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Cognitive biases in culture wars: "I've one reaction to the culture clash between the west and Islam - include me out. This is big think. And big thinking is bad thinking. The first problem is that glib generalization leads us to think that there are clearly defined and demarcated cultures.Put it this way. Both my dad and grandad had convictions for handling stolen goods. Does this mean fencing is part of my culture? If not, why not?  What proportion of people must believe or do something (and how strongly and how closely to me) before it becomes part of my culture? And over what group of people do we define a culture? Why does it make sense to say that I am part 'western culture' rather than 'economists' culture' or 'Leicester culture'?These vaguenesses mean we take a pick-n-mix approach to defining culture. For most of you reading this (and me), I guess, 'western culture' means liberalism more than it does imperialism and slavery.  But is this just a self-serving bias?Another bias in the clash of cultures is the group attribution error. Anong 'us', bad people are exceptions. Among 'them', wrong 'uns are representative of the general group. So, to westerners, the soldiers who beat up Iraqis are exceptions. To Muslims, they are typical. To 'us', suicide bombers are representative, whereas to Muslims, the"