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Overcoming Us vs. Them

nautil.us

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Re: Overcoming Us vs. Them

#81

Post by joe_the_user »

Danihan wrote: post #66
joe_the_user wrote: post #61

In America today, you've got multitude of "us vs them" dynamics - anti-terrorist, liberal-vs-conservative, rich-vs-poor, black-vs-white, etc. And at lot of this comes because, as the article says, "us versus them" is a powerful psychological dynamic. Given that that current American society is hyper-competitive, it seems likely this situation will continue. If pulling "us versus them" is akin to chemical warfare - a…

Isn't this just the nature of reality though? A never-ending battle for resources and territory? On time lapse, even tree roots are fighting for water, and leaves are fighting for sunlight. I feel like this article might as well be called, "Overcoming Reality." Which the article basically admits, since these in-group / out-group distinctions are so deeply hardwired into our neurology. Yes, cooperation works sometimes…

Hmm,

Levels of competition within a given collection of organisms is relative - the cells of the human only occasionally compete directly - in the rebellion known as cancer (which clearly isn't the norm).

Not all societies compete at the same level but levels of competition also depend on the level of technologies and resources available. English society didn't stay in permanent civil war when muskets were introduced but you can see situations where the introduction of muskets and potatoes cause civil wars in societies where they were introduced [1].

Now, in the US since WWII and especially since the 1980s, an increase in resources has been channeled to allow society to become more competitive. One could easily imagine that if this trend continues indefinitely, things may well reach the level of something akin to civil war.

Edit: whether one see cooperation as a mean of competition or competition as means of cooperation is kind of a matter of taste. An army facing another army can experience toxic levels of internal competition that prevents it from being effective against an enemy (or oppositely, it might experience a lack of "killer instinct" before the key moments I suppose).

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Musket_Wars

Re: Overcoming Us vs. Them

#82

Post by watwut »

otakucode wrote: post #62
frgtpsswrdlame wrote: post #2

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…

The first thing to always keep in mind is that intentionally attempting to engineer social behaviors has historically been the single most devastatingly destructive motivation. Far more destructive than war, famine, disease, or other means of human suffering and death. It gave us eugenics, concentration camps, political purges, the obesity epidemic, and all manner of other ills. It backfires consistently and almost a…

I will take obesity epidemics over famine, war or some of historical epidemics. Also, holocaust was extension of war itself - the ultimate attempt to kill perceived enemies. For that matter, so was Rwanda genocide.

Re: Overcoming Us vs. Them

#83

Post by [deleted] »

IronWolve wrote: post #29

Its too late, tech is growing more divided in hiring and its customer base. 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/…

[deleted]

Re: Overcoming Us vs. Them

#84

Post by burkaman »

IronWolve wrote: post #29

Its too late, tech is growing more divided in hiring and its customer base. 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/…

Too late, are you serious? Are you claiming the world has never been more divided? It's clearly not too late, we've recovered from so much worse.

Re: Overcoming Us vs. Them

#85

Post by bluthru »

nine_k wrote: post #12
onewhonknocks wrote: post #7

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.

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.

>Seeing most everyone on Earth as ingroup improves collaboration and thus propels culture / prosperity.

Not when this isn't a shared sentiment. Whites are resented, not praised, for their anti-identity politics and inclusiveness. Now we're called racist for trying to ignore race or judging people based on the content of their character instead of the color of their skin.

Also it's a pretty radical proposition to overcome nature regarding in-group preferences, since that has a genetic component.

Re: Overcoming Us vs. Them

#86

Post by nemo1618 »

onewhonknocks wrote: post #7

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.

There's a more practical question here. Perhaps it's possible that such biases could be totally overcome, i.e. requiring no conscious effort. But clearly we're not on the verge of doing so. So, if we accept that our society is going to be composed of Us-vs-Them tribalists for the time being... what implications does that have for social policy?

For example, our "rational brain" tells us that racism is bad, but our "lizard brain" is still going to fail the implicit bias test every time. We can consciously override that bias some of the time, but it's still there. Even if you believe that you can consistently override your bias, surely you don't expect that the average person could. So how can a society comprised of "average" people avoid being plagued by racial bias?

Our rational brain -- the part that tries to overcome bias -- is also the part that is responsible for designing our society. And the people designing society tend to be more rational than most. As a result, society is in direct conflict with our lizard brain. If you are not adept at suppressing your automatic responses, you are a bad citizen. For the most part, this is what we want; after all, your lizard brain generates a lot of unsavory impulses, like the desire to enact violence. But I think it's a mistake to disregard the lizard brain entirely. "Whatever your lizard brain says, do the opposite" is unlikely to result in a perfect society. We should continue to push the limits of what we can successfully repress, but we should also be willing to admit when repression has failed.

Thousands of years ago, we began to experiment with repressing our urges to murder, steal, commit adultery, etc. That experiment was largely successful. In modern times, we are launching new experiments, many of which concern implicit bias. We don't know yet whether we can suppress those impulses. And we don't seem to have very good criteria for deciding whether the experiment has succeeded or failed. That concerns me, because it likely means that things have to get really bad before the experiment can be deemed a failure.

Re: Overcoming Us vs. Them

#87

Post by anigbrowl »

thomastjeffery wrote: post #51
anigbrowl wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't think of any examples in which it is good. Bad actors exist in the world and can and do team up. If you adhere to the view that Nobody Is Truly Bad that's nice but you won't be able to defend yourself or anyone else when attacked and thus raise the incentives for non-cooperators.There's a reason your body has an immune system.

> If you adhere to the view that Nobody Is Truly Bad I do. It is their actions and ideas that are bad. Even if you do not agree with me, I think it is important to show others trust until you have a real reason not to. What the "Us vs. Them" attitude does is ignore the potential for people in the "Them" group to have anything of value to the "Us" group, or the potential for both groups to work together.

OK, but I'm talking about those cases where people have already provided reasons not to trust them. And I don't mean people who are affiliated with their group by default, such as people who happen to have been born in North Korea and whose opposition to the United States is thus an inherited position, but people who choose to affiliate with other actors.

Put another way, sure, people are products of their circumstances to some extent, but they do also have agency, and insofar as they choose to be aggressive I consider them 'bad people' until they abandon such choices.

Re: Overcoming Us vs. Them

#88

Post by wu-ikkyu »

jotm wrote: post #73
nine_k wrote: post #12

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.

Aren't most Indians Hindu yet they still judge and separate each other by the shade of their skin or the family they were born in? There is no extending, there's always going to be some arbitrary point for Us vs Them.

It's worth noting the influence British colonialism played in emphasizing caste in India, a strategy otherwise known as divide et impera.

Re: Overcoming Us vs. Them

#89

Post by neveroffensive »

tyleraldrich wrote: post #78
IronWolve wrote: post #29

Its too late, tech is growing more divided in hiring and its customer base. 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/…

> left-leaning google/facebook/youtube/twitter using alt-right as a banner to ban conservatives What? Citation needed. I haven't heard of any conservatives getting banned from these services due to their political affiliation. > Then when programmers are on a list, or a project doesn't support the diversity license, you get banned from github, hackathons or talks. Again, what? Has this happened? I've never heard of t…

> If reading HN has taught me anything, the tech scene is full of conservatives and libertarians.

In my experience, libertarians yes, conservatives not so much. Also, libertarians have to tread extremely carefully in tech. The true libertarian perspective doesn't fit with the new left at all, and can be easily misinterpreted as supporting racism/harassment etc... Try making a joke about dongles with a friend at a conference (totally fine from the libertarian perspective), and watch the dominate ideology of the left in tech crush you...

Re: Overcoming Us vs. Them

#90

Post by tomschlick »

mtgx wrote: post #75
joe_the_user wrote: post #61

In America today, you've got multitude of "us vs them" dynamics - anti-terrorist, liberal-vs-conservative, rich-vs-poor, black-vs-white, etc. And at lot of this comes because, as the article says, "us versus them" is a powerful psychological dynamic. Given that that current American society is hyper-competitive, it seems likely this situation will continue. If pulling "us versus them" is akin to chemical warfare - a…

I think most of them are caused by the two-party political system in the U.S., where parties do make everything seem like an "us vs them". For every proposal one party has, the other party tends to have the opposite proposal. Except when it's about giving the military bigger budgets, the NSA more surveillance powers, and expanding U.S. military operations in more countries. On those issues both parties are BFFs. The…

I think a preferential voting system would be the first step to dismantling the two party regime.

It would make it "safe" to vote for an independent candidate without people feeling like their vote was being thrown away. In time, that would lead to more specialized parties running.

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