The Weirdest People in the World with Joseph Henrich

[@akrobatish]

probably the most interesting topic ive heard discussed on youtube in a very long time lol thanks, truly.

[@antonyliberopoulos933]

Thank you Joseph. Thanks Alexander. Always a treat.

[@julieannboone80]

My only complaint was that this interview was too short. Very interesting. It seems to come at the question from a different angle than the book Guns, Germs and Steel.

[@gene-culture_coevolution]

Funny you say that. Henrich actually taught a seminar on Guns, Germs, and Steel long before he wrote this book. I think his work compliments Jarrod Diamond's and adds a lot of (pretty large) pieces to the whole puzzle.

[@Ptaku93]

@@gene-culture_coevolution yes, he actually writes in one of the last chapters of his book that Guns, Germs and Steel might explain well why places like China or India were the economic powerhouses before 1000 AD, but only after taking into consideration Europe's peculiar psychology does one start to understand why this continent out of all places colonized the rest of the world

[@kinglear5952]

Fantastic interview

[@worldwidehappiness]

Society distracts us away from the innate happiness of being by judging people and promoting competition. This creates moral dilemmas like the passenger dilemma. If we tune back into the innate happiness of being, then we won't judge ourselves or others, and we won't compete for illusory forms of happiness. Then we won't harm others and so moral dilemmas will disappear.

[@wallyworld817]

The divide and conquer game is our doom. Operating from the position of Love is key in these otherwise confusing and fearful times!!!

[@silviuadrian9702]

Snowflake syndrom on you all

[@VM-hl8ms]

ah, fellow introvert, i see.

[@steveb9713]

Innate happiness of being? Reality would like to have a word with you

[@hansgullickson4080]

This thread is hilarious.

[@damienmills293]

Could you please ask speakers like this what book, other than theirs, that we should read?

[@yeaown8139]

The connection between protestantism and rampant individualism and capitalism is especially interesting. Gonna check out his work.

[@karenlewkowitz5858]

Max Weber

[@tremaynetyler947]

Great interview - the 3rd guy in the Q&A was very well spoken

[@ChrisJones-hs6nj]

Expecting many of my Facebook friends here

[@RebelWisdom]

Are they weird?

[@ChrisJones-hs6nj]

@@RebelWisdom I thought about the term literally but many are the acronym explained. The zen diagram almost completely overlaps lol

[@4angayoga]

Great job both of you. Thanks.

[@dannyjquinn880]

I’m only 5 minutes in but it feels like his story is going to almost perfectly map Vervaeke’s fall of meaning in his series

[@sethrichnietzsche]

Hello, world.

[@adamwade1808]

@49:00 I doubt if suicide rates are related to societal wealth. Have you or anybody else tried to correlate suicide rates to weather/latitude. In the USA the three states with the highest suicide rates are Alaska, North Dakota, and Montana- all are far north, with widely scattered populations (loneliness, isolation) and long, cold, dark and snowy winters. I suspect the European countries, especially Scandanavia, have high suicide rates note because of culture but weather and environment.

[@joedavis4150]

One of the weirdest and most dastardly actions, is out of ignorance and fear and malevolence, criminalizing good people who use safe and beneficial plant medicines, such as cannabis.

[@jacobjorgenson9285]

Add, psychedelics

[@joedavis4150]

@@jacobjorgenson9285 ... Jacob, yes, for sure add psychedelics.

[@VM-hl8ms]

14:42 social media is not based on individuality, it's based on an icon (on creating an icon). individuality is something what is becoming, not being.

[@afterthesmash]

3:50 Gah! I wish the questioning hadn't started here, because Ken Wilber tends to point out (at nearly every opportunity) that Purple is about 10% of the world population, Red is about 20%, Blue is about 40%, Orange is about 30%, and Green is about 10%, with fringe amounts of anything else (apparently due to rounding effects, the particular source I consulted adds up to 110%). This puts the primary WEIRD developmental colours (Green and Orange) at just over 1/3 of the world's population. Well, duh! Of course WEIRD is a minority population. Of the list that Henrich reiterated, you don't really get the Orange traits without post-enlightenment Orange culture (scientific/rational). The internal combustion engine, pharmaceuticals, the transistor, genetics, space travel, GPS, Google data centers, and the iPhone are all products of Orange culture. So if you're a member of Blue culture (mythic, chivalric, religious) but you run your entire life driving around in your car, to fetch your fancy medications, navigating by GPS, while conversing on your iPhone, where are you situated, really? The Amish continue to live in a world they largely create for themselves (though they love their agricultural GPS), but few other Blues can claim any vestige of whole-cloth psychological landscape. It would be totally different to spin a story about how Orange people (especially) are not neurotypical if the rest of the world wasn't devouring the fruits of Orange culture and can-do spirit quite so ravenously. Not many people these days want to be the original Blue, from any of the many previous centuries where you really had to earn it (not that you had much of a choice). In no past society are the thought processes that dominate the ruling class in the majority among those they ruled, and this story continues. Once we finish (mostly) curing world poverty (the most extreme forms), the Purple and Red segments are going to be dwindling populations. And then the majority of the world population will be Blue people who are working overtime to have it both ways: all the old traditions on top of all the new toys. Does this become our new neurotypical bulge? I surely hope not. I hardly know where to even begin thinking about what would effectively amount to a normative neurotypcial dispossession (being one way, living another way). Edit: Put the colour group in consistent upper case, for visual clarity.

[@afterthesmash]

Now I've listened to a bit more and this is really cooking with fire. Fortunately, the implication of minority status conveyed by "WEIRD" is not getting all the airplay here (perhaps because they take a hard turn into territory that's more Orange than Green).

[@afterthesmash]

11:30 The weird thing in this discussion of shame, is that Green culture is trying to restore guilt by association, as as we move further into Green culture in the developed world, this pendulum could swing back the other direction again.

[@robbie_]

Fascinating.

[@CariMachet]

Define “prosperous”

[@afterthesmash]

Job, before he became God's cat toy.

[@thetruthwillsetyoufree9209]

Weird that RW does not have more subscribers

[@mellonglass]

The conservative exists by behaviour not title, RW says what it doesn’t practice, so how is a principal demonstrated to example? A narrow world view arrives from living a narrow example. Humility is scientific, guilt is just an excuse to have non by the patriot, social trauma is the root of economic disparity on a finite planet that can’t share by the corporate model and capitalism habits of knowing better while muzzling the indigenous of ancient practices to grow nature more than capital. World at war was in the absence to live with capitalism as disaster has no bank or debt relationships, yet a social contract.

[@evanblackie7510]

RW is caught between people on the mainstream left who think it’s an alt-right site to people on the right who just want culture warriors owning the libs. It’s probably a good sign.

[@mellonglass]

Evan Blackie today it is hard to see which flag is of a party, if they were removed, only the level of hate could be a measure of difference. We ask for cameras on cops, yet not on those that control them by provocation and failure. Not the kind of failure in science, experiments, but the kind of failure of faith in scientism.

[@maggieadams8600]

I have to say that this book sounds very interesting and it's a refreshing way of evaluating our situation, condition and how we got here, but it's difficult for me to not see the weirdest people on earth heading for extinction, and taking much of all living beings with it, it's so weird! So I'm thinking that maybe this weird can lead us back to kinship of mankind as a whole, and a harmonious relationship with the natural world, once we transverse the run away rain of global weirding, and the economic delusions of grandeur's demise, as all castles made of sand must melt into the sea eventually.

[@henrymongrain9008]

If you aren't WEIRD, why do you care about global diffuse problems like Global Warming? Only a true and un-hypocritical WEIRDness can solve the modern world's problems.

[@googlemechuck4217]

if an advanced civilization could travel to earth and monitor the year 1000 im pretty sure they would have a high degree of modeling for the future of this planet. i doubt evolution is frowned on in their society couldn't they touch down do a little archeologically to understand the expotential growth from 1ad to 1000? assuming their is life compatiable with earth why else would they travel here

[@merlepatterson]

Political and institutional Corruption erodes trust to the point where as on Flight 93 during 9/11, the passengers know they are trapped on a doomed airplane because they have been informed their pilots have been killed and the cockpit has been taken over by suicidal sociopaths. They know if they don't rush the cockpit in a bid to hopefully take control of the plane and bring it securely to a safe landing spot, they will just be passive passengers all the way to their assured death. We all know what the outcome was of Flight 93, because suicidal sociopaths can't be bargained with.

[@afterthesmash]

45:00 The name is Daron Acemoglu.

[@tommore3263]

Interesting. I find Catholicism literally IS sanity.

[@A-No-One]

Been watching rebel wisdom since day one, I saw this title and I thought? Why are they going to talk about me 😂

[@vv7299]

They aren't

[@wallyworld817]

War would be overlooked by aliens 👽🙄 i think not!

[@charlesrobb6912]

Human clan behaviour gives Russia, as well most non former Catholic societies, the tendancy to be corrupt- not Putin.

[@nicholasmitchell8749]

Shame is not an emotion, it's a social projection. The emotions associated could be many, one being a deep sense of loneliness or sadness. At least guilt has some rationale behind it.

[@jamesmartingattuso9915]

Is it not true to say that shame can be deeply felt?

[@jacobjorgenson9285]

@@jamesmartingattuso9915 There is a big difference between shame which comes from having done something wrong and toxic shames which is who you are

[@nicholasmitchell8749]

@@jamesmartingattuso9915 We need to distinguish between strategies used by tribes or communities (shame and guilt) and the emotions that arise from being on the receiving end of them. They are psychological tactics to control the individual, not emotions. I was an addict from aged 5, and have studied this within myself and my culture. A common way to cope with it is to dissociate from your emotions, leaving you numbed. This strategy to survive compels more addictive behaviour, which in turn can encourage more shaming and guilting from the tribe or community.

[@ethanhammond7615]

I'm gon git them boys

[@mistressofstones]

Shame is the feeling you don't want people to look at you because you did something wrong and you know you deserve the stink eye. We're social creatures and we need such things to stop us from doing things that hurt each other or messing up the social contract.

[@andreesandahl300]

Testify honestly

[@redman6790]

6:22

[@aeonian4560]

Ora et Labora

[@fumiemunro1740]

What made “individualism” possible was availability of resources. How did westerners do that?: invading other countries. Warmongers love to hear this talk.

[@renatojohnsson5548]

Thats right. Arabs never invaided anyone...

[@moondog7694]

No, it was the stopping of cousin marriage that started in England. Go read HBD Chick's article about cousin marriage in 13th-15th century England. Go read JayMan's article "The Rise of Universalism".

[@DanielDunne1]

Read Henrich's book, lots of evidence presented.

[@daniel-zh4qc]

Psychology is such a made up discipline.... The first person to draw on a cave wall was weird, creating language was weird, the invention of geometry in egypt was weird, samurai seppuku was weird, group hunting was weird.... All by his own definition.... Ergo his whole premise is shot by the logic of human history itself (weirdness is western)... Hahahahahaha jesus.... Even then, every trait he mentions is hermeneutically open to contextual retranslation as being "weird" as he randomly defines it (see marcuse on the love of acronyms) into x historical culture.... See lu bu's rebellion during the waring of the 3 kingdoms in china.... I mean - he made sure to really check other cultures yeah??? I mean thats one random azz example i just picked off the top of my head hahahaha Listen to how he begins....uhhhh we were like sitting there and then literally artistically think up a topic and blindly follow it.... Then allow their own cultural bias to take over their selective history, sociology, anthropology .... Alll Void of objective data or research or any clear ontology, social or personal....and done by a biologist???? This is Self aggrandizing navel gazing of an - ohhhh i just so happen to be weird person...... I live in the us bud .... And you clearly havent left cambridge or a college town since you were 18 If foucault and deleuze taught us anything this type of metanarrative construction is straight poetry for power..... (Ask his high end consultant friends) I mean the effects he highlights are 100% not the result of industrial colonization, the enclosure movement, the rise of urbanization, and imperialism where massive groups of ppl in the same uniform kill other ppl in a uniform following a dude in the sky or some shouty man (from savanrola to hitler) then taking the losers shtzzz... Errrr i mean individuals!!!! Nietzsches last man Kierkegaards herd Gassets revolt of the masses Marcuses one dimensional man Adornos negative dialectics Heideggers das man Webers iron cage Lukacs reification Arendt on totalitarianism Leo Strauss and the noble lie And on and on and on.... I mean .... Either they are right or this guy which i think dyes his hair???? I mean - i respectfully disagree

[@airmark02]

I was born in Cambridge & every time I hear "Harvard Professor" I roll my eyes. Most them are so intellectually brain washed with there need to create a heirarchy out of every experience. All their peer reviewed Psychological studies to celebrate what should be obvious too anyone very often all sound the same to me.

[@JayzsMr]

Throw those philosophy books away if you actually want to learn general principles

[@brendaratoni6479]

Eres el comentario que enmarca lo malo de su teoría, gracias.

[@MsDamosmum]

People want diversity without differences 😂

[@a7tweetk]

I was disappointed I thought they would be Saudi Arabia people

[@missh1774]

bruh...natives were already exceeding creativity...tech just extends aspects of it. the suicide - prodistan relation thing was cringe worthy, sorry. 🛸 i think there is money made in harbouring shame or guilt... just as friction disturbs nature, the instruments used to calculate those disturbances are flows of +s or -s. surely im not the only one that see's it?

[@sebastianfayle2066]

Is it just me, or are half of the words in the acronym superfluous? Why do you need industrialized and democratized if you have western and educated? Educated generally indicates rich, too, so I'd say western and rich is probably enough to identify everyone in this group. Why then is all of the discussion instead about the evolution from Catholicism of kinships and individualism? Are they not more important and indeed salient factors in this topic? And after all the suggestions that other cultures exhibit similar growth, I feel like the use of Western is really borderline unacceptable. I may be missing the point of some things here - i hope so - but please Stop trying to make complicated things into catchy slogans.

[@eliterun6214]

read the book

[@sebastianfayle2066]

@@eliterun6214 sell it to me

[@karinchavoll7121]

El libro me encantó.,

[@saracorbin1152]

I'm just WEID

[@TheMuddman74]

Be me

[@joemendiuk5683]

The disposition of this author concerning his personal assessment of his credulity is evinced by his consistent use of the phrase 'i make the case...' of this or that conjecture of his. Given the general tenor of Harvard University and it's faculty this is unsurprising. Perhaps this author would be more accurate to say 'i put the case for...' or 'i argue the case that...' but he always only says 'i make the case...' which reveals his arrogance and high sense of self. It's troubling our society the many self esteemed professors and all the cases which they 'make'. That a major driver of the demise of our society.

[@dukedavid78]

So that verb choice is a major driver of social decline? Really? He's making a case because he's assembling data and putting together an argument-making, creating, constituting, etc. Maybe grand declarations about the drivers of social decline are themselves the issue: 'evil is the eye that sees everywhere,' etc.

[@joemendiuk5683]

@@dukedavid78 in argument and postulation presenting data and arguing it's validity is making a case for one's postulation, or putting the case which conveys implicit presentation of the data and argument(s) to opposition. The verb usage of 'making'(the case) denotes absolute proof of the conjecture, his conjecture which is precisely what it is. Given that his postulations are merely that, constituting this man's opinion the use of the phrase 'make the case' resounds an absolutist tenor which is inappropriate. Have I made my case?

[@joemendiuk5683]

That said, it is not the usage of this verb or that which is a driver of societal erosion which I suggest but rather the absolutist arrogance of biased professors and their ilk which is the driver. Notng that such arrogance is a primary and fundimental characteristic of the illuminating cherub, albeit corrupted by huberus which his loyal adherents emulate in homage, worship if you will.

[@VM-hl8ms]

@@joemendiuk5683 or he's just an extrovert?

[@ryanbachman3850]

I get what you're saying but I feel you have too much certainty in the judgment you're making. From my perspective he seemed humble and adequately aware that he's presenting reasonably plausible patterns and conclusions from the data and work he has performed. I see humility in his hesitancy to speculate for example. But I do think I understand what point you're trying to make. Our proclivities to certainty in the academic arena where ideas are born probably has contributed to our sociopathic tendencies. I'd be quicker to make a judgment if I heard him debate some of his critics on the topics he presents. I found his lens refreshing in a time of stale ideas. Regardless have a blessed day Joe!