[nostromo]

Compared to Europe, the US is very homogenous.

Think about how many cultures you would encounter walking from Paris to Moscow. Now compare that with walking from New York to LA. Even though Paris is much closer to Moscow than NY is to LA, you'd experience much more cultural diversity along the european walk.

[bowlofpetunias]

Hell, you would experience much more cultural diversity of you would walk from one end of France to the other.

Just like Europeans have difficulty mentally grasping the physical size of the US, Americans seem to have great difficulty grasping the internal cultural diversity of Europe.

[nknighthb]

In my state alone, I can encounter at least three very different cultures just within the English-speaking populace. I'd have to have some long conversations with people in the Spanish-speaking populace to establish a rough approximation of the real number.

But something tells me you draw your own entirely subjective cultural lines in vastly different places than I do mine.

[mtrimpe]

We've had this argument here before and in some sense you're right in that culture is relative and 'more diverse' is essentially a meaningless phrase.

What is true though is that Americans tend to underestimate the homogenizing effect a shared language, border, government and media apparatus has and the degree to which it helps in facilitating cross-country trade.

[nknighthb]

I'm sure there's a substantial effect there. I have no idea how to estimate or measure it, and I don't really care, either. I also don't really care whether the US has larger or smaller cultural gaps than Europe, and I wasn't talking about that. I spoke of present reality in the US as I observe it, not long-term trends.

Present reality is that anywhere east of the Rockies may as well be a foreign nation. I am far more comfortable with many foreigners, even non-Western foreigners, than with most people in the eastern US. Present reality thus leaves me utterly unsurprised that Silicon Valley remains relatively unique in the US.

Edit: Incidentally, I'm amused by the strongly negative reaction I'm getting from Europeans who wish to tell me, an American, what America is really like. What would be your reaction, exactly, if I started telling you what Europe is really like?

[mtrimpe]

The negative reaction is probably because while you can argue this position from a perspective of wisdom (re impossibility to quantify cultural differences) many Europeans have plenty of prior experience with arguing this from a perspective of ignorance (i.e. failing to consider even basic things like the implications of language differences making you resort to sign language a few 100km from where you live.)

Technically your argument didn't necessarily show any signs of such ignorance, but statistically speaking it would have been quite likely.

[tokenadult]

Present reality is that anywhere east of the Rockies may as well be a foreign nation.

As an American who lives in the central region of the United States, I call baloney on that statement. My HN user profile discloses that I have been to all fifty states of the United States and some of the other territories of my country. The United States really is startlingly homogeneous, all over the country. One illustration of this is the role of English as a national interlanguage unifying all ethnic groups. Only about one-fourth of Americans have ancestors who were speakers of English before arriving in North America. (Sure enough, strictly less than one-fourth of my ancestors were English speakers, even though my family name is English.) Two of my four grandparents (all of whom were born in the United States) received the entirety of their schooling in German rather than in English, but both were perfectly able to communicate with me in English. (Another grandparent grew up in a Norwegian-speaking household, although all of her school lessons were in English.) The United States has a great deal of cultural, ethnic, and even today linguistic diversity, which is a blessing to the country, but the United States also has a great deal of shared culture and ability to communicate in one language from east to west and from north to south that is quite amazing in other countries. Only a little more than half of the people in China even have a common language for conversation.[1] By contrast, people in the United States can use a common language that takes them not only all over their own country, but increasingly all over the world.

[1] http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-china-23975037

http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2007-03/07/content_5812838...

[nknighthb]

You are an example of exactly what I'm talking about. You have an utterly alien mentality and worldview to me. In no small part perhaps exemplified by the fact that you have managed to spend a wall of text arguing aimlessly against a strawman.

[eli_gottlieb]

I grew up in the Northeast, and what is all this? What's this bizarre East Coast Culture that you West Coasters have nothing in common with?

[nknighthb]

What east coast culture? That was part of my point, the northeast is not the south is not the midwest is not appalachia is not the west is not the west coast... (And for that matter, there are at least four very different regions I could divide the west coast into.)

My brief description of the northeast would hardly be "bizarre", but probably "traditionalist", or "old world". Of course, New England and the mid-Atlantic are themselves quite distinguishable.

I didn't say we had "nothing" in common, any more than I would say I had nothing in common with a European, but it's hardly one culture.

[davidw]

I'm an American who lives in Europe, and, without any antipathy, I think you're very wrong in your relative assessments of the two places.

[nknighthb]

Holy shit, again, what relative assessments? I didn't make any!