The article is by Joel Achenbach, who cites this study:
Social psychologist Muzafer Sherif took 22 Boy Scouts and separated them into two groups camping at Robbers Cave State Park in Oklahoma. Only after a week did they learn that there was another group at the far end of the campground.What they did next fascinated the research team. Each group developed irrational contempt for the other. The boys in the other group were seen not just as rivals, but as fundamentally flawed human beings. Only when the two groups were asked to work together to solve a common problem did they warm up to one another.
Ironically, the top comments over there are about how Republicans are fundamentally flawed human beings.
Posts
92 comments:
How is this surprising? The Dems are anti-American and crazy.
Who, in their right mind, supports child mutilation?
I told the OPPD Board that Net Zero will kill people. Net Zero killed over 500 in TX, but OPPD voted for it.
We conservatives have very little in common - policy wise - with the Dems.
Progressives are fascists at heart. "STFU and obey me!" is their motto. Dissent is to be punished and any non-progressive opinion is to be ruthlessly suppressed.
No, it's about women and soap opera. Progressively more evil figures keep the click-bait working.
Until about 2000 agreements and expectations on the other side were kept. No internet.
Cain the farmer killed his brother Abel, the drover (following semi-domestic animals, as opposed to hunting/gathering). After his hearing, and the sentence handed down by God, he was quoted as saying: I don't why, I just hate those bastards. The Tower of Babel. What's the definition of the Greeks? The people who more or less conquered the other people in their neighbourhood, and kept referring to them as barbarians. Did northern Europeans, in conquering much of the world (or at least places that could be reached by navies), hit a triple, thus showing their virtue, or simply find themselves on third base thanks to disease and gunpowder? To be on the safe side, they stole home, and believe me, they are still taking a lot of criticism for that.
We don't really like each other all that much? Why would that be? I'll take a shot in the dark: we're not all that likeable.
What’s so ironic. It’s the WaPo.
Who would have guessed that diversity (i.e. color judgments, class bigotry) breeds adversity.
That said,
The metal is heated to a predefined temperature then cooled by air. The resulting metal is free of undesirable impurities and exhibits greater strength and hardness. Normalising is often used to produce a harder and stronger steel, albeit one that is less ductile than that produced by annealing.
All's fair in lust and abortion in pursuit of capital and control... or is it? #HateLovesAbortion
Diversity is our strength. Say it enough, and it will magically work. Or, failing that, cancel all research that says the opposite. Didn't Christakis learn anything from his tenure at Yale?
Any mention of Obama's "Identity Politics on Steroids"? Probably not.
"The evolution of cooperation required out-group hatred. Which is really sad."
OK, but a general theory does not account for historical variation.
The relative power of the groups and the motives for hatred vary.
In most American institutions and cities, progs rule; in terms of power and ability to act on hostility, the out-group hatred is asymmetrical. Motives also differ: progs despise deplorables who stand in their way as transphobic racists who threaten Gaia and resist their absolute power, while deplorables despise progs as cruel and myopic overlords who tear down the country and our way of life. As the power imbalance increases, so does the mutual contempt.
The greatest sin of our two-party system is that it forces smart people to be stupid as a condition of participation.
Remember, most Americans are neither Republican nor Democrat.
Small population, inconclusive results, and the wrong conclusion in an evolution of misinterpretation.
Achenbach is reading a lot into that study. I suggest reading this It's not very long but you find out that the conflict was instigated from the outside.
Funny how that was glossed over.
Achenbach is reading a lot into that study. I suggest reading this It's not very long but you find out that the conflict was instigated from the outside.
Funny how that was glossed over.
Not a 'Sociologist.'
Is this the most useless college degree possible or just in the top 3?
"The evolution of cooperation required out-group hatred. Which is really sad."
Horse crap. If that were true mere-cats wouldn't exist.
Goodness, what a remarkably neat and apropos social-science experiment. So apt! The experimental animals -- I mean 'the subjects' -- were so uniform in their reactions and plain-spoken in their reporting of their feelings. And a solution for their unacceptable responses was ready at hand: 'working together.'
In other words, it sounds about as credible as most other social-science studies: A 'Just So' story.
This is nothing but team sports.
Scouts are attached to their TROOP. There is a constant competition between troops.
I would liken this to the early years of the nation, and decades before that. Identity was State. There was a natural competitiveness between the group identities. Tribes if you will. Its not necessarily always a pejorative.
The Experts may want to examine what happened at a Boy Scout camp in western Iowa several years back when the camp took a direct hit from a tornado. The camp was full of scouts from several different Troops.
First responders were in awe of what the found by the time they had arrived, The uninjured scouts were triaging the situation in real time with little adult direction.
No tribalism at all.
I sense the experts no little of young teenage boys. Scouting, or camping.
"we're not all that likeable."
Speak for yourself. I'm both likeable and lovable.
Come on kids, the answer is simple.
13. “Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it.”[bold added
Cut off the support network and isolate the target from sympathy. Go after people and not institutions; people hurt faster than institutions.
— Rules for Radicals, Saul Alinsky, 1971
But dems are so... so..
https://www.coffeeandcovid.com/p/sinking-ships-saturday-january-20
So cooperative!
First ting we do, let's kill all the Social Scientists.
"“The significant point is that people unfit for freedom — who cannot do much with it — are hungry for power. The desire for freedom is an attribute of a "have" type of self. It says: leave me alone and I shall grow, learn, and realize my capacities. The desire for power is basically an attribute of a "have-not" type of self.
Freedom gives us a chance to realize our human and individual uniqueness. Absolute power can also bestow uniqueness: To have absolute power is to have the power to reduce all the people around us to puppets, robots, toys, or animals, and be the only man in sight. Absolute power achieves uniqueness by dehumanizing others.
To sum up: Those who lack the capacity to achieve much in an atmosphere of freedom will clamor for power.” - Eric Hoffer
Ironically? Consider the publication. "Naturally" would have been more fitting.
When we choose our politicians we need differentiation. We have millions of career lawyers, campaign managers, psychologists, professors, media propagandists…and now prosecutors and judges to help us differentiate. It’s polarizing…
"Science is revealing why American politics are so intensely polarized”
No.
When politicians stuck their noses in every facet of our lives, elections became intensely important.
If they leave us alone to live our lives as we see fit, politics will retreat in importance.
I have spent almost my entire adult life living in some of the bluest cities in North America. Often there isn’t a single conservative in my life. Familiarity has bred contempt. I have no respect for the thought processes of liberals. However decent, intelligent, etc. they may be by nature, when it comes to political and social issues, they ate hateful small-minded people.
They define themselves as good so they never have to do anything good. They define themselves as thoughtful so they never have to think carefully. They define themselves as nuanced so they can see everything in black and white.
What is disheartening is what doesnt bother people in the slightest.
I noticed this phenom when I was very young. Worst thing you can do is stick up for the other side.
Boom, you're out of the tribe.
"The other side sucks!". That's what we used to yell at the other side of "Gravity Cavity" at Unadilla Motorsports Park in the 70s, as we pelted them with beer cans and dirt clods.
"The other side" is always wrong. They did not have the same bonding experience we had. Being on OUR side, for example.
How much money was spent on this study? It only exposed the obvious.
This is one of those posts that makes me wonder if you have been in my head. I think about the issue of tribalism quite often. That, and the fact that humans (in my opinion) are getting dumber doesn't bode well. It's as if we are dying to regress back to the 1400's or thereabouts - back to the era of warring families, clans, tribes, dynasties. Veganism, feminism, stoicism, activism.... so many tribes to choose from these days.
Even the Boy Scout study is right out of my head. I've been saying for a while now that all you have to do is put people in Group A, another batch in Group B, tell each that the other group is evil, arm both groups - and stand back and watch.
Early humans didn't create enemies in order to cooperate with each other. They looked around and saw enemies (you might say "competitors"), and said to friends and neighbors, Let's get together to defend ourselves. In an era when resources were very thin, and game in YOUR valley that the tribe in the NEXT valley killed, was game your family couldn't eat. So you and your friends and neighbors would naturally regard them as competitors.
But tribes in different valleys did sometimes cooperate, and intermarry. And when they did, they had more strength to defend themselves against the hunters in THE VALLEY OVER THERE.
For those down on sociology, it's actually pretty interesting with the right sociologist. Erving Goffman being the best.
Ann would like "Gender Advertisements" no longer in print, a dense picture book of them from the 70s.
Asylums is his classic.
He works by irony.
The in group/outgroup dynamic that is specific to our time is the domination by one side of education, the professions, finance, business, the churches, and the media. It creates a massive momentum in which everyone who chooses their opinions for personal advancement has only one alternative.
As Tim Maguire succinctly observes, people find ways to delude themselves into believing that they aren't cynical careerists in their choices; they are thoughtful and nuanced.
"other group were seen not just as rivals, but as fundamentally flawed human beings"
Yep, Jr High Catholic league football.
I am just going to call bullshit on this study. I suspect that the antagonism towards the other group was initiated in some way by the social "scientists" conducting the study.
"Science is revealing why American politics are so intensely polarized..."
One study doth not "science" make. Polarization has to start somewhere, and lately it's been one side actively harassing the other side that wishes to be left alone. The study cited sounds like one that was set up to arrive at a predetermined result.
Sounds like a repeat of the famous Stanford prisoners/prison guards experiment.
The description of the study is different in the Wikipedia article about Sherif. Wikipedia says the members of the two groups of boys did not know each other. They were chosen as highly intelligent, protestants from two parent families who were doing well in school. The two groups spent a week doing separate activities during which each developed a name and a team spirit, i.e. became tribal on their own. Then the two groups were introduced through a four day series of competitive activities. As the days wore on, with winning and losing ongoing, the two groups became more and more competitive and then hostile. Two days afterwards, the researchers tried to diminish the hostility by parties and get-togethers but this did not work. Then they tried having the boys work on projects together which did diminish hostility.
I think this is quite a different result from saying that out-group hostility is needed to develop in-group spirit. Moreover, the validity of the entire experiment (which took place in 1954) has been questioned since it's possible that the researchers pushed the two groups in the direction of hatred.
I think that taking up an old experiment (which has been questioned) and mischaracterizing it is typical of the arrogant but dull elite writing for the NYT. The way the NYT readers accept the mischaracterization and apply it to Republicans is typical of them.
Meanwhile the country suffers.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muzafer_Sherif
Further notes
Born in 1906, this researcher worked with William McDougall and Gardner Murphy of the eugenics societies. He had close ties to Communism and this led to his exclusion from Turkish society in post World War II society but he was welcomed in the USA and held posts at influential universities. He suffered mental breakdowns. This kind of man is good at questions.
"How is this surprising? The Dems are anti-American and crazy."
Hahahahaha! The first comment by the first commenter expressed the same tribal contempt and perception under study!
As for the assertion: "The evolution of cooperation required out-group hatred." I don't know if the study reveals or proves that, not having read it, but that doesn't seem right to me. We are pack animals, and cooperation within the pack is innate, an evolved behavior that contributes to the survival of the pack, and thus, of each individual. That cooperation is necessary with or without an out-group.
Now, perhaps it may be that out-groups provide additional incentive to the members of any given in-group to work harder for the survival and flourishing of their pack, as out-groups may be perceived as (or actually may be) a danger to the group one is in. The out-group is seen as competing for the same limited resources as one's own group, resources necessary for survival. On the other hand, as disparate groups cooperate with all others and create an expansive multi-varied in-group, the combined cooperation of all can produce greater output of resources or protections against survival threats that are too great for a smaller or isolated group to protect against.
Ultimately, competition between groups may lead to the expiration of all, either in the despoilation or using up of available necessary resources, or in violent conflict driven by the goal to gain possession or control of all available necessary resources.
Commenters here seem to have forgotten that for mmore than a century, beginning around 1890,tribalism wasn't a "thing" in American life, at least not something engaged in nationally, day-to-day and puahsed relentlessly by the new media.
Anyone remember the Melting Pot?
Anyone remember the years after MKL Jr. when race relations improved in the US, and especially the South?
What's changed?
MadTownGuy nailed it: "Polarization has to start somewhere, and lately it's been one side actively harassing the other side that wishes to be left alone."
That "One Side" is now the entire Democrat Party, the lockstep media and millions of petty tyrants like Fani, Letitia, Liz Warren, Bernie, Shumer and all their ilk---EVERY ONE working day and night to force a crown-of-thorns of anti-Constitutional Big Government on all of us, starting with a former President who stands in their way.
Ironically, the top comments over there are about how Republicans are fundamentally flawed human beings.
The Democrats are midwits who think that the college certificates make them geniuses.
Back when Megan McArdle was still worth reading, she commented that when fighting about the judicial confirmation process, the Republicans would honestly report what happened (The Democrats voted down Bork for purely political reasons, so we started voting down Dem judges for purely political reasons. etc) The Democrats OTOH, would completely ignore their own actions, and jump straight to "and then those mean Republicans started voting down Democrat judges for mere political reasons!!11!"
Whether they're liars or ignoramuses is really irrelevant, because neither group is worth dealing with.
Every single destruction of the norms of our society has been initiated by the Democrats / Left. And then they constantly while with world class butthurt when we do back to them the new rules they used against us.
Stupid, ignorant, or just evil, it really doesn't matter. The core of the matter is this:
You can't be a Democrat and have any principles. And you can't make a functioning society with people who have no principles.
Because when the other side has no rules they're willing to follow when the rules go against them, your society has no rules
The Stanford Prison experiment has been revealed to be a fraud.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31380664/
https://www.vox.com/science-and-health/2018/6/28/17509470/stanford-prison-experiment-zimbardo-interview
So the NYT can no longer use that. Instead they switch to the Sherif "experiment", but as wildswan pointed out, they had to lie about it to do so.
I guess writing "our side are unprincipled scum who are destroying society in order to push our political agenda and keep our 'freak' on" wouldn't sell as well to they people who pay for it in order to get validation.
They think people turned and booed the media out of duty to Trump? As if there is no reason to dislike/distrust the media outside of Trump calling it "fake news".
A Pelosi-gate scenario, and probable Whitmer conspiracy, with DIE grooming and shaming, brayed through JournoListic outlets.
My neighbor said the other day that because we can individualize our entertainment and news sources so much, we are having fewer and fewer shared exciting experiences. And so we are bonding over the negative experiences and over anger.
I think NFL is the outlier there. People love football and we watch it together, or at least at the same time. It is a positive event to bond over.
This felt more revelatory in Lord Of The Flies.
I thought the Robbers Cave study was discredited. Basically, they ran it once, and didn't get the result the wanted, then did it again, essentially forcing the result with a bunch of contrived interference.
Dennis Prager made a cogent observation years ago. Conservatives think that liberals/progressives (whatever label the left is going by these days) are mistaken. Liberals think conservatives are evil.
There's a big difference in how the two sides see each other. Ignorance can be cured and stupid is forever--but it's not evil.
I think NFL is the outlier there. People love football and we watch it together, or at least at the same time. It is a positive event to bond over.
========
so how is 2 teams x 11 'fighting' over 100 yds of ground for ovoid object different from boy-scout groups 2x11 in Oklahoma campground ?
fans/audience or study observers?
"If you want to make men brothers, have them build a tower together.
If you want to make men enemies, throw them bread."
Earnest Prole said...
The greatest sin of our two-party system is that it forces smart people to be stupid as a condition of participation.
I'm over listening to people who use 'we' when they really mean 'me' or 'you'. You're not fooling anybody but yourself.
Robert Cook said...Hahahahaha! The first comment by the first commenter expressed the same tribal contempt and perception under study!
Studies show that conservatives have a much better understanding of liberals and liberalism than liberals do of conservatives and conservatism. Which isn’t surprising considering that most conservatives were liberal in their youth, whereas few liberals have any meaningful exposure to conservatives or their ideas.
Top comments here are how Democrats are fundamentally flawed and even evil humans.
Funny how the commenters here cannot help but reciprocate. Despite their claims to moral high ground, they attack like rabid dogs.
"Studies show that conservatives have a much better understanding of liberals and liberalism than liberals do of conservatives and conservatism. "
Of course you claim this without providing links to the many definitive studies you say support you.
Making stuff up to support our tribalism is fun!
Skeptical Voter glosses right over David Begley's quote about Dems to claim the opposite.
I guess if Dennis Prager said it, than the appeal to authority can be accepted lol.
The two main problems with academia today:
1. Infected by censorious, autocratic politics following WW2 and especially after the Vietnam war. Critics of contemporary lefty values have routinely been forced out or to shut up, so what remains is shallow, echo-chamber agreement. Sometimes their analyses can be destroyed with a light poke by a small twig. They don't think about alternatives or counterexamples, just present what they want to be true as morally-righteous facts (likely a consequence of "everyone is an equal quality winner" DEI thinking / pandering).
2. Every generation of new/wannabe professors must stand out from the generation prior. So, they "discover" something new. So they "overturn" the old order. So, crisis ABC "is worse than we thought." Half of the so-called new findings merely reveal self-promotion and sophistry. They don't plagiarize in the fashion of Harvard's Gay, but go back to ideas that faded in popularity 2-3 generations ago. Saying "With new methods...we've discovered..." and other tripe.
Social science isn't the enemy -- politicized right-think science and establishment censorship is the enemy. Recall that Francis Galton, a relative of Charles Darwin and a key developer of social science, statistical analysis, data visualization, and scientific methods, was an evolutionist and eugenicist who firmly accepted biological realities. He utterly destroyed the religious (aka Woke) academic dogmas of the 1800s. Today's lefty biological and social scientists would consider him politically worse than Trump by a wide margin, even though much their work is a but a footnote to his accomplishments.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francis_Galton
Does the other side have a right to be wrong?
I believe a lot depends on how we answer that to ourselves.
We do it to ourselves.
The Robbers Cave experiment was one of three famous experiments from the early 1950s which purported to show that people are pretty sh*tty. The others are the Zimbardo Stanford Prison Experiment (student guards abused student prisoners) and the Milgrom Obedience to Authority Experiment (recruited volunteers went along with giving electric shocks to people even when it seemed to cause major hurt or even death). All three experiments have been criticized more recently for the experimenters rigging things to get the results they wanted.
It would be nice to know what would happen in "clean" replications of these experiments. But it is now impossible. They are all considered "unethical" and would never get past an IRB, the Institutional Review Boards that every school must now have to vet all experiments involving humans.
And many of the comments here are about how Democrats are fundamentally flawed human beings.
Having read Christakis Blueprint: The Evolutionary Origins of a Good Society, I don't think Christakis meant that humans started out with "out-group hatred". Rather, it developed as a by-product of in-group co-operation. It turned out that in order to sacrifice immediate self-interest with members of our own group, we had to feel we all were something special. Owed special consideration. Along with that came feeling that others outside the group weren't as special. They weren't owed as much. Maybe very little at all if they had done something bad to us (in reality or in legend).
(Though thinking about it, chimpanzee troops are pretty bad when it comes to other troops.)
Cf. The Godfather's comment above.
Mark said...
"Top comments here are how Democrats are fundamentally flawed and even evil humans."
I don't think you're evil, Mark. Evil means you know it's wrong but you do it anyway. With the object to cause pain. I just think you're not as brilliant as you think you are. You've proved that more than enough here.
Robert Cook is for child mutilation.
As for the study. I'd have to see how it was set up. What the parameters were. How the scout masters influenced the behavior of their scouts. There's a lot in the study that is vague.
I think Robert Cook's comment was altogether reasonable, until the end, where he says this:
"Ultimately, competition between groups may lead to the expiration of all, either in the despoilation or using up of available necessary resources, or in violent conflict driven by the goal to gain possession or control of all available necessary resources."
There are other possible outcomes besides the "expiration of all" or "violent conflict." IIR Robert's own leanings (Green Party, yes? I can't remember whether he considers himself to be a Marxist), his dichotomy is predictable, but it's not accurate.
"...most conservatives were liberal in their youth, whereas few liberals have any meaningful exposure to conservatives or their ideas."
I'm one, bub! Grew up in a Republican family, and I voted for Gerald Ford and Ronald Reagan in my first two presidential elections. Voted for the Dems for President from 1984 to 1992, and have voted Green Party since.
"I think Robert Cook's comment was altogether reasonable, until the end, where he says this:
'Ultimately, competition between groups may lead to the expiration of all, either in the despoilation or using up of available necessary resources, or in violent conflict driven by the goal to gain possession or control of all available necessary resources.'
"There are other possible outcomes besides the 'expiration of all' or 'violent conflict.'"
Well, yes, there are always other possibilities, but, based on human history, past and present, in which "violent conflict driven by the goal to gain possession or control of all available necessary resources" has been and remains the prevailing trend, I don't see those other possibilities gaining much traction. The question is becoming less "Will we destroy ourselves?" but more how and when?
Mark.
As an example. Prior to Elon Musk buying X Musk was an OK guy with the left. After all he was making electric cars and building re-usable space ships. What was not to like? Soon we'd all be driving electric cars and going into outer space.
Then he bought Twitter/X. The purported reason being to provide a platform for everyone. Even people who Mark disapproved of. Can't have that. So in one fell swoop Musk became a pariah for the left. And in one fell swoop we found out who was really for free speech.
Elon Musk didn't change. The lefts perception of him changed. He was no longer a member of their approved tribe. He left the confines of the approved area and went and talked to the tribe the left disapproves of. Electric cars and re-usable rockets be damned.
MY question is. Why do you care?
"Every single destruction of the norms of our society has been initiated by the Democrats / Left."
Easy to vomit out. Can you back it up?
First step: What do you define as "the norms of our society?" Can you enumerate them, every single one of them?
Without defining specific societal norms--that's on you, buddy--I will assert those "norms" were/are not uniformly positive and desirable. They never are in any society.
American politics is (not are. Where do they find these illiterate morons? Oh, yeah. WaPo!) so polarized because the Left has been pounding wedges into every wrinkle and crevice of the American electorate for several generations. And it is finally starting to come unglued.
"Studies show that conservatives have a much better understanding of liberals and liberalism than liberals do of conservatives and conservatism."
BTW, I'd like to read those studies. Can you provide the link(s)?
This is akin to what DeLanda calls an “assemblage” in which identity
is structured around exteriority but does not actually reflect a substantive
unity. Those involved only rarely protest the systems as systems but more
often protest their relative positions in the systems, leading to those sharing
relatively lower position temporarily organizing together, assembling “as part
of the antagonistic struggle of Us against Them, and antagonism is something
that traverses each of these elements from within.” The goal of this assemblage
is not toward wholeness or unity, however this does not diminish the
continuing interest of each element to find meaning, and that embeds a tension
within the assemblage.
Slavoj Žižek writes:
"The desire-for-assemblage is thus proof that a dimension of universality is
already at work in all the elements in the guise of a negativity, of an obstacle that
thwarts their self-identity. In other words, elements don’t strive for assemblage
in order to become part of a larger Whole; they strive for assemblage in order to
become themselves, to actualize their identity."
This is why once a goal is accomplished there is rarely continued cohesion
among the different players. A politician will use an artist as long as the
goal is unmet, but an artist should not depend on the politician’s continued
advocacy once power is achieved. If the politician feels threatened by art, the
system allegiance asserts itself. Thus, the revolution is distorted, abandoned,
betrayed and a new revolution is called for. The systems endure even in a successful
revolution, with different anonymized participants filling established
roles.
Cook
Free markets have always been the way to make efficient use of scarce resources without violence.
"Progressives are fascists at heart. 'STFU and obey me!' is their motto. Dissent is to be punished and any non-progressive opinion is to be ruthlessly suppressed."
Do tell! I didn't realize Gubna DeSantis was a progressive. A fascist, sure, but I never picked him for a progressive. And I guess all those states that have made abortions illegal are progressive states, as well, and also those states that have started banning books and penalizing public protests and restricting what can be taught in public universities, etc. Why, we're living in a progressive hellscape!
I've been in church and so phoneless, but it occurred to me that I shouldn't have characterized Robert Cook's dichotomy as "predictable" - that's dismissive. I should have said "understandable."
But, Robert, it still doesn't seem to me that (in the time since the Enlightenment, at least) either mutual destruction of both sides or violent overtaking of one side by the other has been so much the norm that you can make it into a dichotomy. Even the American Civil War, violent as it was, did not end in the destruction of one side - it certainly led to one side's fortunes falling dramatically, but that side - minus the slavery - still exists as an idea ("the South," not "the Confederacy," except on the minds of small groups of ideologues on both sides). Communism hasn't been wiped out, nor has the free market. The USSR was not violently destroyed; it went out with a whimper, not a bang (and I suppose you could say it kind of went into deep hibernation rather than death).
But maybe I'm playing semantic games.
Essentially I do believe tribalism is in our genes, based on the behavior of our closest genetic relatives. But we are not solely our genes, and it seems that - with pretty constant attention to the issue - we can at least expand our tribalism to include a greater diversity of individuals. Which is, I thought, what you were saying, too.
It seems to me that one significant way in which our sides disagree is on how the tribalism expansion should take place: by group versus by individual, and by shared philosophy versus by embrace of the greatest number of immutable characteristics.
Only a fool would believe that sociology or psychology would have anything to do with "science".
The argument-example that I recall from Jared Diamond is the contrast of the New Guinea highlander's IQ with the IQ of a modern grocery-sacker. The former may well be higher due to the more challenging environment.
New Guinea highlanders need to master a dangerous environment; the turdwit sacking your groceries only has to master the bus schedule.
Robert Cook said...
"Studies show that conservatives have a much better understanding of liberals and liberalism than liberals do of conservatives and conservatism."
"BTW, I'd like to read those studies. Can you provide the link(s)?"
All you really need to is read this blog. Try and approach it with any preconvictions.
I didn't need a scientist to tell me this.
For some reason, we've gone from simple disagreement on how to handle situations to intense hatred of people who don't share your point of view. They're labeled as enemies and are accused of attempting to destroy everything. (Like democracy or even the planet.)
Just look at the Israel/Palestinian situation. Both sides keep calling the other side "genocidal Nazis."
"Only when the two groups were asked to work together to solve a common problem did they warm up to one another."
So, group A did not try to force group B at gunpoint to "help" solve a non-existent problem, at great personal sacrifice? Huh. Wonder how that would have worked out. I guess it would depend on how the guns were distributed. Wouldn't it.
But how odes this moron Achenbach get from "Here is what some Boy Scouts did in the wilds of Oklahoma" to "Here is why purple-haired crazy ladies want to cut off their sons' genitals"?
Oh, right. Science.
Robert Cook said...
"Progressives are fascists at heart. 'STFU and obey me!' is their motto. Dissent is to be punished and any non-progressive opinion is to be ruthlessly suppressed."
Do tell! I didn't realize Gubna DeSantis was a progressive. A fascist, sure, but I never picked him for a progressive.
Ah, yes, the evil Gubna DeSantis who, checks notes:
1: Fires DAs who refuse to obey the law and do their jobs
2: Fires "teachers"{ who spend their "teaching" time pushing their personal political agendas, rather than teaching and educating according to the rules they were hired under
3: Takes away special gov't giveaways going to large businesses
4: Attacks big tech companies that are using their power to censor users
You don't have the slightest fucking clue what a "fascist" is, do you.
Let me use little words, so that even you can understand:
No one gives a shit about teh "personal lived experience" of a 20 something "school teacher" whose biggest "accomplishment" in life is her tattoo.
It is not "fascism", or "assault on freedom of speech"for an employer to tell employees what they can and can't say while working on the employers dime.
It MIGHT be fascism to fire people for what they say and do on their own time. But that's a "progressive" pathology (you all call it "cancel culture", or "accountability culture"), not a DeSantis one.
And it is not an "assault on academic freedom" to tell 2nd grade teachers that they aren't allowed to discuss their sex lives with their students.
The fact that you call it "fascist" for DeSantis to prevent that just shows what complete and utter scum you are
"The argument-example that I recall from Jared Diamond is the contrast of the New Guinea highlander's IQ with the IQ of a modern grocery-sacker. The former may well be higher due to the more challenging environment."
Well, yeah, Diamond does seem to be very strongly attached to the idea that the inhabitants of New Guinea are much smarter than the inhabitants of Los Angeles, and that this is because of quite recent evolution. You have to wonder how he has managed to convince himself that he does not believe in racial differences.
I know it's WaPo, but the complete lack of self-awareness in that article's rabid, vitriol-spewing comment section is so intense that it borders on performance art.
What happened to love thy neighbor as thy self?
I think NFL is the outlier there. People love football and we watch it together, or at least at the same time. It is a positive event to bond over.
The NFL that insists on playing the black national anthem before the Super Bowl? That NFL?
Robert Cook said...BTW, I'd like to read those studies. Can you provide the link(s)?
Here's one that turned up with about 2 seconds of googling.
Robert Cook said...BTW, I'd like to read those studies. Can you provide the link(s)?
Here's one that turned up with about 2 seconds of googling.
But, Robert, it still doesn't seem to me that (in the time since the Enlightenment, at least) either mutual destruction of both sides or violent overtaking of one side by the other has been so much the norm that you can make it into a dichotomy.
I don't say that humans are more inclined to mutual self-destruction than historically--though we've always been and are savagely violent--but I think the consequences of our assaults on the earth (poisons in the air, land, and water, climatic changes resulting from humanity's actions and technology, loss of tropical forests and the consequent aridity and loss of animal species, etc.)--and the destructive power of our various instruments of war, including not just nuclear weapons but engineered viruses, etc--are greater than they ever have been and more uncontrollable in the event they are ever deployed. In short, we might walk into global self-destruction with no such intention in mind, just trying to get the advantage over the other guys, (and everyone are "the other guys" to everyone else).
Funny, I remember when it was less polarized. I don't think we've had that much time to evolve .
@robert cook
Yeah, I agree. I don't think people are getting worse, but the consequences of a mistake made by a single person are amplified by technology. History is a collection of individual human decisions.
Democracies tend not to seek the destruction of other democrascies. Since they also twnd to be more caoitalistic they make better use of their resources than countries that aren't democracies.
capitalistic.
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