one or more members of the group and eventually lead to catastrophic errors. The best groups are the groups of people who are legitimately pursuing the truth, even if they are temporarily ignorant, which again, is inevitable due to information constraints. We've become so saturated with power dynamical thinking we've forgotten that it is possible to be motivated to try to see the world accurately so as to best cooperate with it regardless of power differentials.
irjustin 4y ago
I agree with this. Many tend to think this is isolated to religious groups but it's just as bad in groups that present as "woke" or "enlightened". There's a survival instinct that we can't get away from. That being in groups is innate to the core of our being and to go against the group or even change a group's mind requires potentially breaking that bond and losing the safety that the group represents.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
airtonix 4y ago
- denkmoon 4y ago
  Care to elaborate at all?
- dang 4y ago
  We've banned this account for breaking the site guidelines and ignoring our request to stop. If you don't want to be banned, you're welcome to email hn@ycombinator.com and give us reason to believe that you'll follow the rules in the future. They're here: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.
Cd00d 4y ago
The most important thing I learned from my graduate advisor: anyone can have a worthwhile idea. I watched him for years coming into weekly colloquia and seeming to tune out reading papers. But, occasionally there would be a speaker that was less than credible, and you could feel the entire hall close off. But, my advisor would hear a tidbit of a good idea (even amongst loads of bunk), and look up from his journals and ask a genuinely curious clarifying question. This would often lead to new lines of research in our labs. In the end, many of these speakers were on the wrong overall track, but they definitely had insights that were incredibly valuable. Those who dismissed them entirely missed out, while my advisor had a knack for finding the signal in the noise and moving forward with that without missing it due to judgement.
- jiggawatts 4y ago
  My hobby is to look for a physics theory of everything (ToE). I have virtually no chance at succeeding at this, but it's fun reading through random junk on ArXiV. I noticed something similar: You can find papers by clearly crazy people that have nuggets of good ideas in them. Odd bits of mathematics they reference might be an interesting rabbithole to go down, even if it ultimately leads nowhere. The whole thing reminds me of the passtime of the hyper-intelligent Minds in the Culture series. They play in Infinite Fun Space, which is vaguely like coming up with new rules of physics and "seeing what happens". The rules don't have to be realistic, just fun. I've found that practising physicists seem allergic to any such notion, too quick to dismiss unorthodox approaches. So what if they're wrong? They're fun, and maybe not that wrong in some rare cases.
  - agumonkey 4y ago
    I somehow converged around a similar idea, fun and exploration
  - sitkack 4y ago
    If you want a good idea killed, have it presented by the wrong person. We attach an outsized amount of meaning between the two, sometimes so much that we kill the person delivering it.
waynesonfire 4y ago
why don't you find people who are in a group that don't subscribe to this approach?
- bombcar 4y ago
  Because it's too hard to work everything out all the time, it is much easier to rely on others, which causes the group dynamic. The best you can do may be to find a group that is based on something entirely outside everything else, but that's quite hard to locate.
kornhole 4y ago
What do you think of the wisdom of the great Groucho Marx: I wouldn't be a member of any group that would have me as a member.
- ouid 4y ago
  i thought that was bertrand russell...
leaflets2 4y ago
There's a book called How to Win Friends and Influence People -- pay attention to the order :-) first become a group member, in the eyes of the other person, and then there's a chance he/she will be open to something new > almost not worth listening to their arguments At the same time, their arguments are likely the-least-dumb / most-intelligent things they've been able to come up with, to rationalize their group's ideas -- so at least you have a chance to get to know what those least-dumb-things are
- jasonzemos 4y ago
  You make it sound so simple. Becoming a group member in this context means corrupting oneself. You are what you do. You are the last action you take. If you deceive the other externally while holding different positions internally, you are those external positions, and the internal is the deception. Those that lie to themselves this way have nothing to offer the group and will certainly never "make a change from the inside."
  - leaflets2 4y ago
    More books for you :-) Never Split the Difference. And Nonviolent Communication. Because just listening to others, and showing that you care about and understand what they're saying, can go a long way. Not always a need to actually do anything in the real world (or to say or pretend that you agree). Maybe theoretically this won't place you in their old group, still, you'll a bit form a new group where you and that other person are friends
    - AstralStorm 4y ago
      Or you become a traitor to everyone and are rewarded as one deserves. These tactics are just that, they are not strategies. They are not long term successful or sustainable.
      - leaflets2 4y ago
        The things on your mind are misunderstandings. Not sure exactly what you think, but what you wrote made no sense to me. It seems you haven't read any of the books. I did use the listening technique in Never Split... and it worked well, and long term good effects too for everyone. -- When listening to the other person, one gets a bit more open oneself -- sometimes the other person does have (partly) good ideas (although not in that case) and it's simpler to find something that works.
WalterBright 4y ago
Join us, the non-conformists!
- hef19898 4y ago
  "You are all individuals" "We are all individuals" "I am not!"
safety1st 4y ago
There's some truth to this but it's a pessimistic and ultimately counterproductive take on people. Rather I would say that high agreeableness (and maybe to some degree conscientiousness or extroversion) [1] is correlated with the likelihood that someone will change their opinions in order to conform with a group. So if you don't like that personality trait, you can seek out less agreeable people, there are plenty of them out there. The only trouble will be that if you need to collaborate with them, you may have a hard time getting anything done! There is survivor bias among groups - if a bunch of people all have different opinions and aren't willing to modify them, they're unlikely to remain a group for long. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Five_personality_traits https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Five_personality_traits
- bombcar 4y ago
  > There is survivor bias among groups - if a bunch of people all have different opinions and aren't willing to modify them, they're unlikely to remain a group for long. I suspect this is why over time all members of a political party become near carbon-copies of each other. Even if the party started "big tent" over a single issue, natural forces will cause it to coalesce into "same thought on all issues". One solution for the individual is to forcefully prevent yourself from associating with the group, but this often requires drastic action and gets you shunned by all groups. Compare the vitriol against someone who "votes wrong" vs "votes third party" vs "refuses to vote at all".
still_grokking 4y ago
> It appears this is true of academic and scientific disciplines as much as anywhere else. Sure, of course! That's why "A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it." And we can be happy with at least that! In anything outside science there is no progress at all. Humans in general behave exactly the same since thousands of years. You could read some thousands of years old drama and the story will be very familiar. Lust, greed and power struggles, and the other typical human traits. We did not manage to solve even one none technical problem since we came down the trees. But that's nothing unexpected actually given we're a horde of apes. I'm old enough to know that nothing will ever change as we had already more than enough time to easily mange at least some "humanity scale" issues by now. But we as a species are seemingly bound to our ape nature. The few statistical outliers here and there could not and can not change the course of events. They never had any realistic chance. Because they're outnumbered by the billions. That's just how it is. Eugenics would be a small chance. Or we'll become some day the "wet bootloader" of some truly intelligent beings. But both is not very likely. Or, of course, we just kill our species eventually by some stupid mistake, or just out of rage; which is frankly the most likely outcome in the long run given human nature and its current technological possibilities. There are no other realistic outcomes one could come up. Apes will stay apes. Likely to their very end. Time already proved that we just can't do better. Now, anybody who likes to argue that I'm too pessimistic needs to explain away why there wasn't any substantial progress up until now (besides tech, which is something almost exclusively driven by singular people). I say it's all about human nature, psychological phenomena and that. Which is something coded by our common gene pool. And that's something that just can't change on any time scale that is meaningful to humanity as it is. (Besides doing this through tech, which isn't a realistic option at all given said human nature. My guess here would be that it's more likely that we'll go "the Borg path" than that we would try to re-engineer our-selfs to become a more generally friendly and intelligent species). Like said, it's imho already proved by time that we don't want maximize joy for everybody. Quite the contrary actually! We seek ever since only more efficient ways to extinguish our enemies. That's the one constant in human history. Actually, even most of our technological breakthroughs are direct results of this pursuit. Go figure… Hmm, now I have the opening scene of "2001: A Space Odyssey" on my head. Not sure why.
mistermann 4y ago
> If someone is a member of a group, it is almost not worth listening to their arguments, especially arguments in support of views held strongly by that group. They are arguing in order to maintain their group membership, not to find the truth. It appears this is true of academic and scientific disciplines as much as anywhere else. I tend to agree with you, but based on the way you have worded this, I am curious if you think that people have conscious awareness (which is required to form intent) of this? And as a follow-up: if this phenomenon is sub perceptual, might that change how one might go about addressing it, or even discussing it (it is a fairly common point raised in these sorts of discussions)?
- bigmatto 4y ago
  I think there can be different things going on under the hood. Some people will be self aware, and not take arguments or positions too seriously - their own or others - they know they hold the points of view for group membership - they tend to not to like to debate them, aware of the futility. More common though is ego-defense/group-defense reaction. This is the zealot. Both a person's ego (you're wrong) and their group (your group is wrong) is on the line. This is in addition to losing their membership of a group if they adopt a different position.
  - mistermann 4y ago
    Ya, it's a big chaotic mess, but I wonder if we humans are somewhat prone to letting the apparent complexity of it (the actual complexity isn't actually known) scare us away from trying to make sense of it all. Look how much complexity about the physical world that science has come to understand, because we applied some of the sharpest minds we have to the problem, and funded them well. If we don't even try (including if the idea doesn't even cross our minds), we may never succeed.

agumonkey 4y ago

Yes. And if someone knows books or discussions about this topic I want the names. Its such a strong force in social structures. Stating your truth is rarely possible, you better sing along and talk down in smaller sub groups later.

christophilus 4y ago
Read anything Charlie Munger writes on the topic. He said something to the effect of “A year in which you fail to kill at least one of your cherished ideas is probably a failed year.” Anyway, he has a lot to say on the subject and on incentives and human psychology broadly.
- AstralStorm 4y ago
  Nice platitude, but sometimes cherished ideas are actually true. A better way to phrase it would be a year when you don't challenge your idea is probably a failed year. It might still win the challenge.
  - bombcar 4y ago
    I think the idea is you have many cherished ideas, and so many are actually false that you shouldn't have much difficulty killing one. Or, another way of looking at it, your knowledge of so many areas is superficial and a deep dive into any one would let you know how you weren't even wrong, as the saying goes. You can find people doing it in any HN thread about almost anything - often shows up as "why didn't they just do X". A non-domain expert with a "obvious solution" is almost always missing something major.
- agumonkey 4y ago
  stuff like psychology of misjudgement ?
seneca 4y ago
This is a large chunk of "The Elephant in the Brain", though it's present as an example of the wider thesis. The overall topic of the book is that people basically always lie about their motivations, including to themselves. I highly recommend reading it.
ler0ix 4y ago
https://youtu.be/QWkWeZOQZI8 https://youtu.be/QWkWeZOQZI8 Jordan Peterson’s zebra story
- agumonkey 4y ago
  I think peterson is crazy but some of this story was fun
  - ler0ix 4y ago
    I’m curious why you think he’s crazy.
robswc 4y ago
Not really books but did some undergrad research on the topic. http://stephendavies.org/writings/mitterederEtAl.pdf http://stephendavies.org/writings/mitterederEtAl.pdf We referred to it as "issue alignment" but its gone by other things, IIRC. Basically, in theory, one could end up supporting positions that would make 0 sense outside the context of "well, I support "X" cause "team green" supports "X." I've seen it happen often online, a lot less IRL.
gmnash 4y ago
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/02/27/why-facts-dont-change-our-minds https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/02/27/why-facts-dont... Three mentioned in the article: * Enigma of Reason * The Knowledge Illusion * Denying to the Grave
suoduandao2 4y ago
Everything handwaving freakoutery (it's a blog) publishes on egregores I found highly relevant and entertaining. Actually, everything contemporary mentioning egregores is probably relevant - they're also called 'AI autocults', but the concept existed long before group communication became enmeshed with computer infrastructure - though the dynamics are different now than in enlightenment-era Europe, and the pre-Newtonian assumptions of the older publications throws most modern readers off.

romeros 4y ago

I think it is the other way around. When people are part of a group the view of the group becomes their own. Most of the thoughts that you think aren't really your own. It is simply a script written by the society around you. For example: Someone born and brought up in the West would think that children don't owe anything to their parents because it was their parent's choice to have them. While someone born and brought up in the East would think that they owe everything to their parents because they gave them the gift of life and because of all the sacrifices they made for their kids. You can't convince someone in the West to think anything otherwise than that stated above. They are utterly convinced that that is is truth and likewise the reverse for someone born and brought up in the East.

sillyoldfart 4y ago
ch4s3 4y ago
> You can't convince someone in the West to think anything otherwise than that stated above. That isn’t at all a uniform view in the West. I grew in a community where people expressed a great deal of what might be called filial piety. Not everyone held or maintained that belief though.
themitigating 4y ago
But not everyone holds that view based on where they live. So how do you those are the prevalent views?
rfrey 4y ago
That was kind of a ... weird example. I don't think I've asked many people in my circle if they think they "owe" anything to their parents, but by their actions I'd say 90% of them do think they owe a lot to them, and have a profound duty to care for them as they age. I live in Canada, but I can't imagine it's that much different in the US.

themitigating 4y ago

Why did you point out academics and scientific disciplines specifically even though you said it happens everywhere?

labster 4y ago
Read the article.

anonporridge 4y ago

"People don't have ideas. Ideas have people." https://wearehostsformemes.com/ https://wearehostsformemes.com/

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

scifibestfi 4y ago

In fact that's how many get into the elite group and jockey for position within it. "Think about what it takes to claw your way into America’s elite strata. Unless you were born into the upper-middle class, your surest route is to pursue an elite education. To do that, it pays to be exquisitely sensitive to the beliefs and prejudices of the people who hold the power to grant you access to the social and cultural capital you badly want. By setting the standards for what counts as praiseworthy, elite universities have a powerful effect on youthful go-getters." "As the senior assistant director of admissions at Yale recently observed, “for those students who come to Yale, we expect them to be versed in issues of social justice. We encourage them to be vocal when they see an opportunity for change in our institution and in the world.” Picture yourself as an eager high schooler reading these words, and then jotting down notes. You absorb, assuming you hadn’t already, what it takes to make your way in contemporary elite America. And as you grow older, you lean into the rhetorical gambits that served you so well in the past. You might even build a worldview out of them." https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2018/08/the-utility-of-white-bashing/566846/ https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2018/08/the-utilit...

markdown 4y ago
> for those students who come to Yale, we expect them to be versed in issues of social justice. We encourage them to be vocal when they see an opportunity for change in our institution and in the world. Would you want anything less in an academic institution? That's the entire point of places of higher learning.
- BuyMyBitcoins 4y ago
  I consider this meaningless fluff, or at the very least trite marketing. It reminds me of management that claims to welcome criticism with open arms and then proceeds to pay lip service to concerns while changing nothing.
- ekianjo 4y ago
  Social justice is not an innocent word. It is charged with a political agenda.

lapcat 4y ago

> If someone is a member of a group, it is almost not worth listening to their arguments, especially arguments in support of views held strongly by that group. Who isn't a member of a group? We're all members of a number of groups. It's refreshing that Kahneman honestly admits that he doesn't change his mind either, and his tastes were formed when he was relatively young. He's not putting himself above the rest of humanity. He could easily say, "Well I'm a famous and distinguished scientist, so obviously my beliefs are rational, unlike everyone else", but he doesn't.

ekianjo 4y ago
> who isn't a member of a group? We're all members of a number of groups. Not everyone is brainwashed to accept group think no matter in what cirles they have to evolve in. There are individuals and then there are the parrots who mindlessly repeat what the group says.
- nelsondev 4y ago
  https://xkcd.com/610/ https://xkcd.com/610/
  - ekianjo 4y ago
    nice strawman that has nothing to do with the point being made
- drekk 4y ago
  Being aware of cognitive biases doesn't render you immune to them. Others shape and inform our beliefs about the world just as our own experiences do. You might be a "rational, fully self-realized, and atomized" individual but your behaviors and thoughts are certainly influenced by those around you. Here's a simple example: https://dictionary.apa.org/social-facilitation https://dictionary.apa.org/social-facilitation
didericis 4y ago
The issue isn't group membership. It's what's being prioritized. If you prioritize truth over group membership, you are more likely to see your own flaws, the flaws in others, and prevent yourself from making catastrophic errors in your inevitable ignorance. If you prioritize group membership over truth, you are more likely to fall prey to lies that have only short term benefits for one or more members of the group and eventually lead to catastrophic errors. The best groups are the groups of people who are legitimately pursuing the truth, even if they are temporarily ignorant, which again, is inevitable due to information constraints. We've become so saturated with power dynamical thinking we've forgotten that it is possible to be motivated to try to see the world accurately so as to best cooperate with it regardless of power differentials.

irjustin 4y ago

I agree with this. Many tend to think this is isolated to religious groups but it's just as bad in groups that present as "woke" or "enlightened". There's a survival instinct that we can't get away from. That being in groups is innate to the core of our being and to go against the group or even change a group's mind requires potentially breaking that bond and losing the safety that the group represents.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

airtonix 4y ago

denkmoon 4y ago
Care to elaborate at all?
dang 4y ago
We've banned this account for breaking the site guidelines and ignoring our request to stop. If you don't want to be banned, you're welcome to email hn@ycombinator.com and give us reason to believe that you'll follow the rules in the future. They're here: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.

Cd00d 4y ago

The most important thing I learned from my graduate advisor: anyone can have a worthwhile idea. I watched him for years coming into weekly colloquia and seeming to tune out reading papers. But, occasionally there would be a speaker that was less than credible, and you could feel the entire hall close off. But, my advisor would hear a tidbit of a good idea (even amongst loads of bunk), and look up from his journals and ask a genuinely curious clarifying question. This would often lead to new lines of research in our labs. In the end, many of these speakers were on the wrong overall track, but they definitely had insights that were incredibly valuable. Those who dismissed them entirely missed out, while my advisor had a knack for finding the signal in the noise and moving forward with that without missing it due to judgement.

jiggawatts 4y ago
My hobby is to look for a physics theory of everything (ToE). I have virtually no chance at succeeding at this, but it's fun reading through random junk on ArXiV. I noticed something similar: You can find papers by clearly crazy people that have nuggets of good ideas in them. Odd bits of mathematics they reference might be an interesting rabbithole to go down, even if it ultimately leads nowhere. The whole thing reminds me of the passtime of the hyper-intelligent Minds in the Culture series. They play in Infinite Fun Space, which is vaguely like coming up with new rules of physics and "seeing what happens". The rules don't have to be realistic, just fun. I've found that practising physicists seem allergic to any such notion, too quick to dismiss unorthodox approaches. So what if they're wrong? They're fun, and maybe not that wrong in some rare cases.
- agumonkey 4y ago
  I somehow converged around a similar idea, fun and exploration
- sitkack 4y ago
  If you want a good idea killed, have it presented by the wrong person. We attach an outsized amount of meaning between the two, sometimes so much that we kill the person delivering it.

waynesonfire 4y ago

why don't you find people who are in a group that don't subscribe to this approach?

bombcar 4y ago
Because it's too hard to work everything out all the time, it is much easier to rely on others, which causes the group dynamic. The best you can do may be to find a group that is based on something entirely outside everything else, but that's quite hard to locate.

kornhole 4y ago

What do you think of the wisdom of the great Groucho Marx: I wouldn't be a member of any group that would have me as a member.

ouid 4y ago
i thought that was bertrand russell...

leaflets2 4y ago

There's a book called How to Win Friends and Influence People -- pay attention to the order :-) first become a group member, in the eyes of the other person, and then there's a chance he/she will be open to something new > almost not worth listening to their arguments At the same time, their arguments are likely the-least-dumb / most-intelligent things they've been able to come up with, to rationalize their group's ideas -- so at least you have a chance to get to know what those least-dumb-things are

jasonzemos 4y ago
You make it sound so simple. Becoming a group member in this context means corrupting oneself. You are what you do. You are the last action you take. If you deceive the other externally while holding different positions internally, you are those external positions, and the internal is the deception. Those that lie to themselves this way have nothing to offer the group and will certainly never "make a change from the inside."
- leaflets2 4y ago
  More books for you :-) Never Split the Difference. And Nonviolent Communication. Because just listening to others, and showing that you care about and understand what they're saying, can go a long way. Not always a need to actually do anything in the real world (or to say or pretend that you agree). Maybe theoretically this won't place you in their old group, still, you'll a bit form a new group where you and that other person are friends
  - AstralStorm 4y ago
    Or you become a traitor to everyone and are rewarded as one deserves. These tactics are just that, they are not strategies. They are not long term successful or sustainable.
    - leaflets2 4y ago
      The things on your mind are misunderstandings. Not sure exactly what you think, but what you wrote made no sense to me. It seems you haven't read any of the books. I did use the listening technique in Never Split... and it worked well, and long term good effects too for everyone. -- When listening to the other person, one gets a bit more open oneself -- sometimes the other person does have (partly) good ideas (although not in that case) and it's simpler to find something that works.

WalterBright 4y ago

Join us, the non-conformists!

hef19898 4y ago
"You are all individuals" "We are all individuals" "I am not!"

safety1st 4y ago

There's some truth to this but it's a pessimistic and ultimately counterproductive take on people. Rather I would say that high agreeableness (and maybe to some degree conscientiousness or extroversion) [1] is correlated with the likelihood that someone will change their opinions in order to conform with a group. So if you don't like that personality trait, you can seek out less agreeable people, there are plenty of them out there. The only trouble will be that if you need to collaborate with them, you may have a hard time getting anything done! There is survivor bias among groups - if a bunch of people all have different opinions and aren't willing to modify them, they're unlikely to remain a group for long. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Five_personality_traits https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Five_personality_traits

bombcar 4y ago
> There is survivor bias among groups - if a bunch of people all have different opinions and aren't willing to modify them, they're unlikely to remain a group for long. I suspect this is why over time all members of a political party become near carbon-copies of each other. Even if the party started "big tent" over a single issue, natural forces will cause it to coalesce into "same thought on all issues". One solution for the individual is to forcefully prevent yourself from associating with the group, but this often requires drastic action and gets you shunned by all groups. Compare the vitriol against someone who "votes wrong" vs "votes third party" vs "refuses to vote at all".

still_grokking 4y ago

> It appears this is true of academic and scientific disciplines as much as anywhere else. Sure, of course! That's why "A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it." And we can be happy with at least that! In anything outside science there is no progress at all. Humans in general behave exactly the same since thousands of years. You could read some thousands of years old drama and the story will be very familiar. Lust, greed and power struggles, and the other typical human traits. We did not manage to solve even one none technical problem since we came down the trees. But that's nothing unexpected actually given we're a horde of apes. I'm old enough to know that nothing will ever change as we had already more than enough time to easily mange at least some "humanity scale" issues by now. But we as a species are seemingly bound to our ape nature. The few statistical outliers here and there could not and can not change the course of events. They never had any realistic chance. Because they're outnumbered by the billions. That's just how it is. Eugenics would be a small chance. Or we'll become some day the "wet bootloader" of some truly intelligent beings. But both is not very likely. Or, of course, we just kill our species eventually by some stupid mistake, or just out of rage; which is frankly the most likely outcome in the long run given human nature and its current technological possibilities. There are no other realistic outcomes one could come up. Apes will stay apes. Likely to their very end. Time already proved that we just can't do better. Now, anybody who likes to argue that I'm too pessimistic needs to explain away why there wasn't any substantial progress up until now (besides tech, which is something almost exclusively driven by singular people). I say it's all about human nature, psychological phenomena and that. Which is something coded by our common gene pool. And that's something that just can't change on any time scale that is meaningful to humanity as it is. (Besides doing this through tech, which isn't a realistic option at all given said human nature. My guess here would be that it's more likely that we'll go "the Borg path" than that we would try to re-engineer our-selfs to become a more generally friendly and intelligent species). Like said, it's imho already proved by time that we don't want maximize joy for everybody. Quite the contrary actually! We seek ever since only more efficient ways to extinguish our enemies. That's the one constant in human history. Actually, even most of our technological breakthroughs are direct results of this pursuit. Go figure… Hmm, now I have the opening scene of "2001: A Space Odyssey" on my head. Not sure why.

mistermann 4y ago

> If someone is a member of a group, it is almost not worth listening to their arguments, especially arguments in support of views held strongly by that group. They are arguing in order to maintain their group membership, not to find the truth. It appears this is true of academic and scientific disciplines as much as anywhere else. I tend to agree with you, but based on the way you have worded this, I am curious if you think that people have conscious awareness (which is required to form intent) of this? And as a follow-up: if this phenomenon is sub perceptual, might that change how one might go about addressing it, or even discussing it (it is a fairly common point raised in these sorts of discussions)?

bigmatto 4y ago
I think there can be different things going on under the hood. Some people will be self aware, and not take arguments or positions too seriously - their own or others - they know they hold the points of view for group membership - they tend to not to like to debate them, aware of the futility. More common though is ego-defense/group-defense reaction. This is the zealot. Both a person's ego (you're wrong) and their group (your group is wrong) is on the line. This is in addition to losing their membership of a group if they adopt a different position.
- mistermann 4y ago
  Ya, it's a big chaotic mess, but I wonder if we humans are somewhat prone to letting the apparent complexity of it (the actual complexity isn't actually known) scare us away from trying to make sense of it all. Look how much complexity about the physical world that science has come to understand, because we applied some of the sharpest minds we have to the problem, and funded them well. If we don't even try (including if the idea doesn't even cross our minds), we may never succeed.