I think the point isn’t “loook, a mysterious difference in braaain fuuunction.~” but that nurture is more important than nature when it comes to human psychology.
But they act as if the impact of nurture on decision-making is this inaccessible thing. The people making the decisions could have been able to tell them why they decided the way they did.
Oh sorry! I mean the people who wrote the article. (Which is similar to the way Dan Ariely wrote in his book that people have no good reason to pick the $10 card, even though we do sometimes. He just concluded that we irrationally value free things more than we should.)
I think I’m concerned that by not providing any explanations, this article jumps into @Villiam_Bur’s post’s category #4. Other cultures are so different! They make these totally alien decisions with this game! If the researchers themselves did have explanations, then that makes the article even more sketchy because its authors decided to overplay the cultural difference instead of presenting the results as “probably if you were raised [like this], you’d also play this game differently”—which is what the research likely found.
EDIT: I caught a weird bug where I keep saying “they” when referring to the article authors. I fixed it myself this time!
The article isn’t written by multiple people but by one person called Ethan Watters who reports about the scientific work of Joe Henrich and his collegues to a nonscientific audience.
As a result there are multiple different groups you could mean with “they”.
I think I’m concerned that by not providing any explanations
Explanations aren’t what science is about. Science is about having a theory and using it to make predictions. Then you see whether those predictions are accurately describing reality.
this article jumps into @Villiam_Bur’s post’s category #4. Other cultures are so different!
I don’t think there anything wrong with making that argument. The orginial WEIRD peer reviwed paper makes that point with data.
They make these totally alien decisions with this game!
It’s not about whether the decision violates “common sense” and is alien. It’s about whether it violates theoretic models that were developed in academia.
I think the point isn’t “loook, a mysterious difference in braaain fuuunction.~” but that nurture is more important than nature when it comes to human psychology.
But they act as if the impact of nurture on decision-making is this inaccessible thing. The people making the decisions could have been able to tell them why they decided the way they did.
Who do you mean with “they”?
I would guess that the orginal papers do include some discussion of why they decided the way they did.
Oh sorry! I mean the people who wrote the article. (Which is similar to the way Dan Ariely wrote in his book that people have no good reason to pick the $10 card, even though we do sometimes. He just concluded that we irrationally value free things more than we should.)
I think I’m concerned that by not providing any explanations, this article jumps into @Villiam_Bur’s post’s category #4. Other cultures are so different! They make these totally alien decisions with this game! If the researchers themselves did have explanations, then that makes the article even more sketchy because its authors decided to overplay the cultural difference instead of presenting the results as “probably if you were raised [like this], you’d also play this game differently”—which is what the research likely found.
EDIT: I caught a weird bug where I keep saying “they” when referring to the article authors. I fixed it myself this time!
The article isn’t written by multiple people but by one person called Ethan Watters who reports about the scientific work of Joe Henrich and his collegues to a nonscientific audience.
As a result there are multiple different groups you could mean with “they”.
Explanations aren’t what science is about. Science is about having a theory and using it to make predictions. Then you see whether those predictions are accurately describing reality.
I don’t think there anything wrong with making that argument. The orginial WEIRD peer reviwed paper makes that point with data.
It’s not about whether the decision violates “common sense” and is alien. It’s about whether it violates theoretic models that were developed in academia.