[opdahl]

You reject that peoples personalities are shaped by their environment? What if instead of focusing on location but instead focused on time period. Do you think there would be behavioral differences between a child born to a middle class family now compared to one 1,000 years ago? What about 10,000 years ago?

Rejecting the premise that the environment shapes who we are and the type of people we become sounds extremely ignorant of the realities of history.

[silisili]

> You reject that peoples personalities are shaped by their environment

No, I reject that you can tell anything meaningful about the environment by country. Or even state. Or even neighborhood!

Japan itself could fit into the US 25 times by area.

Are kids raised in SF the same as those raised in Alabama? Or NY vs Phoenix? It'd be insane to make any generalities about a country so large and diverse, IMO.

Heck, kids in Loudoun county grow up completely differently than kids in Baltimore county. What does that tell us about the US, if anything?

I'm guessing Japan is the same, but I'm not educated enough to speak to it.

[buran77]

It looks like you're rejecting every concept of averages, or probabilities, or statistics, or generalization because you feel slighted by the resulting comparison.

When considering the US as a whole then Loudoun county will get the appropriate weight in the resulting number. If you zoom out to see the map of the world and no longer see your street, it doesn't mean the map is wrong. It's perfect for the purpose of visualizing the world.

I'll bet you're fine with "the US people are richer than the Burundi" or "Dutch people are taller than US people". These also don't tell you anything about the short Dutch people or ultra-poor in the US. But you accept them because you don't feel slighted by them.

Or else you reject the premise because you zoomed in on a place which is not right on that average so the whole concept gets thrown out the window.

[mapt]

It has become fashionable among Very Online people who obsess about social justice to loudly reject generalizations.

They took the very reasonable "you're not allowed to talk about black people liking watermelons" and applied it to every statement about every minority, disadvantaged or not, ethnically defined or not, whether offense was taken or not. Generalization was relabelled a microaggression, and avoiding them (or calling them out) became an urgent imperative, whether or not you're a member of the group in question. Whether or not you take offense personally, it became a Duty To Police this sort of speech.

This alienates one from the vast majority of humanity, which uses generalizations about people and things every day as a cognitive & social necessity. It makes it impossible to communicate or organize, because some sort of nitpicking about social equity, even purely semantic equity, is always prioritized over topical action in SJW-oriented leftist conversation. The rally for women's rights is cancelled because the committee spent all day deciding whether to use the term "women" or some alternative.

It also makes one less effective as a thinker, because there are statements that you can make about cultures and people's background that are statistically very likely, or which indicate a very real difference in the center of different bell curves.

[JasserInicide]

Great post. The increasingly insane purity tests that the far left levy upon others they deign as less woke (in the original sense of the word) has gotten completely out of hand. Especially here on HN. Too many times I've seen normal discussion happen and then someone comes along with "Um excuse me can you not use that term because [3 paragraphs of nonsense when one time one person somewhere took offense to said term]". It feels paralyzing. People can't have discussions anymore, especially online. There's always 20 caveats you have to worry about.

Personally I blame autism for much of it but that's another can of worms.

[SketchySeaBeast]

I know this is what you're complaining about, but did you just equate autism and being far left? Do you find that the sort of complaints you are describing come out after you do groupings like that?

[JasserInicide]

but did you just equate autism and being far left

No, more so it's at the root of crippling all online discussions.

[latentcall]

To be fair as someone on the far far left we really think of those people as liberals caught up in culture war nonsense with conservatives. Many of us at least in my local community see “woke” as ultimately damaging to what we’re hoping to achieve. While we advocate for marginalized groups, we really generalize everyone (except the bourgeois) together into a working class. This includes conservatives, liberals, trans people, Christians, Jews, whatever.

I know in the US “liberal” is the “radical left” which is unfortunate as hell.

[mapt]

Leftist ideas favor the disadvantaged generally, but they have traditionally discussed economic disadvantage, since money is the primary way we denominate power and implement material change.

This recent "woke" trend originates from leftist impulses in a society where the fall or even moderation of neoliberal capitalism is 'harder to imagine than the end of the world'. A society where Reaganomics has been adopted wholesale by Third Way Democrats who still control the political discourse because that's what effectively fundraises from billionaires. Politicians who try to satiate their political base by promoting diversity initiatives that will make zero dent in the economy or institutions of state. "Social Justice" as explored on Tumblr by people still in university (isolated from economics) is largely orthogonal to that, and it wouldn't be possible for people exposed to more of the diversity of society and the exigencies of life to ruminate on the subject, absent economic concerns.

This is what leftists complain about with the pejorative "liberals", a distinction that half of the country appears to be completely unaware of because every pejorative means the same thing on Fox News.

This tendency to substitute diversity messaging for systemic material solutions appears to have zero appeal left to the American people. No, the American people do not want to send the gender noncomformists to the gas chamber, but if that's all you talk about, it does not add up to a political platform that people vote for. The "Black Lives Matter" protests demanded dramatically reshaping the way criminal justice works, not wearing kente cloth for an afternoon. The last Democratic presidential candidate scrupulously avoided social justice, but they didn't actually substitute any sort of populist left-wing economic ideas because the donors wouldn't allow that.

[graemep]

There are huge variations within a country, but they are far smaller than variations between countries.

It seems to be to be a common failing in the west to underestimate just how big differences are between themselves and other cultures. The two cultures I have lived in, despite being Britain and one of its former colonies (and therefore partially anglophone, similar political system, lots of other influences) are quite substation, and noticeable even in the (heavily westernised) circles I socialise in there. The differences would be even bigger if you compare to an East Asian culture like Japan.

Things that are regarded as fundamental concepts, or universal values are often not share (some values are pretty much human, some are not).

[librish]

> There are huge variations within a country, but they are far smaller than variations between countries.

That's not true. To use the examples in the thread, a patient American kid will be much more patient than an impatient Japanese kid.

[guappa]

Funny you should think there are spain and finland are similar at all.

[graemep]

I did not actually mention either, but they are very similar viewed from a non-western perspective.

[helboi4]

They're really not. Europe is diverse enough that you need to split it into quadrants to decide what countries are relatively similar. Like is Finland similar to Germany from an outside perspective? Yes. Is Finland similar to southern Italy? Absolutely not, you'd be better off comparing southern Italy and latin America, and Finland with Japan. Like seriously, those will have more in common with each other than Finland and southern Italy. People have told me Naples feels like Brazil... which is nothing like Finland, which has the orderliness and cultural restraint of Japan. North European,East European and South European countries are similar to other countries in those same segments of Europe. They are not similar across segments.

[graemep]

Lots of similarities.

"Europe is diverse enough that you need to split it into quadrants to decide what countries are relatively similar"

The same is true for South Asia, but if you look at it from a western perspective you see the similarities.

There are plenty of similarities across Europe. Shared attitudes to sex, politics, religion..... things like freedom of worship and separation of church and state (laws restricting freedom of worship even in secular democracies like India, let alone the Middle East or China), attitudes to sex and sexuality (and ideas and definitions and identities linked to them - although this is changing because of Western influence, historically the idea of people having a fixed sexual orientation is a modern western one, for example)....

[guappa]

Basically it's "roman empire vs not roman empire" :D

[guappa]

I mean, the same perspective that people have when they say all asians look identical? :D Then yes, sure.

[the-lazy-guy]

Did you notice that you just devided kids in Loudoun and Baltimore in 2 groups, giving them as examples of different environments? You do not object to premise, only to granularity of defining environment geographically.

[silisili]

> You do not object to premise, only to granularity of defining environment geographically.

Correct. I just picked those two because of stark differences of two well known areas close to each other. But it can go down to even neighborhood, or even street in said neighborhood.

Sorry if my rambling seems confusing. I'm not against the idea that environment affects children. I'm against broad brush stroke categorization about how different countries behave.

[buran77]

> or even street in said neighborhood

Or even one individual on different days. It should be all chaos and noise and yet it's not because these "general" numbers get translated to a realistic "it's more/less likely" not "it's guaranteed".

You're arguing against comparisons you don't like, or feel make you look worse than others. In other words you want to get to arbitrarily define the brush width presumably based on where you feel you sit in the comparison.

[noisy_boy]

> I'm against broad brush stroke categorization about how different countries behave.

Ok - pick any conservative country (say India or Indonesia). Now tell me that the chances of an average Indonesian woman wearing a bikini to a beach (pretty normal in most Western countries) is same as an average French woman?

Or for a less gender-charged example, chances of an average Saudi eating Pork vs an average American.

Note that I didn't say "every", I said "average".

[potato3732842]

>Ok - pick any conservative country (say India or Indonesia). Now tell me that the chances of an average Indonesian woman wearing a bikini to a beach (pretty normal in most Western countries) is same as an average French woman?

The strongest predictor for both the French and the Indonesian is almost certainly going to be the individuals physique and and the second is probably going to be the country and prevailing culture in which the beach is located (i.e. what everyone else is wearing).

This kind of illustrates the point you're trying to disagree with. You can't just look at some sort of demographic based average and shoot from the hip and expect to hit anything.

[noisy_boy]

> The strongest predictor for both the French and the Indonesian is almost certainly going to be the individuals physique

I take it that you have either never been to a beach or the one you have been to is only open to athletes and supermodels.

> the second is probably going to be the country and prevailing culture in which the beach is located (i.e. what everyone else is wearing)

So you haven't had the chance of seeing Indonesian woman wearing full headgear and clothes covering their body having fun at a beach far away from Indonesia? Not joking, they were having a genuinely good time - from direct experience.

The world is much bigger and has far greater variety of people, customs and norms than you can imagine.

[bongoman42]

This is so wrong that it I don't even know where to start countering it. The average Indian woman will not ever wear a bikini at all, most wouldn't even wear one in a women only swimming pool let alone a mixed beach.

[jahsome]

I can't even tell what you're arguing for or against. Every comment seems to defeat itself. I am not trying to be inflammatory, but your statements honestly don't seem to stem from anything other than "think about it bro" and ignorance.

[paulluuk]

I think their point is that you can not just say "children in china like math" or "children in france will drink wine", because those are stereotypes and there are many examples of children within those countries who do not conform.

They say that there are differences between even children living on two different roads in the same town, and these differences matter more than differences between countries, and therefore we should not make any kind of arguments based on nationality at all.

I disagree though, I do think that there are significant statistical differences growing up between, say, Afghanistan or Sweden. That does not mean that you can make claims about specific children in either country, but you can make generalizations about the population as a whole.

[throw0101c]

> Or even neighborhood!

Well then it's kind of a strange coïncidence that there is a high correlation between population density and political leaning/voting:

* https://dailyyonder.com/distance-and-density-not-just-demogr...

And not just in the US:

* https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/00104140231194...

* https://macleans.ca/politics/ottawa/338canada-the-urban-rura...

[potato3732842]

>No, I reject that you can tell anything meaningful about the environment by country. Or even state. Or even neighborhood!

This. The standard deviation is too damn high to make predictions. You might as well toss a coin.

[Aeolun]

Japan is… well, no. It just doesn’t appear to work that way here. The social conditioning is strong enough that the lane you fall into in life is basically predetermined based on your upbringing (and gender!).

Even at 6 there is a major difference between boys and girls that I just don’t see anywhere else.

The thing is you won’t even realize that’s what’s happening, and you just feel that the way you think is right and proper the rest of your life.

It’s honestly pretty anazing because people can be incrediy dissatisfied with how their neighbors are parayzed by social constraints while being bound a hundred times more strongly influenced by their own expectations.

[genewitch]

I'm all for claiming these things are soft sciences but they still claim to be sciences. Demographics, sociology, anthropology.

Sometimes I can't tell when people are pulling chains, so in the interest of charity ^

[watwut]

You don't believe that what parents do has impact on kids? Or, you don't believe that parents in one culture can treat kids differently then parents from culture qirh different values?