Letters to the Editor
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Copy editor wanted
I think that this article is interesting, if not convincing, but my first thought is that somebody should copy-edit this. For example, "cannibal" is not a trait, "cannibalism" is.
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"Natural" vs. "Right" or "Good"
The first thing to beware of in thinking about these kinds of findings is any assumption that "natural" implies "right" or "good".
The moral status of prejudice and ethnocentrism, or any behavior, is a consideration separate from the scientific question of their origins. Whatever the eventual scientific consensus may be, we as people will have to decide if those behaviors are consistent with a just morality or not.
Humans are self-aware enough that we can choose to ignore biological imperatives. We have an impulse to eat; some people fast, even to the point of death. We have an impulse to seek mates; some people are celibate. Our biology will always be an influence, but nevertheless we are responsible for our own actions.
From my perspective, prejudice and ethnocentrism unjustifiably cause harm to innocents and therefore are immoral. To be moral, A person must strive to avoid them, even if that is against his or her natural impulses.
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There are some worth shunning and hating
Creationists, neocons, zionists, Republicans. I'm sure there are others.
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From Survival To Happiness
...dumb computer agents... can switch from noncooperation to cooperation if they learn that it is in their best interests."
That's the right bottom line! Is it in our best interests to cooperate? Yes. Therefore, let's cooperate!
All our effort should be put into discovering, spreading and implementing this basic information.
I believe the fundamental human evolutionary pattern is from the competitive survial orientation to the cooperative happiness orientation. Humankind is currently in the middle of the main transition period. We talk about happiness and aim for happiness, but it is within the survival paradigm of us vs them. Instead, we need to include everybody.
For more, see my website: http://www.worldwidehappiness.org
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First of all, Salon you mean "bias against" not "bias toward"
Being biased (or prejudiced) toward certain people means that you like them more than others. And that's really where the problem is. We're biased toward our family members, toward our friends, and people we identify with. Human beings are social critters and tend to form teams. Once we do, we want our team to win. We stand by our friends--that's loyalty, dammit, and it's one of our noblest human traits, right?
The problem comes when you have to live together with people you've decided aren't on your team. Way back in the Stone Age there was plenty of empty space between tribes, but ever since the tendancy to see outsiders as opposing teams has been causing trouble. But teams aren't permanant things. We may be hard-wired to divide people into insiders and outsiders but we aren't hard-wired to see people of other colors as outsiders, any more than we're innately prejudiced against people of other religions, or different heights, or who don't share our ancestry. You just have to look for the similarities between you and someone else instead of the differences.
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Unsurprising, perhaps...
But not worthy of the dismissive snorting that characterizes the first page of comments. "Hell, anybody with a barnyard fulla chickens coulda told you that! Don't need no fancy-pants scientist to tell me that!" Maybe you didn't, but now you have evidence to back up your position. It's fun, I reccomend it--the whole evidence thing.
Anyway, anti-racist activists have been working from this assumption for years now. Trying to act like prejudice does not exist (not in MY brain!) is not only taxing on the brain, as the article points out, but it's also a powerful way to protect that prejudice. Hey, come to think of it, that explains a lot... hey, buddy, are you sure you're not racist? Maybe your brain's too taxed. Cognitive dissonance is exhausting.
It does raise the question, too--what now? I agree that it's time to stop reacting puritanically towards our own biology, and just dealing with us as we are. That's a good reccomendation all around. Maybe we could incorporate that idea into our education systems.
That would mean radical reform at the state and federal levels...
Hold on, gotta start a revolution.
Be right back.
--val
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Three sorts of people claim to have no bias: Journalists. Judges (and that's after a career as a lawyer). Feminists that claim the feminism stands for all human rights
So Journalists start off their college career as high school students. They take a bunch of classes on how to put an article together. At some point they are magically transformed into perfectly objective people that have no bias, or can eliminate the bias from their reporting.
So Judges start out with a long career as attorney in which they take the side of whoever pays them first. They put on the black robes, and voila! They are unbiased. Supreme Court Justices are the best at this. After a career explicitly supporting Republican causes, Judge Roberts became tabula rasa.
And then there's feminists. Feminists specifically blame the Patriarchy. And they call themselves Feminists, not humanists. But regardless, they tell us, they are the chief proponents of everyone's human rights. Fathers they say, have no better friend than the feminists. Certainly not fathers rights activists that try to make custody arrangements fair for fathers. And do you know what else? Feminists don't poop!
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No Links?
No links to papers or abstracts? I appreciate Salon diving into science, but the thing is- you have to actually show the science, otherwise it's meaningless.
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Blinded by science
Some blowhards are just blowhards and other blowhards have fancy impressive titles and strict and formal ways of blowing hard.
Anyone familiar with the history of science is well aware that scientists, as a group, have a very high percentage of blowhards, who will blowhard until someone blows even harder than they with a better crafted piece of science, which is only accepted into the canon after much blowing by blowhards who are imprinted with newer nostrums, memes, facts and wheedlers.
I know how to tell time with an astrolabe so don't mess with me, fool.
Well, I used to know.
Light the torches, get the pitchforks and let's head for the castle keep. The scientists are at it again.
It's just behavioralism and programming but if we can con people into making it an organic problem or condition maybe we can sell a pill for it and get even richer.