Book Review: The Arctic Hysterias

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33 points·feross··4 comments

Sounds interesting. Several years ago I got into reading about these "culturally-bound" mental disorders. The most amusing of them was Puppy Pregnancy Syndrome (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Puppy_pregnancy_syndrome), whereas the story that got me interested in this topic was about how the guy who carried out a mass shooting on the Virginia Tech campus was said to have shown signs of "Hwabyeong" (https://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/31/magazine/should-it-matter...).

Minds can differ greatly by culture. For instance, some cultures only count one, two, many. Consider what a huge difference that would make to your cognition.

"Minds differ greatly by culture" -- Bravo

Is it politically correct to say "Minds work better in some cultures, because they live in harsh environment, so only better-working minds survive"?

-- Probably not because properties above the neck are not hereditary. Everybody is equally beautiful and wise.

You didn't put much effort into your reply, but I'll respond:

"Minds differ greatly by culture" is something that is absolutely not obvious to most people (or most scientists). Cross-cultural psychological research is really only picking up steam recently.

Is the quote you gave politically correct? Depends on your culture :-D Is it true? Yes. But the thing you miss is that culture is like software...you can install new software, for the most part, in humans (teach them new ways of doing things). You're actually thinking about selection on the hardware, it seems.

I share your frustration with the fact that speaking the truth about the heritability of psychological traits is treated as heresy in lots of the developed world.

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