Tag: semiotics

Charles Barkley On The ‘dirty dark secret’ in the black community

~ ABN ~ 2 Comments

The names are different, but the game is essentially the same in all cultures. Culture is a lowest-common-denominator set of controlling concepts. And every culture in the world discourages serious thought about itself in many important ways. Ethnic and religious myths are built on this, as are anti-ethnic and anti-religious myths. As is all politics. There is no escaping the herd mentality of whatever culture you happen to be stuck in. In this sense, culture is sort of “democratic” in that loosely-defined groups of low-minded idiots will always seek to and often succeed in pulling down anyone who is perceived as smarter, different, or better in some sense of the word.

Culture is a simplified fractal set of the language(s) it uses. Individual humans are fractal sets derived from the culture(s) they live within. If you step out of this matrix, even with the best of intentions, you are going to have a bad time. It doesn’t matter which culture it is. It’s essentially the same wherever you are.

Barkley is speaking about the American black community, but anyone anywhere in the world can, and many should, say roughly the same thing about their culture. The human mind is potentially wonderful and language is awesome in its capacity to express, and even culture has some good stuff as it gets us started in life. But wherever you go, culture is like a cage of light or darkness in the adult mind.

Signals and morality

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A valuable and basic definition of morality might simply be “clear signaling.”

If I harm you, I am messing with your signaling, making it less clear. If I deceive you, I am doing the same.

If my own internal signaling is unclear, confused, or contradictory, I am probably going to cause harm to others whether I mean to or not.

If we see humans as signaling networks at various levels of clarity or confusion, we can remove terms like self, personality or ego. “I,” then, am a system or network of signals that interfaces and interacts with other signaling networks.

By extension, there is no need for terms like “narcissist” or “abusive personality” or any of the other many, many words we normally use to describe human signaling networks.

For example, we can see that each human does social management within their own signaling system and as that system interacts with other human signaling systems. We compose a signaling system that we want others to see and then display it.

When a person often uses social signaling to manipulate, control, or deceive others, we can say they are doing malignant or immoral signaling instead of saying they are “narcissists” or “abusive personalities.”

The advantage of removing those traditional terms that assume an intentional personhood (narcissist, etc.) is we can see much more clearly what is actually happening.

With respect to narcissism,  we can clearly say what a “narcissist” is. When narcissism is redefined as a signaling problem, we can also see that many narcissistic acts are done out of ignorance more than “selfishness.” People believe that they are supposed to be selfish or secretive or withhold important information simply because they do not know another way to act or have had long experiences with others who signal in those ways.

Of course, all of us manage our signaling systems to put us in a good light, at least to some extent. Refraining from gross behavior at the dinner table is a form of manipulating the signals you send to others. Since that is objectively a kind act, it is not narcissism.

Signaling integrity between adult friends is rarely perfect or even very good. Not because many of us don’t want that, but because we don’t know how to do it. Rather than make virtually all signals clear through a technique like FIML, we are forced instead to use off-the-shelf cultural norms to communicate our “personalities” to others.

Besides the few crude markers like punctuality, basic honesty and reciprocity, basic pleasantness, etc., it is very difficult to know another or even oneself without detailed control over the signaling we do with them.

If morality is seen as fundamentally a signaling issue, then the soundest ethical position would be to make our signaling clearer, more honest, less manipulative. Clarity depends on detail. In this light, we can say that there is a sort of moral imperative to do FIML or something very much like it.

MacDonald on Shipman

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In his The Rise and Fall of Anglo-America, Eric Kaufmann described liberal Protestantism as one of several liberal traditions in American history. Although it had its origins in the 19th century, by 1910 there arose a liberal Protestant elite committed to “universalist, humanitarian ethics.” Elite Protestants (but not the great mass of Protestant Americans) were opposed to immigration restriction in the 1920s and were at the vanguard of the Civil Rights movement in the 1960s. They embraced the dream of universal humanity, and they developed idealized images of Jews who, after World War II, had assumed the leadership of liberal causes in the U.S. (Bruce Shipman and the Idealized Image of Jews among Elite Protestants)

Two extreme and opposite examples of moral weirdness

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Protecting your own versus not appearing racist. Both of these moral positions (which become public semiotics when simplified as aspects of culture) are understandable until taken to extremes.

The first example comes from England, where police and public officials were afraid to appear racist and consequently allowed some 1,400 children to be abused without investigating the matter, which had been clear as a bell for years:

The vast majority of perpetrators have been identified as South Asian and most victims were young white girls, adding to the complexity of the case. Some officials appeared to believe that social workers pointing to a pattern of sexual exploitation were exaggerating, while others reportedly worried about being accused of racism if they spoke out. The report accused officials of ignoring “a politically inconvenient truth” in turning a blind eye to men of Pakistani heritage grooming vulnerable white girls for sex. (Abuse Cases in British City Long Ignored, Report Says)

That quote and story is from the New York Times. Isn’t that the most fucked-up thing in a long time? British officials were so concerned about appearing racist that they looked the other way while an enormous number of their own children were being violently raped. We might say in the sedate language of academic analysis that the public semiotic or the moral injunction against racism was so strong that they lost their capacity to think and act.

Here is the other extreme, a group that so wants to “protect” its own that they are willing to prevent them from making individual choices that harm no one.

This video is a good example of the raging emotions that can be experienced at the other side of the spectrum from the case in Britain. An article about this incident can be found here.

Fortunately, it is not often that we can see such extremes within a single week. I would propose that all of us are susceptible to the emotions that lie along this spectrum from extreme “self” preservation to such amazing laxity that sworn officials cannot even lift a finger to preserve the safety of their own children.

The difference between us (you and me, dear reader) and them is most of us can find a reasonable balance between these primitive extremes, the one born in sexual and tribal instinct, the other in overwhelming deference to internalized social norms.

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Edit 8/29/14: Here is more on Rotherham: Rotherham: In the face of such evil, who is the racist now?

Here is one from the USA: Conspiracy of Silence. If you have not seen this video, it’s a must watch, especially for US citizens. There are several good books on this story and many links to articles can be found easily.

Evolution of the smile and the inherent ambiguity of signs

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Michael Graziano proposes a interesting, and quite convincing, hypothesis on the evolution of a good many human signals, including smiling, crying, laughing, and subtle versions of these.

His essay can be found here: The First Smile. I highly recommend it.

Evolutionary psychology is without question a real field capable of explaining a great deal about human beings. At the same time, it is often very difficult to separate what actually happened during thousands of years of evolution from what we think happened.

Graziano proposes that the human signals of smiling, crying, and laughing all evolved from a single more basic cringe reaction employed as defense against an object or person striking us or otherwise threatening us.

The evolutionary transformation from primitive reactions to subtle social cues is fascinating to contemplate. I am particularly struck by how ambiguous our present-day understanding of these social cues can be. As Graziano, the evolutionist, says, “So long as both sides of the exchange keep deriving benefits, the behaviour floats free of its violent origins.”

The violent origins of smiling and acting nice only sometimes play a direct role in why people do these behaviors today. Added to them is a plethora of cultural and idiosyncratic interpretations. And so, Graziano the social scientist also says, “We have stumbled on the defining ambiguity of human emotional life: we are always caught between authenticity and fakery, always floating in the grey area between involuntary outburst and expedient pretence.”

I would contend that this aspect of human emotional life is maddening, that it is literally driving people crazy. Because how can you really tell if an expression, a statement, a gesture is authentic or fake? And how can you be sure you know how to interpret it?

In most cases, you can’t be sure. Yes, we can make vows, proclaim fealty or allegiance, swear till death do us part, or repeat familiar, comforting routines for years, but none of these methods is certain. Indeed, our need for them only shows what thin ice we are on. All of them can be faked and all of them often are.

I do believe that many, if not most, of us do not want to be either fakers or the one faked to. Yet we seem all but trapped “between authenticity and fakery, always floating in the grey area between involuntary outburst and expedient pretense.”

This is why we all need FIML practice or something very much like it. With FIML, much greater communicative detail can be made available to both partners. Rather than wonder what words, smiles, tears, or a tone of voice means, FIML partners have the means to find out.

Evolutionarily, you might say that FIML allows the human neocortex to understand and control the human limbic system. FIML allows higher thought, reason, and reflection to control base reactions and base signs that inevitably cause serious misunderstandings even between people who are very well-disposed toward each other and who share a strong desire to interact honestly.

Humans are characterized by a delicate and intricate web of thought, language, and culture that has been grafted onto a base of animal behavior. I do not see how it is even remotely possible to fully realize the potential of that delicate and intricate web of thought, language, and culture without frequently analyzing how animal signs and signals interfere with it during even the most ordinary of interactions.

Graziano mentions the Duchenne smile, a supposedly authentic smile that includes the muscles around the eyes. But Duchenne smiles can easily be faked. They are a required social expression in most of East Asia and can be seen faked by actors on American TV all the time.

The distinction between a Duchenne smile and a super-fake one is valid and valuable to a point. But it is also a woefully simple distinction. We cannot as thinking beings expect to find satisfaction in noticing minor, and easily faked, distinctions like that. The same thing goes for tones of voice, gestures, word choices, behaviors, and everything else we use to communicate.

In public, in the world at large, we have to use best guesses about what is going on, but in private guessing about what your partner really means is a recipe for mutual disaster, if not complete destruction.

Alpha male falsehoods

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UPDATE 01/30/21: After learning more about the socio-sexual hierarchy, I am much more accepting of the alpha concept. When other male hierarchical positions are included the system as a whole makes much better sense. See this video for a basic overview:

In addition to what is presented in this video, look into how the sigma male comports with the hierarchy. More about this type can be found by poking around this site. Basically, a sigma male is somewhat similar to an alpha but wants nothing to do with the hierarchy. Sigma lifestyle is characterized by nomadism, individuality, and competent pursuit of own interests. End update.

______________________________

I have a sort of close friend/relative who deeply believes in the alpha male thing. He believes it so much he frequently behaves horribly, and probably due to his alpha beliefs, at least in part, has become an alcoholic. He suffers from wild delusions of grandeur coupled with abject self-abasement and shame, a not uncommon formula. He is also as abusive to others as he is to himself.

So I have a personal stake in this issue. And also the alpha male thing is very good example of how far cultural beliefs can stray from reality and thus cause great harm to society as well as individuals caught up in falsehoods of that sort.

Alpha status, even based as it is on bad science, became a semiotic—something that can be communicated with signs to other humans—and in that capacity became a fetishized semiotic that took on a life of its own.

Anyone who has given thought to culture must surely be aware that all of the world’s cultures are filled with mistaken semiotics like the alpha male thing. In US culture, pretty much anything that become “a thing” is a fetishized semiotic, or a fetishized semiotic bundle.

If our entire culture can see through the alpha male thing, and by extension, the alpha female thing, we will save a great deal of time and avoid a great deal of suffering. In Buddhist terms, “empty” semiotics are impermanent things (dharmas) that have no “own being,” no “inherent nature.” They are reified concepts that become part of a transitory culture and are doomed to oblivion, especially if they are demonstrably false like the alpha male thing.

As individuals, I don’t think we can do all that much about which way our culture flows, but we can do a great deal about how our own minds flow. FIML practice would help my friend, but he is too drunk to do it and too lost in his delusions to even glimpse an exit from them. He is a sad example of someone trapped in a prison of his “own device.”

The alpha thing came from narrow wolf studies extended to dog training and then to human males, then females. It began in the 1940s and has held sway over parts of US culture to this day.

Here is a quick refutation:

The debate has its roots in 1940s studies of captive wolves gathered from various places that, when forced to live together, naturally competed for status. Acclaimed animal behaviorist Rudolph Schenkel dubbed the male and female who won out the alpha pair. As it turns out, this research was based on a faulty premise: wolves in the wild, says L. David Mech, founder of the Minnesota-based International Wolf Center, actually live in nuclear families, not randomly assembled units, in which the mother and father are the pack leaders and their offspring’s status is based on birth order. Mech, who used to ascribe to alpha-wolf theory but has reversed course in recent years, says the pack’s hierarchy does not involve anyone fighting to the top of the group, because just like in a human family, the youngsters naturally follow their parents’ lead.(Dog Training and the Myth of Alpha-Male Dominance)

As for my friend, I hate the sin but not the sinner. I know he doesn’t read this site (doesn’t know about it), but maybe by getting these ideas out there they will by “a commodius vicus of recirculation” “bring him back” if not to Howth Castle or Adam and Eve’s place, at least to a better place.

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Edit 8/20/04: Here is a counter-argument on dog obedience versus wolf cooperation:Wolves cooperate but dogs submit, study suggests.

A lesson in semiotic manipulation

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A secret report on “how to influence the media and public opinion in America and Europe” is allegedly guiding Israeli spokespeople’s words and emotions when they describe the Gaza conflict on the news or in public.

Every one of the 112 pages in the booklet is marked “not for distribution or publication” and it is easy to see why. The Luntz report, officially entitled “The Israel project’s 2009 Global Language Dictionary, was leaked almost immediately to Newsweek Online, but its true importance has seldom been appreciated. It should be required reading for everybody, especially journalists, interested in any aspect of Israeli policy because of its “dos and don’ts” for Israeli spokesmen.

These are highly illuminating about the gap between what Israeli officials and politicians really believe, and what they say, the latter shaped in minute detail by polling to determine what Americans want to hear. (The secret report that helps Israel hide facts)

Readers of this site should be well-aware of the importance of semiotics and of how they are used to construct and conceal “reality.” Humans are primitive semiotic animals who fight with words and ideas as much or more than with physical weapons.

Public statements on the conflict in Gaza amply reveal this, while the report linked above shows us some of the ways the deception works.

Of course, all public figures do stuff like this. Indeed, all individuals do it sometimes, if not all the time. Call it “framing,” “massaging the message,” “getting your point across,” “dissembling,” “explaining yourself,” “giving your side of the story,” or just “lying through your teeth,” it is something we are exposed to in public and private every day.

I don’t know how to stop this in the public sphere, but individuals can put an end to this sort of biased and harmful “messaging” by practicing FIML. FIML practice shows partners how societal and idiosyncratic semiotics affect both their listening and speaking, and, by extension, how they fundamentally make up what we normally call our “selves” or “psychologies.”

Remove as much bullshit as you can from your mind with the help of your FIML partner, and you will discover that your “self” is a very different entity than you had thought. It is much more dynamic, rational, and adaptive than the stolid bozo now trapped inside your head by a network of poorly learned semiotics.

Sorcery

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An article this morning describes an increase in mob killings of sorcerers in Cambodia.

The article is interesting, and grisly, because it provides some insights into this behavior as well as insights into Cambodian society.

One explanation for the murders:

“I think these killings have more to do with Cambodians’ perceived lack of agency in their own lives than with increased sentiment against people who claim supernatural abilities. And mob-think can be very powerful, especially in a country with so little effective governance.” (Cambodians are increasingly being executed for sorcery)

Reading that made me wonder if we Americans are all that much different when it comes to “terrorists” or our perceived “enemies,” in Ukraine or anywhere else in the world.

Most Americans oppose most wars unless there is a trumped-up threat accompanied by the “sorcery” of important people lying about that threat (run-up to Iraq war, Vietnam, etc.). At such times, and especially as the economy worsens, our “perceived lack of agency in our own lives” leads us into “mob-think.”

“Governance” in our country is very “effective” at inciting “mob-think” against terrorists and enemies, though it is, similar to Cambodia, generally highly ineffective at governing according to sound ethical principles or social ones that benefit the public.

The Vietnam War is an example of how we used sorcery at home to kill millions of innocent “enemies” in Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos. Our government’s support for the bombing in Gaza today is another example,

It’s a small stretch to see our large public space as a macrocosm of village life in Cambodia where sorcerers are singled out for blame and murder. The semiotics are remarkably similar, though our death tolls are massively higher.

“Creative intimacy” – the importance of pairs

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Read an interesting piece this morning that focuses on the importance of pairs, or partners in creative work. An excerpt:

…given that our psyches take shape through one-on-one exchanges, we’re likely set up to interact with a single person more openly and deeply than with any group. The pair is also inherently fluid and flexible. Two people can make their own society. When even one more person is added, roles and power positions harden. This may be good for stability but problematic for creativity. Three legs make a table stand in place. Two legs are made for moving.

Pairs also naturally engage each of the two people involved. In a larger group, an individual may lie low, phone it in. But nobody can hide in a pair. (Source)

Please read the whole piece and not just that short section.

I agree with the above and would add that groups all but force us to employ lowest-common-denominator semiotics in communication.

Moreover, it is very important to understand that the meso-level of communication (words and semiotics) between two people is not now and probably never will be describable in terms of neurons or the physical matter of the brain. The more we know about the brain, the better. But even if we have perfect knowledge, we may never be able to use it to predict the trees of association that will form in your mind after being prompted by virtually any semiotic, word, or concept. It is very unlikely that thought will ever be entirely reducible to neurons or chemistry.

What do you imagine or associate with the simple composite of a sheep plus an apple? Then what do you imagine or associate with whatever that is?

It is very unlikely that any micro-science of neurons will provide us with an answer to that, though you could easily just tell me what your associations are.

Thus, at the macro-level of society or more than a few people, it is difficult or impossible to arouse the depths of your mind, your being, your creativity, your unique existential reality.

At the micro-level of physics, it is unlikely we will ever be able to describe those processes or phenomena, let alone improve on simply speaking honestly to each other.

At the meso-level of communication with a trusted partner we can achieve detailed and fulfilling psychological traction. We can discover aspects of thought and feeling that we cannot find in any other way. An individual alone cannot check their work. A group cannot handle significant detail. Only partners (maybe more than two) can find robust clarity and depth in the meso-reality of interpersonal semiotics, that level at which we most deeply recognize ourselves.

FIML practice is designed to be done by two people. It works by providing partners with a means to unlock the profundity and complexity of the meso-level of semiotic exchange between them. In the linked essay, Shenk puts it well why we need partners. FIML gives ordinary people the means to become extraordinary by showing them how to investigate the meso-level of semiotic exchange between them.

Kevin MacDonald

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I am a huge supporter of free speech, both in public and in private. I mention this because I am dismayed at how little can be said in private even among close friends, while even less can be said in public.

I am also terrified at the idea that the USA may eventually enact hate speech laws. As a linguist, I know from study and practice that limiting speech to pre-approved topics and emotions is the bane of social and intellectual progress.

As a Buddhist, my main complaint against the Dharma as we have received it is its emphasis on “right speech” with no mention of right listening. Over-emphasizing speech while ignoring the importance of good listening gives all power to the listener to interpret what they hear without analyzing it.

Having grown up in a community that was about 40% Jewish and having spent many years in China and East Asia, I am very used to how these groups speak about themselves and others. Editorials that would be deemed “racist” in the USA or Europe are common in East Asia where discussions of race and racial/ethnic interests are normal.

Kevin MacDonald is a scholar of Jewish history and Jewish “group strategies” as interpreted from the point of view of evolutionary psychology. It is refreshing to read MacDonald’s work because it is clearly referenced and argued and because he is not Jewish.

Not being Jewish gives him an objective point of view that frees him from some bias. One bias that affects the way many Americans perceive Jews today is the great prominence of the Holocaust in our understanding of Jewish history coupled with almost complete ignorance of the prominent role played by Jews in the Great Famine (Holodomor 1932-33) in Ukraine. Here is a piece by MacDonald on that subject: Stalin’s Willing Executioners: Jews as a hostile elite in the USSR.

Here is an essay posted by MacDonald just today: Žižek, Group Selection, and the Western Culture of Guilt. In this piece, he defends and explains himself better that I can. I highly recommend both of his linked essays.

When he is not being completely ignored, MacDonald is often called a racist or even a neo-Nazi, words strong enough to scare most listeners away. What is conspicuously absent is reasoned refutation of his well-argued ideas. Either he is right or wrong or partly right and partly wrong. But no one who has read his Culture of Critique could in good conscience dismiss it out of hand or conclude that MacDonald is racist or anti-Semitic.

I admire MacDonald for his scholarship, much of which I accept as adding to our understanding of the past and present. And I also admire him for his courage to speak publicly and to make his views known to a wider audience through The Occidental Observer, which promotes “white identity, interests, and culture.”

If those last few words make you shiver, go live in China where the promotion of Chinese identity, interests, and culture is the rule, not the exception. Or read any of scores of Jewish publications that do the same. Or Japanese, or Korean, or Mongolian, or pretty much anywhere in the world.

But white. Why white? Why not Irish, or French, or Polish, or Italian? Why white? The reason is the genes and culture(s) of European-derived peoples are mixed together. So if you want to preserve or promote the interests or culture(s) of those people you probably should use a simple word like white.

I have spent much of my life supporting civil rights, first for blacks, then for women, then for everyone. Then I became involved in promoting the interests of Chinese immigrants, followed by the interests of Tibetans in Tibet (now a largely lost cause, I fear). But only recently did it ever even occur to me to support the interests of white culture.

I got this way due to time and growth but also due to my painfully slow realization that the non-white groups I was supporting virtually never supported my group, the white people group. Yes, they sometimes supported me, but only if I were supporting them, often against real or imagined white oppression.

I don’t for a second deny that white people have done horrible things, but so have all the other groups, including Jews. When we don’t have free speech and we allow the listener to decide what can be said or not, we tend always to emphasize one side of things while leaving out other facts and interpretations.

Speech is always suppressed by those with the power to do it. There is much truth in the saying that you can tell who rules over you by what you are not allowed to say. This is as true in a Chinese Buddhist monastery, as it is in a Japanese classroom, as it is in American media.

I do not believe this is good for anyone. We should be open and free in what we say, how we reason, and how we think. Open discussion promotes a safer and better world for everyone. Kevin MacDonald is either right or wrong or partly right and partly wrong. He should be read and discussed widely and not simply ignored or dismissed with ad hominem attacks.

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Edit 11/03/15: Just discovered this answer to MacDonald from 2009 by Paul Gottfried: In Search of Anti-Semitism.

Edit 04/16/16: Here is one from 2003 by John Derbyshire: The Marx of the Anti-Semites. And one from 2009 by Eric P. Kaufmann: Verdict: Suicide—Eric Kaufmann Replies To Kevin MacDonald.

Always important to read both/all sides of any argument. I find none of these answers to MacDonald strong enough to convince me that he is not mostly right. Derbyshire, in particular, seems to be viewing Jewish behavior from an abstract distance that does not  recognize the strength, even violence, of Jewish networking and ethnic nepotism. He reminds me of Western sojourners to China or Japan who enter those societies at high levels (academic, diplomatic, or business) and thus fail to perceive the intense ethnocentrism that prevails outside of the well-mannered (and often phony) venues they frequent. The kinds of things MacDonald says are utterly normal topics of public and private discussion in East Asia and throughout the world, with the focus, of course, changed to whichever country one is in. ABN

Alison Weir

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This talk was given on March 7, 2014 and applies to events today in Gaza as if she were foretelling them.

I am putting the video up for that reason and also because something she said grabbed my attention. Her claim begins around 1:22. She says, in part, of the Israeli strategy that it is designed “…to keep deaths below the level that would trigger world outrage, while maiming as many as possible.”

I hope she is wrong, though I doubt it. A strategy of this sort is particularly gruesome as maimed individuals can cause more problems than dead ones. If there are many of them, they can hobble an entire society. A maimed individual still has a place in society. If they were leaders, no matter how small, those who looked to them for direction will still look to them though now they will learn a lesson of despair.

Having been deliberately maimed myself (in the USA), I am acutely aware of how effective this strategy can be. Social bonds can be weak and even deep interpersonal bonds can be degraded overnight when one party is maimed, especially if others don’t know what has happened. Maiming can take many forms, including war wounds, poisoning, psycho-surgery, beatings, infection, deliberate medical malpractice, false arrest, and so on.

I hope Weir is wrong about Israeli strategy, but I am certain that strategies of that type have been and are used in many parts of the world, including the USA. If the level of maiming within any particular society is kept largely secret—“below the level that would trigger [societal] outrage”—narrow, partisan aims can be ruthlessly pursued without fear of ever meeting significant opposition.

Measuring pleasure, pain, bias, and acculturation

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It’s a given that our senses of complex pleasure and pain are socially mediated and/or constructed.

Even simple pleasures and pains can feel different in different cultures and contexts.

Complex pleasures, pains, values, biases, and social norms are learned and maintained by social interaction. Just as most children naturally like sweets, most adults naturally cleave to cultural norms.

It is relatively painless for most to hold conventional beliefs and painful to go against them. This is why cultures seems so groundless—even ridiculous—when viewed from a temporal or cultural distance.

An interesting study from Cornell University claims that “…the subjective quality of affect can be objectively quantified across stimuli, modalities and people.” (Source: Population coding of affect across stimuli, modalities and individuals)

An article on the study, which is behind a pay wall, says of it that brain “activity patterns of positive and negative experiences were partly shared across people.” (Source: Study cracks how the brain processes emotions)

That is, different people’s brains appear to show similar activity under fMRI imaging when responding to similar pleasures or pains.

The pleasures and pains charted in the experiment were simple, but I believe it is reasonable to extrapolate from them to general statements about how humans perceive and respond to cultural norms, values, beliefs, and semiotics.

The biases of my culture feel pleasant to me and remain maddeningly simple-minded because I process them in much the same way I process the taste of ice cream or the feeling of a familiar and comfortable chair.

The biases of your culture feel painful to me and remain maddeningly simple-minded because I process them in much the same way I process a fly on my nose.

Virtually all people are trapped in very slow-moving agglomerations of signs and symbols (culture) that determine how they experience pleasure and pain (biases and more).

I think the Cornell experiment, though it does not make such strong claims, is showing basically that.