Parable of the Polygons – a playable post on the shape of society

I think one of the problems with the "avoid neighborhoods with segregation" solution is that it's more or less the same idea as affirmative action. As soon as you choose not to rent an apartment because "there are too many white people and not enough black" you're effectively practising reverse racism.

Living in rural Maine, I've watch the deleterious effect this has on a rural community as young white people flock to Portland or Boston looking for black people for their kids to grow up near.

In the meantime, there are 20 other non-race related variables in your community that you're ignoring, like age, health, wealth, gender, sexual orientation, language, education, technological proclivity, Meyers-Briggs results etcetera and so forth.

Race, while a dominant segregator in our society, is not he only one, nor, perhaps, the most pervasive here in 2014.

Sometimes we have to look at questions in a hard, unflinching way, and prepare ourselves for the answers that come.

It could be that "too much" focus on diversity could create "reverse racism" where there are somehow institutional oppressions exerted over white people. That seems very unlikely in any place where white people are a racial majority and also control all institutions of social or political power.

It could also be that focusing on such things leads to the death of communities in rural Maine.

But what do we care about more: creating a world where black youth are not gunned down by police officers on a literally daily basis for either absurdly petty crimes or literally no reason (like Oscar Grant, for example), or preserving rural Maine?

Personally, I don't care at all if rural communities die. I'm living in a rural "community" in New England myself right now, and it's honestly torturous. I'm glad people are moving to Portland or Boston to raise their children because, frankly, it seems abusive raising a child in this environment. There's no Uber, basically no other apps, very few amusements, and virtually zero culture beyond what the majority in the area (old white people) prefer. The lack of competition in general means that there are very few new things, and lots of old, crappy things. Raising children in this area deprives them of stimulation that will literally mean their brains are less dense and less able to fluidly adapt to new situations.

I doubt very much that rural Maine, like my own area, has very much diversity in terms of any of the other factors you've listed (I exclude the MBTI because each MBTI axis is effectively randomly distributed, because the test is based on Jungian psuedoscience that means it has no correlation to the real world -- all areas are diverse in MBTI because all areas are diverse to a random discriminator variable). It is not a bad thing for these areas to die. In the near future, I can easily see the area I'm in dying off as well, and it'll be great for all the people who don't have to live here anymore.

I really don't believe that is a significant factor in why young people leave rural Maine for Portland and Boston.

Sigh. I wasn't expressing a fear of institutional oppressions of white people. All I'm saying is that in a desperate attempt to integrate white and black people, you're missing a myriad other -isms.

For my sake, your final paragraph is horribly misguided. I'm sorry you're unhappy where you live, but I can honestly say that there is an ass-load of wealth, education and age segregation where I live.

You can wish for everyone to move into a large urban conglomeration like in some shitty si-fi novel, but the reality is that as long as there is land, people will live there. As they say in real estate, they're not making any more of it.

And back before you hijacked my point to rant about how you don't like where you live and wish others didn't either, I would simply restate my original point that trying to seek out integrated neighbourhoods will most likely lead to unintended consequences as we fail to appreciate that perhaps wealth disparity is more of an issue in 2014 than simply being black or white.

And the only reason I brought up Maine was that friends of ours moved down to Portland looking for black and Hispanic people to expose their children to. What they found was a shitty neighbourhood full of fairly uneducated folks with whom they shared almost no culture touchstones and as a result they had a miserable time.

That may not be everyone's experience, but mashing together black and white people != automatic peacefulness and equality.

Is it possible that at some level humans will always segregate themselves based on what is culturally important to themselves?

Sometimes we have to look at questions in a hard, unflinching way, and prepare ourselves for the answers that come.

I have direct experience with numerous friends, some with families and others unmarried, moving to urban areas hoping to be exposed to more racial and cultural diversity.

Sometimes they find it, sometimes they don't, but it certainly does happen.

It hard to keep track of who to hate. Apparently it is OK to hate old people. Or maybe just old white people. Or is it just old people who live in rural areas? And also apparently we should hate those who aren't serviced by Uber. And those whose culture we don't like.

I think New Englanders have it worse than most other American regions because their culture is so bland and denialist because of the Puritanical influences that still roam unchecked. It's probable that Mainers would hate Portland just because it's a place where people have fun.

But you seem to be using "culturally important touchstones" as a way to be racist by proxy, so I'll stop this interaction here. I hope you get better.

I also live in small-town Maine and can safely say that these metrics: "age, health, wealth, gender, sexual orientation, language, education, technological proclivity" are all much better optimized by living in the city.

And you can also get tortillas that aren't garbage.

The "no fucking jobs" effect also plays a role.

Holy shit. There's only like 700,000 of us. We're probably related.

Also, my point had nothing to do with optimization and everything to do with segregation. I would continue to argue that rural Maine struggles with age, education and wealth segregation even though we're racially not very diverse.

Sweet. I'm actually from inner city Chicago. I just like the coast of Maine more than being surrounded with shit I don't want and people I should envy. My problem, I know but it's real, and a lot of people are affected by it.

I was just being honest about shit a lot of people don't like to talk about. Sure, I could move to Compton and make a go of it with folks not like me, but the whole point of the article is that folks like folks who are like them. The odds of me finding someone in Compton who wants to come over and play Pandemic with me is pretty low compared to a relatively affluent community on the coast of Maine. And there in lies the segregation that most people don't see. Black, white, Hispanic, Chinese, etc ... pretty obvious. But wealth, education and such, that shit is also a problem and much less obviously.

Also, please don't call me racist by proxy while insulting an entire region of people who, most likely, don't even all share the same cultural heritage because Americans move around a lot.

It's true that there are more factors than race, but people's Meyers-Briggs classification is generally not as visible as people's race, and in neighbourhoods, racial segregation has a disproportionately large impact.

What this experiment basically shows, is that some degree of affirmative action is necessary. White people need some encouragement to live in black neighbourhoods, and black people need some encouragement to live in white neighbourhoods.

But wealth is absolutely also a big factor. Even if they're mixed, it's not good to have a poor ghetto and a rich ghetto. In Amsterdam, people actively complain when a new neighbourhood doesn't have a mix of cheap rentals and more expensive homes for purchase. The city actively tries to get diverse neighbourhoods, and with good reason.

It's funny you read 'hate' into my comment. I certainly don't like living in a place where people who are actively trying to perpetuate a society of domination along class, race, and gender divides dictate the culture, but that doesn't imply that I hate them.

The actual hate, and worse, the cold, seemingly-benign, hate, is in your attacks (you seem to have created this account exclusively to do this) on progressive politics on Hacker News.

Maybe this is actually 'hot' hate. Maybe you truly think that non-whites have no great books of 2014 or no cultural contributions for you. But I don't think so.

I think it's more likely that you just see any divergence from the status quo you grew up used to as "going too far." Because you somehow think that a thousand years of liberatory struggle ended in 1985.

That is a thing worth hating. People will die because of that. The longer we allow white supremacy to exist, the more black children will be gunned down in the streets.

Personally, I don't think areas that are the equivalent of a white rice diet are good areas to raise a child, because I'd think it was cruel to raise a child on a diet of nothing but white rice. But it's a stretch to say that I hate old white people in the country because of that. Plenty of them are fine.

It's just you who isn't.

>It's funny you read 'hate' into my comment.

It is not so funny, because you could make a very minor tweak to your comment, and even you can see it is unacceptable:

"Personally, I don't care at all if urban Detroit dies. I'm living in an urban "community" myself right now, and it's honestly torturous. I'm glad people are moving to away to raise their children because, frankly, it seems abusive raising a child in this environment. There's no Uber, basically no other apps, very few amusements, and virtually zero culture beyond what the majority in the area (old black people) prefer. The lack of competition in general means that there are very few new things, and lots of old, crappy things. Raising children in this area deprives them of stimulation that will literally mean their brains are less dense and less able to fluidly adapt to new situations."

Thanks for pointing that out, another_sigh. I just wish my comment hadn't been buried while being argued against. And my point had nothing to do with the merits of rural life, but pointing out the over simplification of proposing intentional integration as a way to beat human psychology game theory. Like we haven't tried intentional integration before.

Additionally, I had a an unpleasant and almost visceral reaction to the notion that anyone would hope for community diversity death. As though the world would be a better place if we all just had access to Uber and curated art museums and such.

That is not a minor tweak, it changes the entire meaning of that statement.

It's also factually wrong, because Uber has launched in Detroit, plenty of other apps have launched in Detroit, and Detroit is a cultural nexus. Virtually all of electronic music has origins in Detroit house and techno. Detroit is still a center for cultural innovation along multiple axes. And it's a city dominated by the young.

You are:

1. Not understanding my point in a factual manner

2. Implying that you if you swap "black" and "white" or "men" and "women", sentences retain any meaning, even though you've totally changed the context in which they exist

3. Very literally a white supremacist apologist, because every one of your HN comments is attacking progressivism.

Please leave HN and the tech community. Racists are not welcome here.

The only racist person in this thread is you. And progressivism is a morally bankrupt enterprise whose existent is justified to cure the problems it creates.

>The only racist person in this thread is you

>progressivism is a morally bankrupt enterprise

...

This is not Tumblr, we allow difference of opinion and even disagreement with your politics.

We allow people who can come up with something other than as hominem attacks, which you seem unable to do.