[rayiner]

> However, look at Ireland vs the UK. Basically the same genetics, an extremely similar culture (particularly given the amount of cross migration back and forth), and yet very divergent amounts of social trust

Ireland is culturally distinct from the U.K. For example, the U.K. is historically predominantly Protestant, while Ireland is historically strongly Catholic. That manifests in many ways. For example, the Anglosphere tends to have the latest gestational limits on abortion among European and European-derived countries. By contrast, abortion was illegal altogether in Ireland until recently (2018).

There is also the fact that the Irish were brutally colonized by England and Irish society developed a strong cohesiveness from that external pressure. The Bengal Famine of 1943 killed 3 million people out of a population of about 60 million. The Irish Famine, by contrast, killed 1 million people out of a population of only about 8 million. Indeed, the Irish population peaked in 1841, a few years before the start of the Great Famine and never returned to that peak.

> I think that the particular outcomes of one country, predominantly founded by Europeans, tells us very little about how culture works.

Europeans are culturally quite different from each other! For example, the Swedish practice of not feeding guests (https://www.the-independent.com/voices/swedengate-sweden-din...) would be mortifying to Americans in the southern U.S.