Can you clarify exactly how he suggests "diversity is bad" - linking off to a 20 minute video and saying "its in there" isn't exactly great for discussion.
I think you are taking what he is saying out of context and being very dishonest about it. He is not talking about diversity meaning he doesn't want different races or sexualities involved in the country. He is talking about the extreme fracturing of groups that is driven by social media.
I see this in my everyday life. Browsing any forum, almost every view expressed by any person is polarized to some side. However, being older and having enough people not connected to social media in my circle, I notice no one expresses the same polarization of thought that is so prevalent in social media and online communities. I also notice that the few people I interact with who do spend a large amount of time on social media are extremely polarized and mostly miserable.
Direct quote !
“ We have this idea diversity is good, and diversity has many good effects, but diversity also makes things come apart for a large secular nation like the United States what are the forces holding us together, what are the things blowing us apart, diversity makes group more creative when you have good norms..”
That is not a direct quote. Your semi-quote "but diversity also makes things come apart for a large secular nation like the United States" is inaccurate and extremely misleading; Haidt clearly ends the sentence at "come apart", and you left off the "And so" starting the next sentence.
The actual quote, starting at 9:20, with as much fidelity as I can muster:
"We have this idea that umm... that diversity is good, and diversity has many good effects. But.. diversity also makes things come apart. And so for a large secular nation like the United States you have to look at what are the forces holding us together, what are the things blowing us apart. Now diversity makes [a] group more creative when you have good norms, when things are well structured. We have to think really carefully about how to get the benefit from America's diversity, but it's hard to do because if you critique it you could get in big trouble. Now in terms of what actually holds a country together, traditionally it's shared gods, shared blood, and shared enemies. That's what nations usually have used. So we have a challenge, and it is a great experiment, and when social media came in -- when everybody was on social media beginning around 2012, 2013 when it gets hyperviralized, umm, the ability to have any shared understanding of what we're doing shatters. Social media allows us to participate in microstories that kind of bubble up and are gone. There is no ability to have a common understanding of what we're doing. Not that we ever were all one nation and all on the same page. But there's a qualitative change when it's like... here's the story of the day, and.. and.. umm.. uhh.. so there's no possibility for shared stories in the age of social media, widely shared stories. Umm... uh... there's huge decline of trust, trust in each other and trust in institutions. And here I'm drawing on recent social science - uh, political science research showing that social media generally leads to a decline of trust. Social media's incredibly powerful for tearing things down. And that can be a good thing in a dictatorship. But it's very bad at building things up. And in an ailing democracy like ours where our institutions need to be improved not ripped apart, it generally has... has made things worse."
Thank you for the whole transcript. I find the whole transcript very problematic. Especially the “shared gods” and “shared blood” part, does Professor Haidt really think this country was held together by “shared blood”? Is he that ignorant of America’s history?
I wager that you are having some issues reading the quote that was presented to you, so let me elaborate:
Traditionally, a shared cultural mythos- that is, the set of 'stories' that the society believes in and uses to bind themselves together- is one element of what holds societies together. Yes, even completely secular societies have their shared mythos and arguably even their own shared gods depending on how you look at it.
Also, all human beings are naturally inclined to heavily favor anyone who is similar to themselves, especially regarding physical traits (shared blood).
We now have neither of these convenient pillars, so Professor Haidt suggests that we have to be highly cautious in the way that we structure our society, such that we can reap the creative benefits of diversity without leaning too far into the natural tendency of diversity to push people apart from each other.
Maybe it is “Hope”, America is like the promised land for many people around the world.
This is Hacker News right; so I can think from the perspective of a Software Engineer, which Software Engineer in some part of the world wouldn’t like to spend some time in Silicon Valley? I would argue if you are a Software Engineer you like to be in the valley at-least once.
Maybe it is not one thing, America offers different things to different people.
He claims traditionally a country is held together by “shared gods, shared blood, and shared enemies”.
What is he saying, the issue is, this is a multi-faith, multi-ethnic country? I say, Professor Haidt, the train has left this station, America has progressed, it is not going back to “shared blood” and “shared gods” anymore. You better get used to some diversity.
Not literal faith. Otherwise he would have said God, not Gods.
He means shared ideals and ideas relating to the nation itself.
For example, the founders were shared Gods. Now a part of Americans thinks they were horrible racist people.
It’s not something that bonds anymore. It’s the opposite now.
