Einstein's Science Defied Nationalism and Crossed Borders | Hacker News Reader

Einstein's Science Defied Nationalism and Crossed Borders

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63 pointsHooke53 comments

Nationalism is an extension of tribalism which is inherited in human beings, it's in our DNA [1]. We, as a species, may override our instincts to do what we feel is better for humanity, but then again humanity is just a larger tribe.

[1] https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/life-is-trip/201208/...

[2] https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/our-emotional-footpr...

> As man advances in civilisation, and small tribes are united into larger communities, the simplest reason would tell each individual that he ought to extend his social instincts and sympathies to all the members of the same nation, though personally unknown to him. This point being once reached, there is only an artificial barrier to prevent his sympathies extending to the men of all nations and races. If, indeed, such men are separated from him by great differences in appearance or habits, experience unfortunately shews us how long it is, before we look at them as our fellow-creatures. [...] This virtue, one of the noblest with which man is endowed, seems to arise incidentally from our sympathies becoming more tender and more widely diffused, until they are extended to all sentient beings. As soon as this virtue is honoured and practised by some few men, it spreads through instruction and example to the young, and eventually becomes incorporated in public opinion.

-- Charles Darwin, "The Descent of Man" (1871)

> A human being is a part of a whole, called by us universe, a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings as something separated from the rest... a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.

-- Albert Einstein

> It has been asserted that the ear of man alone possesses a lobule; but 'a rudiment of it is found in the gorilla' and, as I hear from Prof. Preyer, it is not rarely absent in the negro.

> The sense of smell is of the highest importance to the greater number of mammals--to some, as the ruminants, in warning them of danger; to others, as the Carnivora, in finding their prey; to others, again, as the wild boar, for both purposes combined. But the sense of smell is of extremely slight service, if any, even to the dark coloured races of men, in whom it is much more highly developed than in the white and civilised races.

-- Charles Darwin, "The Descent of Man" (1871)

> It would be a pity if these Chinese supplant all other races. For the likes of us the mere thought is unspeakably dreary.

-- Albert Einstein

Yes, and? Quoting a person doesn't mean blanket agreement to anything else they said, it's usually more about agreeing with the quote.

As for Einstein, it would be a pity if any "race" would supplant all others.. do you disagree? How is that some kind of "gotcha" quote in your mind?

The implied logic is "This person was Great, and said X, therefore X is Good". It is only fair to point out this can be used to support the almost polar opposite of the quote you chose.

I mean, people should make up their own minds, instead of being swayed by authority, no?

And the Einstein quote wasn't aimed at 'any' race - it was aimed specifically at the Chinese. The implication being that being supplanted by the Chinese is worse than if by some other race.

The implied logic you name is actually your presumed logic. I certainly don't read that logic into every time someone uses a quote.

Quotes can be used to show that past generations have said similar or relevant things

Quotes can be used because they were interestingly or eloquently phrased

Quotes can evoke someone's connection to a subject without relying on an appeal to authority.

Probably the last thing I'd assume is that someone is seriously positing the quality of an argument based on who said it. Such a logic would probably be expressed explicitly if it was key to the message.

> Such a logic would probably be expressed explicitly if it was key to the message.

Not if you don't want the audience to critically examine it. Commercials don't say "product X will give you a happy family" - they just happen to show a happy family using product X.

The subject is Einstein. The Darwin quote also fit perfectly to humanity being "just one big tribe", and both quotes expand that to sentient beings. That was my point, not "yeah, Darwin also said something similar and is also considered important, so it's double true".

I'd be happy for you to critically examine both, and express any issues you have with the actual content of the quotes. But you're not doing that, you're doing anything but that. That's not my intention, that's your choice.

> The implied logic is "This person was Great, and said X, therefore X is Good"

It's supposed by you, not automatically implied by quoting someone; that just implies "this is an eloquent way to phrase something I agree with, and this is the source".

Tribalism is based on blood ties between member of a group. This has nothing to do with nationalism which is the most evoluted social structure where blood ties where replaced by common morales, culture and languages. Tribalism is a very low form of social structure, highly linked to our primal condition of mammal individual. Nationalism and sovereignety are far more advanced social structure in an attempt to extract ourself of our natural condition. Modern society based on compound of different community, and political communautarism are just a major fallback to our primary mammale condition and an systematic attempt to destroy superior form of social structure. And i would not much trust the thinking of a proselyte member of one of the most tribalistic social group on earth, expressing his opinion about universal society, due to the fact that his mind has from birth a tribalistic biais.

> This has nothing to do with nationalism

A nation is just a larger tribe - people are more closely related to others in their own nation, than to those in foreign nations.

"people are more closely related to others in their own nation, than to those in foreign nations." Thank you mister Obvious. But the first part of your sentence just serves your desires by an over-simplification and reduction of the topic. No, a nation is not a larger tribe.

Just try to explain all the atrocities which happened in Africa since colonialists retired from the continent.

Try to keep several tribes inside the same border of a nation, and see the Rwanda result... :)

Why does treating a nation as an extended tribe require explaining atrocities in Africa?

If someone claimed a tribe is an extended family, would you demand he explain family feuds?

Because when the central power which designed the border and defined them as a nation, is going away, old tribal tension and conflict are resurging. Leading to inter-tribe genocide. Therefore, tribalism has nothing to do with nationalism... :)

You are missing the point. He's explicitly saying those _States_ aren't _Nations_. Hence the term "Nation-State" where a state is coterminous with a nation.

I'm curious as to what extent this sense of feeling closely related is also a product of ideology and further how it's reacting to globalization. Can this feeling of closeness be tied to particular biological factors, and how do we know if it can? How is it that many of us (especially online) feel much closer to individuals from other places than to our own countrypeople?

Don't tell me something is built into people until you can show me the neurocomputational mechanisms by which it is so.

We've seen nations grow beyond the bounds of tribal/regional origins into ethnically diverse multicultural and multilingual economic powerhouses. The US and most European countries are good examples of this. As long as a lingua franca remains mostly dominant and people acclimate to others acting differently around them, it's a perfectly natural state. Ancient Rome and Ancient China both prospered economically under these conditions. Nationalism in all it's incarnations has historically been an attempt to reassert tribal balance in favor of some formerly dominant but now sub-dominant group and it rarely ends well for that group.

"The US and most European countries"

More likely European nations are still mostly ethnocentric whereby the clear majority of the populations identify with a group that is historically part of that territory.

Which is fundamentally different from US, Canada, Singapore and even Central/South American nations which have yet another aspect.

"Ancient Rome and Ancient China both prospered economically under these conditions. "

Ancient Rome invaded, plundered, occupied and demanded ongoing massive tributes from it's territories. Even most of the Italian peninsula were technically slaves.

The basis of 'prosperity' in Roman territories mostly boils down to physical security, i.e. 'Pax Romana'

"Nationalism in all it's incarnations has historically been an attempt to reassert tribal balance in favor of some formerly dominant but now sub-dominant group and it rarely ends well for that group."

Maybe you should offer some examples here, because I can't think of a single one.

- Quebec nationalism resulted in a 'quiet revolution' and an officially bilingual federal state.

- Scottish nationalism resulted in devolution.

- Nazi/German nationalism in both World Wars wasn't exactly the reassertion of a 'formerly dominant state' - moreover, now that France is weakened and the UK is 'out' - Germany's dominance of the EU is basically unchallenged.

- Russian nationalism has been fairly strong since the modern concept of nationalism.

- Nationalist movements throughout the post WW2 era resulted in the ostensible freedom of many powers from former colonial rule: Egypt, Libya, Algeria. (That list is very long.)

FYI the modern concept of 'Nationalism' is merely a civic orientation of that which existed before (and still does) i.e. 'ethnicity'.

Sweden and Finland do not share totally arbitrary borders.

The border between Finland and Sweden is such that the relative ethnic populations of Swedes and Finns are contiguous, i.e. Sweden is where the Swedish people live, Finland is where the Finns live - mostly.

The ethnocentric nature of the nation state is still obvious today by the fact that many ethnic Swedes for example live in Finland, and are demarcated as a separate group - not just people who 'speak a different language', bur rather, they are of a different ethnicity than Finns, although technically of the same legal nationality.

Though nationalism is very different in a place like the USS or Canada, it's still forms part of people's natural identity.

Family, tribe, ethnic group, 'nation' (be it ethnic or idealist) are part of who we are; to ignore this would be to ignore the very nature of who we are.

That said, some things, like Scientific knowledge tend to be humanist, i.e. transcending ethnicities, and of course we often need to be reminded of this.

I was specifically thinking of the Roman empire at it's apex, ca 300 AD. Romans did employ slave labor but, to my understanding, the percentage of the population that were slaves is still mostly unknown. This paper gives a ballpark figure of 1/3rd of the population of the Italian peninsula.[1]

Ethnocentrism, the attitude that one's own culture is superior, coloring an individual's perceptions of other cultures as inferior and incorrect, has been mostly in decline over the last 70 years in Europe and the US. There has been a slight nationalist push in the other direction in the last 3-4 years but even that seems to be in decline. (Example: Turkey seems to be moving away from their nationalist president.) Russia is going to stay Russia, Stalin killed millions.[2]

Ethnocentrism is not about identifying as part of a group. People retain their cultural identities when taking a multicultural posture adopting the best parts of other cultures and integrating those traits into their lives. American's love doing this and even get accused of cultural appropriation. Just look at American cuisine.

> Though nationalism is very different in a place like the USS or Canada, it's still forms part of people's natural identity.

I don't dispute that American's are patriotic but every city and town is different. Social norms, popular songs on the radio and driving habits all vary across America's cities and towns. American cohesion is mostly due to the power of our popular culture, media, political parties and religions.

> That said, some things, like Scientific knowledge tend to be humanist, i.e. transcending ethnicities, and of course we often need to be reminded of this.

Biased science is bad science.

[1] https://www.princeton.edu/~pswpc/pdfs/scheidel/050704.pdf

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Purge

I also don’t see China as having been ethnically diverse. They had foreigners invade, control and eventually got swallowed by the numbers, but it wasn’t like the Roman Empire. If anything anyone who didn’t assimilate into Han culture was driven out or worse (mountain people, manchurians, etc)

https://www.haaretz.com/jewish/what-was-einstein-s-relations...

Einstein views were conflicted. He was very pro-nationalist where it was a Jewish concern. He felt this was forced, but that doesn't change his position.

Time to pull out this chestnut. I start out as a physics major, this is Georgia Tech in 1980, 1981. In my classical mechanics class my german physics professor said that "of course we weren't taught relativity because it was considered Jewish physics". That brought a round of chuckles until we realized he wasn't kidding.

just wondering out loud, but one can’t defy nationalism without crossing borders no?

It's not because law of physics are universals, that the political point of view of Einstein are universal. Moreover, when you look are how many nationnal socialist scientists from Germany were transfered in America after ww2, and how America benefited until today from them, tends to discredit any kind of authoritarian argument that political point of view of a physics specialist is more relevant than the one from my jobless neighbour.

No political views of Einstein are even mentioned, they're kinda besides the point here. Even if they weren't, many things Einstein said or wrote aren't considered insightful because he was "good at being a physicist", but because they are valuable and insightful in their own right, and often beautifully put.

There should be some kind of Godwin's law for mentioning Einstein, and the "just because he was a good physicist doesn't mean the thing I'm not actually going to address is correct" stuff showing up.

This is a very common habit of our modern propaganda, to use the position of an expert in very narrow field as an authoritarian position to promote political agenda... Moreover, dead cannot speak, and it's very easier to use them for this.

> This is a very common habit of our modern propaganda, to use the position of an expert in very narrow field as an authoritarian position to promote political agenda

Examples? I can't think of any. But I know the article isn't one, so why even bring up what is supposedly "common"?

Except in this case, Einstein very much was a philosopher in addition to a physicist. His philosophical writings weren’t as stand-out as his physics, but they weren’t shabby either. He was offered the job of the first leader of Israel, not because he was a great physicist, but because he thought deeply about philosophical and political issues.

He did write quite a bit in his own contemplated voice in these subjects. It is true though that a reinterpretation of his voice can become problematic.

Fascinating. The entire article doesn't even bother to include the fact that Einstein was a socialist. He didn't want to "cross borders" - he wanted to remove them, which is the sole sane solution.

How does a democracy work without borders? Without borders there is no demos.

The "demos" or people would be any freely associating group of people, which isn't necessarily defined by borders.

>The "demos" or people would be any freely associating group of people

So like what's been happening for the last 2000 years and resulted in our current borders?

Multinationals

It would end up the same as today, ultimately, nations would emerge. Don't you think "free association" is where civilization began at first place? And you expect a different outcome? Who would protect "free associates" from the violence of others who don't buy into that system?

Utopia like Anarchy severely ignore the "human nature" factor.

It's unknown how civilisations began but they were most likely not formed through "free association" but rather by violent extortion. It's thought that pastoral communities being regularly robbed by nomadic groups eventually developed a relationship of paying tribute to one group in return for protection against others. Or, put differently, one group of bandits will fight off the others to get exclusive pillaging access to some farming communities. This tribute system is believed to have then developed into a taxation system.

In no way are modern nation states a form of "free association". I cannot freely choose to not pay taxes if I am born in a nation, nor can I freely choose to join another nation if I accept their principles.

Your predictable and very unoriginal use of the "human nature" argument is in fact the ignorant position. It completely ignores the significantly larger number of humans throughout history (and including today) that have lived in freely associating relationships that in no way resemble the modern nation state or earlier forms of civilisation.

It's very well known how civilization began.

You cannot find a single example of what you deem "free association" that is not currently defended directly or indirectly by an army.

The irony of your statement is that while you called me ignorant you said the exact same thing as I said in your first paragraph.

Then you try to back pedal to make a "point" in the last one by giving zero examples of your "larger number of humans throughout history (and including today) that have lived in freely associating relationships.

And next time refrain from calling other people who disagree with whatever ideology you believe in as "ignorant", it qualifies you as a troll.

You quite literally just independently re-derived the concept of "border" in the same sentence that you rejected it.

When was socialism ever about democracy?

For examples of how order is maintained, just see the Tiananmen Square protests

How would it be any different than if there was just one country? Borders in the US don't seem to prevent democracy (or something close to it) from working

Borders and socialism seem perfectly compatible to me. Or do you mean that he was both a socialist, and against borders?

Socialism at the time was inherently international.

That's not the same as against borders - see e.g. international trade, or tourism.

Socialism today seems to agree with borders ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vf-k6qOfXz0 ), and back then, there was national socialism...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socialism_in_One_Country

Einstein was explicitly anti stalinist and advocates globalism in his work "Why Socialism"

You can read it online

I don't understand how this is related to my comment and the comment I'm replying to, both of which you presumably just read online.

Link to the piece:

https://monthlyreview.org/2009/05/01/why-socialism/

For there to be something meaningfully international, there have to be several nations, with something distinguishing between them.

Ok then call it global, it's not a meaningful distinction just a dumb nitpick

While I agree with you that socialism is inherently against borders, I'm not sure Einstein ever said so.

He argued in favour of a supranational security system in 1945:

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1947/11/atomic-...

Einstein married his 1st cousin, I bet he loved socialism.

And he abandoned his schizophrenic son.

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