1. The author keeps flipping back and forth between defining the set of 'weird' people as all 'Westerners' and just 'rich, educated Westerners.'
[ edit: Further thought/reading brings up the references to 'privileged Westerners' as well. This whole aspect of the article seems to only be there to: a) inflame the reader or b) provoke feelings of guilt in the reader (since the audience here are the 'privileged Westerners that they are speaking of). ]
2. They state that Westerners are 'weird' because they are different from the rest of the world, but only present single anecdotes as evidence (i.e. "Westerners differ from Amazon Tribe X in test Y" then "Westerners differ from Chinese in test Z"). All this seems to say to me is that maybe it's impossible to generalize about the human condition because too many factors are dependent on culture.
> "We live in this world with police and institutions and pre-packaged food,
> TV, the Internet, watches and clocks and calendars. Our heads are loaded with
> all this information for navigating those environments. So we should expect
> our brains to be distorted," Dr. Henrich says.
3. Are our brains really 'distorted' or just different? Who is to say what is the better/natural/whatever way of thinking?
4. I found it extremely annoying that they capitalized the word 'weird' everywhere, even in quotes from experts.
> The UBC researchers acknowledge the limits of what is known about
> WEIRD versus non-WEIRD populations. Because data comparing how
> people from different populations think is relatively hard to come by, the
> authors write, "we cannot accurately evaluate the full extent of how unusual
> WEIRD people are."
> "This is, however, precisely the point. We hope research teams will be
> inspired to span the globe and prove our claims of non-representativeness
> wrong."
5. So you spent the entire article trying to highlight the significance of this finding and trying to backup their claims as being rock solid, only to say, "of course, this could be complete bunk," at the end?
3. Are our brains really 'distorted' or just different? Who is to say what is the better/natural/whatever way of thinking?
In this case there is a clear logical answer.
4. I found it extremely annoying that they capitalized the word 'weird' everywhere, even in quotes from experts.
They do this because they've defined WEIRD to mean something specific and they want to make it clear that they're not using the dictionary definition of the word.
Comments
I see quite a few flaws in the article:
1. The author keeps flipping back and forth between defining the set of 'weird' people as all 'Westerners' and just 'rich, educated Westerners.'
[ edit: Further thought/reading brings up the references to 'privileged Westerners' as well. This whole aspect of the article seems to only be there to: a) inflame the reader or b) provoke feelings of guilt in the reader (since the audience here are the 'privileged Westerners that they are speaking of). ]
2. They state that Westerners are 'weird' because they are different from the rest of the world, but only present single anecdotes as evidence (i.e. "Westerners differ from Amazon Tribe X in test Y" then "Westerners differ from Chinese in test Z"). All this seems to say to me is that maybe it's impossible to generalize about the human condition because too many factors are dependent on culture.
3. Are our brains really 'distorted' or just different? Who is to say what is the better/natural/whatever way of thinking?4. I found it extremely annoying that they capitalized the word 'weird' everywhere, even in quotes from experts.
5. So you spent the entire article trying to highlight the significance of this finding and trying to backup their claims as being rock solid, only to say, "of course, this could be complete bunk," at the end?WEIRD stands for "Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, Democratic", which explains the capitalization.
3. Are our brains really 'distorted' or just different? Who is to say what is the better/natural/whatever way of thinking?
In this case there is a clear logical answer.
4. I found it extremely annoying that they capitalized the word 'weird' everywhere, even in quotes from experts.
They do this because they've defined WEIRD to mean something specific and they want to make it clear that they're not using the dictionary definition of the word.