ramblin_ag02 said:

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lying protects all the innocent members of your family. The whole idea really blew my mind..

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7. What do you see as the most important take-home messages from this book?

It is no longer tenable to continue pretending that all populations are psychologically indistinguishable or that cultural evolution doesn't systematically modify how people think, feel, and perceive. And knowing this changes our understanding of who we are and where our most cherished institutions, beliefs, and values come from.

After all, major institutions like democracy, constitutional law, and science didn't spring from the minds of Enlightenment thinkers after they threw-off the shackles of religion and "discovered" rationality and reason. Instead, these concepts evolved over a long-process of myopic groping, and through an interaction with a particular cultural psychology and family structure. They reflect the hidden dynamics of a particular pathway of cultural evolution.

Formal institutions, social norms and cultural psychologies coevolve in mutually re-enforcing ways over centuries. Such interactions explain why one can't simply transplant the political, legal or religious institutions from one population into another populationas was common under colonialism and expect them to operate in similar ways. Instead, such institutional-psychological mismatches often disrupt people's identities, create moral conflicts, break down the kin-based institutions that provide social security, and foment social turmoil.

Finally, in discussing the massive economic expansion of the last few centuries, the book shows how certain psychological traitse.g., trust in strangers, tolerance of differences, rejection of tradition, and an openness to novelty spurred the acceleration of innovation by creating sprawling social networks through which diverse ideas, practices, techniques and concepts flowed and recombined. Communities and organizations that cultivated greater psychological and cultural diversity, however modest by modern standards, thrived and outcompeted their competitors. In other words, ethnocentrism is the enemy of innovation.

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ramblin_ag02 said:

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https://www.amazon.com/WEIRDest-People-World-Psychologically-Particularly-ebook/dp/B07RZFCPMD

Just finished this book and highly recommend it. The basic premise is the Western Europeans and societies that sprang from that area have a psychology and morality that is very different from the human norm. It goes into great detail about how this happened, how our psychology and societies are different, and how that makes us economically prosperous. The Catholic Church makes a big appearance, as does the Reformation/Counter Reformation.

Probably the biggest shock to me was the entirely different morality that people have in different cultures, and how that morality makes perfect sense in that context. For example, one of the questions was able lying under oath to protect your brother from a manslaughter charge. Pretend you are a passenger in a car, and your brother is driving. He hits a pedestrian and drives away. There are no other witnesses. He gets arrested and asks you to lie about it in court. Western people refuse, because lying is wrong and your brother did hit someone with his car. We stick with universal standards of right and wrong that don't respect individuals. However, in most of the world people would definitely lie for their brother, and they would do it without hesitation. For most of the world, the only thing keeping them safe and secure is their family ties, and family/tribe/clan comes before everything else. In that situation, your brother going to jail weakens your family, and that puts you and the rest of your family in a weaker position. Other families can then attack you taking your land, jobs, and influence. So lying protects all the innocent members of your family. The whole idea really blew my mind.

The book gets technical at times, at least a technical as sociology and psychology gets. But it is well thought and certainly thought provoking.

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For example, one of the questions was able lying under oath to protect your brother from a manslaughter charge. Pretend you are a passenger in a car, and your brother is driving. He hits a pedestrian and drives away. There are no other witnesses. He gets arrested and asks you to lie about it in court. Western people refuse, because lying is wrong and your brother did hit someone with his car. We stick with universal standards of right and wrong that don't respect individuals. However, in most of the world people would definitely lie for their brother, and they would do it without hesitation. For most of the world, the only thing keeping them safe and secure is their family ties, and family/tribe/clan comes before everything else. In that situation, your brother going to jail weakens your family, and that puts you and the rest of your family in a weaker position. Other families can then attack you taking your land, jobs, and influence. So lying protects all the innocent members of your family. The whole idea really blew my mind.

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• The brother committed a hit and run and didn't render aid - selfish and possibly fearful
• It may have been an accident or caused by driving under the influence.
• A person is dead
• You are lying to cover your brother

• One has their life taken away from the actions of the brother
• One walks free while the other suffers
• The victims family doesn't have answers or justice.

• attacking your land is sinful.

The level of arrogance and contempt for the public in releasing a 100% redacted document is staggering. The CDC is thumbing their nose at the Freedom of Information Act.

Without transparency, there is no such thing as democracy. When I’m President, the CDC won’t get to decide… https://t.co/aJNMxW9lr2

— Robert F. Kennedy Jr (@RobertKennedyJr) March 19, 2024

ramblin_ag02 said:

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That was only one example. Another interesting one was the comparison of parking tickets in NYC by different countries. Some countries had hundreds, and some had none. This aligned pretty well with the Global Corruption Index for that country. It also aligned well with the historical exposure (or lack of exposure) to the Catholic Church. Basically, the longer a country was exposed to the Catholic Church, the less clanish and tribal the society.

It's interesting to see the evolution of culture. Hunter-gatherer societies are largely individualistic and brutally violent. Agricultural societies are best served by family and clan based societies. Industrial societies are best served by individualist, impersonal societies with large voluntary associations such as corporations and governments.

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