Why this term appears here In the conversation with Nadia Asparouhova, the concept comes up through Joseph Henrich’s book The WEIRDEST People in the World, which “underlines how narrow a slice of humanity most of our science studies.”[^e82f3d23-2fb9-5cb6-a3b3-143a6bc7adf3@1214] The point is raised while exploring whether the human self is fluid across history — and it cuts against assuming that findings about one kind of mind describe all minds. How it is used in the argument - A caveat on generalization: because most research participants come from one cultural cluster, claims about “the human mind” — including notions of selfhood and consciousness — may describe a cultural pattern rather than a universal one. - Support for the fluid self: Nadia cites literacy as one example — literate brains abstract figures from scenes while non-literate brains perceive scenes holistically — so an ancient Greek would be shocked not just by our technology but by our notion of self. - Consequence for AI debates: if what counts as a typical human mind is narrower than assumed, then confident claims about what makes humans special — and therefore about LLM consciousness benchmarks — deserve more humility.[^e82f3d23-2fb9-5cb6-a3b3-143a6bc7adf3@1214] - WEIRD samples flags that psychological and cognitive science draws disproportionately on Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, Democratic populations. - In this channel’s material it is invoked via Henrich’s The WEIRDEST People in the World to show how narrow a slice of humanity most science studies. - It supports the broader argument that the self is fluid and culturally shaped, softening confidence in universal claims about human intelligence and consciousness.