[temp0826]

Living in South America a bit really showed me this. I think it's a cultural thing here but someone will always give you an answer, even if it's wrong, confidently. It was hard for me at first- I am usually the first person to say "I don't know" (often followed by "but let's slow down and find a good solution").

[jfaulken]

This was similar to my experience running a software team in India (I'm an American) a couple decades ago. I had to learn not to ask yes/no questions because the answer would always be yes.

[ponector]

From real life: - Is it done? - Yes! But not yet!

[disillusioned]

On a long enough time horizon, with sufficient multiverses, all things are done!

[HiPhish]

It's a long-standing jodke that AI stands for "Actual Indians".

[lm411]

I've experienced similar with some Southeast Asian cultures as well.

I'm a patient person, but it can be frustrating to have to endure 10 minutes of verbal diarrhea that eventually results in a "no" or "I don't know".

[noisy_boy]

I'm genuinely curious if this is a thing with roots in Spanish culture? Because there is strong Spanish influence in Philippines and South America.

I don't know any Spaniards but I do know Filipinos and the confidence projection is a real thing. The Filipino IT guy confidently declared that my OnePlus Android phone wasn't certified for the software he was trying to install and was getting errors. It is a bog standard application that can be installed on any modern Android phone but the level of confidence he projected, just because he didn't know OnePlus as a brand, made me doubt myself until I turned on the critical hat and pushed back a little with alternative approaches, which solved the problem.

[sublimee]

Over the last couple of years, I've spent a lot of time in Indonesia. By the time I got used to their way of communicating, I questioned my own reality, perception and sanity. I even put a thought it's some very passive way of gaslighting foreigners. It seems it's just how they like to do it here.

[throwaway132448]

Talking about South America as a homogeneous unit is… weird. Even neighbouring countries speaking the same language can be entirely different in this regard.

[temp0826]

I agree (and I don't normally generalize like this, so I apologize). I've spent most of my time in Peru but noticed it in neighboring countries as well.

[thiagoeh]

That also is my perception, from Brazil. There is even the concept of "cordial man", coined by sociologist Sergio Buarque d Holanda, that is connected to this

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cordial_man

[croisillon]

i remember >20 years ago going to the bus station somewhere between RJ and SP, and asking the best way to get to Iguaçu

  - it's difficult
  - ok fine but how
  - it's difficult
  - right i'll see that but how
  - it's difficult

then it dawned on me this meant get away you fool :D

[CGMthrowaway]

"You can't get there from here"

[wesleyfsmith]

can speak from personal experience that it's the same culturally in colombia

[aktau]

This reminds me of a great adventure. A long time ago I was travelling through Brazil, in the Amazonas state. I was in Porto Velho and needed to get to Manaus quickly to catch a flight. The boat that would take us there (as I had found in the Lonely Planet) was present on the quay. But the captain didn't feel like going. If I remember correctly, he was waiting for more people. We needed an alternative route quickly.

The captain told us that if we took the bus to Humaitá (a smaller provincial city), we could take a smaller boat that would take us to Manaus. But he warned us that the boat only goes once in three days, and that it would leave soon. The last bus to Humaitá would also leave from Porto Velho promptly.

Despite this flimsy instruction, we didn't see any alternative. So we went. With great luck, we caught the bus and made it to Humaitá (I still have a picture of the boat river transfer the bus took: https://bashify.io/i/CdNcLf).

Our time in Humaitá was surreal. When asked about a boat to Manaus. Everyone told us a different story. There was no harbour (hydroviaria) personal. One person told us the boat to Manaus was named "Caçote". Another person said the boat was named something else. Then someone said it had stopped ferrying years ago. No, we heard from someone else, it would come in 5 hours! Yet another one said it was tomorrow. Someone else felt sorry for us because it had just left. I felt like I was in a (difficult) point and click adventure. There weren't a lot of people in town close to the river, so we ran into the same people from time to time. They would often give different answers to the previous time.

No one was willing to tell us they didn't know. Not a single person out of the 20+ we must have talked to.

In the end, a boat arrived. It went in the direction of Manaus. The captain said that he would only go up to Auxiliadora, and that was still a long way from Manaus. Once again without alternatives (going back to Porto Velho would surely mean we'd miss the flight), we chanced it. In the hopes that getting closer was worth it.

When we arrived at Auxiliadora, it was the smallest inhabited place I had ever been to. Perhaps about 13 houses. Some fishermen. No passenger boat would come for days, they told us. Not to take us to Manaus, neither to take us back. The fishermen had boats, I tried to offer them money so they would take us further. But their day was at an end and they wanted to relax, regardless of what I offered them (we were on a tight budget, but I was desperate enough to offer a significant chunk of a monthly wage, no dice).

Then we found out that on the boat with us, a woman had come who was in a similar predicament as us. She was Brazilian, living in MT and wanting to visit family in Manicoré (which was bigger, and closer to Manaus). Exasperated, she ended up convincing her family to come and pick her up with a speedboat. We hitched a ride. We were very thankful.

When we arrived in Manicoré, I felt like exploring the place. It looked so different from anywhere else I had been, like something out of a movie. But I couldn't. The docks were little more than a collection of wooden jettys (trapiche) that ran everywhere in criss-cross fashion. In order to even get to the quayside we would have to pass through many other boats. In the first one we went through, the captain walked past and I asked him whether he knew of a boat going to Manaus. He signalled where to put my bags. We were leaving.

We reached Manaus in the nick of time.

I love this story, and that time. These anecdotes definitely triggered my memory.

[analog8374]

Is South America populated by LLMs?

But I kid, I have a friend who's the same way. He's an Austrian who grew up in Chicago and was in the army.

I have considered the phenomenon. I somewhat disapprove but I can also see the advantage of always presenting a confident face

[andriy_koval]

> someone will always give you an answer, even if it's wrong, confidently

its common playbook for corporate self-development in NA.