Yes, OK: it seems likely that it's not "nature or nurture" but some combination of the two; culture comes from somewhere, after all - people have to make it up all the time, and we're clearly working with some ingredients. As for how much nature and how much nurture, I like Steven Jay Gould's response - that two sources, interacting with each other, can give rise to great complexity and novel products, which cannot be unraveled to reveal their 'original' components.
As for the intuition of fairness, there is very likely something there: all sorts of other social animals manage to divide limited resources among themselves, such that no group member starves. With humans, though (and arguably with animals) I don't think you can come up with extra-cultural explanations; culture is there in the mix, whether it supports or undercuts economically driven rational actor behaviour in any given case.
But I think you know this and we probably agree, and we are, in any event, deep in unfalsifiable terrain. As for the specific case of noise levels in public spaces, we see wide variation between cultures (whether geographically-based, class-based or even age-based), and I think muckefuck's point may well be valid. I know I tend to ask "why are they so noisy?" rather than "why am I so quiet?"
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momijizukamori
no subject
Date: 2008-05-31 06:30 am (UTC)As for the intuition of fairness, there is very likely something there: all sorts of other social animals manage to divide limited resources among themselves, such that no group member starves. With humans, though (and arguably with animals) I don't think you can come up with extra-cultural explanations; culture is there in the mix, whether it supports or undercuts economically driven rational actor behaviour in any given case.
But I think you know this and we probably agree, and we are, in any event, deep in unfalsifiable terrain. As for the specific case of noise levels in public spaces, we see wide variation between cultures (whether geographically-based, class-based or even age-based), and I think muckefuck's point may well be valid. I know I tend to ask "why are they so noisy?" rather than "why am I so quiet?"