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Comment by thaumasiotes | Hacker News Reader

> Greenland is a poor country. Perhaps Denmark simply wants to help out. This is ethically reprehensible. Greenland is poor, but compared to many African countries it is fabulously wealthy

Earlier:

> Much of the Greenland population is Danish, unsurprisingly

I don't see that it's "ethically reprehensible" for Denmark to focus its charitable efforts on Danes. What did I miss? Gwern even calls this out:

> if that is Denmark’s true reason, shame on them for letting [...] ethnicity warp their ethical judgement to such a freakish extreme.

I'm pretty sure it's better for 100,000 Africans to die than for my sister to die. That's not warped judgment.

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> I'm pretty sure it's better for 100,000 Africans to die than for my sister to die. That's not warped judgment.

I don't see warped judgment but it's something we see frequently these days: An attempt to take down liberalism, with its embrace of reason and compassion, by aggressively making illiberal statements - as if to challenge the very ideas. The crazier and more illiberal the better; it almost becomes a contest to see who can say the craziest thing, which also serves as a proof of ideological purity common in such movements. You can see it in the statements of GOP candidates (Trump is on the same continuum they've been on for a long time) and on Fox. The only solution is to letting these hateful ideas dominate our country is to start calling people on it.

We're not machines, we're human beings, and it is humanity's nature for a person to love their own parents more than other parents, and for parents to love their children more than other children. What's inhumane is preventing people from doing what comes to them naturally via excessively high taxes, and force people to provide for everyone else who they hardly know[2].

Love is not equal, and that is just a fact.

Mohism[1] - where everyone love everyone else equally - is dead. It will die once again.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mohism#Morality_and_impartiali...

[2] See nursing homes, poor public schools.

This post ignores the massive social movements away from such highly tribalistic human associations. It ignores how technology, state, and economic structures have utterly dictated family structures since the neolithic. It does not actually establish some causal link between 'human nature' and what current familial affiliations people have. It is a statement of 'common sense' dressed up as an unassailable assertion about 'human nature'. How dare anyone question 'human nature'?

Furthermore, the idea that any particular inborn kin affinity implies any particular social structure, falls flat on its face on purely logical grounds: If it is human nature to maximize the utility of one's parents and one's children over other relatives and other human beings, it is still possible that the best way to do so is to create a more egalitarian, free associating society based on large scale cooperation between human beings and compassion for non-kinsmen. The assertion relies on unspoken intuitions which are shaped by the institutions and cultural powers that raise us. Convenient for someone trying to justify their world view, pitiable for anyone trying to understand 'human nature'.

Furthermore: We are all related and the time horizon of this kin favoring behavior has not been established. It is not clear why it is inborn 'human nature' to care for your immediate relatives and not more distant relatives. It is conveniently left implicit as that which makes most sense for the capitalist nuclear family, and maybe a generation or two down. If you care about your offspring into the indefinite future, and if you care about your relatives going back indefinitely, you care about all human beings.

What I truly believe 'human nature' to be, if such a thing could be well defined is our ability to apprehend what lot we have in the common good, what our place in the way of things is. Not just in our communities, but in our species and on our planet.

It's certainly not an excuse to grumble about taxes.

You are arguing people should be prevented from prioritising their resources to their kin. You are free to think such an action is contrary to your sense of ethics. My opinion is - if a person can't even love their own children, how can they love others'?

A long time ago all matter originated from the Big Bang, uniform and same in every way. Does that mean that is where we should aim towards? If you care about 'all', why not throw everyone and everything into another giant Big Bang yet again and be done with it? Because that is exactly what globalisation is doing - extinguishing unique cultures, languages and demolishing identity.

We don't live in a free society. If we lived in a free society, we would have to, from scratch, determine how best to cooperate. You complained about taxes: Taxes exist for a reason, because they are part of an enormously complex social structure whose main purpose is to support the concept of private property.

I am asking you to consider that if you want more freedom to love your kin, then maybe you ought to abolish the system of coercion that props up capitalism. It's not the taxes at fault. The taxes are there because without them, the system destabilizes. History teaches us that much. If you want private property, you're going to have taxes. The best you can hope for is to be the top of a feudal hierarchy where all the taxes feed into your estate. That does not endure, as we are all aware.

I don't think caring about everything means you want it to be homogeneous. I also reject globalization at a personal level, because I see it as a horribly violent system of interlocking political, social, and economic forces seeking to assimilate more and more of the world into their hierarchy of exploitation.

What I think it means to care about everything, is to not be myopic. It may be your intent to love your children, and even love them more than other children, but it may very well be that the best way to do so is to love all children. Is that unreasonable? It may be that the best way to love your children the most is to care about the entire ecosystem. Is that unreasonable? I think human beings are remarkably good at seeing the connections between things, and even if instinct is what tells us what is important, it is something far more dynamic and intelligent that tells us what is true.

If you want to be an individual, I think, personally, that it means you must find a society that supports the kind of individual you want to be.

I can't imagine being an individual without other human beings around. Realizing that, I see that my individuality is found in my community; my place in my community is part of my individuality.

I can't imagine being an individual without the world I live in. Realizing that, I see that my individuality is also found in my planet; how I treat the Earth is part of how I treat myself.

P.S. If we ever get to the point as a species where we can generate a new universe, I think it would be enormously important for every individual to contemplate what that means about what we are.

Everything is connected. Everything and everyone are merely shards of the same universe. And that is exactly the point. By my parents, I and my brother are one. By my grand parents, my cousins and uncles and aunts and I. By my ancestors, I am connected to the rest of humanity. And through me, my children will inherit this same connection. And, so, to take care of the world, I must take care of my parents first, and concentrate my resources on my children.

The same mindset that creates excessive high taxes for redistribution to everyone else, taken to the extreme, would abandon elderly in elderly homes, prevent children from receiving the love of their parents, take babes from the arms of mothers, and in doing so, tear the fabric of society apart, dissolving the connection between nodes and turning humanity into one giant glob, devoid of uniqueness of individuals, by equalising everything.

And the mindset to do that, as hackuser so fervently advocate, at its core, is narcissism. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10038933 The idea that his ideas are all important and others have zero standing, to impose his ideas of how society should be structured on others.

I know nothing. I cannot convince him, and I cannot convince you. Are my ideas the only way people can build societies with? 100% no. What's important is for me to leave others to figure out their own humanity. People will find their own way and from your comment I can see you are already most of the way there. As long as I do nothing to meddle in others, there will be no need for me to meddle.

It's in our nature to live in caves, hunt and gather, die very young, lose most of our children before they turn 5, and murder each other over food and sex. But reason and compassion [1] also is in our nature, and using it we've built great things far beyond those other things.

[1] I'm not entirely sure "compassion" encompasses it, but I'll go with it.

I think it's more an acknowledgment that instinctual forces are more powerful than ideals could ever hope to be. That when push comes to shove, people will violently protect those closest to them and that its fantasy to pretend otherwise.

Well, no, except in the sense that it can be objectively demonstrated that it is better for your sister to die than it is for 100,000 Africans to die by just about any measure of 'better' — outside of your own immediate and immutable personal preference — that you might care to name. So in that one sense, it could be argued that it might be an example of warped judgement.

You're not a guilty white person. Nationalism is not en vogue.

Could you elaborate on that?

There was a time when nationalism was a much more powerful force in society. 100 years ago, millions of young men marched out to be slaughtered in the name of king and country.

Now, in many circles, people have adopted a guilt ridden opposite of nationalism. People genuinely believe that helping a countryman is an ethical dilemma so long as there is someone worse off.

Interesting points; I've a few rambling thoughts about them:

* I don't think many people are so extreme as the 'opposite of nationalism'. In fact, I think that nationalism (or more broadly, the basic tribalistic instinct) has such an natural, powerful pull on people that it will never need to be encouraged.

* I think it's great that many people moderate their nationalistic instincts now with reason and compassion. Not only did millions get slaughtered for the nation (or the race, or whatever), but they murdered millions more. The moderation of 'tribalism' with liberal ideas might be one of the most important changes in humanity's history.

* Unfortunately, I see nationalism and other tribalistic ideas as rapidly spreading again. It's promoted by state school boards in Texas and Oklahoma; many national leaders push it, for example in Russia, China, Japan, and South Korea (off the top of my head). Outright religious 'tribalism' is rampant in Europe and, to a degree, the U.S. The EU's unity is under serious strain, Scotland almost succeeded from the UK, and parts of Spain and other countries are discussing the same. Nobody stands up for the value of the liberal ideas and institutions that kept the peace since WWII.

Arguably, there are two kinds of political movements (and leaders), those that bring people together, and those that play on tribalistic instincts and divide them. One kind has much better results for humanity.

There are two kinds of political movements (and leaders), those, like narcissists, forcefully change others into themselves, remove differences between peoples, demolish language and culture, and those that remain resolute in being non-interfering of others, even while being interfered with, allowing other humans to live according to their humanity.

In Firefly - you would be part of the alliance. In Star Wars - you would be part of the empire. In the People's Republic of China, you would be part of the CCCP. In the U.S. you would be part of the Federal government. In Europe you would be part of the Troika.

And I accept that is your nature.

I disagree; I don't at all intend to force anyone or think they should be forced. I believe they can and will be pursuaded and do the right thing, of their own free will; good leaders facilitate that but showing them how to work together. Humanity's track record for working together is incredible - we're a long way from caves and hunting - and it may be that the more free you make people, the better they respond.

The most prosperous, safest and most peaceful countries in the history of the world, by a long shot, are the freest.

You can disagree. You have the same mindset as the U.S. Government in the 1800's thinking it is wise to persuade American Indians to 'civilise' for their own good. People who never admit failure no matter the results of their social experiments. And that's just how some of us are going to think some of the time.

I can more than disagree; I speak with absolute authority for what I believe. I declare the truth of it. You and your speculation have no standing at all.

That's true for you, since you know if you're lying; it's not true in general.

I don't mean to say that there's any reason to think you're lying here, but I think it's worth pointing out that the identical argument fails very badly in different circumstances.

The problem is that in practice the alternative to nationalism isn't universal humanism. It's pernicious individualism or strong group identification along other dimensions. Many Netizens, for example, feel closer to the educated elite in other countries than they do to working class people a couple of neighborhoods away. I don't think that's actually a good thing if you're trying to create an egalitarian cohesive society.

> in practice the alternative to nationalism isn't universal humanism. It's pernicious individualism or strong group identification along other dimensions.

That's the 'tribalism' I'm talking about. People can divide into 'us and them' over nations or states or race or wealth or whatever. I agree with the downsides and your example.

But it's not intractable. We're not living in family units in caves; we've formed societies, nations, companies, bowling leagues, etc. Humans are naturally social, cooperative, even herd-like organisms and they do work together, organize, and build inclusive social structures.

The very divided states of 1776 did form the United States of today, though it took a little work. The Germanic states formed Germany. Europe did make peace and form the EU. Think of the notion of "white" in the U.S.: There used to be violent, hateful divisions between Protestants, Catholics, and Jews; between Italians, Irish and Germans (and more); it was a big deal when JFK was elected in 1960 that he was Catholic. Now that all would be absurd; those people are just "white" (and the division is with black and Hispanic peopl, and with Muslims). We had segregation, and now we elected a black President (though we still have a ways to go.) LGBTQ people are now widely accepted as just people.

Those are people who live in countries that will be gone in a few generations.

> Those are people who live in countries that will be gone in a few generations.

Pretty sure Europe, the Middle-East, Asia and Russia will all still be here in some form in a few generations.

I agree. The societies who haven't adopted the "guilt ridden opposite of nationalism" will be fine.

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