I noticed that the post and the comments were a little bit vague on what exactly does or doesn't belong in my 'culture'. Would arguing that nudity is good translate into something obvious and true (like for most Europeans, as I understand it), or would it turn into something absurd and possibly evil (like how I think most Americans see it)? In other words, whenever the examples talk about zeitgeists, am I to translate that into generalizing from the example of me?
Arguing for evolution is super-obvious to me, but a large fraction of Alaskans aren't too keen on the idea. So if I told the chronophone about natural selection while I'm in Alaska, would it tell Archimedes that humans are featherless chickens... but if I said it in the midst of a Biology symposium, it would tell him that humans are mortal?
My guess is that you can't change your affiliations so easily, because it avoids the point of the hypothetical. But I would be interested to see what comes out if I tell him about all the things that I think other cultures do better than my own.
Would arguing that nudity is good translate into something obvious and true (like for most Europeans, as I understand it)
Seriously? How many people have you seen walking around casually nude in an average European city? What does it even mean to say "nudity is good"?
A better example would be homosexuality as seen in Iran (they hang you for it) vs as seen in most of the Western world (it's okay)
Today's post, Archimedes's Chronophone was originally published on March 23, 2007. A summary (taken from the LW wiki):
This post is part of the Rerunning the Sequences series, where we'll be going through Eliezer Yudkowsky's old posts in order so that people who are interested can (re-)read and discuss them. The previous post was Useless Medical Disclaimers, and you can use the sequence_reruns tag or rss feed to follow the rest of the series.
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