Joseph Henrich

So, societies have varied over time in what counts as good evidence and what counts as a good argument.

So one of the psychological changes that we see emerging in Europe compared to other places is how much – how important is what the ancients say?

So in lots of societies, you're really – if someone says something and you can say Aristotle or Confucius didn't believe that, then it's like, oh, gosh, I guess I'm sunk.

Whereas at some point, Europeans decided actually who cares what Aristotle thought.

We know a lot more than he did.

So this is a big epistemological change.

And then the emphasis on empirical evidence in science is not something you find in earlier traditions within Europe, and it's quite variable across different societies.

So you should think of the very standards by which we count a good argument and good evidence is itself culturally evolved.

Yeah, absolutely.

So polycentricity, there should be lots of different competition amongst these groups, no single funding sources.

Lots of different priorities.

One thing I point out in this book I'm working on is that scientific papers tend to be more impactful when the authors are from more diverse societies.

But interestingly, people are biased to work with people from their own society.

So what we actually do is different than what would maximize innovation.

Yeah, that's something I'm really interested in figuring out.

And one thing that is, I'm still, I don't have a full answer to this question, but one thing that is clear is that there's something special about face-to-face interactions.

So something like whether, even in the 21st century, whether two cities have direct long-haul flights between them or direct flights between them increases the flow of ideas between those places.

But we know these places are connected by the internet, whereas that effect doesn't seem as good

And part of this is that people have to build trust probably before we start sharing ideas and we're more likely – and the more different someone is from us, the more you need that trust.

So some of the research suggests that this effect is even bigger when places are more culturally different.