>By what metric is a culture pure? By the degree to which it has uniquely evolved in relative isolation. >How can information be pure? By the degree to which

>By what metric is a culture pure? By the degree to which it has uniquely evolved in relative isolation. >How can information be pure? By the degree to which the combination of information that defines a particular culture is unique. Again, if we model culture as a linear combination of cultural traits, purity may be measured as, for example, euclidean distance between clusters, reflecting unique developments that occur as a function of isolation. As an extreme case, compare an undiscovered tribe in the Amazon, or the Amish, to a cosmopolitan population like residents of New York City.