Mindscape 128 | Joseph Henrich on the Weirdness of the West 

Sean please put your ads at the beginning or the end as to not disrupt the flow of the conversation. Lex fridman has changed the way I view ads it's nice being able to skip them at the beginning thank you sir I love you podcast

I did my 2 years of Peace Corps in a small rural village in Central America and everything he said about non-Western social norms was spot on to what I experienced. Personally, getting out of my "WEIRD" state of mind was the best thing that ever happened to me.

Thanks for all you do sean!

Thank you, Sean. Happy New Year!

It would have been interesting to hear the guest's views on the potential socio-economic power of the United States (perhaps an example of diverse economic solutions being tried) with that of more unified economies such as China, Japan or Korea. It is fashionable in some minds to see the US as homogeneous and anti-immigrant, but in any practical sense, I think it is not when compared to many other relatively wealthy modern societies.

The chimpanzee food sharing result is likely an artifact of experimental design not a valid indication of a lack of concern for the other animal. Chimps simply understand that enough food is available outside the immediate context.

15:20 - Giving one chimp reward or two chimps reward is an inadequate experimental equivalent of the human ultimatum game; none of the stated scenarios tested on chimpanzees/capuchins break their self preservation instinct for "fairness". What is encoded by evolution is never generosity but selfishness relative to the survival of their genetic variants (which may or may not involve altruistic behaviour, depending on the context). The existence of an adaptive morality wrt some absolute ethical standard (e.g. utilitarianism/deontology) is spurious. Testing whether monkeys chuck a tantrum when their friend is given more reward than them is a better experimental design; ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-meiU6TxysCg.html&lc=UghG992CXvBTYHgCoAEC 20:00 - The primary differentiating factor between weird and non-weird societies (including those of our ancestors) is the harshness of the environment (including reproductive consequences). While there are variations based on religio-cultural history (e.g. trait individualism), technological development is the primary driving force for change; which is a function of EIRD. Both environmental adaptation and gene-environment coevolution likely exist wrt the development of dominant population personality traits. The W-universal post-modern extremes of individualism witnessed across the political spectrum are however better framed with respect to well intentioned but theoretically questionable post WWII propaganda efforts to suppress collectivisation/intergroup conflict based on facial kin recognition (arguably the evolutionary driving force for the superiority of this cognitive feature). 51:00 - What would be a better model for human behaviour throughout history: non-human primate intergroup conflict or mythic non-tribal hunter gatherers who would likely either exterminate or breed out any noticeable outgroup they encountered? 11:00 - The ultimatum game provides a good model for political polarisation, based on the assumption an individual or group/population within an environment will either exhibit greater or lesser fitness relative to the average, and will therefore either be a winner or loser relative to its social/national peers if governmental policies are in any way biased towards either fitness or equity.

My only reservation that I have for Dr. Henrich's theory is the fact that I think he misses the opportunity to tackle the possible connections and heritage that Western European Culture inherited from ancient Greco-Roman civilization, where monogamy was also already curiously accepted, poligyny shunned and cousin-marriage already less common. the same goes for possible heritage of the ideas for representetive government, democracy and citizenship that were already highly developed in the classical age in various forms. What truely accounts for Western adoption of ideas of represantative government, citizenship and monogamous nuclear type of family unit? it seems awfully feasible for example that Catholic adoption of monogamy and restrictions on cousin-marriage were just simple continuations of various form of common Roman practice. If that's the case, what made the Greco-Romans already peculiar in their cultural habits back then? It surely wasn't a religious doctrine or dogma in the same fashion that Christianity came to institutionalize later. These are questions that sorely need to be answered I feel.

Thanks Sean, happy new year 🥂

Excellent guest!

I'm WEID.

Hello Professor. Can you do a program on Quantum decoherence? Is the LHC a Quantum decoherence system? Does quantum computers and fiber optics improve the LHC results. Can quantum decoherence be used to discover dark matter. Dated 19 Dec 2020 "MIT's extremely precise new atomic clock can help detect dark matter." Thank you in advance.

Very interesting exchange. Engaging ideas. As to the unusual success of Europe relative to the rest of the world, I tend to think much more is owed to the foundations laid down by the Roman republic and empire, and its Hellenic predecessor: language, laws, institutions, infrastructure, technology, trade, rudimentary science and mathematics, military absorptions followed by the ability to integrate immigrants and grant citizenship, etc. There was quite a template laid out, which medievalists were aware of, and in awe of, as they tried to reconstruct something the knew had been lost. The empire was even clever enough to adopt Christianity as the next best thing among competing beliefs as a way of solidifying further what it meant to be a Roman citizen. In fact, the more or less homogeneous religion provided the glue to hold things together, survive challenges from Islam and other invaders, solidify Europe again into some coherent "nations", which had no choice except to begin exploring a new way to get to China by sea. Religion, location, the return of Byzantine scholars fleeing Islam, and desperation at the lack of other options, prompted exploration. Lots of fortuitous factors working together, I think.

The title has a lisp

I found that the guest meandered around his subject - I lost interest because of this lack of focus.

These ideas really bother me.... maybe it just hit me wrong and I should listen again but I would like to think there is more commonality between cultures than posited in this discussion ... I would like to suggest a guest however: DAVID GOOD, of the Good Project. He is an academic and the son, of an anthropologist and a Yanomami mom who actually lived in New Jersey and raised her kids, before going back to the Amazon.

20:09 Quran 2:178: "O ye who believe! the law of equality is prescribed to you in cases of murder: the free for the free, the slave for the slave, the woman for the woman. But if any remission is made by the brother of the slain, then grant any reasonable demand, and compensate him with handsome gratitude, this is a concession and a Mercy from your Lord. After this whoever exceeds the limits shall be in grave penalty. "

Looking forward to it. "The Secret of Our Success" was a game changer for me.

Please consider Peter Turchin as a guest

Many many years ago I toured Japan as a good friend of mine worked at the New Zealand Embassy in Tokyo and was getting married to a Japanese Girl. I bought an unlimited JR Rail Pass and travelled on the Bullet Train from one end of the country to the other with not much more than a backpack and a map of Youth Hostels. When I first arrived, I noticed no one J-Walked. The first time I did that everyone looked at me like I was a crazy fucked up alien from another planet. For the rest of my time there, I never did it again. Although it felt odd to me, like my individuality to be an asshole was being systematically robbed, by the time I got back home, I decided I liked their way better.

I question weird. If it's a study on college students then i have to think that the students are put in situations to see how they act. It's like put stumbling block in front of them so they do stumble. Being that we all have the same brain they have learned how to goad people anyway they want. Peace and agap'e.

SC ... you sound a lot like Alan Alda.

I think the Catholic Church banning cousin-marriage is too weak all by itself to be the prime cause of everything he attributes to it (building guilds, economy taking off, and so on). He's probably overestimating the size of its effect by omitting a lot of confounding variables. But it's a nice attempt to justify Western individualism (i.e. relative lack of tribalism and nepotism) and relate it to its economic prosperity that is the envy of most of the developing world, as many Western governments have made a lot of propaganda to the developing world (the Global South as it's sometimes called today) over the last several decades to spread the idea of democracy, open society, freedom of association, equality before the law, etc being the causes (not consequences) of economic development. My opinion: Cousin marriage is quite rare in the developing countries today, and yet they're still to take off like the West. For some reason banning cousin-marriage in the West seems to have worked for them, but it's not working so well for the others.

*W* estern *E* ducated *I* ndustrialized *R* ich *D* emocratic *WEIRD* Hahahaha!

By democratic do you mean left ?

Psychology may well become a science, in the fullness of time.

Yayyyy

No your assumptions about the whole subject matter of why middle East is not developed is wrong sir. I think maybe you should consider things like environment and weather and lack of water resources and scarcity of food sources and history of interrelationships between west and middle East first, then jump into cousin marriage to try to explain your theory. This is crazy.

2 marshmallows a few minutes later. $100 NOW!