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Comment by kypro | Hacker News Reader

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> how diverse are we talking?

Switzerland is deceptively effective at assimilation. Migrants tend to learn the local language and customs.

Many people are awful. I’d be fine with Afghan refugees moving in. Even if we accept the premise that Afghan culture is “awful,” wouldn’t the fact that they’ve fled the country indicate they’re not exactly in sync with that culture?

I live in an extremely diverse area with many immigrants on my street and it’s fine.

They could have fled for any number of reasons- that doesn't mean that they aren't exactly in sync with the culture they are coming from. And even if they aren't in sync with the culture they are fleeing- they very likely still hold radically different values than you.

I met a man from Afghanistan sometime last year, however, once we got past the introductions and realized we shared things in common- he opened up to me and began trying to make me realize the value of Sharia law in America, and how much better it would be here if it became the cultural norm.

I’ve had that experience as well, except instead of Afghanistan it was America, and instead of Sharia law it was Biblical law.

I am far more afraid of certain of my native-born countrymen than I am of people who come here.

That makes perfect sense. But clearly Switzerland, unlike America, barely has any proponents of Sharia-like Biblical law. This is a large cause of misunderstanding in threads like these by fellow Americans. Because the US has very similar people at home, it just looks like "potentially a little more of something there's already lots of, they'll never outgrow that existing group anyway, what are they even complaining about".

I've upvoted you because it's a relevant point.

My point is not actually "potentially a little more of something there's already lots of," but rather that the shittiness of people is not well correlated with what country they're from. I'm sure Switzerland has plenty of shitty locals, even if it might manifest in a different way.

The reason I'm not afraid of Afghan refugees moving in isn't because I think their love of Sharia law will be drowned out by my other neighbors' love of Christian Sharia, but because I don't think it's particularly likely they're going to love government-imposed Sharia law in the first place.

>but rather that the shittiness of people is not well correlated with what country they're from.

Would you say it even doesn't correlate in the US with what church they go to? Whether they go to a Fundamentalist Baptist church or are Quakers? I find that hard to imagine to be true in a meaningful way. And if it can be, then it can also hold for villages, cities and countries.

>I'm sure Switzerland has plenty of shitty locals, even if it might manifest in a different way.

The way it manifests is incredibly important and cannot be waved away. That's an entire half of what makes up the issue.

As far as their desirability as neighbors, I have no idea how it correlates to church membership. I mostly don’t know what churches, if any, my neighbors go to. The old Trump-loving Catholics who used to live next door were fine neighbors. I don’t know the religious proclivities of anyone else in the neighborhood that I can think of.

Sharia law is quite big! So big that I'm fairly certain that there is at least one aspect of Sharia law that you would agree with, even if (as it sounds like) you are overall against. If you accept that, you can have a honest discussion of the merits and detriments.

I find it's best to break these things down and discuss them individually (or discuss how multiple rules combine to produce a particular effect, as the case may be): then it's easier to tease out which arguments are honest ("I genuinely think X is better, for Y reasons") and dishonest ("I think X is better for Y reasons, but I believe you'll find Z more persuasive, so I'll say Z"). There's also a phenomenon where people attribute beneficial (or detrimental) properties to one, visible part of a system, when they're really due to another: consider the arguments about capitalism versus communism, which are rarely actually about economic policy, and are more often about other (on the face of it, unrelated) policies of the state: your interlocutor might realise this after detailed discussion, if that is what is going on, when otherwise they might have gone their whole life without noticing the misattribution (as many people do).

Cultural exchange can be mutually-beneficial, even if you both go away thinking "wow, that other guy was an idiot".

Yes, I'm well aware of how big it is, and of course there are aspects of it that I do agree with. What I came away from the conversation with was "wow, this other guy has zero understanding of how important individual liberties are in the United States"

Yeah I think a culture that turns away asylum seekers is pretty awful tbh

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