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Comment by charlie0 | Hacker News Reader

In otherwords, water is wet. It's very easy to see that tribal behavior is hardwired into the brain. One just has to look at history and current events to see that.

I own a sports motorcycle. One of the first things you learn at the track is that your initial instincts in certain situations are wrong because physics says so. During the course you learn to remold or even completely change your instincts.

I've often wondered what we could accomplish as a species if we could just overcome some of these hardwired / knee-jerk instincts.

We have amazing technology and could do so much more, but we're still stuck with the parts of our brain that are millions of years old.

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> I've often wondered what we could accomplish as a species if we could just overcome some of these hardwired / knee-jerk instincts.

And wouldn't studying the brain help lead us towards a better understanding of how to accomplish those goals? I'm not saying that this particular study is advancing us much, but helping identify how "obvious" human behaviors activate different parts of our brains does seem to be working towards that goal.

I'm just having a little difficulty reconciling your dismissive opening paired with your wonder of what might be possible for us as a species. Breakthroughs in science are rare - it's mostly small, incremental, and boring progress.

As a member of an "outgroup" (I'm over 40, in the tech industry -I never considered myself to be "on the outs," but have learned that I am, indeed), I can confirm, that, when profit is involved, no one is interested in changing their bias, and a scientific study won't make one whit of difference.

It seems that the only thing that causes change in our innate bias, is pain. When we are forced to confront our biases, because not doing so hurts (like crashing a racing bike), we will work hard to change it.

Otherwise, we will blithely continue "as we were."

“The findings raise the possibility that one day treatments that disrupt the reward of intergroup aggression might help to reduce the costly and persistent human phenomenon of violence toward other groups, Chester said.”

Well, considering that we have an extremely large number of folks that refuse to take treatments that would save their own lives, as well as the lives of those around them, and the Venn diagram of those folks, and ones that want to hurt "others," has a significant overlap, what odds do you give, of them participating in the treatments?

One word: "Miranda."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1hVuzOamXEk

I don’t know, but I don’t see any reason to be skeptical that the future can’t improve, given history. You could have made the same argument about most medical treatments 400 years ago, and it’d turn out to be more or less completely wrong.

Fair enough.

I would caution about treatments that are designed to affect that fundamental a level of "being human," though. That clip I referenced was from the movie Serenity, and "Miranda" was a planet, where they tried pretty much exactly what you are talking about. It was fiction, but there's a road, leading somewhere, reputed to be paved with good intentions...

> It seems that the only thing that causes change in our innate bias, is pain.

Funny enough, it is quite often love. Many former neo-nazis left the scene because they fell in love with a member of the "wrong race". It is kind of a cliche at this point.

Now whether it is that is getting to know a person of another race/culture/faith helps overcoming biases or if reproduction is simply biologically more pleasurable than bashing the outgroup, who knows.

This. I understand that researching this is a step in the right direction, but am disappointed that there are no good solutions to problems like these because they stem from basic biological functioning at some very deep level and this affects everyone, not just a tiny portion of people.

But he DOES race motorcycles. So there's that.

"Infants as young as nine months old prefer individuals who are nice to people like them and mean to people who aren’t like them, according to a new study published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science."

https://www.psychologicalscience.org/news/releases/babies-pr...

On the other hand:

"People have found that even by 18 months of age, children have expectations about how things should be shared fairly."

https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-19421644

> It's very easy to see that tribal behavior is hardwired into the brain

All this study showed was that it was present in adult men, nothing about whether or not this is learned behavior or instinctual, or gender differences.

> It's very easy to see that tribal behavior is hardwired into the brain. One just has to look at history and current events to see that.

There are some people who would take issue with this. Their view being that one just has to look at history and current events to see the influence of Satan in human affairs.

It's tiresome when people complain about scientific research seeking to prove obvious things. One of science's most important lessons is that what's obvious and what's true are frequently not the same.

Curious - what are these specific track lessons?

As a super sport rider who has never been on the track, I am curious as well.

> I've often wondered what we could accomplish as a species if we could just overcome some of these hardwired / knee-jerk instincts.

The instincts that you like are also hardwired, and we'd also learn to overcome those. We could end up as the society in Brave New World.

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