I have been reading on Think Again about polarization. This topic is highly relevant to politics. What would be an advantage for a political leader to polarize people? It is somewhat understandable that fans, soccer team enthusiasts etc would enjoy polarization, which, in a way, defines who they are. What can be a benefit to being polarized as a society?
From an evolutionary perspective, we have the survival of the fittest phenomenon. The instinct could be to exist within a winning group and gain evolutionary advantage. But then it does not make sense to be in a losing group, yet still stubborn to change. In that case, the psychological benefit of feeling belonging to the same group and that sustained environment overcomes the need to be winning.
In America, the extreme examples are from Yankees vs Red Sox fans. Scientifically, this is fueled by repeated exposure, being comparable, which also means ‘worth fighting’. The word clouds of how each group of fans describe the other are pretty much the same. In a way, they are comparable groups in all those bad terms that describe them.
So, in a world, where we could be “XYZ” to others as we claim that they are “XYZ”, what is the point of being in groups anyway? The “power” oscillates between groups and who can use the power to gain even more power will dominate. At that point, maybe being called “whatever” does not matter, because the joys of such ultimate power mitigates such negativity.
This brings us back to the topic of attachment. Being such fragile, temporary human beings, we should probably not have strong attachments to things that are more vulnerable than who we are. That way, we would not have to make presumable sacrifices of our personality, social status or “being” to opt for a better future.
Today, I struggled with my High Dimensional Data Analysis course on the machine learning problems. Bro, I am a molecular biologist. How can I code for such complicated kNN problems? I enjoy learning about how people improved prediction methods to make lower rates of mistakes. But I just want to do my own analysis, generate data, publish papers.
The school is still out, the snow is slowly melting. My poor brain has three directions to pursue: study High Dimensional Data Analysis, write a paragraph on AGEs in dogfoods, write a blog on polarization, cook food for kids (yes this is on autopilot).
Let us reconsider why we are so divided. What would happen if we were more to open changes, listen others more, and understand better? It all starts with wanting to do it though.
Comments