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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   35580 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of March 20, 2023

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HENRICH's MIRRORS, KENYANS and invincible ignorance

Joseph Henrich, the Harvard professor of evolutionary biology who coined the term WIERD to describe Westerners, and wrote the book on the cultural differences between us and them recently went on Hanania's podcast where he insisted that the Kenyan advantage in running records was... purely a matter of cultural psychology. Having introduced the bizzare lengths to which knowledgeable Academics will go to lie about the most obvious things; and knowing that these taboos have been the sacred in the West for so long, I'd like to propose the possibility that even committed HBDers have only scratched the surface of how far biological differences may go.

With that in mind, let's consider the matter of Kenyan children and mirrors. What matter you may ask? Well, one that might prompt the following, again from Heinrich, et al.

"It is possible but unlikely that these children, up to 72 months of age, did not recognize themselves in the mirror. Although the data presented here do not directly address the question of why they did not show signs of self-oriented behavior, we speculate that these are false negative responses..."

You read that right, standard self recognition testing does not detect self recognition in Kenyan children, a whole three years after it does so in European toddlers, and who knows how much longer.

https://www2.psych.ubc.ca/~henrich/pdfs/Journal%20of%20Cross-Cultural%20Psychology-2010-Broesch-%20Cultural%20Variations%20in%20Children's%20Mirror%20Self-Recognition.pdf

Now, you'll have noticed that a 5 years of age, even dumb children can be asked questions. Yet for some reason, the study in question shows no sign that these children were ever asked anything about what they saw. In fact the study makers decided to go for another round elsewhere, and leave it at that. Thousands of psychologists are aware of this study, it was even published in Scientific American, and yet no one has publically tried to run it again. If there is even the slightest possibility that this means what It might mean, we are talking about the most important replication attempt in modern history, and it's not even close.

If put on tape, this is the final shot in the HBD wars, and one which even the normiest normie can understand. Any takers? My own prediction is 20% non-recognition, 30% fraud, 20% innate psychological differences in responding to mirrors, and 30% abusive parenting.

I saw this recently on a video on animals that can/can't pass the mirror test. I think that animals interacting with mirrors are fascinating, because it's one of the ways that we can get some sense of their psychology, or at least be reminded by how different we are from them. One of my earlier approximately datable memories is looking into a mirror when I was 3 years old, so it's also something I can relate to my own experiences.

My bullshit alarm fired at full force, especially when the video glossed it as "Kenyans have more of a collective identity". What, as opposed to East Asians?

The video:

https://youtube.com/watch?v=cKs_iW0QVNY

What, as opposed to East Asians?

Huh, Chinese children mirror testing doesn’t seem to pull up much. Does anyone know at what age East Asians show self recognition in mirrors? Ideally looking for a study with Chinese or Koreans.

Chinese children mirror testing doesn’t seem to pull up much.

Hmm, I couldn't find anything either. I had just inferred that there was nothing to see there, given the focus on Kenyan children. However, I was assuming that they'd tested Chinese children, but from the abstract, the 2011 study apparently just tests Kenyan children, plus those from "Fiji, Saint Lucia, Grenada, and Peru... as well as children from urban United States and rural Canada."

So this literature looks even worse than I expected.

Also, I came across this part of the article: "In Fijian culture, for example, there is no “why” phrase that children can use"

I have a low prior in claims of deep linguistic differences between cultures. Sure enough, when I checked their references for that paragraph, they don't mention Fiji. (I might not be searching for the right words.) So this seems to be the sort of "There's an Amazonian tribe with no concept of time" bullshit that people hear at a conference and then repeat, often subtly distorting it.

Also, I came across this part of the article: "In Fijian culture, for example, there is no “why” phrase that children can use"

I congratulate them on baking anti-teleology into their very language.

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