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>“There are two kinds of people in the world: those who divide the world into two kinds of people and those who don’t.” "Only a sith deals in absolutes" I love phrases like these. Not sure what to call them but they're fun. Recursive contradictions?
So this is the challenge, then, probably no different than most "human condition" type challenges - to what extent do we let our subconscious thoughts drive out conscious ones?
Without consideration, we are slaves to our unconscious thoughts and instincts. As philosophers and religious leaders have demonstrated for millennia, however, we can wrestle our quick shot subconscious into relative submissions with enough application of conscious thought. Say, mindfulness, meditation, consideration.
So the article alleges that as a white male my amygdala is gonna fire off an aggression response when I see a black male, microseconds before my conscious brain can grab the wheel and apply my hard-fought-for values (non racist ones). Is this just how it's gonna be for me, or can I subvert even that initial, lizard brain initial response to be in line with my value that all humans are equal?
>“There are two kinds of people in the world: those who divide the world into two kinds of people and those who don’t.” "Only a sith deals in absolutes" I love phrases like these. Not sure what to call them but they're fun. Recursive contradictions?
The first isn't a self-contradiction; it just places the speaker in the first camp.
I think this phenomenon is the fundamental problem of any two-party system and is one of the issues in American politics. The "us vs them" feeling is a lot less strong when there are multiple parties. This feeling leads to more divisiveness in politics and eventually trickles down to the whole population.
I think this is going to be the next big challenge in social tech: Contact: The consequences of growing up amid diversity just discussed bring us to the effects of prolonged contact on Us/Theming. In the 1950s the psychologist Gordon Allport proposed “contact theory.” Inaccurate version: bring Us-es and Thems together (say, teenagers from two hostile nations in a summer camp), animosities disappear, similarities star…
But if we're just Guitarfan_1172 and Guitarfan_3654 then we can chat about guitars and build bonds that transcend the decor war, as long as neither of us goes off topic and starts discussing patterns. Of course the problem is that the positivity is latent and confined to the interior of the guitar forum, unless we meet in battle and then become aware of our mutual guitar friendship which will cause us to re-evaluate our whole worldview.
Think of it as a poker-like game where you have public and private cards. Your public dot or stripe cards are your loyalty to your design tribe, and the # of stripes or dots across all your cards indicate your degree of group identification. But you also have hidden cards reflecting various private interests.
Let's say when you battle another player you're required to reveal one set of hidden cards if any other have the same or more points (or some other ratio) than your public loyalty cards. In this example you really love guitar and have to reveal your guitar cards. If the other player has the same cards they must also reveal theirs, or perhaps the revelation depends on the strength of their affiliation. Of course, by revealing your similarity of interest maybe you lose points among your own (stripe/dot) peer group because you have something in common with an enemy player...
You see where I'm going with this. Of course, any modeling of relationships and disruption built on this framework assumes that tribal affiliation is fundamentally arbitrary, eg as an accident of birth. If it turns out that the Stripers really and truly want to slice up their enemies or that the Dotters really and truly want to punch holes in them then mutual interest in guitars/crochet/pokemon may never be sufficient to overcome their differences. Thus a good deal depends on whether the enemies are opposed to each other by default or have made a conscious choice to fight each other, in which case that's likely to predominate over all other factors.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
We can overcome them without removing them, by extending "us" widely enough. This is how a number of religions handled it, leading to their expansion over large swaths of diverse nations. Seeing most everyone on Earth as ingroup improves collaboration and thus propels culture / prosperity.
But what if there is a group whose strategy is to take advantage of the trusting nature of everyone else for its own gains? In that case it would be advantageous to unite against them. Universal cooperation and trust is great when there are no attackers but it needs to be hardened against attacks somehow. Also, does universal collaboration necessarily bring the best results? Seems like there might be a number of peop…
I prefer the former, because it is a pure "improvement" mindset, whereas the latter allows for "success" via subjugation of other people while your Us stagnants.
>In other words, our visceral, emotional views of Thems are shaped by subterranean forces we’d never suspect. And then our cognitions sprint to catch up with our affective selves, generating the minute factoid or plausible fabrication that explains why we hate Them. It’s a kind of confirmation bias: remembering supportive better than opposing evidence; testing things in ways that can support but not negate your hypot…
http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/09/30/i-can-tolerate-anything...
I think this phenomenon is the fundamental problem of any two-party system and is one of the issues in American politics. The "us vs them" feeling is a lot less strong when there are multiple parties. This feeling leads to more divisiveness in politics and eventually trickles down to the whole population.
The biggest thing we are missing in the fight against the two party system is confidence.
We need people to be confident that they can elect someone from outside the two parties, and that those people can effect change in politics.
The problem is that individuals see greater participation by others as a dependency for their own participation.
Because people wait for that dependency, they refuse to act until there is a significant participation, and they themselves are no longer needed.
To tell someone otherwise is (or seems to be) to tell them that their vote does not effect the result, which is untrue, and undesirable.
I'm not really sure how to express this problem, or its solution.
Now that google and other tech startups make blacklists of "them" that they want to block promotions and ban from working with people and groups, it seems us vs them is well embraced by the tech community.
And left-leaning google/facebook/youtube/twitter using alt-right as a banner to ban conservatives, then using "Truth masters" like snopes/politifact to confirm a viewpoint as the only truth, then SPLC/RightWingWatch to confirm anyone not spouting the common truth must be outcasts, and all followers of them are also "them". Easier for patreon/kickstarter and other crowdfunding to avoid supporting "them".
Then when programmers are on a list, or a project doesn't support the diversity license, you get banned from github, hackathons or talks.
Tech is sick with "us" vs "them" mentality and its spreading.
Unpopular opinion - Is this something that we should seek to overcome entirely? These judgement calls are hard-wired into us for a reason. Whilst there are scenarios in which it is bad, there are scenarios in which it is good.
I can't think of any examples in which it is good. I also think that is a mischaracterization of the problem, and of the solution. Our instinct is to trust those in our communities, and distrust those outside our communities. While that was useful in the past, two significant things have changed: 1. We are in a civilized society where it is to our advantage to begin relationships with trust rather than distrust. 2. W…
Entering any relationship with a default of distrust and allowing trust to be earned seems very prudent in 2017 (and probably any other time period).