Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

America Is Not the Greatest Country on Earth. It’s No. 28

bloomberg.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 71 posts

Re: America Is Not the Greatest Country on Earth. It’s No. 28

#61

Post by CalRobert »

nmc wrote: post #48
CalRobert wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed. However this is something that most of the world (aside from Mexico, Central, and South America) collude in. I try to say "the US" in conversations with my European friends, but they will always just say "America" in response. And of course, there is no English equivalent to Estadounidense.

The French language has "États-Unien" [0] but it is almost never used. [0] https://fr.wiktionary.org/wiki/%C3%89tats-Unien

Of course, even that _could_ be ambiguous given that my homeland's southern neighbor is officially "Estados Unidos Mexicanos" (Mexican United States). That usage is so rare as to be pretty much irrelevant, though.

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

Re: America Is Not the Greatest Country on Earth. It’s No. 28

#62

Post by j_jochem »

vacri wrote: post #14
j_jochem wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd say they're more than a little confusing. Why would anybody from a western cultural background choose yellowish orange for "better" and a range of blues for "worse"?

Heatmaps are pretty common in western culture.

Heatmaps are used with continuous data. This map has 4 discrete values, so it's really misleading.

Re: America Is Not the Greatest Country on Earth. It’s No. 28

#63

Post by majewsky »

pipio21 wrote: post #53
jnordwick wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why people only rip on Americans for being patriotic? Nobody rips on the French when they say they have the best {food, fashion, history, literature, country, *}. Everybody seems fine with European snobbery in all its variants: French, Italian, and even English snobbery is accepted, but not quite as much as the others it seems.

"Nobody rips on the French when they say they have the best." Everybody does, it is called "chauvinism". There is nothing wrong believing your country is the best, provided that you have actually traveled to other countries and know it is a fact. You will find your country being the best "at something", but could learn and improve a lot from other countries as well. The problem with chauvinism is not understanding ot…

> There is nothing wrong believing your country is the best, provided that you have actually traveled to other countries and know it is a fact.

Yes, there is. No single country can be "the best" or "the greatest", because this term is ridiculously underdefined. (The same fallacy applies to the submission, btw.)

Re: America Is Not the Greatest Country on Earth. It’s No. 28

#64

Post by majewsky »

Hermel wrote: post #50
aryehof wrote: post #7

When traveling in the US, I'm always amused at the reactions of disbelief, horror, aggression, and utter incredulity when I propose that their country isn't the greatest in the world. After all, they likely hear or are told every day that they are not only "free" (unlike everywhere else?) but the "greatest".

Really? What kind of people are you talking to? Note that Bloomberg, the source of the above news, is American. Note that the reaction you get might not only stem from the message itself, but also from the way you deliver it. How do you react when a foreigner critizes your country out of the blue? Imagine someone saying to you: "Your people regularily mistreat immigrants, did you know that?" How do you react?

> Imagine someone saying to you: "Your people regularily mistreat immigrants, did you know that?" How do you react?

"I know, right?"

Re: America Is Not the Greatest Country on Earth. It’s No. 28

#66

Post by squozzer »

I never accepted America as "greatest country in the world" as a literal truth, anymore than I would say my Dad is "the greatest in the world" and expect anyone to believe it. It's a statement of love, or belonging, or some other sentiment, but some set up its literal interpretation as a strawman and begin wailing on it.

Re: America Is Not the Greatest Country on Earth. It’s No. 28

#67

Post by ende »

squozzer wrote: post #66

I never accepted America as "greatest country in the world" as a literal truth, anymore than I would say my Dad is "the greatest in the world" and expect anyone to believe it. It's a statement of love, or belonging, or some other sentiment, but some set up its literal interpretation as a strawman and begin wailing on it.

Bingo.

Re: America Is Not the Greatest Country on Earth. It’s No. 28

#69

Post by Sideloader »

Did the UN report actually set out to rank countries by order of "greatness" or was that the mass media's contribution? The compilers of the report probably stated something like "based on criteria x,y and z which are based on data we obtained from organizations 1,2 and 3, or their equivalents, in countries around the world we ranked these countries from 1 to 100 (or whatever) according to their scores".

So...being #28 in the list doesn't mean that country is the 28th "greatest" country in the world. Obviously there exists no objective definition of "greatest" or "best" country/city/region in the world but every time I see that written somewhere I cringe a little. It could be my inner pedant but it's also because I know somebody will take this as meaning the researchers meant x country is THE greatest in the world and argue why this is, or is not, the case. Probably not so much on HN but preventative measures have been taken just in case.

Post reply on HN