Dr Joseph Henrich | WEIRD Minds-Why the West is psychologically peculiar and particularly prosperous

[@nowithinkyouknowyourewrong8675]

This is best Henrich talk on youtube, thanks for uploading.

[@cueva_mc]

7:56

[@jaythefox]

Good critique of the H1B visa around 1:21:45.

[@joaodecarvalho7012]

There is a notion that individualism is currently reaching such high levels that it’s becoming negative. People are increasingly alone, birth rates are declining, and even the nuclear family is eroding. In Eastern societies like Japan and Korea, which are more collectivist, the effects of this are brutal.

[@OmegaLaser-xy4ip]

Not very convincing and the traditional powerpoint presentation with random cherry-picked data

[@enisten]

A lot of what he says is BS (ad hoc, distorted, or underdeveloped). But I agree with the individualism part and a few other things, as someone who was born in Turkey (one of the most illiberal, if not anti-liberal, societies in the world) and lived in the US for 7 years and racked his mind about this very topic for years.

[@MS-il3ht]

I think he is primarily wrong about excluding genetic factors for the Western divergence.

[@enisten]

@@MS-il3ht Maybe. But remember that the West started to diverge only a few hundred years ago, and it's hard to attribute this divergence to a sudden change in its gene pool. And East Asian countries have achieved the same economic success in a matter of a few decades more recently. So other, collectively more powerful factors than genetics are almost certainly at play here, at least when comparing the East and the West. You may be right about the divergence from sub-Saharan Africa, though, which appears to have been going on for a much longer time. Domestic cultural differences may be almost completely attributable to the succesful spread of Christian values in the West, which differ radically from the 'law of the jungle' morality that governs much of the rest of the world, as well as its economic prosperity that followed the Industrial Revolution and its centuries-long colonization experience, which probably contributed to its further civilization, just like the Cold War liberalized the US as it tried to distinguish itself positively from the unfree world. (E.g. flag burning and abortion would not have been deemed constitional rights by today's SCOTUS.) The US also noticed that its moral superiority that resulted in part from its economic prosperity and in part from its Christian heritage allowed it to spread its imperialist hegemony more easily, just like the Northern states before the Civil War could condemn slavery much more easily than the Southern states because they didn't need it or have much use for it in the first place.

[@MS-il3ht]

​@@enisten While there's truth to all these cultural variables, some important insights are missing from modern anthropology, unfortunately. One of them being: gene-culture interaction has hastened the pace of evolution by a fair lot. (cf. Cochran et al) Within the ∼1100-1200 years after the likely itself dysgenic collapse of the Western Roman Empire and before early modernity, European eugenic selection patterns - of which Christian inbreeding avoidance was only a fragment - have almost certainly led to a sharp increase in average Western IQ (there is even a fair bit of aDNA evidence; cf. e.g. Kierkegaard). Nowadays, since the least educated/-able of people are the only ones consistently breeding above replacement, of course, we are on an even sharper decline as well. But general variables traditionally considered more cultural in nature, e.g. overall conscientiousness (cf. Weber's Protestant work ethic), arguably follow an even more pronounced trend. It might have been selected for by an unknown albeit high factor before and is selected AGAINST qua almost double the aforementioned dysgenic fertility (regarding IQ) today (just consider the higher birth rates for people with ADHD; such as for criminals, and in particular those among them with the most heritable of antisocial pathologies; cf. Richard Lynn's work). By the way, very similar processes can be observed throughout South-East Asian history; e.g. significantly less child mortality for the offspring of high-SES men (like Japanese Samurai) than for kin of low-SES commoners. The cultural divergence initially favoring the West was arguably mostly due to the geographical isolation of places like Japan and Korea. After all, in contrast, the ever-so-slightly less afflicted China (not to forget about the whole "center of the world" narrative) was an impressively stable and innovative entity in the region for some 5000 years.

[@squatch545]

What's "BS"? What's "ad hoc"? What's "distorted?" What's "underdeveloped"? Any idiot can make any assertions on the internet. Please back them up with examples and argument.

[@squatch545]

@@MS-il3ht Gene-culture interaction has been part of modern anthropology for decades. Not sure where you're getting your information from.

[@enisten]

22:44 Our minds evolved to be plastic in order to adopt to the diversity of cultures and languages in the world? This is so anachronistic, it's just stupid.

[@upvotecomment2110]

It's but does that mean it's wrong? You don't really provide any proof not even context that disputes his claims

[@enisten]

@@upvotecomment2110Yes, it's both stupid and wrong.

[@enkh-uliraldechin7071]

@@upvotecomment2110 exactly

[@squatch545]

What's stupid about it?

[@arnebruland73]

@@upvotecomment2110 I may be wrong, as the lecture was a bit cursory, but that part sounded lamarkist to me. Is he implying that acquired characteristics are inherited across generations? Or maybe cultural evolution was the idea?