Comment by gxs | Hacker News Reader

Comment by gxs | Hacker News Reader

>>This is sad on a number of levels. For one thing, the friendships were actually closer and longer lasting at the small colleges, suggesting that there is nothing intrinsically beneficial about seeking out similar people. (Opposites don’t attract, but they should.)

This parallels closely my experiences at a certain UC in the bay area.

It was ironic because for a school that preaches diversity, for a student body that is self-proclaimed ultra liberal and progressive, it was socially very conservative. The better off white kids hang out pretty much with only other better off white kids in their frats..the asians have their own frats..so do the blacks and hispanics. What's more, there is not too much interaction between these groups to the point where you can really feel uncomfortable if you find yourself in a group where you don't belong.

I don't really know where I was going with this, other than people definitely tend to form cluster of like-minded people.

Heh, this was not my experience at all. I knew several very diverse groups, basically made up of random people that met in the dorms.

Of course, I have to admit that my friends are actually fairly alike: almost all are EECS with some other engineers thrown in. But this does not reflect most of the groups I knew in the dorms. (Also, ignoring the EECS/engineering bent, my best friends are also a fairly diverse group.)

It's easier. I go to another UC myself and while I agree with most of what you say, I see more and more people interacting with one another. Hopefully this trend continues.

But I get it. For almost all of our evolutionary past, we were in tribes where everyone looked like us. While we're more open to diversity, it takes a certain type of person to want to go outside the comfort zone.

In the past, this would mean getting eaten by an animal or getting killed by a rival tribe. If you looked different, believed in different things, etc. you are dead.

So being with like-minded people, even if you're liberal or whatever is the remnants of human evolution that we haven't fully gotten over yet.

Besides, it's safer. Easier to relate to people who look like you and think like you.

This also parallels closely with my experiences. One of my high schools had a student body of 400, where everyone tended to be friends with everyone. On the other end of the spectrum, my college was the "most diverse school in the United States" and the largest school in Virginia (George Mason University); everyone pretty much stuck to their group that most represented themselves.

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