[PeterHolzwarth]

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]

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]

> 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]

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

[adwn]

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]

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]

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_]

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]

> […] '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]

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

[bonoboTP]

People are very sensitive to sensing politically threatening undertones in any take. If you truly aren't sure why: it's probably related to certain funding decisions and certain discourse around certain academic fields.

[CaptWillard]

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]

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

[CaptWillard]

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

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

[ludicity]

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]

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

Here are the cocktail ideas. Hits the spot.

[bryanrasmussen]

>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]

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]

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]

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]

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)

[godelski]

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]

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]

> 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]

The book has been recommended and discussed here before.