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Overcoming Us vs. Them

nautil.us

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Re: Overcoming Us vs. Them

#141

Post by joe_the_user »

rdtsc wrote: post #136
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…

> . Given that that current American society is hyper-competitive, There is slight snag in there I think, because the level of competitiveness is also determined by culture, media, propaganda, education etc. In other words it is not something that's just there, perceptions of competition is easily manufactured. Think of telling black people that illegal immigrants are taking their jobs. There is all of a sudden a pol…

Of course competition isn't just-there. But that hardly means it's not there. Apartment rents don't go up whatever large percentage in a vacuum, for example, they have a context. But whatever the context, the competition for apartments if that happens is going to become more intense as more people fight for the fewer apartments that are in their budget.

Broad brush conclusions, of course, are hard to give full support to but I would still expect a large number of folks would say the US is now extremely competitive and has become more competitive over the last twenty and fifty years.

Edit: Also, competition is a bit like fame (if many people believe someone is famous, by the definition of fame those people can't be wrong). If many people believe a society is competitive, it makes the society more competitive because it impels the people to compete more.

Re: Overcoming Us vs. Them

#142

Post by ScottBurson »

smichel17 wrote: post #111
ScottBurson wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Although I agree with you that the plurality voting system (aka FPTP) is a big problem, I think your theory of why it isn't changed is silly and overlooks the very real difficulties. One of those difficulties is that there isn't a clear winner among the alternatives. Approval voting, the STV(/IRV), and the Borda Count all have adherents, who disparage the other two. Worse, none of them is perfect. For example, STV an…

What's the downside to score/range voting? Voters give each candidate a score (say, from 1-10), and the highest average wins. I've no particular expertise in this area; I know about it from http://rangevoting.org/

Range voting and approval voting are closely related; approval voting is just the limiting case of range voting where there are only two values on the scale.

My take is that range voting is useful when you have a relatively small number of voters, but once that number gets into the thousands, its advantages over AV fade. Instead of one voter rating one candidate a 7, say, instead what you have is 100 voters of whom 70 vote yes on the candidate and 30 vote no. Once you have enough voters that that effect is statistically reliable, there's no further need for the added complexity of allowing more scale values.

And as you add scale values, tampering gets even easier. How would we notice it if someone went in and changed a bunch of people's 6 votes to 7s?

Re: Overcoming Us vs. Them

#143

Post by quantumofmalice »

pklausler wrote: post #133

This would be easier if We and Them simply differed in arbitrary preferences. But I fear that when We and Them disagree on basic epistemology, we simply sound crazy to each other. And this irreconcilable difference, if it exists, will eventually always come out if you talk long enough.

There is a mechanism for dealing with this: secession.

A lot of violence will be saved if we start agreeing to amicable divorces.

I don't expect us to do that, so, sadly, I expect a lot of violence.

Re: Overcoming Us vs. Them

#144

Post by Erem »

Boothroid wrote: post #113

Wow, liberal fascism distilled, pretty much a call to arms for the destruction of individual cultures and global imposition of wrongthink. South Park's Death Camp of Tolerance comes to mind. I await the introduction of the reeducation gulags. Edit: I'm just amazed that people cannot see this guy is blantantly arguing for the exact thing he claims to despise: 'Meanwhile, give the right-of-way to people driving cars wi…

Sapolsky is just arguing for us to understand each other a little bit more, recognize unconscious biases, and move towards judging one another on individual merits rather than groupthink. These are basic free-society, founding fathers kind of ideals. I think you're projecting modern (maybe justified) worries onto these old and common ideals.

> and then LITERALLY ARGUES FOR an us and them attitude :|

I'll argue that he doesn't refute his own point by closing with a claim that we're all the US against a THEM of eternal evil embodied. It's like the non-overtoned version of saying "it's all of humanity vs satan".

To say bluntly -- Sapolsky was not arguing for us to strive towards including the principalities of timeless spiritual evil in the _us_ group.

Re: Overcoming Us vs. Them

#145

Post by weberc2 »

blattimwind wrote: post #130
wefweoiu23j wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the answer is partially in your quote: emphasis the similarities. Women of all colors, backgrounds, and economic statuses are sexually harassed and assaulted. Men of all colors, backgrounds, and economic statuses are sexually harassed and assaulted. These are facts of reality. Our culture makes it such that women are more likely to be on the receiving end. But it doesn't make the fact that both sexes in vario…

> I think the answer is partially in your quote: emphasis the similarities. > Change all conversations to focus on the similarities. > (GP) I think this is going to be the next big challenge in social tech: But so far social media is completely reliant on us-vs-them, in- vs out-group differentiation. It would seem that social media already changed dozens of societies across the globe to the worse in the matter of a j…

Not just social media either, but traditional media as well.

Re: Overcoming Us vs. Them

#146

Post by ekr »

pklausler wrote: post #133

This would be easier if We and Them simply differed in arbitrary preferences. But I fear that when We and Them disagree on basic epistemology, we simply sound crazy to each other. And this irreconcilable difference, if it exists, will eventually always come out if you talk long enough.

It has little to do with epistemology. The main cause for human conflicts is the fact that we are playing zero-sum games. Humans are constantly fighting/jockeying for status, acquiring resources for themselves, and simply getting ahead of the others.

This is in the genome unfortunately.

Re: Overcoming Us vs. Them

#147

Post by dwaltrip »

pklausler wrote: post #133

This would be easier if We and Them simply differed in arbitrary preferences. But I fear that when We and Them disagree on basic epistemology, we simply sound crazy to each other. And this irreconcilable difference, if it exists, will eventually always come out if you talk long enough.

Perhaps we should come up with better methods that people can use to critique/improve their own epistemology as needed, and spread the idea that it is highly worthwhile to do so? The mindset that "realizing you are wrong" can be a joy, not something to fear.

After reading Kuhn's "Structure of Scientific Revolutions", it seems to me this difficulty could also be described as people operating from different base layer paradigms.

E.g. "Natural laws are sufficient to explain everything we see" vs "A supernatural element is needed". Or "Power dynamics are the primary force that steer human activity" vs "There are many important factors to consider".

Re: Overcoming Us vs. Them

#149

Post by dwaltrip »

ekr wrote: post #146
pklausler wrote: post #133

This would be easier if We and Them simply differed in arbitrary preferences. But I fear that when We and Them disagree on basic epistemology, we simply sound crazy to each other. And this irreconcilable difference, if it exists, will eventually always come out if you talk long enough.

It has little to do with epistemology. The main cause for human conflicts is the fact that we are playing zero-sum games. Humans are constantly fighting/jockeying for status, acquiring resources for themselves, and simply getting ahead of the others. This is in the genome unfortunately.

Not all of the important games we play are zero-sum, fortunately.

Re: Overcoming Us vs. Them

#150

Post by fzeroracer »

fareesh wrote: post #115
tyleraldrich wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

> What? Citation needed. I haven't heard of any conservatives getting banned from these services due to their political affiliation. See: Professor Gad Saad, whose YouTube videos are regularly demonetized. Sometimes they are demonetized while they are processing. Dennis Prager's "Prager University" is currently suing Google for a similar situation with their channel ( https://www.prageru.com/press-release-prager-univ…

Would you believe that if I cherry picked a few examples of left-leaning people being censored or harassed out of their company that there exists large, right-leaning groups and companies whose sole purpose is to censor people even slightly left of center?

For example, there are a fair amount of liberal channels being demonetized on youtube as well.

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