8 ms·

When an entire population is far more homogeneous than most modern Western states, the heightened social trust and cohesion permits this kind of harmless fun (a

When an entire population is far more homogeneous than most modern Western states, the heightened social trust and cohesion permits this kind of harmless fun (among many other benefits). It's one of those sacrifices made to accommodate diversity which is almost impossible to quantify and existentially unsettling to even try.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
dbingham 4y ago
> the heightened social trust and cohesion permits this kind of harmless fun This needs a citation. It's the sort of "common sense" all too often advanced by people with - frankly - racist or ethnonational agendas.
- ipaddr 4y ago
  When everyone comes from the same background and/or culture there is a shared understanding. Mix two different cultures and you have less shared background mix in 100 and you have little. It's not a race issue when this is experienced in Africa/Japan/Sweden/Finland. Calling new idea to you racist is racist. Most of the times the word racist is used it is used incorrectly and often in a racist way.
  - dbingham 4y ago
    It's not a new idea to me. It's an idea I've encountered many times, often propping up arguments of various kinds against pluralistic societies - which is an argument implicit in the comment above. Those arguments lead directly to ideas around ethnonationalism and segregating societies by cultural background, which is a direct analog for ethnicity. There's a straight line between that argument - which again, almost always gets through around with out any kind of citations or research support - and ethnic cleansing. It's directly attached to racist ideas. Similar to social darwinism, it's something that seems like relatively harmless common sense on the surface, but leads to horrific implications when followed to its logical conclusion.
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
    - jlawson 4y ago
      Interesting. So you don't actually argue that it's untrue. You just argue that people shouldn't acknowledge it because doing so would lead to policies you think would be immoral. I'm just not sure that this anti-truth stance is tenable or really worth it. What if we can acknowledge the facts and then... handle them in a non-evil way? Or perhaps even use that knowledge to head off terrible outcomes that might otherwise happen? E.g. Lebanon-style ethnic civil wars. I generally think that knowing the truth is useful and equips you to do good things. You just need a non-childish moral system to integrate it (too easy to feel moral if you just wish away the hard facts of the universe).
      - dbingham 4y ago
        No, I argued that it's the sort of thing people assume is "common sense" when it is often very poorly supported. And my argument was that said assumption often comes from a bad place (when you examine it) and leads to a bad place.
- scarface74 4y ago
  I knew I read something somewhere and this is the closest I could find. But I think it’s related. So when I asked ChatGPT > Are countries with less racial diversity more likely to have a larger safety net” because my GoogleFu was failing me, of course it gave me a non controversial generic answer. But when I asked it for citations it gave me this > A 2018 study published in the journal Social Science Research, which found that countries with more ethnically diverse populations tend to have less generous welfare states. Which led me to this link https://academic.oup.com/esr/article/37/1/89/5934740 https://academic.oup.com/esr/article/37/1/89/5934740 > First, vignette experiments established a consistent and pervasive deservingness gap: welfare recipients belonging to the ethnic ingroup are more likely to be considered deserving of welfare support than the ethnic outgroup
  - dbingham 4y ago
    That's very circumstantial evidence that requires more examination. Is that a direct result of the diversity - or of the history that generated that diversity in the first place? In most countries that are ethnically diverse, that diversity was created through various forms of colonialism. Often with racial imperialism deeply ingrained in it. Which means those countries have long running strains of racist ideas and ideologies that forms the foundations of the ethnic "in group" and "out group". Which is not to say that ethnic strife doesn't exist in non-colonial countries as well, but that this line of thinking and examination is a) extremely complex, b) inextricable from the history of the systems under examination, c) inextricable from deep histories of racist thought - often imposed by colonnial or imperialist powers, and d) similar to social darwinism in that it is often presented as common sense, but leads to some very dark places when taken, unexamined, to its logical conclusion.
    - scarface74 4y ago
      That last paragraph sound like the same non committal answer I got from ChatGPT at first. That’s not meant to be a criticism, just a random aside. You do raise a fair point
      - 4y ago
- georgeburdell 4y ago
  Have you ever nodded your head in agreement at the assertion that the middle east/Africa/etc is so screwed up because the colonial powers drew arbitrary borders?
- jameslk 4y ago
  > This needs a citation. It's the sort of "common sense" all too often advanced by people with - frankly - racist or ethnonational agendas. Jumping straight to claiming someone has a racist or ethnonational agenda because they didn't provide a citation seems uncharitable. It comes off as a worse form of sealioning. I'm not sure if you're trying to do that intentionally but I mention it so you can understand the hostility it may create. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1467-9477.2007.00176.x https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1467-9477.2007... From Wikipedia on the study: Harvard professor of political science Robert D. Putnam conducted a nearly decade long study on how diversity affects social trust. He surveyed 26,200 people in 40 American communities, finding that when the data were adjusted for class, income and other factors, the more racially diverse a community is, the greater the loss of trust. People in diverse communities "don't trust the local mayor, they don't trust the local paper, they don't trust other people and they don't trust institutions," writes Putnam. That said, there can both be problems and benefits of something, and in his research on diversity this is considered: Putnam says, however, that "in the long run immigration and diversity are likely to have important cultural, economic, fiscal, and developmental benefits." He asserted that his "extensive research and experience confirm the substantial benefits of diversity, including racial and ethnic diversity, to our society."
tonmoy 4y ago
What source do you have to show there was higher social trust and cohesion at that time?
pjc50 4y ago
Struggling to work out when the nondiverse America ever existed, that Woz could have been in?
- JuniorBalleg 4y ago
  It's not binary. Mark Potok of the SPLC has a poster on his wall tracking the demographic decline of Whites in America. You don't need to look far - official population statistics, your kid's school, or your local Walmart - to see this massive, rapid demographic shift in action. You're welcome to argue the absence of causation.
- hindsightbias 4y ago
  Born & raised in: http://www.bayareacensus.ca.gov/cities/SanJose50.htm http://www.bayareacensus.ca.gov/cities/SanJose50.htm Even Atherton was more diverse back then. Lives in Los Gatos: https://censusreporter.org/profiles/16000US0644112-los-gatos-ca/ https://censusreporter.org/profiles/16000US0644112-los-gatos...
manimino 4y ago
People often refer to the Scandinavian countries or Japan as examples of low ethnic diversity and high trust. Are there any quantitative studies on this topic? It would be a stronger argument if a clear trend was observable over many countries.
- ramraj07 4y ago
  What’s the argument supposed to be? Homogeneity in service of peace? I’d rather live in a diverse hellhole than some whitewashed “utopia”.
  - butlerm 4y ago
    I think you are failing to distinguish between 'is' and 'ought' here.
- landemva 4y ago
  If I was searching for comparisons, I would look at Stockholm and suburbs in 1990s compared with present. I am told there are now areas where those born in .se and the police just avoid due to take-over by gangs of (some) recent immigrants.
- qwytw 4y ago
  > Scandinavian countries examples of low ethnic diversity That's no longer the case and hasn't really been for a decade or two at least. Especially in Sweden.
kfajdsl 4y ago
Maybe this struck a nerve because I'm an American born-and-raised PoC, but frankly I believe this is a bad opinion that is often pushed by racists (even if the idea itself isn't necessarily inherently racist). Heightened social trust in people of one's own ethnicity isn't a fact of life, it's just racism. It's what causes PoC to be profiled by law enforcement, on average have worse outcomes for the same crimes in the justice system, etc. I know that this isn't just the way humans are wired. I met so many people (including police) in my life that I would consider truly "colorblind" and treat everyone with respect, regardless of their ethnicity. Different shared cultural values (as opposed to just differing race) is also not as much of a problem as some make it out to be. First, most cultures of people that are immigrating to the US (I can't speak for Europe, I'm not very in the loop) have values largely compatible with Western ones. Second, most immigrants will at least somewhat assimilate into the culture of their host country, especially after a generation or two. Note, this doesn't mean throwing away their native culture. I'd also like to point out that Woz's America was definitely NOT homogenous.
- lupire 4y ago
  How many of those colorblind people (of the ones who are married), and married outside their race and/or religion?
  - kfajdsl 4y ago
    Several. If race isn't a factor for you selecting a partner, landing on someone with a different race is fairly common, especially considering I live in a diverse area.
- JuniorBalleg 4y ago
  >Heightened social trust in people of one's own ethnicity isn't a fact of life, it's just racism. It is a fact of life, it's natural and there's a clear evolutionary impetus for it. I would argue that this is how we are wired. Of course we feel more comfortable among our own. You are far more at ease if you walk into a room to be surrounded by people just like you, rather than strangers from the other side of the world with their alien appearances, behaviours, and even smells! Who knows how the reptilian subconscious analyses this information - are we at war? conquered? lost? isolated? kidnapped? In a more modern sense, we can more readily let out guard down among our own, knowing we share a common history, culture, humour, etc, while we must precariously navigate the invisible minefield of sensitivities in a more diverse group.
ilyt 4y ago
Clearly you haven't read or been in any post-soviet country, near perfect "ethnical cohesion", doesn't stop crime or increase trust in any way. Frankly that's arrogant and narrow-minded view; homogenous culture might cause less conflicts and problems when the culture itself is one promoting that in the first place
- shrimp_emoji 4y ago
  Hahaha. Great point. The U.S. is one of the higher-trust societies, socially, while also being extremely racially diverse. It sounds like pro-social culture and your people being rich probably matter more than race, and Eastern Europe has a critical deficit in both of those. :p
  - ilyt 4y ago
    Mostly thanks to "inheriting" it from russia in form of being post-soviet satellites... it took decades for most countries (and for other it is still in progress) to get from "you need bribe or connections to get anywhere in bureaucracy" for example.
- enedil 4y ago
  What do you mean? For instance, Poland escaped Soviet block, is almost unilaterally composed of Polish people, and yet look at the chart: https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php?title=Crime_statistics https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php... The countries with lowest crime numbers in EU per capita are (ordered by crime rate increasing): Slovakia, Hungary, Estonia, Cyprus, Slovenia, Czechia, Poland, Bulgaria, Croatia, Lithuania, Romania. All of them are socially pretty homogenous. Most of them escaped Soviet block. Some even escaped Soviet Union. On the other hand, look at the countries from the other side of chart (this time, rate decreasing): Belgium, Spain, Portugal, Sweden, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Germany. As this data concerns only EU, there is no UK here, but as I remember, it had around 3x crime rate as the Republic of Ireland, which would put it on the tops of the EU list. Of course, increased diversity might not be the only differentiator between the countries from the top of the list and those from the bottom, but I think it defeats your point (almost as if you were racist for having irrational fears against living in a post-soviet society, which aren't backed by numbers).

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

dbingham 4y ago

> the heightened social trust and cohesion permits this kind of harmless fun This needs a citation. It's the sort of "common sense" all too often advanced by people with - frankly - racist or ethnonational agendas.

ipaddr 4y ago
When everyone comes from the same background and/or culture there is a shared understanding. Mix two different cultures and you have less shared background mix in 100 and you have little. It's not a race issue when this is experienced in Africa/Japan/Sweden/Finland. Calling new idea to you racist is racist. Most of the times the word racist is used it is used incorrectly and often in a racist way.
- dbingham 4y ago
  It's not a new idea to me. It's an idea I've encountered many times, often propping up arguments of various kinds against pluralistic societies - which is an argument implicit in the comment above. Those arguments lead directly to ideas around ethnonationalism and segregating societies by cultural background, which is a direct analog for ethnicity. There's a straight line between that argument - which again, almost always gets through around with out any kind of citations or research support - and ethnic cleansing. It's directly attached to racist ideas. Similar to social darwinism, it's something that seems like relatively harmless common sense on the surface, but leads to horrific implications when followed to its logical conclusion.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - jlawson 4y ago
    Interesting. So you don't actually argue that it's untrue. You just argue that people shouldn't acknowledge it because doing so would lead to policies you think would be immoral. I'm just not sure that this anti-truth stance is tenable or really worth it. What if we can acknowledge the facts and then... handle them in a non-evil way? Or perhaps even use that knowledge to head off terrible outcomes that might otherwise happen? E.g. Lebanon-style ethnic civil wars. I generally think that knowing the truth is useful and equips you to do good things. You just need a non-childish moral system to integrate it (too easy to feel moral if you just wish away the hard facts of the universe).
    - dbingham 4y ago
      No, I argued that it's the sort of thing people assume is "common sense" when it is often very poorly supported. And my argument was that said assumption often comes from a bad place (when you examine it) and leads to a bad place.
scarface74 4y ago
I knew I read something somewhere and this is the closest I could find. But I think it’s related. So when I asked ChatGPT > Are countries with less racial diversity more likely to have a larger safety net” because my GoogleFu was failing me, of course it gave me a non controversial generic answer. But when I asked it for citations it gave me this > A 2018 study published in the journal Social Science Research, which found that countries with more ethnically diverse populations tend to have less generous welfare states. Which led me to this link https://academic.oup.com/esr/article/37/1/89/5934740 https://academic.oup.com/esr/article/37/1/89/5934740 > First, vignette experiments established a consistent and pervasive deservingness gap: welfare recipients belonging to the ethnic ingroup are more likely to be considered deserving of welfare support than the ethnic outgroup
- dbingham 4y ago
  That's very circumstantial evidence that requires more examination. Is that a direct result of the diversity - or of the history that generated that diversity in the first place? In most countries that are ethnically diverse, that diversity was created through various forms of colonialism. Often with racial imperialism deeply ingrained in it. Which means those countries have long running strains of racist ideas and ideologies that forms the foundations of the ethnic "in group" and "out group". Which is not to say that ethnic strife doesn't exist in non-colonial countries as well, but that this line of thinking and examination is a) extremely complex, b) inextricable from the history of the systems under examination, c) inextricable from deep histories of racist thought - often imposed by colonnial or imperialist powers, and d) similar to social darwinism in that it is often presented as common sense, but leads to some very dark places when taken, unexamined, to its logical conclusion.
  - scarface74 4y ago
    That last paragraph sound like the same non committal answer I got from ChatGPT at first. That’s not meant to be a criticism, just a random aside. You do raise a fair point
    - 4y ago
georgeburdell 4y ago
Have you ever nodded your head in agreement at the assertion that the middle east/Africa/etc is so screwed up because the colonial powers drew arbitrary borders?
jameslk 4y ago
> This needs a citation. It's the sort of "common sense" all too often advanced by people with - frankly - racist or ethnonational agendas. Jumping straight to claiming someone has a racist or ethnonational agenda because they didn't provide a citation seems uncharitable. It comes off as a worse form of sealioning. I'm not sure if you're trying to do that intentionally but I mention it so you can understand the hostility it may create. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1467-9477.2007.00176.x https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1467-9477.2007... From Wikipedia on the study: Harvard professor of political science Robert D. Putnam conducted a nearly decade long study on how diversity affects social trust. He surveyed 26,200 people in 40 American communities, finding that when the data were adjusted for class, income and other factors, the more racially diverse a community is, the greater the loss of trust. People in diverse communities "don't trust the local mayor, they don't trust the local paper, they don't trust other people and they don't trust institutions," writes Putnam. That said, there can both be problems and benefits of something, and in his research on diversity this is considered: Putnam says, however, that "in the long run immigration and diversity are likely to have important cultural, economic, fiscal, and developmental benefits." He asserted that his "extensive research and experience confirm the substantial benefits of diversity, including racial and ethnic diversity, to our society."

tonmoy 4y ago

What source do you have to show there was higher social trust and cohesion at that time?

pjc50 4y ago

Struggling to work out when the nondiverse America ever existed, that Woz could have been in?

JuniorBalleg 4y ago
It's not binary. Mark Potok of the SPLC has a poster on his wall tracking the demographic decline of Whites in America. You don't need to look far - official population statistics, your kid's school, or your local Walmart - to see this massive, rapid demographic shift in action. You're welcome to argue the absence of causation.
hindsightbias 4y ago
Born & raised in: http://www.bayareacensus.ca.gov/cities/SanJose50.htm http://www.bayareacensus.ca.gov/cities/SanJose50.htm Even Atherton was more diverse back then. Lives in Los Gatos: https://censusreporter.org/profiles/16000US0644112-los-gatos-ca/ https://censusreporter.org/profiles/16000US0644112-los-gatos...

manimino 4y ago

People often refer to the Scandinavian countries or Japan as examples of low ethnic diversity and high trust. Are there any quantitative studies on this topic? It would be a stronger argument if a clear trend was observable over many countries.

ramraj07 4y ago
What’s the argument supposed to be? Homogeneity in service of peace? I’d rather live in a diverse hellhole than some whitewashed “utopia”.
- butlerm 4y ago
  I think you are failing to distinguish between 'is' and 'ought' here.
landemva 4y ago
If I was searching for comparisons, I would look at Stockholm and suburbs in 1990s compared with present. I am told there are now areas where those born in .se and the police just avoid due to take-over by gangs of (some) recent immigrants.
qwytw 4y ago
> Scandinavian countries examples of low ethnic diversity That's no longer the case and hasn't really been for a decade or two at least. Especially in Sweden.

kfajdsl 4y ago

Maybe this struck a nerve because I'm an American born-and-raised PoC, but frankly I believe this is a bad opinion that is often pushed by racists (even if the idea itself isn't necessarily inherently racist). Heightened social trust in people of one's own ethnicity isn't a fact of life, it's just racism. It's what causes PoC to be profiled by law enforcement, on average have worse outcomes for the same crimes in the justice system, etc. I know that this isn't just the way humans are wired. I met so many people (including police) in my life that I would consider truly "colorblind" and treat everyone with respect, regardless of their ethnicity. Different shared cultural values (as opposed to just differing race) is also not as much of a problem as some make it out to be. First, most cultures of people that are immigrating to the US (I can't speak for Europe, I'm not very in the loop) have values largely compatible with Western ones. Second, most immigrants will at least somewhat assimilate into the culture of their host country, especially after a generation or two. Note, this doesn't mean throwing away their native culture. I'd also like to point out that Woz's America was definitely NOT homogenous.

lupire 4y ago
How many of those colorblind people (of the ones who are married), and married outside their race and/or religion?
- kfajdsl 4y ago
  Several. If race isn't a factor for you selecting a partner, landing on someone with a different race is fairly common, especially considering I live in a diverse area.
JuniorBalleg 4y ago
>Heightened social trust in people of one's own ethnicity isn't a fact of life, it's just racism. It is a fact of life, it's natural and there's a clear evolutionary impetus for it. I would argue that this is how we are wired. Of course we feel more comfortable among our own. You are far more at ease if you walk into a room to be surrounded by people just like you, rather than strangers from the other side of the world with their alien appearances, behaviours, and even smells! Who knows how the reptilian subconscious analyses this information - are we at war? conquered? lost? isolated? kidnapped? In a more modern sense, we can more readily let out guard down among our own, knowing we share a common history, culture, humour, etc, while we must precariously navigate the invisible minefield of sensitivities in a more diverse group.

ilyt 4y ago

Clearly you haven't read or been in any post-soviet country, near perfect "ethnical cohesion", doesn't stop crime or increase trust in any way. Frankly that's arrogant and narrow-minded view; homogenous culture might cause less conflicts and problems when the culture itself is one promoting that in the first place

shrimp_emoji 4y ago
Hahaha. Great point. The U.S. is one of the higher-trust societies, socially, while also being extremely racially diverse. It sounds like pro-social culture and your people being rich probably matter more than race, and Eastern Europe has a critical deficit in both of those. :p
- ilyt 4y ago
  Mostly thanks to "inheriting" it from russia in form of being post-soviet satellites... it took decades for most countries (and for other it is still in progress) to get from "you need bribe or connections to get anywhere in bureaucracy" for example.
enedil 4y ago
What do you mean? For instance, Poland escaped Soviet block, is almost unilaterally composed of Polish people, and yet look at the chart: https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php?title=Crime_statistics https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php... The countries with lowest crime numbers in EU per capita are (ordered by crime rate increasing): Slovakia, Hungary, Estonia, Cyprus, Slovenia, Czechia, Poland, Bulgaria, Croatia, Lithuania, Romania. All of them are socially pretty homogenous. Most of them escaped Soviet block. Some even escaped Soviet Union. On the other hand, look at the countries from the other side of chart (this time, rate decreasing): Belgium, Spain, Portugal, Sweden, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Germany. As this data concerns only EU, there is no UK here, but as I remember, it had around 3x crime rate as the Republic of Ireland, which would put it on the tops of the EU list. Of course, increased diversity might not be the only differentiator between the countries from the top of the list and those from the bottom, but I think it defeats your point (almost as if you were racist for having irrational fears against living in a post-soviet society, which aren't backed by numbers).