This is intellectually yummy, incredible,
awesome, and a giant DUH, all at the same time. It is also sooooo long
that I haven't quite gotten through it, but even partway through, quite
useful.
Thank you, Travis :).
www.psmag.com/magazines/pacific-standard-cover-story/joe-henrich-weird-ultimatum-game-shaking-up-psychology-economics-53135/
.
Part of another discussion, November 10-11 2013 on John Ceniceros' Fb page:
ReplyDeleteKR: Ah, we seem, then, to be passing the cultural evolution stage suggested at the end of this article ... I actually googled the material because of John's "New World/Old World" terminology, for the section that starts "what is your favorite color?," about halfway down: one of the most interesting cultural miscommunications I've run into. Other commentaries spend much more time spelling out how the mysterious incompatibility between the British and the Americans functionally impacted their military cooperation, especially at first, but this gets to the heart of the cultural disconnect pretty quickly:
http://www.lvtsg.com/.../01/5395/according-to-margaret-mead/
(full disclosure: yesterday I hit the tipping point on my hair getting too shaggy in the back and this morning cut it quite short again, which was why the topic was on my mind )
According to Margaret Mead - Las Vegas Trade Show Guide
www.lvtsg.com
Margaret Mead was a remarkable women studying human culture during a remarkable ...See More
John: I definitely think that not only things like the internet but also the increased ease of air travel and the rise of global brands since Ms Mead's work have changed the game pretty completely, and greatly increased the homogeneity of the planet. Just look at the speed with which we are losing languages around the globe. i realize now that I was not expecting to have a different opinion from Old World John Ceniceros so much as I was hoping to for the sake of having an interesting discussion about it. Thanks for managing to make it interesting, Kirsten! At least, to me!
KR: I felt responsibility : ), since I suggested the topic!
I'd have to disagree about the homogenization of global cultural preferences, though ... or at least limit it to those people with significant access to the internet, and note that those of us who choose to use Facebook are most likely a demographic already sharing reasonably common foundational assumptions ; ).
I forget when we started being FbFriends; on Sept 27 I posted a link that I think is perhaps the most important thing for humanity-as-a-whole that I have ever read on the internet. It was an article about academic work that suggested (I forget now whether it was explicit or implicit) that even what is considered 'thinking', and that at least some things we thought were fundamental neurological (physical!) perceptive processes, varies from culture to culture ... and that Western Europeans are very odd thinkers indeed from a global perspective ... and that Americans are (in general) an acute case of Western European thinking/perceptive prejudices.
But you never know when an outlier will turn up, though, so it was worth asking ; ). Perhaps hair is biological enough to be more easily universal, because I am often non-Western-Civ in my perceptions and processing and I also agreed ... I should perhaps have asked about favorite cars or God or corned beef hash ; ).
John: I'm going to stand by my assertion that "the world is getting smaller" as far as cultures in general are concerned. our preferences are driven so strongly by media, and rtegardless of whether the general populace of Kuala zzzzlumpur or Marrakeh\\sh can
KR: ;)