The study finds what most would probably think is quite obvious. Humans, like almost all animals, are more trusting of their own kind, pack, or family than they are of others. The finding that diversity also leads to distrust within groups is perhaps counter-intuitive though not entirely surprising.

quote:
Putnam didn’t like what he found and spent five years trying to disprove it.

Are you talking about the gap between publishing the data and publishing the paper? What makes you say he was trying to "disprove" the results rather than make sense of them?

Regardless, you have twisted the results hard into "worse off by every metric". Far from "every metric", it's Putnam's own vague definition of "social capital" and its negative correlation with diversity. Why do you stop here instead of recognizing, as Putnam does, that we've been successful in many ways despite a decline in "social capital"? Do you assume that "social capital" is a positive quality rather than a neutral or negative one?

It seems clear that society benefits when we set aside our differences and work together, yes? We still far too often war and fight and victimize one another, but obviously things work out better when we don't cave to those animal instincts, right? When we accept and communicate and do business with each other? How do you reconcile this with the idea that any group would be better off segregated from the rest? Or do you think we should do most things together but only live segregated? It's an issue of housing proximity?

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Posted by SlowFlowPro

Simple Solutions to Complex Probs

Member since Jan 2004

425080 posts

Posted on 4/20/22 at 8:53 am to Korkstand

quote:
It seems clear that society benefits when we set aside our differences and work together, yes?

This works within the context of Western culture and those who present "differences" assimilate into that culture.

You are primed to see this outlook b/c you were raised in a country of Western culture with immigrant assimilation into that culture.

There is a reason why you don't see the same results in countries like Iran, Saudi Arabia, North Korea, etc. In those countries people who are different are forced into "setting aside those differences". The output is not nearly as comparable .