Comment on Open Thread, August 16-31, 2012

Mon, 20 Aug 2012 14:10:12 GMT

This may be strongly culture-dependent.

In some culture you can find many people of any skin color on your social level. In other culture, things may be completely different. In different cultures people will notice different facts, because those facts will bring different number of bits of information.

For example, if there is exactly one black person in otherwise white town, and it is a well-known person (especially well-known for something that is somehow related with them being black -- for example well-known as the billionaire prince from Nigeria), then obviously everyone remembers whether they have 1 black friend or 0 black friends in the town; and if they say otherwise, I would suspect hypocrisy.

Perhaps this all just shows that one should not blindly copy heuristics just because they worked in a different environment.

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