> And culture is, by and large, random, arbitrary, and self-reinforcing.

The best definition of "culture" I've ever found is "how we do things 'round here". It's valid in both the large and in the small.

Of course, why and how we converge on those norms is mysterious, and the anthropologists, the psychologists, and etc. can have a go at explaining those parts. I can't.

At its core, I believe the phenomenon of culture is intertwined with the hard problem of consciousness, which is notoriously circular and self-referential and roughly speaking “how we do/feel things ’round here” is potentially not far from the best we can do.

Cultural baggage, for the lack of a better word, drives how we tend to approach reality (holistically or by dividing and classifying things, monistically or dualistically, materialistically or idealistically, and so on), and reality includes the very thing under discussion (consciousness, culture).

Shared cultural baggage is perhaps the thing that makes us believe another being is conscious (i.e., shares similar aspects of self-awareness). Shared culture manifests itself in an infinity of fine details of one’s behaviour; looking like a human but not behaving like a human can be a great horror movie trope, depending on how carefully shared culture is violated[0].

This carries over to animals, to a degree. A dog is social to an extent that many would consider it conscious. An octopus is legally recognised as sentient in some countries—thanks to it behaving in a way that is vaguely reminiscent of ourselves. Same reason we call ravens smart.

Most humans anywhere on the planet, though, share enough cultural baggage that we do not question whether others have what we consider consciousness; though I think some people are more sensitive to how much shared cultural baggage another human possesses, the small lack of which could lead to fear, cautiousness, and/or a feeling that they are in some ways subhuman (closer than a dog, but not as human as their peers in local community) relative to them, which eventually contributes to exclusion, racism, and so on (well demonstrated in both Japan and parts of the US).

[0] Arguably, “behaving sufficiently like a human while being not human at all”, which we have plenty of examples of now in the last year or two, is another such trope.

I'm partial to "culture is shared expectations".

Which can, of course, be random, self-reinforcing, etc.

> > And culture is, by and large, random, arbitrary, and self-reinforcing.

Culture, by and large, isn't random nor arbitrary. Culture is obviously influenced by the past and the environment, but it's mostly artificially created by the elites. Once established it is self-reinforcing.

> Of course, why and how we converge on those norms is mysterious, and the anthropologists, the psychologists, and etc. can have a go at explaining those parts. I can't.

It's not mysterious. Monkey see, monkey do. We see the higher ups do it and we mimic. Or we are told this is how we do things and we obey. This applies to nations, corporations and families.

Yeah, please leave the cultural analysis to anthropologists, sociologists, etc. The engineering-focused materialist way of looking at stuff like this makes my head and heart hurt.

I think you're missing one element. It works. The culture in Germany in 1600 compared with the culture in Germany in 2026 is very, very different, even though the geography hasn't changed. That's because in the modern world nearly none of the culture of the old Germany works.

This is not unique to Germany, of course. We long ago gave up on the four humours theory. We long ago gave up on burning women who wear pants. We long ago gave up of many things that used to be European culture.

The culture of queuing in Japan works because you are looked down upon if you don't participate and because it is better than the random stuff we do in the West. However, it would probably disappear pretty soon if it wasn't also a good solution.