All this thinking about worldviews and cultural drift has been deeply engaging. Between Robin Hanson questioning the rationality of trusting in our de

The Structure of a Worldview - by Regan Arntz-Gray

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2024-11-16 11:30:02

All this thinking about worldviews and cultural drift has been deeply engaging. Between Robin Hanson questioning the rationality of trusting in our deepest cultural values, and reading Thomas Sowell, who very clearly articulates the anti-idealist position and bias in favor of tradition—I’ve been evaluating political and moral disagreements in a new light. This essay continues my exploration of worldviews and the “worldview space” by examining their potential structure, particularly how they form, influence other beliefs, and help to explain seemingly unrelated differences among groups of individuals. And I’ll once again tie this discussion back to the analogy with personality, and some relevant details from the Big 5 research program.

So, what axis of variation explains the maximum amount of relevant and salient differences in the worldviews of individuals within a given population and time period of interest? Or alternatively, since it’s not obvious that there’s always one dominant foundational divide, how could we identify a manageable set of largely independent factors which together explain a significant amount of salient differences across individuals in the context of interest. 

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