[atomicity]

I've never understood why people support the escalating US-China conflict since it's so easy to just keep focusing on win-win collaborations but your comment gave me an insight.

Please let me know if this is wrong, but I think this is the argument:

1. The US is a better leader than China because it is a significantly better place. Notable US problems that cause lots of suffering are significantly less severe than notable Chinese problems.

2. As a result, the US government should put a lot of effort into making sure that China doesn't become too powerful. It is ok for the US to publish articles that are less reliable than those on Iraq WMDs because if China becomes too powerful, the world will be far worse. In particular, China should not become powerful enough to project its values on other countries as much as the US does. China also should not be able to non-democratically reform international, democratically-decided rules such as International Maritime Law.

For most people in the US, it would take heaps of evidence and learning could to even make them doubt that US might not be a significantly better place than China (Note that I'm not arguing that the US is not far better). On the other hand, many people in China doubt that the US is significantly better as China because of how much better they see their life compared to the past. So, they don't understand why people in the US are confident about their conflict against China.

I personally can't buy into this argument though because I lack the confidence in my personal philosophy to know what a "better life" truly is. However, many people in the US have a more stable philosophical foundation and could never be convinced that the US is not a significantly better place than China.

[bllguo]

Chinese people don't believe the US system is inferior solely based on improvements in their own country. I think this discredits them. Chinese students study English and America in school, many have come as exchange students, they consume American media - they are comparing things firsthand in a way that Americans mostly refuse to do.

Believe it or not, Western ideals used to have a good amount of traction in China. I suggest this translated firsthand account of how American values lost their luster: https://mp-weixin-qq-com.translate.goog/s/erCJHZVLEtnZ4wWbkg...

[atomicity]

Nice anecdote, I tried to speak more to the point that I think that most US citizens are right to support the US escalating the conflict against China. Their values align with their actions.

Furthermore, people that think they can convince US citizens that they should not escalate the conflict are focusing on a lost cause. This does not mean no discourse should happen, but people should understand that differences in opinions are due to very big differences in values.

I did not look much into why a Chinese citizen would support China escalating the conflict against the US nor have I done much research on how China builds up anti-US sentiment.

[ravel-bar-foo]

> On the other hand, many people in China doubt that the US is significantly better as China because of how much better they see their life compared to the past. So, they don't understand why people in the US are confident about their conflict against China.

Are you refering to military conflict? My guess would be that the Chinese people are very misled about the military prowess of their country. It seems like a weekly occurrence that a PRC military propaganda video is shown to actually use footage of foreign military exercises.

On the other hand, the US military (one might argue government as a whole) seems to be slipping in basic competencies. The navy has had three very public ship navigation errors in four years, and continues to be absolutely clueless about drones. ("UFOs") The air force has a new fighter which is still not functioning at design capabilities, and the withdrawl from Afghanistan was less organized than the 1970s withdrawl from Saigon. At least in the US the failures are public and might inspire change.

[dillondoyle]

What evidence would you present to me - an American - that the US is not a significantly better place than China?

[atomicity]

My assumptions:

1. Hedonism is "fairly correct". In a well-fed and low-violence society, the pleasure/pain axis explains >40% of what every human cares about, especially chronic pleasure/pain.

- 1a. Both the US and China are low-violence and well-fed.

2. Obesity is responsible for a high amount of pain. Furthermore, there are few things in society that don't kill you which are worse that obesity.

- 2a. People don't die that much in societies like China.

3. Modern entertainment is a good painkiller. However, obese people that consume it still experience great amounts of pain throughout the day. Entertainment that distracts people from fixing the chronic pain they feel is a negative to society.

With these assumptions, the US doesn't look like a significantly better place than China. In theory, the freedom enabled by the US allows people to do well on the pain/pleasure axis. In practice, the US enables companies to do things that lead people into greater chronic pain.

Note that I think that Taiwan could be a significantly better place than China by this logic.

[dillondoyle]

Those are definitely good quality of life indicators.

Every country can do better. The US should do better at a lot of things and poverty, inequality, and racism are for sure big drivers of things like childbirth death rate, lack of education and more!

But to OP's comment, there is no way in hell you can convince me or even a significant minority of Americans that China is better on the whole or even on a minor slice.

Lol even life expectancy and health seems like a lot of people here don't care about and are perfectly happy to guzzle cola and sit in front of a tv lmfao.

In terms of do better, China's list is ginormous and some of the things on it - like not building interment and forced 'integration' for millions of their citizens - are so extremely opposite of the values most here hold that it far outweighs any good weights on this 'better than' scale. It feels farcical to say otherwise.

I commented an open ended question in the first place is because these one off comments similar to OP feel to me exactly like what the article shows are active campaigns to interact on social networks like HN. But pointing that out without proof (impossible for me to get) is against HN ethics. I'm guilting of doing it though this is a moral and emotional issue for me.

Plus we americans are pretty self confident and often beligerantly arrogant. Makes it hard to convince people anything beyond american exceptionalism even on obviously nice things. Like that historical pamphlet comparing French lifestyle during the war that was posted here a long time ago. Yes they can value family and well being over working, that's horrible and un american ;) !