All of Juxtaposition's Comments + Replies

That is a good explanation for why eskimos have a more intricate canoe-building culture, while Brazilian indians have more cognitive resources dedicated to humor, spirits and other stuff that fills the cognitive niche, but doesn't change your technical capacity that much. Anthropologists used to call indigenous rain forest cultures "cultures of abundance". It is not a very good explanation for why current day, urban populations are different. One thing that is related and interesting though is that the cost of usable space is higher in the cold, because 8 months a year you can only use the space that is indoors, which I have no idea, but I'll guess is about 5-15% of urban land? In Peru or Syria you can pay a dollar for nice coffee and go sit in an open public space to chat with your coworker. In Alaska you'll have no qualms about paying four or five times more for the same thing, as long as they give you an indoor chair to sit while drinking.

The update is on the idea that houses, rather than individuals, may be the locus of events. I previously regarded haunted houses as being the product of superstitious people scaring themselves, or perhaps a series of coincidences, which though unlikely will occur in a large enough population. I can no longer reasonably do so. I don't subscribe to a particular causal explanation because I don't have one.