91–100 of 232 posts
Maybe the reason the west is successful lies in the belief that individuals matters. If that's the case, then i suppose the OP still has a long way to go.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
"Smart hard working people succeed much more often than they don't." A smart hard working person today might be a hard working computer scientist. Their skills would be absolutely worthless even a few centuries ago. Their skills would be absolutely worthless even today depending on where they are born and to the parents they are born. I'm not convinced "smart and hard working" are not post hoc descriptors themselves.
Plus, that sentiment is only true with a narrow set of upper middle class, white collar assumptions. What about hard working retail workers or factory workers? Or look how vast the race and gender disparities are...
Many people don't have ambition, or they have limited ambition.
Could someone explain the point of this article? All I'm getting are: * Everything is random. * A generic Chinese man, who did really well on one test is smarter than most people in Britain. * Americans, who are capitalists, don't seem to want to focus their lives on the supposed end goal of capitalism. * MBA programs are nuts, especially if you are on the spectrum. I'm probably wrong about most of those, but like th…
my takeaway: the western stereotype of chinese education is that there is herd mentality and groupthink, but the same thing exists on the western side, just with a different herd. edit: this is highlighted by the conclusion, in which he points out the irony of the lesson from his western education (everything is luck) when the traditional message is "if you work hard you will succeed". i thought it was a great read.
It's not individuals reacting but jingoism, our generation was brought up on the idea of globalism and humanism, that we can connect as individuals. But as one gets older it seems jingoism is as alive as ever, only concealed better, where some things are taken for granted and not to be questioned while pointing fingers at others, judging others and making negative assumptions is perfectly ok.
Reluctance to introspect on your own society while cheering on those who criticize their own is a losing game.
Reading some of the comments below, and having known some Chinese people ( I am not east asian) I want to point out that it seems like many people missed the intention/ tone of the author. I think his intention was not to brag as some people have misunderstood, but to provide context to how he got to where he got to.
His communication style is different compared to the western style of communication. There is no single coherent message he is trying to drive purposefully or tacitly, but my guess is he was hoping you learn whatever you can from his experience and his way of thought.
Sure the article title could have had the words ‘random’ and ‘musings’ in the same sentence..... meh!
I'm not exactly sure what the point of the article is or what the author is trying to say. It's pretty much an abbreviated biography bookended by some attempts at philosophizing. It is interesting to hear how much easier the author found his British curriculum than his Chinese. I was also amused by how he mocked his Stanford MBA curriculum, and how the career office people were dismissive of his passion to make money…
It sounds to me you're classifying people as smart/hard working only if they're successful.
His connclusion mirror's the central tenant of bhagavad gita. "Karmanye vadika raste ma phalechu kadachana". Do your duty as best as you can , without expectation of results
What's the negative of "expectation of results", ie. the normalization of the expression "no (expectation of results)" in constructive terms. I guess it would have to be perhaps expect failure
Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is a good point, but there's an awful lot of post-hoc Just World fallacy wrapped up in those same statements of faith. The really spurious ones - like 9/11 or Katrina being divine punishment - get media coverage but there're more bland ones that are actually more harmful; like disease or disaster being all part of God's plan. It's all good for living a life where you have to cope with what you can't directly con…
How does that tie with the statistics showing US citizens - and in particular more religious people - as good donors for charities and disaster victims? Seems contradictory.
I thought it was a good/enjoyable article and it shed light on many things for me. Reading some of the comments below, and having known some Chinese people ( I am not east asian) I want to point out that it seems like many people missed the intention/ tone of the author. I think his intention was not to brag as some people have misunderstood, but to provide context to how he got to where he got to. His communication…
His connclusion mirror's the central tenant of bhagavad gita. "Karmanye vadika raste ma phalechu kadachana". Do your duty as best as you can , without expectation of results
I think there's a logical contradiction. Without expected return value , how could one measure how good "as best as" could be? The only resolve I can think of is to try to adjust to a blacklist instead, maybe don't expect results, but at least know when you have failed. To me, this is the same thing expressed in inverse logic. What's the negative of "expectation of results", ie. the normalization of the expression "n…
It is rather close to the definition of integrity: To do the right thing, even when nobody's looking.