I have lately been pondering two contradictory human beliefs: the belief in our own exceptionalism and the belief in our own ordinariness. We model the world with ourselves as prototypical humans, using our own emotions and reactions and thought processes to run a program predicting the behavior of others. That is, after all, what our mirror neurons evolved for. However, when it comes to our abilities or our intelligence or our problems, we believe we are something out of the ordinary.

I was thinking of writing an article on this topic this morning. Then I come on here and it's the first thing I see.

How do we model for people whose cultural contexts and information delivering authorities are fundamentally different from our own, without lumping them into a faceless group?

Well, it's probably a trade-off to some extent. The less information, from inside view and personal contact, that one has about a group, the more vague and inaccurate one's model of people in that group will be. One solution would be to get to know a wide variety of people.

Also, this is part of why politics is the mind-killer. The way we are raised, our basic assumptions, and even our terminal values (freedom vs. fairness etc) have a major effect on our politics.