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Comment by blendergasket | Hacker News Reader

I find it really interesting that at a micro level on forums like this there is the same goodness and kindness to one another. People doing each other favors, people encouraging one another, etc. I mean, I guess it makes sense. People are essentially the same no matter what weird, dark beliefs they hold, but it just always boggles my mind that, out of some fundamental goodness and bond with their fellow human, someone will go out of their way to help someone else find some article or another on why all Jews should be shot or why Anders Breivik was a hero or whathaveyou.

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I think this is just about in-groups and out-groups. If you're reasonably liberal-minded, you probably count the human race as a large in-group. They are favoured over animals, and then even more so over plants. A lot of people probably have groups that go family > friends > group/organisation > race > human race > pets > animals > plants.

I put 'race' in here. It's a hard to define concept, and I don't necessarily agree that it exists, but don't have time for that level of discussion right now. However, it's a useful generalization. A lot of people do have a tendency to group together according to race. For most people that's probably a lot to do with familiarity and commonality though than any strong racist feelings.

The only difference with the intentionally racist groups, is where on this spectrum they consider their out-group to lie. Put in these terms, I think it's easier to conceptualize. Personally, and I don't want to get political about this, but as a vegetarian, I feel my boundary includes animals. I don't want this to sound like a holier-than-thou argument, it's hopefully an objective judgement.

I find it difficult to conceptualize including pets in the in-group, but excluding animals we use as food. It makes no sense to me, and just feels like a hard-wired level of compassion that I have. I cannot on an emotional level process the concept of desiring killing animals. But on a logical level, I can see people that do think like that, and I respect people's choices. Now in my ideal world, people would naturally want to think like me, but I have no desire to waste my time trying to convince people otherwise.

Now, if you take a view that just humans are separate from animals and that we don't have a spectrum of care towards living things around us, then it's very difficult to conceptualize racist attitudes as rational or at all fair in any way.

I'm not entirely convinced of his argument that there are not necessarily economic factors in this. I can afford to be a vegetarian, (financially, socially, etc) and I'm not in a position of desperate need, or war or any situation where I need to reconsider my position. I do know for sure though that in times of crisis, this in-group is bound to shrink.

I think the general tendency of liberal thinking to be about sharing with society as a whole, vs more right-wing tendencies to look after your own is also just about where you fall on this spectrum of care to those around you.

If you're anxious or under stress or impoverished, or in any other situation that would make you feel under attack or that you have to protect your own, then I think you are pretty likely to tighten your in-group to a smaller circle.

That's very true. They don't even hate non-White people. They just don't know enough of them.

I'm non-White and was in Montana for a while. At first interaction it was obvious some people didn't even like talking to me but when I was breaking the ice and forcing some conversation they were very good people. Even interested in learning about my background.

> They don't even hate non-White people. They just don't know enough of them.

From the article:

> The percentage of Stormfront’s target audience [whites] that joins is actually higher in areas with more minorities. This is particularly true when you look at Stormfront’s members who are 18 and younger and therefore do not themselves choose where they live.

The more nonwhites they know, the more likely they are to go to stormfront. They say ignorance is bliss.

There's a difference between seeing lots of minorities around your town, and having minority friends. One of these things makes you more likely to post on Stormfront, the other makes it less likely.

I'd wager that they don't actually know them; they probably cherry-pick the negative impressions they experience.

As it turns out, human beings are generally amazing and wonderful creatures, even when they're members of an unfavored group. (Even when they've selected that group themselves, and the group is unfavored for a damn good reason. Notwithstanding that they're celebrating some very terrible things.)

Primates. Go figure. :P

For tens of thousands of years we lived as tribes of hunter and gatherers. We are biologically programmed to form groups and hate other groups that are perceived as an enemy to our group. Evolutionary psychology is complicated and speculative, but it's quite clear we have evolved an ability to form strong feelings of hate towards other groups.

I like this quote from HPMOR:

>Because the way people are built,... the way people are built to feel inside -...is that they hurt when they see their friends hurting. Someone inside their circle of concern, a member of their own tribe. That feeling has an off-switch, an off-switch labeled 'enemy' or 'foreigner' or sometimes just 'stranger'. That's how people are, if they don't learn otherwise...

>You grew up in a post-World-War-Two society where 'I vas only followink orders' is something everyone knows the bad guys said. In the fifteenth century they would've called it honourable fealty... Do you think you're, you're just genetically better than everyone who lived back then? Like if you'd been transported back to fifteenth-century London as a baby, you'd realize all on your own that burning cats was wrong, witch-burning was wrong, slavery was wrong, that every sentient being ought to be in your circle of concern?

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