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PeterHolzwarth 3 days ago

I have to ask (and I don't mean this combatively) - given the ongoing realization of the replication crisis, how likely is it that the book you mention reflects a summation of the "too pat" studies about human behavior that, en masse, always seem pithy in an interesting headline, but years later end up being completely bunk?

I've noticed over the years many chains of reasoning - made up of what I believe someone called "cocktail party" pithy takes - that only last as long as you don't dig into the nuts and bolts of them. Pleasant little takes on our psyche and behavior that makes for nice reaffirming thoughts of our views but break down under later analysis.

It feels like we have sometimes accreted an amalgam of these pithy takes based on very small, one off, studies (never replicated) that let us comfortably assemble an affirmation of our broader takes.

This is a rotten thing to say about your book recommendation, given I have never read it (I hope you'll forgive me), but based on the last few years of the replication crisis, do you think, in your heart of hearts, that what you are describing truly does stand up?

psidium 3 days ago | parent | next [-]

I do not have the time now to craft you a full answer as I don’t have the book on hand and have only been commenting from memory so far. But to give you a quick answer: I don’t think all of it is shallow, especially given the format: the book is mostly a prose re-writing of the author’s own peer-reviewed anthropology scientific papers. Most of the authors claims are backed by actual papers for reference on the footnotes. As for replication it seems that the author himself replicated some of his studies with different hunter gatherer societies in the world. It’s been a good while since I read it.

I can tell you from my personal experience that the info there has helped me understand the differences between how people think in Brazil (where I come from) and how people think here in the US. Could it be me pattern matching? Possibly

I wouldn’t expect all of it to be true, but I would be very surprised if most of the sources the author provide are false or lack theory and tests, since he explain control groups and experiments in details.

I’m not that married to the book either, as I find some claims rather bold (like the Italy divide)

The title does sound catchy tho

Edit; the author’s main point is how the papal rule on monogamy changed Europe and its colonies to this day, which I didn’t capture on my main comment. Lots to unpack there

adwn 3 days ago | parent [-]

> I don’t think all of it is shallow, especially given the format: the book is mostly a prose re-writing of the author’s own peer-reviewed anthropology scientific papers.

That's not the issue. The replication crisis is the phenomenon that many scientific results and conclusions which originate from serious, peer-reviewed research, couldn't be replicated by other researchers, and sometimes not even by the original scientist. This is especially concerning because many results with strong statements – unintuitive ones as well as bias-confirming ones – turned out to be non-existent [1]. It doesn't necessarily have anything to do with "shallowness" or "cocktail-party takes", although the strength of the purported effects, combined with pop-science simplifications and reductions, lend themselves well to such memetically spreading factoids.

[1] The "softer" sciences tend to be much more affected by this than the "harder" sciences.

psidium 3 days ago | parent | next [-]

But I said the book does offer replication studies in different populations in different continents, albeit from the same author

adwn 3 days ago | parent [-]

I know, and I guess it's better than nothing, but replications by the original author don't exactly grant the same level of confidence as independent replications.

adwn 3 days ago | parent | prev [-]

No idea why this is getting downvoted. Everything I wrote is true and directly on topic. Further reading: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Replication_crisis

sho_hn 3 days ago | parent [-]

I know we are not supposed to talk about karma (and therefore a downvote ironically may be appropriate on this comment), but I agree vote behaviour on HN lately shows a still-small but growing tendency toward suppressive downvoting.

This seems to happen generally for two reasons: Even a neutral comment is evaluated for what stance it most closely aligns with, and then downvoted to suppress the opposing view just in case. Or alternatively, a comment that appears low-key combative (but really isn't directly so) gets downvoted in an attempt to ensure harmony.

Both moves to me have "culture war vibes", and come from either adopting those habits or feeling very tired from strife.

I think it's increasingly easy to fall into either bracket, but let's not do that on HN! If a comment is generally polite enough, the only bar to meet is adding new information or new thought into a conversation. None of us come here to be pandered to, and getting challenged by viewpoints that force you to consider the corner cases of your own views is half the fun.

_DeadFred_ 3 days ago | parent | next [-]

Not to call you out for your post but I think this is a result of the 'just asking questions' culture we live in where asking questions online has been weaponized/agenda driven. Even the person asking the question admits their question could be interpreted this way first thing: "and I don't mean this combatively)" and even their caveat these days is sadly easily interpreted as 'I'm just asking questions'. Just look at how the start of my first sentence changes the tone.

The question asker doesn't know the work, doesn't respond to what OP said, but instead challenges OP about methodology, and leads with 'I know this question can seem combative'. Then falls to 'do you think, in your heart of hearts'... how does that question and asking for assessment align with the 'I'm all about methodology' stance of the question asker? It sounds a like a 'core values' assessment/assignment not a 'the room for error in this study' assessment is being asked for. The question on the whole:

'I know this can sound combative but I'm just asking questions. Given other things have been bad and knowing nothing of this being talked about, but pointing out it's probably completely wrong (based on nothing but X other thing is wrong).... really, in your heart, do you believe you are coming from integrity?'

That sounds toxic AF.

Personally as a relative newcomer here it seems like there is a lot of this 'just asking questions' on HN.

Edit: Throttled. I pointed out how I saw the post could be (mis)interpreted. Yeah, that necessitates me replaying it back how it could be (mis)interpreted. That is valid when my point is about... how posts could be (mis)interpreted resulting in a poorer quality of discussion. Sorry if you didn't understand the point I was trying to get across. I didn't say the interpretation was valid, I said here is how posts like the one the person I responded to referenced can derail discussion in an era of 'just asking questions'. Zero disingenuousness nor unconstructive on my part and it's wild you can't see that. My post was about better quality discussion using the message the person I responded to used. Yours is about calling me specifically out. Which is more 'constructive'?

adwn 3 days ago | parent [-]

> […] 'just asking questions' […]

That's not the case here. Non-replicable results from studies in the social sciences are a very real, very frequent phenomenon, and the first question to ask when seeing a claim about a significant effect should be "Has this been replicated?". Being sceptical (without being overly negative or critical) is not "toxic" as you call it, instead it protects us all from becoming trapped in our bubble.

> 'I know this can sound combative but I'm just asking questions. Given other things have been bad and knowing nothing of this being talked about, but pointing out it's probably completely wrong (based on nothing but X other thing is wrong).... really, in your heart, do you believe you are coming from integrity?'

> That sounds toxic AF.

You had to rephrase PeterHolzwarth's post and put word in their mouths to make it sound "toxic AF". That's a disingenuous and unconstructive thing to do in a discussion.

dc10tonite 3 days ago | parent | prev [-]

This is why I have enjoyed not having downvote powers yet. It's made me check why I downvote things - and re-evaluate what I upvote. I've found myself upvoting things I don't really agree with but make interesting points that I find myself dialoguing with. Perhaps this is why I mostly lurk

CaptWillard 3 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I'd never heard of the replication crisis, but it mirrors what I think is a core problem with modern political discourse.

Example: Two people with similar classically liberal values hear the same "pithy take" on a politically contentious issue. One accepts it as presented, the other digs in and finds it doesn't hold up to scrutiny at all.

Almost invariably, the skeptic is ostracized, his findings met with incurious dismissal.

titanomachy 3 days ago | parent [-]

This is probably only true when the "pithy take" upholds accepted dogma.

CaptWillard 3 days ago | parent [-]

This has been my experience, yes. Although dogma implies long held beliefs.

The rate of adoption has accelerated along with the news cycle.

ludicity 3 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

From my own time in psychology, the thrust of the book might be good, but that specific point about Protestant work ethic sounds exactly like all the other "just so" studies that didn't replicate.

But lots of otherwise good books have these little mistakes on them, so I find it best to gloss over them and see if the point stands without them.

gherkinnn 3 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

https://danluu.com/cocktail-ideas/

Here are the cocktail ideas. Hits the spot.

bryanrasmussen 3 days ago | parent [-]

>No one thinks about moving the starting or ending point of the bridge midway through construction.

it is a common rhetorical device to phrase something as an absolute when the negation of it is only an edge case.

hence

>Hillel interviewed a civil engineer who said that they had to move a bridge! Of course, civil engineers don't move bridges as frequently as programmers deal with changes in software but,

fluoridation 3 days ago | parent | next [-]

Not to be that guy, but where can I read those interviews? I got as far as the blog (https://www.hillelwayne.com/) and looked around October of 2019 and can't seem to find anything. As it stands this isn't even anecdata, this is some guy saying some other guy said he talked to a few guys who say something happens from time to time.

bryanrasmussen 3 days ago | parent [-]

no idea but it stands to reason people will need to move bridges at times, we're in the middle of building a bridge, earthquake happens, stuff no longer like it was, gotta move that bridge is just the initial obvious situation that I can imagine from outside. Similar other natural disasters would also affect it, flash flooding etc.

fluoridation 3 days ago | parent [-]

I'll grant that, but that's not a "they don't do this as often as that, but", that's a "it's not unheard of". That was meant to be a response to a Tao of Programming-like post about why programming work has so much improvisation.

godelski 2 days ago | parent [-]

Well the reason you don't move a bridge is because it's really hard and really expensive. Just like you don't build an airplane while it's flying because it couldn't be flying if it wasn't built.

The analogies seem to just be missing the point. There's constraints, so what?

I've worked in hard science, engineering, and software. No one is omniscient, so the goals evolve and pivot during the project. That's pretty standard practice. You can't just plan and execute unless you're omniscient. Honestly, the big differences I see is that programmers spend less time at the drawing board and engineers and scientists spend much more time there because working in physical space is very costly and time consuming. But there's a lot of similarities. Programmers would be more effective if they spend more time at the drawing board and engineers would be more effective if they could hack on their tasks more cheaply (which is why sim has had such an impact for them)

fluoridation 2 days ago | parent [-]

>Programmers would be more effective if they spend more time at the drawing board

Would they, though? As you've correctly pointed out, design goals in software engineering get shifted by decision-makers because its cheaper than in civil engineering. The whole point of the ToP article is pointing out that software engineers have to account for possible future radical changes that in other branches of engineering are at most exceedingly rare. Any time you spend on initial planning beyond a bird's eye view may be time wasted.

godelski 2 days ago | parent [-]

Yeah. I find it weird to think not. Many problems are found during those planning stages. The process is iterative. Like I said, no one is omniscient. So that also means you can't just figure out everything during the planning stage. If that could be solved there then no one would ever pivot and frankly, that'd be a pretty strong case for planning in the first place lol.

But think about it this way, how do you plan a vacation? I'll tell you how I do it and you'll tell me if you're different, which is okay. There's no "right" or "wrong" way. I'm sure some things will be different and it's going to change every vacation, but bear with me here, since this is more of a communication aid than telling you how to vacation lol.

Prior to the vacation I plan out the major things, like how do I get there, how do I get back, the lodging, and so on. I'll have some key things planned out that I want to do. But I won't ever have everything planned out in detail. I actually do not like having each day scheduled unless that is more tentative and and acting as a stand in. Then after traveling my schedule changes, especially in the beginning. Things are different than I expected, so I'll learn that I'd have more fun doing X instead of Y. Or I find that I really like Z so I want to allocate more time to that. Maybe the weather changed and so I can't do P, and I instead do Q. I'll ask locals and hotel staff what their favorite places are to eat and go there. I'll likely have had a few more famous places to eat laid out, but definitely not every mean. Fuck, some days I'm just tired and would rather call the day early and do takeout. As the vacation closes, things become way more "stable". If I go to the same place in a second vacation I'll definitely lean on my experiences and do things very differently, usually with less flexibility (depending how much I was ale to discover what I like doing the first time around).

The point is that no matter what you're doing, there is exploration and exploration is coupled with the doing phase. It'd be pretty fucking exhausting to plan out the vacation at the airport. I mean people do do this and I'm sure you could still end up having a great time. But a little planning can really go a long way, right? That's the planning. Just like when you get back to your hotel at night and modify plans. That's a planning stage too. The logistics of a vacation almost force this kind of behavior on people. But in programming it is much easier to pivot, almost to the degree that you can be mid meal at a restaurant and decide you want to eat somewhere else. Being able to pivot like that is an incredibly powerful and useful feature, but this doesn't mean that planning still doesn't provide major benefits. Going in blind is crazy! If anything, it makes it more important. In both physical and software you still are time limited and unable to brute force all paths. In physical you can't jump mid meal and even if you pivot as soon as you get a good look, you're much more limited to what you can pivot to because you can't teleport across town. But in programming, you can. You can brute force sometimes, but that clock still ticks forward and you're still going to benefit from planning. The real difference is in physical I might be able to consider 2 dozen places to eat but in software I might be able to try a few hundred. Still need to plan if there's a few thousand, right?

You need to balance these things: the planning, exploration, and execution. Working in physical forces a dominating planning stage and more careful exploration stage, because execution is so costly. But in software execution is cheap. That doesn't mean we should throw out the planning stage, it means we can exploit it much more effectively!

fluoridation 2 days ago | parent [-]

I don't mean to be dismissive of the effort you went to in writing all that, but nothing you've said argues why software engineers would benefit from more planning. It argues for some planning, sure; I never said no planning whatsoever is good. If you intend to build, say, a website, that presents a very different set of challenges and usable tools than if you instead intended to build a microcontroller's firmware. But you seem to agree with me that in software you can turn on a dime, yet you don't don't offer any reason why more planning than what is already done would be beneficial.

godelski 2 days ago | parent [-]

  > I never said no planning whatsoever is good
Nor did I say programmers do no planning.

  > yet you don't don't offer any reason why more planning than what is already done would be beneficial.
You're selling high precision, which is impossible in this discussion. I don't know you and thus can't adapt my message to your specific needs. You'll need to think carefully about what I've said to see if it applies to you or not. Look carefully at that vacation scenario. How does it differ from how you go about solving a programming problem? Why do you think I'm stressing so much about how the ability to turn on a dime is an entirely different dimension?

You're a programmer, so I'd expect this to not be too difficult since you deal with deep levels of abstraction every day, right? You know how to generalize functions? You're aware of anonymous functions? Functors? Templates? And many other such generalizations? Why are you seeking such high precision when you can write down a function that automatically adopts to a wide range of cases and situations?

fluoridation 2 days ago | parent [-]

Buddy, you're the one who originally made a specific claim.

>Programmers would be more effective if they spend more time at the drawing board

If you want to retract it then that's fine, but don't act like I'm being unreasonable for asking what reasons you have for making it.

godelski a day ago | parent [-]

  > don't act like I'm being unreasonable for asking what reasons you have for making it.
 
You are though. You never had any intention of talking in good faith, and it was my mistake for engaging.

You've constructed a setting where no matter what level of planning I suggest you'll be able to say that this already is performed.

You've constructed a setting where I must make a suggestion for YOU, when I've made a note about a generalization I've observed. Did I say "all"? Of course not. I'm a programmer too, right?

You've ignored my generalization while attempting to weaponize it against me by seeking high precision.

You then use precision to argue the variability and importance of adapting to differing settings.

You've moved the goalpost multiple times.

You've actively worked against requests to help refine the conversation to settings more appropriate for you, to determine if you are included in the initial generalization or not.

So yeah, you are being unreasonable. I see that all you wanted to do was pick a fight. I want no part in your dumb game.

godelski 2 days ago | parent | prev [-]

It's hard to infer what you're exactly saying here, but I've worked in physics (my undergrad), aerospace engineering (first job), and programming (my phd and onwards), so I think I can bridge whatever gap is being discussed here.

In programming, engineering, and hard science your goals evolve during development. There's always discovery during the doing process that necessitates pivots, and sometimes hard pivots. The main difference I've seen is just how much time goes into planning. Software has an advantage in that when working with physical things mistakes are incredibly costly both in money and time. You fuck up a tolerance and you might need you wait a few weeks for the part to be remade and you might have an expensive paperweight (hopefully you can use for some testing).

So what that leads to is more planning stages. That's not just make a plan and go, but make a plan, go, regroup, replan, go, repeat. It often means gathering people who are the owners of different parts of a project because you can't just duct tape things together and the most permanent solution is a temporary solution that works. This greatly affects how I go about programming and is something I notice I do differently from my peers. I spend a lot more time at the whiteboard while most people I know never visit one. I'm not spending all my time there, or even most, but I couldn't do my job without "pen and paper".

In programming the "laws of physics" aren't constantly changing and you're not "building a plane while flying it" (how would it even get off the ground lol), but your requirements are constantly changing. That's... normal engineering and normal in both experimental and even theoretical science. That's because we're not omniscient and you don't know the full answer from the get go lol.

This isn't to say in trad engineering and science we doing also "move fast and break things". Just like in programming you'll build toy models or scaled down versions. But I do think programmers could benefit a lot more and make a lot fewer mistakes (substantially reducing future workloads) would they spend a bit more time at the drawing board. It's great that in programming we can jump in and poke around and experiment so much faster than the physical world allows us, but it seems that this feature is overused instead of being used in addition to planning and designing. That's what actually made me come over to this side, was the ability to iterate faster. But sometimes you gotta take a step back and look at things. Sometimes you gotta move the bridge. Sometimes you gotta tear it down to build an entirely new one. The latter is actually much easier in programming and honestly I feel like it's used less frequently. But that's like being unwilling to throw away your first draft when writing a report (or anything). Why hold on? The first draft's job is to get the stuff out of your head and see it in a more physical form. It's so easy to rebuild, magnitudes easier than doing it the first time, but it always hangs on as if losing it is losing work.

TimByte 3 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

You're right to be cautious, especially given how many pop-psych books have aged like milk after the replication crisis came into full view. Henrich’s work feels a bit different to me. He’s not just stringing together catchy one-off studies; he’s pulling from a mix of anthropology, economics, history, and cross-cultural psych

trabant00 3 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> It feels like we have sometimes accreted an amalgam of these pithy takes based on very small, one off, studies (never replicated) that let us comfortably assemble an affirmation of our broader takes.

The patterns are there and are hard to deny. The reasoning and explanations of these types of books? Don't take them for granted, do your own research if anything is of particular interest, think for yourself, etc. The books can be of value without being 100% correct.

rjsw 3 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

The book has been recommended and discussed here before.

cpursley 3 days ago | parent | prev [-]

[flagged]

sofixa 3 days ago | parent | next [-]

> I noticed years ago that majority Catholic and Orthodox countries are generally less prosperous than Protestant countries

Based on what? I can't think of a single pairing of Protestant and Catholic/Orthodox countries that genuinely had a similar enough history, geography, geopolitical situation to be able to compare them easily. Maybe the closest would be Belgium and Netherlands, but even then Belgium spent a few hundred years more under a faraway empire milking them, and as a frontier for lots of fighting with the French, and occupied by the Germans. And Belgium is also smaller in land and population, and had a very different colonial way of working. It also had resources (coal) that allowed it to industrialise quickly, while the Netherlands didn't so focused mostly on trade and trade posts.

And... Belgium has a slightly worse economy by most classic metrics (GDP, GDP per capita, etc.).

Maybe the only other even remotely comparable countries with different religions are the Baltics (Estonia was Lutheran when they were religious, Latvia is very mixed, Lithuania is mostly Catholic). Estonia and Lithuania have pretty similar GDP per capita, with Latvia a bit behind.

But seeing this through a religious lens is missing the forrest for the trees at best.

viggity 3 days ago | parent | next [-]

The book examines this in multiple different ways, not just at the national level, but even within countries (provinces that are more catholic vs more protestant, and even within Germany, how far the city was from Wittenberg), as well as comparing third world countries that encountered catholic missionaries vs protestant missionaries.

131012 3 days ago | parent | prev [-]

Trust by Francis Fukuyama explores this relation if you want more meat than comments on a board.

guappa 3 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

If only the protestant countries' secret services would stop arming rebels every time they democratically elect someone that wants to stop funneling riches to said protestant countries…

viggity 3 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

The book suggests two main reasons for this.

1. The reformation increased literacy/education in the populace to a greater extent in protestant areas, because you no longer needed clergy to talk to God, or understand the bible. Protestant countries have had better education for longer and it has a compounding effect.

2. The "Marriage and Family Program" (the "MFP")... protestant areas discouraged cousin marriage and levirate marriage much earlier than catholic countries, and it is still very common in the rest of the world. Consanguineous marriage is ludicrously prevalent in the middle east, it makes most of the rest of the world more tribal and you end up with compounding genetic defects. By making cousin marriage taboo, it encouraged children to move to a different town and made people less clannish.

PeterHolzwarth 3 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I don't think that is a fruitful line of reasoning, given that the vast majority of the world is not Catholic/Orthodox/Protestant! You should consider digging deeper for underlying causes that go beyond localized religions.

Put another way - that would seem to be an effect, not a cause.

fidotron 3 days ago | parent [-]

> Put another way - that would seem to be an effect, not a cause.

Protestantism does seem to become the preferred variant of Christianity in areas of bottom-up power systems, such as the UK (at least wrt Magna Carta), which does make perfect sense given the Vatican being the ultimate in top-down thinking.

svieira 3 days ago | parent [-]

Magna Carta (1200s) was issued 300 years before England defected from Catholicism (1500s), so I think we may be looking at the wrong thing as "the cause" here.

fidotron 3 days ago | parent [-]

No, that's my point.

Generally speaking places that view things in a bottom up way became Protestant. The others stayed Catholic.

IncreasePosts 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

When you think of countries that are protestant, are you imagining Denmark, Sweden, Germany?

What about Central African Republic, Liberia, and Papua New Guinea?

addcommitpush 3 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I don't know if it's a joke I didn't, but it's the topic of Weber's The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism.

bryanrasmussen 3 days ago | parent | prev [-]

The cause is the Spanish Armada did not conquer England.