[adrianm]

Friendly advice: you should think twice before posting long comments where you systematically examine racial generalizations (and dare I say it: stereotypes!) you find to be anecdotally valid.

It's this sort of "reasoning by anecdote" that, while convincing to the individuals relating them, can easily mislead others into believing your conclusions are rational.

[bigtones]

I enjoyed reading his comment and commentary on life as he saw it in Japan. Don't admonish the poster because you think his audience (we) might be idiots.

[emanuer]

Thank you for your advice, I fully agree. I cannot edit my comment anymore, so I actually think about just deleting it.

Edit: I am surprised to find; I mistakenly assumed I have the ability to delete my comments. That seems new...

[pasbesoin]

I enjoyed your comment, as I have enjoyed many comments here on HN that quite thoughtfully and often eloquently take the time to provide a personal context and, yes, anecdote, to a more generally reported circumstance.

Don't worry about it. I -- for one ;-) -- think your comment was appropriate and useful, in this context.

(For example, it provides me with some additional insight to my own occasional interactions with Japanese culture. Most useful, to me.)

Nor do I mean to be overly critical of the critiquing response. Yes, we do need to be aware of anecdote versus corroborated fact. But, as one other respondent has commented, we make some assumption that those on HN can judge this for themselves.

--

This comment meant in good spirit, all around. And yes, it's just my opinion.

[josephagoss]

Yeah after a while the comments become immortal.

It's a pest when you post something only to realise a little while later that perhaps it should have been written differently or not written at all.

Happens to me all the time.

[delackner]

Total disagreement with your premise. Having experienced a place and a culture, it is perfectly reasonable to gain a sense of the uniquely different cultural attitudes and priorities that are prevalent in a society. Trying to relate such impressions to someone who has not been seeing for ten years with the same eyes, inevitably we choose anecdotal stories to illustrate the broad impression it conveys, not just to say 'this one time i saw something and this is my whole dataset'.

[adrianm]

You claim to disagree with my premise, but you did not address the premise of my statement.

I did not say it was unreasonable to "gain a sense of the uniquely different cultural attitudes and priorities that are prevalent in a society".

Based on your analysis, I think you have misinterpreted both the intent and premise of my comment.

What I actually said was precisely what I did say: that you should not be quick to publicly espouse these generalizations that you have anecdotally observed. To a general audience of people who do not know you, the words that you write on here are the only basis we have on which to understand you as a person, short of getting to know you personally.

Perhaps you have never been on the receiving end of a racial stereotype or generalization, even an "innocent" one. Even if the comments are not made with malicious intent, and believe me I know the OP had absolutely no malicious intent at all, stereotypes can and do make some people uncomfortable to hear.

Why is that? Well, there are lots of reasons. If for nothing else, it makes the member of the group in question the "Other". If only for a brief moment in time the individual ceases to exist; their racial characteristics are being now being discussed, rationalized, and analyzed by the others in the room.

I really just wanted to give my honest advice to a nice guy (the OP), that it would be wise to avoid allowing this sort of discussion be associated with him as a person, unintentionally immortalized by the internet.

[delackner]

I understand your suggestion and your point is well meaning, but you are saying no one should ever write downfor others to read, their own experiences or impressions, of things they have seen. In your original comment and this reply you repeatedly use the word "race" or "racial" but the article is about a culture and the comment you are so against is someone commenting on their experience living in that culture. would you have all stories about a particular place be written only by its inhabitants? i think you would find there are precious few, because we do not and cannot see the culturally unique attitudes and behaviors that so differeniate where we are raised from all other places, precisely because everything seems just so mundane and normal with no frame of outside reference.

If we all shy away from discussing the interesting and unique different perspectives of different cultural and social norms and objectives, we lose the opportunity to be inspired by one another.

I really dont care if someone later in the future discovers that i said i had an impression of something i saw in a society, and i dont think people need to be shielded from hearing what outsiders think of their society.

As for your suggestion that i have probably not been on the receiving end of such observations, as a non-japanese living in a country that has almost no foreigners percentage-wise, yes, i am aware of what it is like to be on the receiving end of blanket generalizations about "americans" "foreigners" "californians" and other groups, usually by people who have never travelled more than a few km by train from their home town. That kind of empty and idiotic thinking has nothing whatsoever to do with someone simply describing what they have seen with their own personal experience in a foreign land.

[coldtea]

There is such a thing as culture, and different cultures have different characteristics and values. This is well known to ethnologics and social scientists, and has been studied extensively.

Those are not "racial generalizations" (and the fact that the Japanese are asian has little to do with that, it could have as easily been about differences between French and German attitudes).

Of course you can find Japanese who are totally sloppy and against the description given above. But you wouldn't find a Japanese culture where sloppiness is OK, and shame is not important.

Outliers exists everywhere -- but the importance of observation is to find larger patterns and be able to summarily understand your subject. Science starts with labelling things -- and it's perfectly rational.

And of course, observations and conclusions can be corrected as more data arrive.