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Comment by caterama | Hacker News Reader

Perhaps we are inherently good, but I think we're also groupish. How can that be reconciled? There must be an "other" -- something to conflict or compete with -- in some sense. Unfortunately, that conflicting other usually manifests as other humans. Examples are everywhere: democrats versus liberals, professor vs student, rich vs poor, nation vs nation, sports team vs sports team.

I'm excited to see if and how "Blueprint" addresses this.

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If “Good” means altruistic for all people, we are not. We are altruistic for the groups we identify with (“groupish”) — see the work of Jonathan haidt (the righteous mind) if this stuff interests you

Preferring the groups we identify with is a practical heuristic for being efficient with your well-intended actions. Helping primarily locally will often (heuristic) be time & energy efficient. Belonging to the same group as the targets of help will usually (heuristic) ensure the help is rendered when needed, as needed.

Certainly there are complex moral issues here that can be discussed for days on end, but as a rule of thumb, focusing first on your ingroups (family, friends, community) will yield results pretty close to optimal. There's a reason humanity - just like other species - evolved the ingroup preference.

According to the evolution history we stayed quite a long time as tribes. This tribal emotional tendency may be deep rooted in our brains.

> There must be an "other" -- something to conflict or compete with -- in some sense.

Absolutely with you. My suggestion: Climate change. Why would you need hostile aliens when our environment itself turns against us?

Humanity needs an existential level extraterrestrial threat to unify us.

I read somewhere that this is the most peaceful humans have ever been. Since we are not fighting physical wars it seems we are fighting ideological wars.

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