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Episode 18: "Boy If Life Were Only Like This" (With Joe Henrich)

Very Bad Wizards

The Psychological Effects of Wars

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Episode notes

Psychology is a discipline that has the capability to make claims about human nature. And one of the ways we can do that is by theorizing about variation, says David Perry. We need to harness global variation in order to understand history and then use it to fill in blanks.

Joe Henrich joins the podcast to tell us that we know nothing about his work and that how we got to teach a class in anything is absolutely amazing. We continue our discussion from Episode 17 about his critique of the social and behavioral sciences in "The Weirdest People in the World" and his work in small scale societies on fairness norms. We also talk about the weird American obsession with happiness, monkeys throwing cucumbers, and why some people reject "hyper-fair" offers of more than the half the pot in the ultimatum games.

Links

"I happen to have Marshall Mcluhan right here." (From Woody Allen's Annie Hall.) Longer HD version here
Joe Henrich UBC.ca | Wikipedia
The Machiguenga [wikipedia.org]
Henrich on Brosnan and DeWaal's capuchin inequity aversion study.
Chicha [wikipedia.org]
How much money would it take for you to kill a puppy? [liveleak.com]
Relevant papers are listed in the notes for Episode 17: Learning About Bushmen from Studying Freshmen?

Special Guest: Joe Henrich.

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