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Comment by crdb | Hacker News Reader

This paper is published during an era where the dominant global empire is founded and (mostly) run on principles opposite to ethnocentrism, at least internally.

All of the current POTUS' grandparents were born in Europe, and the previous one's father was Kenyan. The most famous entrepreneur of our generation was born of Syrian parents. The wealthiest self-made woman in America according to Forbes (I did have to Google it), Marian Ilitch, had Macedonian parents.

The best strategy in the Iterated Prisoner's Dilemma is tit-for-tat [1]. The winning groups of today have found ways to cooperate-cooperate systematically, overriding the advantages conferred by the behaviour observed in the paper.

[1] It gets more interesting when both sides know how the other thinks: https://intelligence.org/files/ProgramEquilibrium.pdf

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Counterconjecture: Immigrants have always been shat upon in the US (after the first few waves, to be sure), so the closer you are to the 0th generation of a family, the more adaptation you've had to do in the same environment as those from more established families, and thus are better equipped to solve the problems of a society because you haven't been conditioned to ignore the problems yet (or they don't affect you).

Not so sure. Walk around New York City, a city that proudly claims to be progressive, and observe how segregated the schools[1] and neighborhoods are, and the color of people being served versus those doing the serving.

Those doing well in this social order, per the article, post-facto rationalize this with an essentialist argument: It's a meritocracy, I've earned my nice brownstone (and those I gentrified out didn't), my ability to eat at fancy restaurants (worked in the back by cheap labor of a different color), my cheap pedicures (by Korean immigrants who have no choice but to accept the toxic chemicals[2]), and the cheap nannies for my children (invariably black, hispanic or Filipino women scraping by, spending less time with their own children than the ones of their rich employers, some even moving abroad away from their own kids to give them a "better" life[3]).

Normally the reader comments under New York Times articles side with progressive politics, expressing anger at conservatives and Republicans for their self-serving disregard for the poor, for minorities, for women. But if a story points the finger at them[4], these liberal-banner-flying, I'm-with-Her touting New Yorkers, suddenly they start singing the same tune as the conservatives they disdain, justifying their ability to put their kids in the best schools at the expense of the disadvantaged kids, and blaming the families rather than the system that is rigged in their favor from the get-go. Sort by most votes and you have to get to the 15th comment or so for someone to side with the article. One reader had the gall to say:

> The good schools all have students that

    Show up every day
    Do their homework every night
    Never miss a test, an assignment or a project
    Ask for help when they need it
    Students create study groups on their own to do the work

> A woman who did my nails each week told me that her daycare in queens was open 24 hours to support worker schedules and that there were tons of after school tutoring and enrichment programs to fill the gaps for working parents. She worked 7 days a week as did her husband, and she paid for all of these programs...she did it because that is the norm in her community, and most understood that this is the proven path to the middle class. She did all of this while sending money home to her parents in Korea. I am sure her children will be prepared for college.

> There is no substitute for working hard everyday and delaying gratification.

This is good? That the woman who is doing her nails (see [1] if you haven't already) has to "work 7 days a week as did her husband", no doubt having less time to spend with her own kids, while this woman gets to be pampered in comfort of a pedicurist chair once a week and send her kids to exclusive schools with little effort?

The article is spot on about how we so easily switch sides, whatever it takes to maintain our cognitively dissonant views.

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[1] https://www.vox.com/2016/2/16/10980856/new-york-city-schools...

[2] https://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/10/nyregion/at-nail-salons-i...

[3] http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/04/11/the-sacrifices-...

[4] https://mobile.nytimes.com/2017/05/15/opinion/school-segrega...

Success and comfort often take multiple generations to achieve.

Is that fair? No. But the people and cultures that realize that, and maintain a multi-generational view (rather than looking for comfort in their own life) are much more likely to achieve it.

Life was never fair. If you have a solution to make it more fair, I'm all ears. But just saying that it's unfair offers nothing.

Right.

If you think sexism is unfair, don't call it unfair unless you have a solution.

If you think racism is unfair, don't call it unfair unless you have a solution.

Suck it up women, people of color. If you stop complaining, and just work harder, eventually you'll make it. It might take generations, so just maintain a multi-generational view! I mean, many women say that to get the same recognition, they had to work twice as hard as men. So there you go: Shut up and work twice as hard!

If you think Capitalism is unfair, don't call it unfair unless you have devised the next generation economic system to replace it. The only person who had a right to call feudalism unfair was Adam Smith. Everyone else, especially those damn always complaining peasants, offered nothing.

Complaining has real costs. It gets people embroiled in intractable political battles. It makes people feel like victims and not tale control of their destiny. Anyone who gets annoyed by the complaining potentially turns from an ally to an adversary when it comes time for a real solution.

These costs may be worth paying when fighting for a tangible goal (e.g. abolition of slavery), but not worth it when the solution is still a ghost.

The Us vs Them of this day and age is Democratic societies vs Not. The "Free" vs the "Oppressed".

And of course there's also the terrorists. They're a strong Them used to excuse all sorts of policies.

Ethnocentrism, yeah we care less about that than we used to. We find a different Us vs Them these days. Mostly around ideas you hold to be true.

No, I don't agree. That's the popular ideological line but ethnocentrism is a fact and there are a lot of people trying to revive that as a standard. Ignoring this is facile.

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