What Culture Can You Trust? - by Robin Hanson
Star Wars came out when I was 17, and made a big impression on me; I loved it. It wasn’t until years later that I noticed it didn’t bother to offer evidence that the Empire was worth overthrowing. The movie instead relied on dozens of standard tricks to get viewers to just assume its view. ( Andor later filled this gap.) We humans are plausibly adapted to be vulnerable to such tricks, to help us assimilate to cultures we are born in, and stay aligned with those cultures as they change.
The process by which cultures change doesn’t seem to be that different from the process by which we all assimilate to them. Various people make various bids for cultural influence, via songs, stories, essays, art, etc., and we all let ourselves be more influenced by the ones we judge to be more prestigious, according to current standards of prestige. And those standards include winning popularity contests; Star Wars was more popular than expected, and thus gained more prestige and influence than expected.
All of which suggests that we are really rather gullible re prestigious culture. Which should make you worry: which cultural variants can you trust? That is, should you just naively embrace all that most around you embrace, or hold higher standards?
