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

The Western Elite from a Chinese Perspective

americanaffairsjournal.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

121–130 of 232 posts

Re: The Western Elite from a Chinese Perspective

#121

Post by PeterisP »

PoliteTwig wrote: post #50

I find it interesting that the author only considers America from the top down - from the perspectives of institutions (Stanford, Goldman Sachs, Costco) and slogans (American Dream, All people deserve to live healthy lives). Part of me wonders if that’s due to America's own marketing, or due to his upbringing in a more totalitarian government, but for most Americans these perspectives are just as foreign. At dinner t…

An immigrant arriving from an external environment directly to those institutions would have significant exposure to those perspectives and not to others. USA is heterogeous and split into very different communities/tribes - while there are many and large communities like you describe, in many communities across the country, the dinner tables and churches aren't really a part of their daily life at all and people don't say "God is control"; and the communities that do don't interact much or deeply with the communities that don't.

Re: The Western Elite from a Chinese Perspective

#122

Post by Xorlev »

alexasmyths wrote: post #118
11thEarlOfMar wrote: post #13

"... randomness is not merely the noise but the dominant factor. And those reasons we assign to historical events are often just ex post rationalizations. As rising generations are taught the rationalizations, they conclude that things always happen for a reason. " I didn't realize it until contemplating this statement, but this applies to interpersonal relationships as well as nations. It is the root of tolerance an…

"People wind up where they are largely through circumstance, not intention. " There may be a lot of randomness on the way to becoming, or almost becoming a doctor, but you don't get to be a doctor by randomness. See what I mean? You get to be a doctor only with quite a very long term intent and perseverance, by stacking the odds, and rolling the dice a lot. Though I get what you are saying - I also don't think that m…

"Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity." - Seneca the Younger

> You get to be a doctor only with quite a very long term intent and perseverance, by stacking the odds, and rolling the dice a lot.

I like that way of putting it.

Re: The Western Elite from a Chinese Perspective

#123

Post by aaavl2821 »

analog31 wrote: post #21
fahayekwasright wrote: post #3

Interesting that in one section, he casts doubt on the notion that mathematical models can accurately describe reality, and in another, he uses a heart rate monitor to conclude that he doesn’t have emotions.

I thought it was brilliant. He "innocently" exposed the whole class as a hoax.

Id argue that rather than him exposing the class as a hoax, he exposed that his level of comfort with the course content was quite low. The class is about emotional intelligence, and he essentially admits he is lacking in this (not able to understand why his actions provoke certain responses in people).

I've taken a similar class, and the content can be quite uncomfortable (and sometimes the content strays into bs territory, but I and others find much of the content of value). A common reaction to this uncomfort is to deny the validity of the concept of emotions / EQ, but many people who try to understand these concepts do come out with a better understanding of how to engage emotionally

I know for many logic minded people the concept of emotional intelligence seems like bs, but it is real (sorry for asserting this rather than providing evidence, but that's another topic). My brother is on the spectrum and I'm on the autistic side of normal, and it's my experience that EQ can be learned and that learning it valuable and worthwhile personally and professionally

Re: The Western Elite from a Chinese Perspective

#124

Post by DamonHD »

alexasmyths wrote: post #119
jraines wrote: post #51

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…

"post-hoc Just World fallacy wrapped up in those same statements of faith" Not really. We have built a progressively more just world - and it gets a little bit more just and civilized every generation that goes by. It's only possible when most people have some kind of faith, however crude, as the grind away at it. It does not happen by accident - over the long haul, it requires a Will.

It does NOT require any sort of religious will, and I posit that religion will be a steadily larger impediment to further progress if it does not fade.

We have better and more nuanced ways of making the universe more just these days.

Re: The Western Elite from a Chinese Perspective

#125

Post by aaavl2821 »

pessimizer wrote: post #81
ordu wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If his emotions are buried so deep, that there no way to see real world consequences of them, than maybe it is better to say, that there are no emotions? I think, that mottos in Western culture are just pathetic ones. Western culture knows nothing about how to raise steady emotions in people. I was born in USSR, and I saw how it should be done. But there is one consequence: with experience comes tolerance to external…

I've never heard a good case that emotions exist. I'm a believer that we have both a sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous system that are activated reflexively by the same types of stimulation that activate them in other animals; and as humans who deal with abstractions as physical metaphors, those abstractions stimulate our sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous systems by activating the same ancient reflexes. A…

I've never heard someone say they've never heard a good case that emotions exist before. Would you mind elaborating? For me, I recognize emotione in myself that fit my understanding of the word "emotions", and that is sufficient for me to believe they exist

Many emotions have physiological "symptoms" and are associated with certain brain regions and pathways. Our understanding of biology does not permit us to define emotions to the level of physiological detail that we have for, say, inflammation, but that doesn't mean emotions don't exist

Re: The Western Elite from a Chinese Perspective

#126

Post by wu-ikkyu »

bsaul wrote: post #109
wu-ikkyu wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe there's a balance to be struck between the two ideologies: that seemingly insignificant individual actions can have profound effects, while also accepting the fact that there are infinite environmental variables that we have negligible control over which influence every single one of those actions.

i don't think you need to "accept" the fact that there are infinite variables, or that you're not all-that-powerful. It's pretty much a given, and it's something you realise at 2 year old, when you really want to play with that ball, or lift that rock, or pretty much anything grown up do, but you can't. And as you're growing up, nature is always there to remind you that you're nothing. IMHO, the role of education in…

>you realise at 2 year old, when you really want to play with that ball, or lift that rock, or pretty much anything grown up do

Most two year olds can't form complex sentences, and so have yet to be indoctrinated into their culture's ideologies. It seems like the context of this whole thread is moreso about economic ideology than basic physics.

Re: The Western Elite from a Chinese Perspective

#127

Post by krylon »

rsync wrote: post #77
t3rseCode wrote: post #74

I'm curious for other immigrants with kids, how difficult is it to break from the more deterministic "study hardest for success" vs relaxing a bit to optimize for happiness and embracing the impact of luck.

"... break from the more deterministic "study hardest for success" vs relaxing a bit to optimize for happiness and embracing the impact of luck." Ahh, yes - the third generation ... "We are an immigrant nation. The first generation works their fingers to the bone making things; the next generation goes to college and innovates new ideas. The third generation snowboards and takes improv classes."[1] [1] http://article…

Totally OT, but strangely, 30 Rock appears to be getting better every time I re-watch it. Most other shows tend to get on my nerves after a few times, but 30 Rock just keeps getting more enjoyable.

Re: The Western Elite from a Chinese Perspective

#128

Post by alva »

walshemj wrote: post #58
rdtsc wrote: post #5

> My parents by then had reached the conclusion that I was not going anywhere promising in China and were ready to send me abroad for high school. Maybe the title should be "The Western Elite from a Chinese Elite Perspective". Surely sending kids to school to UK as plan B is not in the average Chinese family's abilities. Doesn't mean we should discount the article or its ideas but it's useful to keep the author's bac…

From what I hear its now plan A to send your kids to British public and American private Schools as well as for the Russian elites. Its what I have been told happens in my home towns Public schools - one of Barack Obamas roomies at Harvard came from one of them. As suggested a in the UK Public School is what an American would call a private one ie one where rich people send there kids

Yup. A huge number of rich foreigners send their children to UK fee paying schools. Lots of Middle-Eastern, Russian and Chinese. Something like 15% of current world leaders were educated in the UK.

Certainly caused some mumblings about the general character of some of the most prestigious institutions like Eton. It would be easy to put that simply down to xenophobia but there is a relative difference between the established culture and the new. British aristocratic elites are generally (and of course this is all relative) far poorer than the children of Oligarchs and party officials. Generally the attitude of the aristocratic Brits is to keep their head down and not be flashy, whereas some of their classmates literally have a private jet for their use on weekends.

Re: The Western Elite from a Chinese Perspective

#129

Post by eschaton »

jwhitlark wrote: post #113
paulpauper wrote: post #45

Eventually I was able to meet the chief financial officer of my favorite company, Costco. He told me that they don’t hire any MBAs. Everyone starts by pushing trolleys. (I have seriously thought about doing just that. But my wife is strongly against it.) Maybe, I thought, that is why the company is so successful—no MBAs! that's pretty amazing..is this really true? So if someone applied for marketing or accounting, th…

I don't know about Costco, but... The MBA was originally designed for people who had worked their way up from the bottom, and needed to backfill the theory.

Originally. But of course the MBA was turned into a gatekeeping/filtering mechanism, to ensue only people with the right pedigree could be hired into roles “requiring” one.

Re: The Western Elite from a Chinese Perspective

#130

Post by gerdesj »

rsync wrote: post #75
walshemj wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From what I hear its now plan A to send your kids to British public and American private Schools as well as for the Russian elites. Its what I have been told happens in my home towns Public schools - one of Barack Obamas roomies at Harvard came from one of them. As suggested a in the UK Public School is what an American would call a private one ie one where rich people send there kids

If you are from the UK, you should probably clarify what you mean by a "Public school" since a reader from the US probably interprets that differently than what you mean.

Well its simple. I, personally went to two public schools, both of which were in the private school sector.

No, it isn't obvious. In the UK the prefix public and private are both synonymous for "fee paying" for schools.

I went to a prep. school (9 to 13) and a public school (13+) after that. Both of which would be described as private schools.

Post reply on HN