
Overcoming Us vs. Them - dnetesn
http://nautil.us/issue/55/trust/why-your-brain-hates-other-people-rp
======
yesenadam
I got to the end and realized I'd been reading Robert Sapolsky.

His "Biology of Human Behavior" Stanford lecture course in about 25 parts is
on youtube. It's absolutely amazing; he's a great lecturer, articulate, funny,
fascinating, a great storyteller about remarkable experiments and legendary
scientists. It starts with evolutionary biology/sociobiology and goes down via
a dozen levels of explanation ('buckets' he calls them) to brains and genes
and how they work, in quite a lot of detail. I couldn't recommend it any more
highly. p.s. My girlfriend (very non-sciency) loved it too.

~~~
j7ake
Nautilus has great articles I wish there was a way to make a compilation of
the best ones then binge read

~~~
Veen
I've enjoyed quite a lot of articles on Nautilus, but it's a shame the the
people who write them aren't getting paid.

[http://nautil.us/blog/a-letter-from-the-publisher-of-
nautilu...](http://nautil.us/blog/a-letter-from-the-publisher-of-nautilus)

~~~
Chaebixi
tl;dr: their grant money dried up, and they've been limping along trying to
find support.

If you like them, it looks like they sell subscriptions here:
[http://shop.nautil.us/](http://shop.nautil.us/)

------
pklausler
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.

~~~
contravariant
The problem with Us vs. Them thinking isn't that there is a group of people
that you fundamentally disagree with, but rather that you've constructed a
somewhat nebulous "them" which you've ascribed all negative qualities about
"them".

The way to recognise this is to ask yourself if you can actually name any
particular example of the "them" you're arguing against. Because if not, you
risk arguing against a straw man you yourself created.

We're at the point where whole communities are being erected to argue against
a "them", usually with an opposing community arguing against a similarly
distorted image of the "us".

~~~
lucideer
> _The way to recognise this is to ask yourself if you can actually name any
> particular example of the "them" you're arguing against._

Unfortunately, I think what can often compound this line of thinking is a
willingness to speculatively ascribe qualities to people we've just met in an
attempt to put them into a box we can relate to (either positively relate or
negatively relate).

Asking someone to think of a particular example of "them" might simply lead to
an example of someone they've judged on first impressions.

~~~
contravariant
That's a fair point. I guess the real problem is that any claims about "them"
can't really be refuted by anyone. So a better method would be to ask yourself
if there's someone who could reject your claims. If not your statements are
not falsifiable, which makes debating them somewhat pointless.

------
joe_the_user
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 toxic affair for all
concerned that only nets a marginal advantage, it will be used when actual
chemical gets used - when one player is losing everywhere and no longer has to
care. But that "pulling out all the stops" situation now happens ... always.
When will politicians "go the low rout"? Always. When will media? etc.

Which goes back to hyper-competitive. When will it end? I don't know. How will
end? Probably in tears but otherwise also hard to say.

~~~
Danihan
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, but it's usually to beat out another
cooperative group.

~~~
ghostbrainalpha
I thought exactly as you did. But then I read this book.
[https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/189989.Finite_and_Infini...](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/189989.Finite_and_Infinite_Games)

Your conception of "Reality" doesn't even include Zero Sum Games. Once you
incorporate that, you can then look at the Finite and Infinite distinction.

The book is a tough read, but I guarantee you will love it, and will conclude
that your model here explains 25% of "reality" at most.

~~~
Danihan
Thanks, I'll check it out.

Edit: The one star reviews on Amazon are hilarious.

------
frgtpsswrdlame
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 start to outweigh
differences, everyone becomes an Us. More accurate version: put Us and Thems
together under narrow circumstances and something sort of resembling that
happens, but you can also blow it and worsen things.

Some of the effective narrower circumstances: each side has roughly equal
numbers; everyone’s treated equally and unambiguously; contact is lengthy and
on neutral territory; there are “superordinate” goals where everyone works
together on a meaningful task (say, summer campers turning a meadow into a
soccer field)._

How do we bring people who disagree back together? Technology is really good
at getting people to do things which are individually gratifying so how do we
encourage individuals to do something which is individually difficult but will
have a strong positive effect on society?

~~~
anigbrowl
Forced anonymity perhaps? Suppose you're a Striper and I'm a Dotter (from the
deadly enemy Stripe and Dot tribes), but we both like to play guitar. Well if
you show up on my guitar forum I'll be 'who let that filthy Striper in here?!'
and will interpret even innocent participation as attempts to stripe up the
place, regardless of whether I have been trying to take it over for the Dots
or not.

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.

~~~
Swizec
I remember internet forums as a teenager. Back when people didn't use real
names and profile pics were of random characters or celebrities not our faces.

It honestly never crossed my mind that the people I was talking to could be
anything other than white and mostly guys. I come from a country where races
basically don't exist so that worldview made sense kinda.

Sometimes I wonder how many racist jokes I made to people who were black or
asian and I had no idea. In my defense, those were just jokes/opinions I
picked up on the internet, completely learned behavior as I was trying to
learn how this "American Society" thing works because most of the internet
seemed to follow american society rules.

Anonymity is great, but it has its drawbacks. Had I known the people I'm
talking to are black/asian, I would've asked about their cultures and how they
perceive this American Society thing I was exploring.

------
komali2
>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 hypothesis; skeptically probing outcomes
you don’t like more than ones you do.

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?

~~~
whiddershins
I think the us/them of race is much discussed, while other versions of us/them
can creep in unexamined:

[http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/09/30/i-can-tolerate-
anything...](http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/09/30/i-can-tolerate-anything-
except-the-outgroup/)

------
komali2
>“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?

~~~
jpfed
The first isn't a self-contradiction; it just places the speaker in the first
camp.

~~~
komali2
Oh, good point. The sith one must be a contradiction, then, because it was
said by a Jedi, so clearly both sith and Jedi can deal in absolutes.

~~~
bduerst
Only if you believe Obiwan when he says it. The line is more or less pointing
out the arrogance of the Jedi with Obiwan's hypocrisy. It comes up a few other
places too, but like the rest of the prequels, messages aren't delivered very
well.

------
onewhonknocks
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.

~~~
nine_k
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.

~~~
laretluval
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 people over which universal coordination
becomes infeasible.

~~~
komali2
If you mean a culture war scenario, this was discussed briefly in the article
- do you focus on the success of your Us, or on the _relative_ success of your
Us as compared to your Them?

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.

~~~
anigbrowl
That's a good strategy in the aggregate but complete defenselessness is no
more sustainable than complete hostility

~~~
komali2
Defense against value invasion doesn't require offense against other values,
does it?

~~~
anigbrowl
Well, it depends on the content of those values. I'm opposed to eliminationist
ideologies for example.

~~~
komali2
What is an eliminationist ideology, and does it require an offensive to avoid
it influencing your cultural values?

------
foxylad
I've always been aware I have these subconscious biases. At a fundamental
level, I think we are all racist and sexist.

But the special thing about being human is that we have higher level thought.
When I see a black person at a party, I acknowledge my bias and remind myself
that there is every chance this person would be interesting to get to know.

But not everyone does this, and many people "go on their gut". And ironically,
this is one of the most significant us/them divisions; between head-rules-
heart and heart-rules-head.

------
stephengillie
The more people I meet, the more I realize there is no "them", only us, us,
and more of us.

~~~
TheAdamAndChe
Yet there are differences between people, and between groups of people.
Different cultures have different values, and social pressures push those
values onto those around them. It's important to recognize those differences.

For example, I recognize that Nazis are people too, but that doesn't mean that
I want to support them in our society.

If we can determine that Nazis are bad due to their toxic culture, then that
shows that certain cultures are bad. Where do we draw the line? How do we
determine what cultures are good and what aren't?

------
tfha
Feel this is very appropriate after the net neutrality thread. Top comment was
a very blatent red-vs-blue characterisation, which of course is not the right
mentality.

If we want to build a better world, we need to work together instead of target
eachother.

~~~
wu-ikkyu
>Now, what does all of this mean in this great period of history? It means
that we've got to stay together. We've got to stay together and maintain
unity. You know, whenever Pharaoh wanted to prolong the period of slavery in
Egypt, he had a favorite, favorite formula for doing it. What was that? He
kept the slaves fighting among themselves. But whenever the slaves get
together, something happens in Pharaoh's court, and he cannot hold the slaves
in slavery. When the slaves get together, that's the beginning of getting out
of slavery.

-Dr. King

------
woodandsteel
In the last part of the article Sapolsky talks about how to overcome us-
versus-them dynamics.

I recently came across an organization that seems to be doing some remarkable
work along these lines. It's called Better Angels.

[https://better-angels.org/](https://better-angels.org/)

~~~
Danihan
>Better Angels Media Network (BAMN)

How ironic that their Network has the same acronym as one of the most violent
Anti-Fa groups - By Any Means Necessary (BAMN).

Very nice organization -- I was impressed with their video from Ohio.

------
jackstraw14
I'm just beginning my recovery from whatever makes "us vs. them" turn into
"everyone vs. me" at a young age, I guess.

I'm pretty sure this way of thinking isn't being instilled systematically from
the top down, but it is happening at a very large scale. What's creating this
"us vs. them" which kids often interpret as "everyone vs. me," is that there
are so many easy ways out of feeling pain (and thus, ways out of learning how
to live as a basic human) that we're in the process of forgetting how to deal
with our emotions. We opt for solitary escape early on, because that's how our
parents dealt with their issues too (their parents likely believed in pulling
up bootstraps, or something). And then we/they continue to opt for escape via
any sensory experience available in consumer capitalist society, most recently
in socially acceptable life-escape games like Facebook and Twitter. We know
it's not an authentic social feed, that it's actually designed to be a game
you play with yourself where your social circle makes up the characters. What
happens if that real-life game turns against you though, or if your mind
simply starts to think they're turning against you? Mass shootings[1],
terrorism[2], and Trump[3], I think.

If the horrors of modern American childhood don't happen at home, by the hand
of adults who also sought solace from their fears in similar ways, these
horrors usually happen in school, where they spend the rest of their time.
From fellow classmates who figure out that bullies get their way, and clever
bullies get their way even more. Us vs. them happens very early on, and when
kids seek out solo escape via phones, games, whatever, well that's the
beginning of a neverending search via consumer society for some answer that
can allow them to live with the thoughts in their head.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_shootings_in_the_United_S...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_shootings_in_the_United_States#Deadliest_shootings)

[2]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terrorism_in_the_United_States...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terrorism_in_the_United_States#Recent_trends)

[3] [https://i.imgur.com/crG3EeQ.jpg](https://i.imgur.com/crG3EeQ.jpg)

------
maxpupmax
On a meta-level, I wonder if this writer was paid for their work to create the
article?

If you haven't seen it yet, Nautil.us has a very spotty record of paying their
workers over the last year at least.

[https://nwu.org/an-open-letter-from-freelancers-at-
nautilus-...](https://nwu.org/an-open-letter-from-freelancers-at-nautilus-
magazine/)

~~~
bornonline1
Does the pay dynamic change if the article was a promotion for a book?

------
tmp123tmp123
Us vs. them is not just mindset, it is in evolved biology. Overcoming biology
is nonsense.

Nevertheless, an intelligent person must be aware of workings of ones biology
and physiology and try to correct his behavior.

It is same like riding a bicycle - difficult to learn but once the skill set
is acquired it becomes a habit. Meditation is the another name for it.

------
ewjordan
A sidenote on one thing brought up in the article, it's worth noting that the
implicit association test (IAT) is of highly dubious utility, despite common
use. While it measures _something_ (as does any test), there are very serious
questions about what it actually measures, how reliably it measures it,
whether what it measures actually correlates with real world bias, etc. There
are very good reasons to think that, however clever the test may sound, and
however real implicit bias is (its existence is almost indisputable), the test
doesn't accurately measure it.

------
qwerty456127
We, the people with ADHD are always annoyed by them, people writing 25-page-
long articles and we are also very jealous of others capability to read them
:-)

~~~
bornonline1
Internet browsers have text to speech built in. It's really helpful for me.

~~~
qwerty456127
Really? I could never find it. Perhaps you've got an extension of a sort
installed. Nice idea anyway, I'll give it a try, thanks! I doubt it sounds
great but maybe the things have actually improved since the last time I've
tried a text-to-speech tool.

------
hosh
The article mentions studies done with fMRI on people recognizing "Us" vs.
"Them".

Anyone know of similar studies done on neuro-atypical people? I'm particularly
interested about studies for people on the autism spectrum and people with
anti-social personality disorder.

~~~
jerf
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Williams_syndrome#Social_and_p...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Williams_syndrome#Social_and_psychological)
, right at the end. As I write this, it's footnote 44.

This is also my meta-answer for those who think that even today the us/them
mechanism has no value. I've read some accounts of trying to raise children
with Williams Syndrome. _Truly_ defaulting to 100% trust is pathologically
dangerous even in the safest places you can imagine in the US. People who are
imagining that they are open and trusting still don't realize how much they
are defending themselves, until they compare themselves to someone who seems
to truly lack those mechanisms.

Which doesn't invalidate the idea that we may need less us/them than we
currently have, but that doesn't prove or even provide a lot of evidence for
the idea that the correct amount is zero.

(Long before the singularity arrives to wipe us all out, we face a greater
danger from someone managing to _successfully_ socially engineer the
population, and in their infinite wisdom, doing something very, very stupid,
such as setting our outgroup trust to 100% all the time, with no way to modify
it based on experience, and rendering the entire population trivially
exploitable by the first parasite that comes along or something.)

------
tim333
Fear not. Facebook has a new goal to bring the world closer together. So
that's that sorted then.

------
autarch
They reference the implicit bias tests that have now been widely debunked (to
the best of my knowledge). This makes me question the other psychology studies
they cite as well. The whole psych field is notorious for unreproducibility.
How seriously should we take an article that relies on such studies as the
basis of its thesis?

------
somberi
For what shall I wield a dagger, O Lord?

What can I pluck it out of

Or plunge it into

when you are all the world?

(Devara Dasimayya 10th century Indian poet)

------
meri_dian
It's simple.

Us vs Them happens when there is competition. Competition happens when there
is demand for limited valuable resources and not all that demand can be
satisfied.

We bring the people of the world and the people within our nations closer
together by eliminating absolute poverty.

Eliminating inequality is neither necessary nor even desirable, but the floor
of our economies must be such that those sitting upon it enjoy a certain
minimum acceptable level of comfort.

~~~
icelancer
>>Eliminating inequality is neither necessary nor even desirable, but the
floor of our economies must be such that those sitting upon it enjoy a certain
minimum acceptable level of comfort.

Behavioral economic research shows this isn't how humans think, particularly
Americans. They are naturally competitive regardless of their base level of
comfort and "fairness" is inherently very important to them. If one would get
1 unit of free utility and another person gets 5 units of free utility, but
the person who gets 1 unit has unilateral control over whether or not anyone
gets anything, a startlingly high percentage of people in the 1 unit group
will completely axe the deal entirely despite being better off.

------
js2
Slate Star Codex on the same topic:

[http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/09/30/i-can-tolerate-
anything...](http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/09/30/i-can-tolerate-anything-
except-the-outgroup/)

------
utopcell
thank the good lord Vishnu -- I thought this would be an article about moving
past Pink Floyd.

------
IronWolve
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/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.

~~~
tyleraldrich
> 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 this, and this seems like
fairly extreme hyperbole.

What is your argument here? Tech companies are against conservative americans?
If reading HN has taught me anything, the tech scene is full of conservatives
and libertarians.

~~~
fareesh
> 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-university-
prag...](https://www.prageru.com/press-release-prager-university-prageru-
takes-legal-action-against-google-and-youtube-discrimination) and
[https://www.bostonglobe.com/business/2016/10/14/youtube-
rest...](https://www.bostonglobe.com/business/2016/10/14/youtube-restricts-
access-dershowitz-video/BpnEzzb6VS2U3VZU0tetlI/story.html))

> Again, what? Has this happened? I've never heard of this, and this seems
> like fairly extreme hyperbole.

There is this tweet from the npm CEO, which I subjectively find quite
disgusting. Not that it affects me, but I care about javascript and node, not
the identity or background of the speaker. I would even listen to Pol Pot if
he gave a good talk on these subjects.
[https://twitter.com/izs/status/911105515798720513](https://twitter.com/izs/status/911105515798720513)

Then there was this incident -
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14480868](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14480868).
The link of the submission is no longer relevant, but the first comment is
consistent with how I also feel about the subject. It covers what happened as
well.

> What is your argument here? Tech companies are against conservative
> americans? If reading HN has taught me anything, the tech scene is full of
> conservatives and libertarians.

That does not counter the points made. They exist, but they are censored, so
it is not in anyone's interest in terms of job security or career advancement,
to express their conservative views. Diversity and multiculturalism is
essentially the equivalent of halal or kosher now. If it isn't there,
seemingly nothing can be done. In general, conservatives these days don't
subscribe to these ideas of classification on the basis of various identity
properties, but if you do not think this way, there seems to be no place for
you. James Damore is a good example of this as well. You are apparently not
allowed to think differently, which is sort of ironic, coming from the
birthplace of Apple.

~~~
fzeroracer
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.

~~~
fareesh
You are free to make that case if you believe it has merit. I can reinforce
mine with plenty of examples and lots of other evidence. I am for freedom of
speech in principle. Nobody should be censored for discussing a political
opinion.

------
legitster
This is where countries with some sort of mandatory service may have us beat.
And maybe it explains why American policy was so focused after the big
national wars. I don't think there's a better way to force camaraderie. But
then it becomes Us vs Them on the other side of the border.

~~~
creaghpatr
I am very in favor of mandatory service as a strategy to improve nations but I
do want to point out that some of the most impressive ones (South Korea and
Israel come to mind) are extremely homogenous.

~~~
otakucode
I have never understood this idea. Why would it be beneficial to have your
citizenry trained to kill?

~~~
DanAndersen
There's several possible benefits:

\- Enemy nations will be somewhat less motivated to invade if they know they
will be facing a population that is entirely armed and ready to resist.

\- Putting the population into the service of the country helps build a sense
of national cohesion by giving a shared sense of mission and duty.

\- Training the citizens to fight could also be a tool to help prevent
dictatorships where the military persecutes the people; a military of citizen-
soldiers would be less likely to see their own people as a "them" and more as
an "us."

~~~
eric_h
A counter point:

I work with some people in Armenia (which has mandatory conscription) - and
from what I've observed that military service made the Us v. Them between
Armenians and Azerbaijani stronger than perhaps it would have been without
said military service (a drunken encounter between one of said Armenians and
an Azerbaijani person outside of Armenia literally came to blows for no real
reason I could observe except Us v. Them (well, and alcohol)).

------
yoran
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.

~~~
thomastjeffery
It's a catch 22, since that divisiveness strengthens the divide, and that
divide strengthens the two parties.

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.

~~~
r00fus
No, the biggest thing we're missing in the fight against 2-party system is an
actual representative voting scheme.

A first-past-the-post [1] voting scheme will always result in 2 parties
(assuming it doesn't collapse into a single-party autocracy) due to the
spoiler [2] 3rd party vote problem.

It's not psychology but basic probability math and game theory.

Why is not fixed? Because this is the cheapest way for the moneyed elite to
both a) wield power, and b) prevent that power from getting concentrated
(which could result in a powerful dictator who doesn't listen to them).

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First-past-the-
post_voting](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First-past-the-post_voting) [2]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spoiler_effect](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spoiler_effect)

~~~
ScottBurson
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 and BC are both susceptible
to strategic voting. I recall reading about some municipality that decided to
try STV. IIRC, in the very next election they had two competent but extreme
candidates at opposite ends of the political spectrum, and a centrist
generally regarded as less competent (and who got a much smaller number of
first-place votes than either of the others). The electorate was so evenly
divided that the centrist won; the voters were so upset with this outcome that
they ditched the STV and went back to PV (plurality). Evidently they would
have been happier with one of the two extremists, even though that would have
been the "wrong" choice for almost half of them.

We could object that none of the three candidates was obviously a great
choice, and that if voters really preferred their opposite-extreme candidate
over the centrist, they should have voted that way. But it's easy to see why
they didn't. We could also object that AV would have given a better result in
this case, picking whichever extreme candidate got the most votes and ignoring
a widely-disliked centrist. But STV tends to be an easier sell, perhaps
because it maintains the notion of "one person, one vote". And finally, we
could object that they were too quick to pull the plug and should have given
STV another chance, having learned a lesson about the importance of finding
competent centrist candidates.

But their conclusion was, they tried an alternative system and it didn't work.

I tend to favor AV personally, as it's relatively resistant to pathological
outcomes, but have to admit that it has another problem: it's the least
tamper-resistant. With PV and STV, the total number of votes counted shouldn't
be greater than the number of voters. AV has a much looser and less useful
bound: the total number of votes shouldn't be greater than the _product_ of
the number of voters and the number of candidates. That leaves a lot more room
for manipulation. In a world where our voting systems are already not as
trustworthy as they should be, this is a problem.

~~~
smichel17
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/](http://rangevoting.org/)

~~~
ScottBurson
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?

~~~
ClayShentrup
Fraud is a small problem compared to not having Score Voting.

------
masterleep
Yes, but in my case, Them is pure EEEVIL.

------
Boothroid
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 with the “Mean people
suck” bumper sticker, and remind everyone that we’re in this together against
Lord Voldemort and House Slytherin.'

He goes on at length about why us and them is bad and then LITERALLY ARGUES
FOR an us and them attitude :|

~~~
Erem
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.

~~~
Boothroid
OK, but look at the context - out of nowhere we have obvious diversity at all
costs propaganda. I'm watching the BBC's Christmas trailer now which involves
a brown skinned single father and his daughter. This in no way represents the
average in the UK in fact the UK is almost 90% white - so what message is the
BBC trying to send? Am I one of the bad guys to recognise the colour of the
skin? Because you can bet that whoever came up with the idea certainly had
race at the front of their minds. Is the UK really so racist that we deserve
to be subjected to this type of manipulation? Is it beyond the realms of
possibility that the people behind this agitprop are in fact the very same
nefarious forces you mention?

~~~
Retra
>This in no way represents the average in the UK in fact the UK is almost 90%
white - so what message is the BBC trying to send?

"Hey brown people. You're not being completely ignored by our society. When we
have to make decisions based on _arbitrary_ characteristics like race, we
prefer to occasional choose people you might be able to relate to on the bases
of colour, rather than trying to appeal to some obviously incorrect notion
that we should only relate to 'the average UK citizen' (which doesn't exist)."

Or maybe those actors just worked best? Or maybe they drew straws. Either way,
there's no reason to believe that the skin colour of the actors on your screen
is some kind of manipulation/propaganda against you. That's an irrational
leap.

>Am I one of the bad guys to recognise the colour of the skin?

No. You're one of the bad guys for failing to recognize that the colour of the
skin is an arbitrary choice and thus not relevant. The only thing about a
person you should consider relevant is their ability to make good decisions.

The BBC will not occupy any moral high ground by using only white actors.
(Which is what you're saying they _should_ do, on account of some frankly
stupid appeal to 'averages.' The 'average' UK citizen is riddled with disease
and missing most of their limbs. So maybe don't try to tacitly substitute
'average' for 'ideal/typical/most common'. And why does the BBC has any
obligation to represent any of these anyway?)

Maybe that's a harsh-seeming way of putting it, but that's the logical
alternative you imply by using crappy metrics.

