You're looking at Less Wrong's discussion board. This includes all posts, including those that haven't been promoted to the front page yet. For more information, see About Less Wrong.

passive_fist comments on Open Thread, May 4 - May 10, 2015 - Less Wrong Discussion

3 Post author: Gondolinian 04 May 2015 12:06AM

You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.

Comments (215)

You are viewing a single comment's thread. Show more comments above.

Comment author: iarwain1 04 May 2015 12:20:36AM *  7 points [-]

When studying history I sometimes find the hardest thing for me is wrapping my brain around how people actually thought back then. I'm so ingrained with modern Western science-based thinking that it's really hard for me to envision how people outside that box actually think. Can anyone suggest some books or articles that explain the differences in modes of thought between us modern educated Westerners and other cultures / time periods?

Edit 1: I think what I'm looking for is something like the following book, just on current vs. past cultures and/or cultures other than just Asian vs. Western:

Richard Nisbett, The Geography of Thought: How Asians and Westerners Think Differently...and Why.

Edit 2: As some commenters have alluded to, a lot of what confuses me about past cultures would probably also apply to non-scientific cultures today.

Comment author: passive_fist 04 May 2015 06:23:11AM 3 points [-]

Forget history, I have a lot of trouble understanding how a large part of the human population currently thinks.

Comment author: [deleted] 10 May 2015 07:08:03PM 0 points [-]

Their subconscious thinking is mostly pretty normal and similar to yours, but they've been given very, very different maps of the world that make their verbal self-expression come out much, much differently from yours.