You're right to remind us about the cognitive biases relating to in-groups and out-groups[1], but let's remember that in the context of this thread, the original comment about "idiots" was:

"These people are idiots. Bringing their cellphones, recording video of themselves committing felonies and then posting them online."

It doesn't seem that the commenter was branding every voter for the opposing candidate an idiot, just the specific group of people who shared evidence of themselves committing crimes.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultimate_attribution_error

It's a pretty common sentiment I've seen lately even here on HN, for example all of the threads about how amateurish Parler is/was (LOL did you know they're so stupid they didn't know to strip image metadata?), like we told them to go make their own website but then mock them while they learn how to do it. I'm just sick of being mean!

I think there's a bit of a chasm between:

"I'm a newbie web developer and I've never heard of EXIF", and

"It didn't occur to me that I shouldn't have recorded video of myself committing crimes and then posted it on the internet."

> I'm just sick of being mean!

Fair point. And regardless, "these people are idiots" doesn't really help us make sense of what happened, or figure out how to stop people from even wanting to do things like this in the future.

Well, technically, I only mentioned that that is how our "tribal urges" work.

I think it's an important thing to be aware of, ideally so you can recognize these thought patterns in yourself and others.

But of course I also implied that OP was doing this. A fairer description would note that most capitol invaders did not publish themselves committing felonies. Taking the dumbest/worst behaved members of the outgroup as typical is textbook.

And from inside the other group, the tribal brain thinks those crimes were committed by antifa provocateurs.