Individuals prefer to harm their own group rather than help an opposing group | Hacker News Reader

Individuals prefer to harm their own group rather than help an opposing group

pnas.org

135 pointssohkamyung184 comments

This is evident in America where you'll find some people take a position against free or subsidised healthcare and other social support, because some undeserving person (who is not in their group) might get it.

I don't think this is limited to America or healthcare.

We're seeing these effects in corporate life, too: A charging station for EVs has been put up for the company and client EVs. I'm the first employee to have received "free access" to the charger as a benefit instead of more money. (to be fair: I'm the only one with a pure EV until now, too).

Now people are voting against putting up more chargers and enabling employees to charge for a smaller fee than normal, because "there's no normal gas pump being installed".

Nobody will lose anything with two more charging stations. But before somebody with another car gets "something nice", people prefer getting nothing at all now.

But this isn't so much a foot shoot. The gas-guzzling employees are voting (why is there voting anyway?) for "I get nothing, you get nothing" over "I get nothing, you get something" - perhaps arguing that the cost of the something has to come from somewhere.

The described action would be more like "remove all parking lots instead of letting martin_a charge his car in a space" - which would harm the guzzlers to own the EVs.

> perhaps arguing that the cost of the something has to come from somewhere.

This is exactly what’s going on. People know that these expenditures ultimately come out of the company’s operating budget, which diminishes the funds available for other things. Installing EV chargers is a great environmental move in my personal opinion, but we can’t pretend it’s unrelated to discussions come raise/bonus time when people are told that their raises are smaller than expected because budgets are stretched this year.

The EV chargers may be a tiny contributor, but they’re still an unbalanced distribution of the company’s funds based on something completely unrelated to performance. People are keenly aware of these things.

You've brought up good points here. Our "corporate climate" often isn't the best, that's probably why this leads to lots of upset people.

Amusingly if it were proposed to put the EV charging stations in the worst part of the parking lot, people would probably be happier; as it is they're often right next to the handicap stalls and so you have the double whammy of someone getting the best parking space AND free "gas".

>"The gas-guzzling employees"

Contrary to EV driving nature saving unicorns? Ever heard that many simply can not afford EV. Or healthy food. Or many other things.

> (why is there voting anyway?)

Meh, it's not the best word, I'm no native speaker. There are some very vocal people pushing against this initiative which are "inciting" (DeepL) others to stand up against this.

> But this isn't so much a foot shoot.

Not sure about it.

We've got some money left from a good business year, so the CEOs wanted to make some "small projects" for the production site, with some kind of "longer impact" than one-time payments. With payments, taxes will eat most it and the holding corporation would probably step in and mess it up, as other companies from the group are struggling a little bit.

So they've built a barbecue area for example. A handful of people wanted that (it hasn't been used more than two times up till now) and some people have said that they'd like their next car to be an EV/hybrid and that it would be great if there were more charging stations. So they thought it would be a good idea to invest some of the money in chargers.

As there's this "inciting" now, it seems like that plan will be cancelled and the money will find its way into the holding group and be lost to the employees right here.

Not sure if that isn't a foot shoot in the end after all.

Yeah, that's an inter-family squabble about what to do with a "windfall" - the leaders should have collected various ideas and "combined" them in some way, a barbecue area that includes EV parking and (I have no idea what office workers see as perks, tbh).

> the leaders should have collected various ideas

Oh, that happened, but only a quarter of people took part in it because of "meh"... Now they are complaining...

We also got bicycle leasing now and some other stuff, not all is bad...

It's not limited to the US or healthcare, but it is extremely evident there. Look at how many politicians get elected solely on the platform of "We won't help a certain group," regardless of who that hurts.

When you account for opportunity costs, i.e. no such thing as a free lunch, then your opponents' position is rational. People see installing chargers as depleting the pool of funds for employee benefits for which they receive no benefit.

> Nobody will lose anything with two more charging stations

Money doesn't grow on trees.

Or we see the problems in other countries that have such systems and think we can provide better solutions. That's not to say the current system is the best, but that's not what many want either.

I'm pretty sure most Americans don't "see" anything outside the US. Even on Hacker News you see the phenomenon where people tend to dismiss solutions popular and proven to work everywhere else as somehow hypothetical and untested, or at least immediately confabulate some random knee-jerk reason why "it could never work in the US". American exceptionalism is truly a force to be reckoned with.

Nah, in my experience many Americans do, especially those that have the privilege to leave home (study abroad, move to a new place far away, etc.).

But those aren't most.

Not sure about that. A _lot_ of city folks didn't start there.

I would say that those of us in the US who are more or less "coastal elite" types are probably just kind of sophomoric about how things work in Europe. I think a lot of us have a simplified and rosy picture of how European systems work, but if we were pressed on the details, would have to concede our ignorance lol

I can't find the quote, but I believe it was one of the physicists involved in the Manhattan Project who said that the greatest secret of nuclear weapons is that they were feasible to engineer at all. Just by dropping them, the US let that secret out and ensured that other countries began engineering them.

I feel like American Exceptionalism has just turned into collective denial.

Although we now know Russia had spies infiltrating the Manhattan project, so the cat was out of the bag either way.

The Allies also had spies sabotaging the Nazis' nuclear program, which may certainly have prevented WWII from being a lot worse.

There were many reasons, including the fact that the Nazis weren't nearly Manhattan Project level serious enough about pursuing nuclear weapons, and simply lacked the brainpower that had emigrated en masse before the war.

You will see this phenomena on discussion forums like r/science

Study participants based out of USA : Most discussion focussed on the study

Study participants based outside of USA : The study is not conclusive because the study is done somewhere else and not generalisable.

They don't say "it doesn't apply to US"; but rather they are "not generalisable".

You can have good socialistic healthcare, and welfare country. You can also have open borders. You can't have both.

It's basic stability condition. People will flow to the socialistic welfare or against it, and it's not going to stop until forces equalize, a.k.a it's just as good staying in the worst country as it is moving to the better welfare one. Since people moving tends to harm the other country the immigration is from, it should bring both down.

Only one side has a stable condition. It's a matter of common sense at this point. If one side advocated for closed borders with subsidized healthcare, that's fair enough and maybe even better choice.

P.S. socialized healthcare works well in Israel for example.

This is what’s called a ‘false dichotomy’

‘Open borders’ is a strawman, anyway. You can have policies which promote immigration, provide legal pathways for immigrants to provide labor to the economy (including unpaid labor like raising kids and domestic elder care), and can structure social benefits in such a way that you provide a social safety net, without having to just throw the border open to all or pay out unemployment benefits to anyone who shows up out of work.

Illegal immigration is a market response to a failure of the government to provide a legal framework for sufficient legal migration. People are willing to come to (for example) the US and work illegally without legal access to any social safety net. But allowing people to live under those conditions is both a moral failing (we should not be comfortable relying on the labor of people who face destitution if they lose their job) and a societal risk (people with no safety net are more likely to end up engaged in criminal activity that harms society).

So why not create a more structured arrangement? Create paths to legal immigration, with access to defined, limited, temporary benefits, and with a pathway that over time - as an immigrant’s stake in the country increases - converges towards the full security afforded to citizens.

>> Illegal immigration is a market response to a failure of the government to provide a legal framework for sufficient legal migration.

No, it really is not. There's really no upper limit on how many people might WANT to immigrate to your country (other than the obvious 8B world population size), but there's an upper limit on how many immigrants your country can accommodate in the given time frame. Increasing limits for legal immigration won't stop illegal one, it might even encourage it (e.g. when one person gets an immigrant visa and some of their relatives don't but they still decide do go, illegally)

If you make it possible for a large enough population of immigrants to be legally permitted to work, you create a situation where employers can remain within the law and only employ people who have legal right to work, meaning you can afford to actually enforce the law preventing employers from employing illegal workers (without as a side effect completely shutting down agriculture, construction and cleaning services across several states).

THAT reduces the incentive to enter the country outside the legal framework, since all the jobs are going to people who have the paperwork.

People do not want to go to live in places where they have no economic prospects.

Illegal immigration is the market response to different economic potential across countries. Just like in physics, if you have chemical potential differences across a boundary and particles can pass, you'll only reach equilibrium when the chemical potential equalizes.

Even if an immigrant enters a country and is still productive and doesn't even use any social benefits, he diluted the job pool. Those getting out of the job pool get the socialistic benefits. So the average productivity could still go down. Those immigrants compete with locals equally in the job market, so dividing them into one group having benefits and another without doesn't change the stability condition. So instead of an immigrant coming and taking benefits directly, he comes, replaces a working local which just takes benefits.

Open or closed borders are a real dichotomy from higher up viewpoint which analyzes dynamics and stability condition, not a 'false dichotomy'. They represent a constraint in the equilibrium condition, which either exists or doesn't. The most you can do is filter the demographics which can enter or leave. But you'll still reach an equilibrium for each demographic with an open border. Like diffusion through filtering membrane. Or you can restrict the flow, but it only delays reaching the equilibrium, doesn't change where that equilibrium will be.

These stability conditions and dynamics are forces beyond the power of governments. You can play around them and find a reasonable trade-off, or you can try fighting them and get disappointed.

It doesn't matter whether the immigrants don't get the benefits themselves, they compete for wages with people that do. It's funny you're even suggesting to solve this problem with inequality.

By the way, in Israel for example, the construction industry is completely dominated by Palestinians. They don't get any benefits. Israelis just don't work in construction anymore. Even when people are jobless they don't even consider working in construction because the state of employment just isn't worth it.

You can't solve this by creating inequality between immigrants and locals. It's even worse.

All immigration is the market response to different economic potential across countries. It will be illegal if no legal pathway for it is provided.

And: Did you just commit the lump of labor fallacy?

Why, in this model, are people ‘getting out of the job pool’ for these ‘socialistic’ benefits?

Benefits like.. healthcare that restores them to a state where they can return to work after an injury? Education that lets them develop skills to increase their productivity? Income support to allow them to care for a child, raising another generation of productive citizens?

I don’t understand why a society offering those benefits is automatically unable to also offer a structured immigration program.

> because some undeserving person (who is not in their group) might get it.

Surely someone, somewhere feels like this, but it’s more often a strawman argument used to make opposing arguments more easily dismissible. The discussions I have with people offline aren’t interested in these types of dismissals. I know many people who genuinely want better healthcare, cheaper education, and stronger social safety nets but who disagree with the specifics of proposals. Like most things in politics, if an argument reduces the other side to an easily-dismissible evil, it’s probably not an accurate representation of the counterarguments.

From real world anecdotes, the concern about things like student loan forgiveness (as the most recent example of an expensive social program being debated) are more about the extreme cost of the program contributing to an ever increasing list of expenditures. People are nervous about the amount of government spending and how it’s being distributed semi-randomly. This goes back to the rampant COVID loans to businesses, the stimulus programs that far overshot their target, and now proposals to give certain households with up to $250K income a free $10K.

People understand that these things do matter in a society where we’re all bidding for a limited supply of homes and such. It’s nice to imagine someone having a reduced debt load, but people still think about where that money comes from and how the uneven distribution of that money gives some people (excluding those who paid their loans off early) a financial leg up in places like the competitive housing market.

It’s all connected. The money must come from somewhere, and we’re all operating within the same markets. It’s disingenuous to pretend that there are no consequences for these programs, which IMO is where politicians fall far short of structuring them and pitching them to a wider audience.

But what are the consequences? People has similar revelation when the national debt was about to surpass GDP, and yet no economy-ending consequences rose from that. In reality nobody really knows how debt works on a global scale, and those that try to understand it seem to do a fair job at keeping the economy afloat when they join FRB or the multinational conglomerates that have a stake in the US remaining economically stable.

> the concern about things like student loan forgiveness [...] the extreme cost of the program contributing to an ever increasing list of expenditures.

SLF is a one-off cost (of between $400Bi and 1Ti depending on which plan you subscribe to) though. It's not like, say, the DOD which is currently burning $800Bi a year and rising - I would venture that the people happy to shoot down SLF are equally happy to keep that budget going up.

> People are nervous about the amount of government spending

...going to people they deem undeserving. They're perfectly happy with the amount spend on the DOD, DHS, etc.

I think there's also a generational aspect to it. Student loan forgiveness is being painted as a cash transfer to younger generations who are somehow lazy, whereas moving cash from younger generations to older (e.g. social security) is sacrosanct.

Student loan forgiveness is not a one-off cost unless it's bundled with a reform that prevents the same debt from being accumulated again. I support the measure, but I wouldn't have supported it if it hadn't included the income-based repayment modifications that should limit the accumulation of unmanageable student debt in the future — I don't believe this goes far enough either, but that's a different topic. My point is that it's not possible for me to countenance supporting a reform that helps some people and "pulls up the ladder" not making it available to others in the future — generally derided as "borrowing against our children's futures".

> ...going to people they deem undeserving. They're perfectly happy with the amount spend on the DOD, DHS, etc.

Defense is what the government is supposed to be spending money on. It's a textbook example of a public good.

> It's a textbook example of a public good.

https://www.brown.edu/news/2021-09-01/costsofwar would disagree, for example.

I don't see anything in that article that disagrees. Note that by "public good", I mean <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_good_(economics)>, not the "opposite of bad" good.

We must live in alternate realities; I am old enough to remember polls from 2016-2018 that showed that rural conservative voters liked the Affordable Care Act and its provisions when it was labeled as such, and hated it when it was labeled as Obamacare.

I have also mostly heard "fairness"-based arguments against student debt relief.

They seem to be way less opposed for government to bail out corporations from same tax money tho.

And I definitely knew many people that oppose to tax break or something for someone that's not in their group all while they enjoy some other tax break without problem and excuse that their one is fine.

"Hands off my Medicare!" might be the prime example. Or farm subsidies. People who constantly argue that government is too expansive and always incompetent (or evil) literally seem to forget that programs benefiting them are in fact run by that same government.

I usually make the case that 60% of the US federal budget is entitlement programs with the largest portion being Medicare and Social Security.

Medicare is what I usually focus on on because a person will take out $3 for every dollar they put in.

The real welfare queens are grandpa and grandma, yet in the 80s under Reagan many of those same people were blaming the poor.

If you want to see who has power, look at what programs people are willing to touch. Medicaid is constantly under attack by Republicans. While Medicare is a sacred cow to both Dems and Republicans.

Pardon my ignorance, but how is Social Security an entitlement program? I thought it was supposed to be forced retirement savings... how often do people get out more than was taken?

It's an entitlement program because what you're entitled to it independently of what you put in. There's no isolation. You don't suddenly get cut off when "your" contribution has been exhausted. You keep drawing from the pool, indefinitely, and in fact this is the common case because official estimates of what people need for retirement (both cost per year and longevity) consistently lag behind reality. The pool "just happens" to be replenished mostly from still-working folks' contributions, but it's still a pool and not individual accounts.

Before anyone else "well actually"s me, as a retiree myself I'm well aware that there is some relationship between what you put in and what you get out. That doesn't change the system's essential nature. It's more of an anti-abuse and anti-depletion measure, similar to raising the retirement age or adding means tests. There's still a big common pool in the middle, and people can still keep drawing from that pool even if they live well beyond the point where their net contribution is negative.

Thanks for clarifying that perspective, I've not considered that before.

It would be nice to see some hard numbers re: net negative contributions.

https://en.wikipedia.org//wiki/Social_Security_(United_State...

It's a pyramid scheme. You put in $10 over the course of your career, but you take out $20 during retirement (funded by the next generation(s)). If US had shrinking population like Japan instead of growing population it would quickly collapse on itself because each generation takes more than it gives and relies on population growth to not collapse on itself. Or maybe social security rules would change so you have to be 75 before you get any benefits so that most people die before they qualify.

No, the social security taxes levied today go directly to the recipients today, with the plan that when you retire, the next generation will pay for your social security. So it's an entitlement program in the most literal sense.

Saving money in the bank makes sense for an individual, but not a government or a whole country. Because, they can print as much as they need. So why have a big warehouse full of cash when you can just make it later? The limitation to that is that it will cause inflation if you print too much- but if you warehoused the money and then released it later the same thing would happen.

Anyways, the reasons they print money or remove it from the economy are not because they don't have enough, it's because they're trying to moderate the boom/bust business cycle. (Not doing a very good job of it, though.)

By the way, I just want to say that having someone say "pardon my ignorance" gives me hope. I definitely support people who have an open mind! I'm sometimes afraid to ask a question because I'm worried people will downvote or attack me for not knowing the answer. There are tons of things I'm ignorant about.

Anyways, cheers

    > They seem to be way less opposed for government to bail out corporations from same tax money tho.

Not really. We had nationwide Occupy protests about exactly that, from both sides of the aisle. Not only leftists were fed up, but it also spawned the Tea Party movement on the right.

Occupy was largely a Leftist movement. And while the Tea Party was created then by Ron Paul, the political machinery that swept into Federal government seats was only after Obama won in 2008. The Tea Party as an entity is completely different between the pre-Obama and post-Obama eras.

The printing press, carried by atlas who needs the dollar?

> Surely someone, somewhere feels like this

That would be my family when I was growing up. A lot of their beliefs are centered people should work for a living. If someone can't work, they are lazy and working people shouldn't have to pay to support them.

My parents have since moderated their stance on this but my dad still believes this is the way things should be. :(

I've moved away from home and very much do not share their view and don't associate with people like this. I still see this belief often enough to believe it's pretty dang common in the midwest among the lower middle class.

Edit:

I should note, everyone I've talked to do make exceptions for a few people they know.

Most of them are otherwise good, kind people. They abhor the idea of anyone else getting something they haven’t earned.

Is it that they abhor the idea of someone else getting something unearned, or that they are frustrated and fed up with the things that they have worked for and earned being denied to them (and only incidentally that they are given to someone else)?

Let me pull an example I’ve had to deal with.

I have a disability and some of the accommodations are a regular schedule (no weekends/overtime/on call) and being able to take time off unpaid when I’m sick. This is the bare minimum I need to be able to do knowledge work.

I don’t mention this because some people don’t think I deserve special treatment just because I “claim” to have a disability. If I can take time off for “vacations” whenever I want, they should be able to as well.

If I didn’t have these accommodations, I wouldn’t be able to work. Any explanation of how being bipolar severely impacts every aspect of my life is met with “life is hard for everyone”. (Exact quote from my parents, btw.)

To put it quite simply, no one should be given anything I wasn’t given.

When it comes to taxes, they see it as the government taking what they earned and giving it to people who haven’t earned it.

This is the default point of view where and when I grew up. Based on the parable 'If you give a man a fish he is hungry again in an hour. If you teach him to catch a fish you do him a good turn.'. The independence and freedom offered by the ability to meet one's own needs rather than be at the whims of others you depend on is seen as a much greater good.

> can't work

Are you sure you don't mean "can work but won't"?

Either or. People who can't work are just people who won't work.

For people who can't truly work, it's up to charities to support them. The government shouldn't be taking money from working people for it.

"Free healthcare" lmao.

Who do you think pays for it? TAXPAYERS! It's not free!

And usually in those kind of "free healthcare" systems the private clinics get looked down upon or are even restricted/blocked via laws in order to "preserve the 'free' healthcare system".

Thus the people have even less choice. There are many countries with this kind of a "free healthcare" system.

I'm living in one of them.

Want to go to a specialist? Sorry bro, that's gonna be 6 months of waiting time...

So anyone who is not piss poor will go into a private clinic.

I wanna go to a specialist in the United States and it’s still 6 mo waiting time…

Right?

What world are people living in? On anything other than a 30% coinsurance PPO, you aren't getting anything done without insurance pre-approval. And that's an extra month or two wait on top of the three month wait to get in the door for a consult.

I have first hand evidence that this is not the case. Let's not over-generalize here.

I’m responding to a generalization with my own specific experiences, so if anything this comment should be going to the original person I responded to

You have first hand evidence that GP does not have to wait 6 months to see a specialist? Was there a HIPAA violation involved?

And hell, while we’re throwing around completely vague and unsubstantiated claims. I have first hand evidence that the top level parent is lying about having to wait as well.

I only see specialists in the US and the wait time is usually less than 24 hours.

Are you calling them directly to set up appointments?

Why did you take such huge offense to the phrase free healthcare when they explicitly mention subsidized a second later?

You know that "free healthcare" does not mean it magically costs nothing, and you know that others wouldn't believe that.

The same can be said from the opposite side of the argument.

People will be on the side of free or subsidised healthcare and other social support regardless of their unpayable public debt rising even further and that it eventually may crush individuals from society that are perhaps not even born yet.

The "opponent" in this case is the wrong person who has a different political view.

Reagan's Welfare Queen is a prime example of how government support systems were not only dismantled, but met with disdain because of the feeling that they were helping undeserving people.

This is a straw man. The actual viewpoint is "I don't want more of my hard-earned money to be taken from me via higher taxes and then wasted".

It seems to me if they modeled it as an infinite series of games instead of a single game they might find it's about denying your opponents resources for the next round. You also should consider things proportionally in terms of the resources of each group, one may be willing to take a bigger total loss that is smaller proportionally to disarm another group.

(I admit I only read through the abstract though)

That was my thought. If I thought my opponent could only survive a few turns I might be willing to take losses to prevent them from surviving more turns.

This is the same strategy as a company operating at a loss in order to put competitors out of business.

I think a lot of people will be tempted to say "that's obvious, you dummy!" but that's what good social science research does: it gives us a systematic explanation and principles of understanding for how people behave in groups.

The key word here is "opposing", not "another", "separate", or "sovereign". Meaning their values are at odds with yours.

So the response should be "duh".

It's even more of a "duh" when you remember that for most of our species history, "opposing" meant "trying to kill you". Denying that people power is an obvious choice.

The real problem is how the public is directed into defining "opposition" nowadays.

An actual great example of this is sanctions, and EU, at detriment to their themselves economically, is cutting their ties with Russia.

A great example of this phenomenon is the white response to desegregation in the United States. White union workers voted against their labor interests, white flight from major cities, municipalities closing down public swimming pools, disappearance of social clubs, etc. Community services were shut down in favor of the "free market" and we've seen the rise of pay as you go government services. Even obviously true notions like "it takes a village" were derided. Collectivism and the notion of "community" were greatly reduced in response to desegregation. The nation self immolated its social fabric in response to desegregation.

EDIT: In the last sentence I wrote above “nation” should have been written as “white people of the nation”.

> The (white people) self immolated the social fabric of the (white people) in response to desegregation.

It's important to note that Black people never had access to those things to start with. They were destroyed out of spite and moved to private clubs that could get away with not admitting Black members.

And when they managed to build them, white people burned them to the ground out of spite.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tulsa_race_massacre

Yes. I made an edit to my comment as a result of you pointing this out. I did not chose my words carefully in my last sentence. Thank you for pointing this out.

Because the white club is one uniform group. In that case I don't even need any more details, since this is such an obvious oversimplification and frankly speaking even racist. "The white response" ...

It really isn’t. You’re just uncomfortable with a group of people that you’re a member of did something bad that was directly related to their membership in that group and you want a carve out so you can feel separate from them. We’re talking about an era in the US where white people were literally in control of everything, nobody else could have done this. And the response was directly related to their whiteness and racism.

So sure, it was only white racists that did this, and without a doubt you wouldn’t have been one of those had you been born back then despite it being the view of the overwhelming majority at the time.

Is there some "fellow white people" group I need to apply to ?

Or you you're a "member of a group" that you never even joined or cared to get close to ?

That's incredibly racist dude. It is exactly same thing actual racists do when they assume someone is <minority> therefore they will do <bad thing>.

If you say, “you’re a white man and therefore you must like Weezer” that’s the prejudice you’re describing. But if you say white men like Weezer you see how that’s an entirely different statement, right?

One is the behavior of an individual ant, one is describing the colony.

> white men like Weezer

This is exactly wrong though - do a majority of white men like Weezer? The right thing to say is "People who like Weezer are overwhelmingly white" (assuming it's true of course).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Original_sin

> you want a carve out so you can feel separate from them.

I am separate from them. I didn’t do any of that stuff.

Also, I have many opinions that disagree with the overwhelming majority of my peers. Do you think you would have been racist back then?

Oh hell yeah I would have probably been super racist. I’m not no naive as to be believe that growing up in an environment where racism is the norm, pushed and supported by my community leaders, surrounded by everyone circulating stories of the evil scary black people to stroke fear, depicted in media, and backed by “science” wouldn’t have affected me.

Statistically speaking, yes. We have a sample size in the tens of millions that demonstrate this fact. A large majority of your views on right and wrong are based on the society you grew up in. For instance, if was a man born in Afghanistan in 1990 it is extremely likely that my views on divorce, marital rape, child abuse, etc. would be quite different than what my views currently are.

> I am separate from them. I didn’t do any of that stuff.

You're doing it right now.

> You’re just uncomfortable with a group of people that you’re a member of did something

Projection much? I'm not white and I feel the same way as gp

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33831208

Yep, textbook projection.

> We’re talking about an era in the US where white people were literally in control of everything, nobody else could have done this.

It's also the era that created the Civil Rights Act, the Voting Rights Act, Medicare, Medicaid and the War on Poverty. You're correct that political leadership in the United States was almost entirely white at the time. But the fact that they passed many substantial pieces of legislation helping other groups shows that people are more decent than the "race war" narrative that gets pushed a lot these days.

I contend that the logic of segregation became unsustainable legally, morally, and in the social conscience of a large portion of the public. With the demonstrations, riots, etc. it became necessary to make the appropriate legal adjustments. However, whites largely weren’t comfortable with the sudden requirement to desegregate and white flight from cities and the other things I mentioned in my original comment occurred.

From my perspective, what occurred is that people wanted desegregation in principle but not in their particular social circles. They didn’t want large numbers of black students in their child’s school for instance.

It was expedient; decency was unnecessary to explain their actions.

These laws were passed in an environment of both great social upheaval domestically, and the cold war internationally. Both contributed.

The Soviet Union kept pointing out US race relations whenever the US claimed to be for freedom. The hypocrisy of the US could not be ignored by the predominantly white christian leaders who enacted these laws while expecting to have any credibility abroad. And, now that the cold war is over, the predominantly white christian political right is attempting to dismantle every single one of these acts and more.

> white people were literally in control of everything

I think there's a big difference between "white people were in control of everything" and "the people who were in control were white".

We can talk about the “white response” to desegregation in the same way we can talk about any other historical event involving massive social change. This does not mean there is absolute uniformity. It means a pattern emerged and that by and large this is how members of said group reacted. For instance it is an undeniable fact that white flight from major cities occurred. Of course not every white person fled a city but, as we normally speak and communicate, it’s correct to say that white flight occurred.

> White union workers voted against their labor interests

What were these interests, and was their intent at the time of "voting against their interests" to injure their own group, and if not what was it?

Do we have any insights into their state of mind when taking these actions, and a clear objective understanding of their actual interests, or is this just your interpretation of their actions?

I'm not into the subject but this article covers race and unions in the US. Might be relevant.

https://racial-justice.aflcio.org/blog/est-aliquid-se-ipsum-...

> Was their intent at the time of "voting against their interests" to injure their own group?

This is beside the point. From the paper:

However, real-world decision-making often entails making choices where harm is unavoidable (7, 8). Groups may have to choose between in-group losses and out-group gains, a circumstance that has not been previously studied and reveals that individuals’ decisions cannot be explained by existing theories.

> Do we have any insights into their state of mind when taking these actions?

Often we do, because people generally are not all that shy in telling one another - and the media - what they think.

It is also highly improbable that a group which fought hard for union representation, or made considerable use of a public pool, suddenly decided these things were against their own interests right at the time these benefits were being extended to other people.

> This is beside the point. From the paper:

I was asking someone who made a specific claim, they were not quoting from the paper. I'm asking him about the claim they made.

Specifically the person said "A great example of this phenomenon is the white response to desegregation in the United States. White union workers voted against their labor interests".

In the context of an article titled "Individuals prefer to harm their own group rather than help an opposing group.

If the person did present an example of something claimed by the article, the article cannot be used to substantiate it, the article cannot be an example of itself, it could contain examples, but this was presented as an independent example, which needs independent justification.

> > Do we have any insights into their state of mind when taking these actions?

> Often we do

Do we have any for the specific instance in question?

> I was asking someone who made a specific claim, they were not quoting from the paper. I'm asking him about the claim they made.

In showing that a specific question you asked is beside the point of the paper, there is nothing wrong in quoting the paper to demonstrate what that point is.

Furthermore, I quoted the specific question you posed (for reference: 'Was their intent at the time of "voting against their interests" to injure their own group?') Syzarian's comment (and, more relevantly, the claim you specifically picked out in your latest reply) neither implies nor is predicated on either a yes or no answer to the question I quoted - and there is no reason it should, especially if, as I suspect (but cannot prove), Syzarian is well aware that this is beside the point of the paper.

> In the context of an article titled "Individuals prefer to harm their own group rather than help an opposing group.

This is an entire paragraph, yet it does not even appear to be a complete sentence, but you do seem to be agreeing that the context created by the paper is relevant.

> If the person did present an example of something claimed by the article, the article cannot be used to substantiate it...

The question of yours that I responded to is not about, and does not raise an issue concerning, the veracity of the claim you have specifically identified.

>>> Do we have any insights into their state of mind when taking these actions?

>> Often we do [because people generally are not all that shy in telling one another - and the media - what they think.]

> Do we have any for the specific instance in question?

This is the most blatant example so far of something that pervades all your posts here: attempting to shift the burden of proof by raising questions where there is no real doubt, knowing that any attempt to respond could be stretched out indefinitely through the use of similar questions [Update: as you have demonstrated in your further replies to Syzarian and others.] If you have a point to make here, the burden's on you to make it, bud.

>> It is also highly improbable that a group which fought hard for union representation, or made considerable use of a public pool, suddenly decided these things were against their own interests right at the time these benefits were being extended to other people.

Don't you have anything to say here?

Yes it was in living memory and your elders who are honest about can tell you. Go ask your grandaddy I get the feeling he might have some insight.

They also wrote books, letters, and op-eds, all part of the historical record, and available if you were willing to spend a little energy on this subject.

> They also wrote books, letters, and op-eds, all part of the historical record, and available if you were willing to spend a little energy on this subject.

Mind citing any? I'm not going to try to do the work to substantiate someone else's claim, and besides, if I don't find anything that agrees with it your response would just be that I did not look hard enough. If you can't cite something, that is fine, just say this is your opinion, that is entirely okay, but claiming something as fact puts the burden of proof on you to substantiate it.

I'm not an American either, and my grandfather is demented now but I think I know him well enough to know that he is would not have done something like that, and I know of at least one case that could be said to show the opposite, where he voted against his own group interest to benefit another group.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_flight

https://the-ard.com/2022/05/31/the-jim-crow-roots-of-loiteri...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Labor_unions_in_the_United_Sta...

I asked specific questions:

> What were these interests, and was their intent at the time of "voting against their interests" to injure their own group, and if not what was it?

> Do we have any insights into their state of mind when taking these actions, and a clear objective understanding of their actual interests, or is this just your interpretation of their actions?

This, at a glance, answers none of those. I'm not going to go do research to clarify someone else's claim. If they did not want to make it, they should not have made it, but they did, and thus it is up to them to clarify it.

Pattern recognition does not seem to be a forte of yours.

>I'm not going to try to do the work to substantiate someone else's claim

That's fine, but I'm not sure why you'd expect someone else to do it for you.

>and besides, if I don't find anything that agrees with it your response would just be that I did not look hard enough.

And now you're the one making unsupported claims.

As if it's unfathomable that preventing gains by groups seen to be competing with a groups interests could be an interest in and of itself.

The groups interests were not correctly understood. The progressive course when this happens would be to attempt to improve understanding of the groups interests. Alternatively, you can keep the invalid assumptions, disproved by the groups behavior, and assert the group is illogical and harming itself - at this point you're no longer reflecting on reality.

"Millions of white working-class and middle-class Americans vote against their own economic interest by defending policies that hurt them while profiting the rich, including the 1% wealthiest Americans. Several factors help explain this peculiar dimension of U.S. politics: myopia fostered by anti-intellectualism; the relationship between religious fundamentalism and free-market fundamentalism; blind faith in the American Dream; and how racism hinders economic solidarity."

- https://academic.oup.com/california-scholarship-online/book/...

Another: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/0023656920089018...

Unfortunately don't have free links but if you're able to read these, they'll answer your questions.

Implied in this: White and black people are distinct, different groups. Good luck approaching these issues with that preconception.

Are you saying that in the US during the Civil Rights era, they weren't?

Uh, they quite literally were under the law back when segregation existed. Yes there were rich black people and white people who marched with MLK. Zoom out to a population level however and they were clearly distinct groups and treated as such.

Good luck understanding the world while refusing to apply historical perceptions to historical issues.

The historical perception is part of the problem.

So are posters who want to grandstand about something other than the comment they're responding to.

Original comment cited a historical example relevant to the posted article. You responded that the comment implied (in the present) that whites and blacks are two different groups, which they never did except in a historical context. Therefore you either disagree that historically whites and blacks were two separate groups in post-war America (good luck arguing that) or you're trying to contort the conversation to a discussion of "the problem" whatever that is in your mind.

The latter, and i think it necessary. I'll gladly hijack more threads to point it out until enough people are aware of this annoyingly subversive detail.

lol

>A great example of this phenomenon is the white response to

In picking an example, you're forced to be reductive. Rather than considering the content of the character, all the comments are focused on the color of its skin.

We could be having a productive conversation about how working class run societies and government (The basic core of the US experiment in self rule) were divided and conquered by the Owner class.

But instead, we'd rather pick apart the example. This is far, far too common here on HN. It leads to a reduction of the value of HN as a whole.

PS: What's the HN shorthand to name syzarian's comment that I'm replying to?

Indeed. And the way the ruling class divided the working class in the U.S. was by using race as the talking point instead of class. I do maintain though that this was especially easy to do because with desegregation white working class Americans had a target to blame that wasn’t the ruling class.

Class reductionism doesn't provide a concrete example of "harming their own group rather than help the Other" as much as the changes the U.S went under in response to the end of Jim Crow.

You're offended that someone is using white as a descriptor ?

You're engaging in the same behavior.

Heather McGhee's "The Sum of Us" talks about this in detail - she refers to it as "drained pool politics." It's a great read.

https://www.powells.com/book/the-sum-of-us-9780525509561

White flight was more about racial unrest and riots.

I don’t exactly blame people for leaving. You can support civil rights and not want to live in a neighborhood where quality of life is getting worse.

>I don’t exactly blame people for leaving. You can support civil rights and not want to live in a neighborhood where quality of life is getting worse.

The quality of life declined BECAUSE the majority of tax-payers left causing city services to fail.

They left due to a rise in crime and other low trust behaviors exhibited post desegregation.

That trend persists today - look at crime rates by race especially the white on black vs black on white crime rate. Controlling per capita shows an enormous disparity. And that’s just the extreme end of low trust behaviors and certainly indicating a litany of other reasons one would want to move away. It only takes 1 instance of being a victim to realize it’s not worth the risk.

Do you know what the violent crime rate of poor blacks was vs. poor whites in 1950s/60s?

No, I think you have the timeline backwards. Crime didn’t rise before white flight happened. Crime rose after white flight happened because there was no longer any funding for the social programs that helped keep crime down. Remember it was still legal to deny black people financial opportunities solely for their blackness at the time, so white people actively denied black peoples business loans and other necessary financial funding to build those programs that white people had happily funded for themselves.

No the quality of life declined because of rioting in the streets.

White flight became inevitable with forced integration of schools.

A lot of comments look at this from a political/party point of view, which is understandable. But could this also be looked at from a group survival point of view?

Let's look at Ukraine right now. In the short-term a deal with Russia might ease the pain of Ukrainians which are troubled by the harsh winter, but by "harming" themselves right now, they might survive better in the long run?

Edit: I didn't want to start a political discussion about the war, just ask whether this behaviour might be evolutionary beneficially from a group survival point of view. Since war has been part of human history.

Like settling with a patent troll vs. fighting an expensive and lengthy legal battle. Sometimes people "self harm" on principle...

That one is a tough calculation imo. My worthless opinion is that Ukraine and the west should’ve negotiated right at the beginning by guaranteeing no NATO membership. Even if Ukraine wins in the end, the country has become a smoldering pile of rubble.

There was even such a deal on the table in the early stages that the west pretty much killed…

At this point though idk what diplomatic solution exists. Deescalation should be everyone’s #1 goal atm.

There is no honest negotiation with Russia. They have proven it over and over again.

Their assumption was that world would just let them do what they want as they did with Crimea, and that previous mistake is direct reason for current situation.

This mentality is was created the Cold War and has cause immense international damage throughout history.

I’m no fan of the Russian federation, but they have legitimate security concerns regarding nato expansion.

We’ve been actively destabilizing the region for decades so they probably say the same thing about us.

Do we really want to go back to perpetual proxy wars with our adversaries?

> This mentality is was created the Cold War and has cause immense international damage throughout history.

This mentality is born from reality, Russia has agreed before to never even threaten Ukraines sovereignty, let alone actually invade.

Russia does not care about agreements, or treaties, or anything, all Russia cares about is what Russia wants.

> I’m no fan of the Russian federation, but they have legitimate security concerns regarding nato expansion.

Russia has legitimate security concerns regarding a defensive alliance expanding closer and closer to them?.

If thats the case maybe they should stop invading countries, Ukraines not the first, and unfortunately may not be the last.

NATO expansion is largely born closer to Russia from Russian imperialism(in the least for the last two members).

> Do we really want to go back to perpetual proxy wars with our adversaries?

Or Russia could not invade Ukraine and not openly call to end it as a country altogether?.

> NATO expansion is largely born closer to Russia from Russian imperialism(in the least for the last two members).

Sure, and before that? NATO has been expanding since the USSR fell.

> Sure, and before that? NATO has been expanding since the USSR fell.

The year the USSR fell, the Russians invaded Georgia.

So conveniently, Russian imperialism has existed since practically as soon as Russia existed.

Maybe if Russia stopped invading countries that used to be in the USSR NATO would stop expanding.

But it's clear that they cannot help themselves and they clearly believe they have a right to try and conquer these counties.

The USSR fell in 1991 and the Russo-Georgia war wasn't until 2008. If you mean the South Ossetia conflict, that was an internal conflict by separatists that had some Russian assistance, much like Ukraine is getting NATO assistance. That's not what people typically mean by "invasion".

> The USSR fell in 1991 and the Russo-Georgia war wasn't until 2008. If you mean the South Ossetia conflict, that was an internal conflict by separatists that had some Russian assistance, much like Ukraine is getting NATO assistance. That's not what people typically mean by "invasion".

There certainly seems to be plenty of claims that Russia was overtly involved in conflict in south Ossetia and it was much more then just "assistance".

> Russia has legitimate security concerns regarding a defensive alliance expanding closer and closer to them?

Yes. The “defensive” narrative is silly if you can think strategically. The United States would NEVER tolerate a similar situation. Remember the Cuban missile crisis?

Imagine if Texas seceded from the union and tried to form a military alliance with China, Iran, and Russia. Ukraine was the second most powerful Soviet and the USSR collapsed only 30 years ago.

NATO is an anti-soviet alliance from the Cold War era. We’ve been fighting proxy battles with the Russians for 80 years. Think about that! Why on earth would Russia trust us Americans and our “defensive” missile systems?

The truth is we danced on the graves of our enemies instead of working to built a better world. This is a tale as old as time and I fear we are doomed to perpetually repeat this mistake for the rest of civilization.

We need to stop excessively spreading our sphere of influence. We got problems at home. Obviously the US can’t back out now…but perhaps we should reassess our future military strategy before we do something REALLY stupid like go to war with China over Taiwan.

> NATO is an anti-soviet alliance from the Cold War era. We’ve been fighting proxy battles with the Russians for 80 years. Think about that! Why on earth would Russia trust us Americans and our “defensive” missile systems?

Because NATO, and America has never invaded Russia, even though they had the capability and will at the end of WW2.

> Imagine if Texas seceded from the union and tried to form a military alliance with China, Iran, and Russia. Ukraine was the second most powerful Soviet and the USSR collapsed only 30 years ago.

This would only be a fair comparison if the USA entirely collapsed and then, the free state of Texas, which, has international recognition from both the world and the country that succeeded the USA as being independent decided to join a military alliance.

> We need to stop excessively spreading our sphere of influence. We got problems at home. Obviously the US can’t back out now…but perhaps we should reassess our future military strategy before we do something REALLY stupid like go to war with China over Taiwan.

Or maybe it's that China shouldn't try and conquer Taiwan?. Like Russia shouldn't have tried to conquer Ukraine?. America(for once) and the EU really look like the goods guys this time around.

A big fan of the American war machine huh?

The US is hated in many regions for playing world police. I suppose you support the war in Iraq because Iraq shouldn’t have invaded Kuwait?

We only care about Taiwan because of TSMC. We don’t even officially recognize Taiwan as a country.

It amazes me that people can’t look in the mirror and realize military strategy is a cold dark forest. America is the undisputed king of warfare. We’ve been involved in more conflicts than any other government that exists today. We’ve trashed South America and the Middle East in pursuit of our strategic goals. Europe has been destroyed twice in the past century. Don’t pretend it’s all black and white and western developed countries are bastions of righteousness.

> A big fan of the American war machine huh?

Big fan of it when it arms a country against its imperialistic neighbour that is doing its best to try and obliterate a country off the map.

It that was truly their goal, they could’ve carpet bombed their targets day 1. Their nuclear arsenal is enough to obliterate much more than Ukraine off the map…

The million land mines in Southeast Asia and record setting drones strikes and 20 yr occupation of Afghanistan sure is awesome. Slurp up that propaganda baby!

> It that was truly their goal, they could’ve carpet bombed their targets day 1.

Russia doesn't have the capability to do this or they would have, Ukraines air defense is too much for Russia to even obtain air superiority after 9 months.

> Their nuclear arsenal is enough to obliterate much more than Ukraine off the map…

If Russia actually nuked Ukraine they would likely collapse in the coming 10 years from the international communities response, nuclear weapons were never on the table.

> The million land mines in Southeast Asia and record setting drones strikes and 20 yr occupation of Afghanistan sure is awesome. Slurp up that propaganda baby!

I can recognise when multiple countries do bad things, something that people who are pro Russia appear incapable of doing.

Russias war in Ukraine is bad, Americas war in Afghanistan and Vietnam were bad.

I don’t even understand what you’re arguing for. Russia is so inherently evil that diplomacy is not an option? That’s insane.

If you can recognize that every country commits war, you should be able to understand that diplomacy is a viable option. I mean seriously take a moment to think critically here. My position is that deescalation is possible. Yours is that war should continue and diplomacy will never work.

Is that honestly the stance you wanna take?

Another commenter made a similar suggestion, that this outcome makes sense when analyzed in a game theory framework where participants play the game repeatedly and seek to maximize their long-run expected value: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33830734

This "repeated games" scenario is very common in social science and economics.

If you see aiding the other group as a moral evil, of course you'd rather incur costs yourself or to your group rather than participate, even in a small way, in supporting something you believe to be evil.

I don't want to distract from the generic point with a specific example, but it's easy for me to think of causes I would spend 10x of my own or my group's resources to prevent that other cause from receiving a benefit.

I used to think that "zero sum" thinking was the worst possible, but now I see that some people really have a "negative sum" mentality. Crikey!

Explains a lot of counterintuitive behavior that just defies all of my prior attempts to understand.

WTF is wrong with people.

In my opinion we’re seeing exactly this with the US Senate race in Georgia right now.

What you're seeing in Georgia is a terrible candidate put up against someone who if not for outside influence would not have been there to start.

I'm having trouble parsing your sentence.

For others not in the US, the state of Georgia has a legislature runoff face where a Texan is running against a Georgian. The Texan appears to have failed to establish residency (does not actively live in the state they are campaigning to represent) and, being a popular sports figure, has been a source of a lot of discussion around mental health and traumatic brain injury in politicians due to the candidate's many gaffes and apparent hypocrisy (paying for an abortion while claiming to want to support a general ban). The other, the incumbent and a local church pastor, comes from the nominally left-wing party and thus is the target of right-wing propaganda despite representing a lot of the values the median right-wing voter likes. Sports-in-politics are weird and no one is happy from it ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

To clarify what I mean: in the 2020 Senate runoff it was between Raphael Warnock and Kelly Loeffler. Despite what some people want to claim, Georgia is still a very red state, and has had Republicans at the helm for nearly 20 year. Even the Democrat leaders of yore (Zell Miller, Max Cleland, etc.) would be considered to the right of Joe Manchin - blue dog Democrats. Loeffler was going to win, but Donald Trump tried to wield his influence on the election, which did two things 1) turned off would-be Republican voters and 2) riled up Democrat voters. Prior to the rally to support Loeffler her numbers were up - pretty far up too. Warnock's win was a referendum on Trump. But apparently that wasn't enough - Hershel Walker is Trump's hand picked candidate, and is not a very good one besides that. He's probably going to suffer the same fate. Walker has popular social appeal as you correctly point out - he was an all star running back for the University of Georgia and everyone in the state over the age of 30 knew his name even prior to his political career. But as I say, he's a terrible candidate.

Democrats would argue Walker is a terrible candidate boosted by outside influence. Republicans would argue Warnock is a terrible candidate boosted by outside influence. Not sure I've seen many argue a 50/50 split.

That's fair. Warnock most likely would not have been elected had Trump not come in and made a scene. Prior to that one rally Leoffler's numbers had her winning by a decent margin. After that she never recovered.

That I have seen, this behavior is smaller-scale than "group". Given a (metaphorical) chance to shoot themselves in the foot, in order get somebody they don't like shot in both feet - a whole lotta people will instinctively go for it.

Could be, but that has nothing to do with this study.

Interesting study with relevant findings. I'd like to see it replicated in Asian and African countries to see how much of it is universal vs cultural. If it turns out to not be universal, that would raise more questions to study.

One international example of this is when there was the nuclear negotiations going on between Iran and the other superpowers a few years ago. While the negotiating team was working hard to come to a compromise and finalise the deal, there was severe lobbying and backstabbing going on within the country to undermine those efforts. This went as far as discrediting the negotiators and even making up criminal cases for them even though they were instructed by the top authorities to finalised the deal.

This reminds me of a study a teacher once referred to. MBA students were asked to choose between two strategies. These strategies basically came down to either hurt the competition but hurt themselves in the process too or hurt no-one and generate more profits for their own company.

Most students chose to hurt the competition and inflict damage to themselves.

On an individual level, this is a caution to not identify or over-identify with a particular group because it clouds judgement.

In much of the real world, you don't get a chance to choose identifying/over-identifying with a particular group. People will do it for you.

I'm not sure that the harm to the in-group is actually known to be a harm. It could be a sincere but erroneous belief that (what we perceive as harm) is not perceived as a net harm by that group.

Makes sense. The impact to the in-group of helping the opposing group is more difficult for them to control or predict over harming one of their own. Fear of the unknown.

Not having read the article, the headline makes sense to me. Harming your ingroup is easier to predict. Who knows what advantage helping the outgroup will give it?

yeah, "beat your friends, so your enemies will be scared of you" proverb

That's going on my wall at work.

The article's conclusions depend entirely on the definition of harm and seems to ignore the particular group's perception of it.

For example one citation used in support of the conclusion is conservative's opposition to getting the COVID vaccine. That group perceived harm in getting the vaccine (whether right or wrong). The article claims the group opposed the vaccine merely as a reaction to the vaccine push from outside the group.

So maybe the conclusion would be stronger if stated as "groups have a hard time making rational calculations of harm when facing a perceived threat from an outside group".

Doesn't really change it too much, but it seems quite unsupported in its assumption that these groups actually perceived themselves to be harming themselves.

Exactly. Also related is the definition of "net negative outcome": is that relative to a prior situation (i.e. could be a very good situation becoming a little less good) or to a value framework common to both groups allowing for an absolute interpretation?

It took me some time to understand the title.

Better summary: Individuals that are dissatisfied with their own group, prefer to harm it directly than join some other opposing group.

relative utility is a vice

Explains Putin's approach to ruling over Russia rather well.

That's a deeper problem. Rule by fear and you will be surrounded by yes-men that only say the good stuff. Allow corruption and everyone, including your closest, will indulge as it becomes a way of life, and at worst, ingrained in culture (from my experience post-socialist Poland also had a lot of that sentiment that you have to pay up if you want to get things actually done, as it was rampant before).

Do both and you have what is happening, "surprise" after "surprise" when what you thought you had in equipment turns out to be actually bricks in someone's villa.

Is that true for student loans? I don't have the numbers, but I'd bet the group of people who have paid off their loans are against bailing out the group who hasn't.

Explains the globalist-technocrat Western leader trash response to the Multipolar world. Hate on China and Russia, abuse your own citizens.

Yeah man anyone upset with Russia at the moment are just haters

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