251–260 of 263 posts
I'm halfway through Neal Stephenson’s "Baroque Cycle" and it's absolutely delightful but it sure requires frequent dictionary/Wikipedia consultation, at least for me.
This ability to look things up on the fly is why I love ereaders, despite the newproblem of finishing one book on my TBR list and having bought more than one book referred to in the first book. A divergent sequence of books I fear.
I started reading the original edition of Don Quijote in Spanish with two years of high school Spanish under my belt. Ten years later, I finally finished the first book.
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That is because the USA is low context while China is high context. For more about this and related topics, read https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B00IHGVQ9I/ref=tmm_kin_swatch... .
I have not read the book but I have heard Erin speak, and I do find the high/low context dimension to be very powerful in explaining a great many things. I don't see how it applies all that well to this one, though, other than perhaps explaining one way in which something can come across as dense or cryptic. Specifically, you could use it to say that a text is embedded in the context in which it was written, and so f…
As Erin explains in https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9oYfhTC9lIQ, the question is how much context the speaker can assume that the listener has. In a low context culture, the speaker assumes that the listener doesn't have much shared context. And therefore it is on the speaker to be explicit. In a high context culture, the speaker can assume that the listener will fill in a lot from that shared context. And it is on the listener to do so.
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> There is also the alternative of treating humans as humans first No there isn't, that's the same thing as just putting everyone in the "world" box. Which tends to boil down to just treating everyone like a member of your own culture (since most of the people from the world you've met are from your own culture), and ends up being worse.
"Which tends to boil down to just treating everyone like a member of your own culture " Not at all. If you want it in programming language: - there is a general human interface, a bit like you talk with people online (ideally like around here on HN) - then there is the more specialized interface with your local countrymen - and way more specialized, close friends, family - you can adress them in a way deeper interfac…
If this is a good thing then surely it's good to do the same for other countries and regions. Occasionally there will be an individual from one of those countries/regions who is more like the average human than like the average human from their country/region, sure - but that's also the case with people from my local country.
> Or do you talk around here, like you talk with your peers around you? Would you know I am german, if I would not have disclosed it?
I am extremely conscious that HN is an American cultural space and one has to talk in specifically American ways to avoid getting downvoted or worse. It's not remotely a "neutral world human" way of interacting with people. If you came to my country I would hope you wouldn't act like you were on HN, there's already enough American cultural imperialism here as it is.
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"Which tends to boil down to just treating everyone like a member of your own culture " Not at all. If you want it in programming language: - there is a general human interface, a bit like you talk with people online (ideally like around here on HN) - then there is the more specialized interface with your local countrymen - and way more specialized, close friends, family - you can adress them in a way deeper interfac…
> - then there is the more specialized interface with your local countrymen If this is a good thing then surely it's good to do the same for other countries and regions. Occasionally there will be an individual from one of those countries/regions who is more like the average human than like the average human from their country/region, sure - but that's also the case with people from my local country. > Or do you talk…
And the way to talk about technical things - to the point, no personal attacks, no ambiguity if possible, but clearly articulated - this is the way I also try to communicate in international settings.
I read Hacker News without understanding 90% of it for years.
Kafka [1] on which types of book to read: "I believe one should only read those books which bite and sting. If the book we are reading does not wake us up with a blow to the head, then why read the book? To make us happy, as you write? My God, we would be just as happy if we had no books, and those books that make us happy, we could write ourselves if necessary. But we need the books that affect us like a disaster, t…
I think you should only read books that bite and sting you. If the book we're reading doesn't wake us up with a punch to the skull, why are we reading it? So that it makes us happy, as you write? My God, we would be happy even if we didn't have books, and we could write the books that make us happy ourselves if need be. But we need books that have an effect on us like a misfortune that hurts us very much, like the death of someone we preferred to us, like pushing us into the woods, away from all people, like a suicide, a book must be the axe for the frozen sea within us.
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The one book I recall that 'bit and stung' as I think Kafka meant to say was 1984. How would you categorize that work? Torture porn?
Oh god no, that’s definitely in the cynically written in bad faith hacky partisan politics category. Maybe it just hasn’t aged well, but I couldn’t get through it.
Orwell was a British Socialist, and the people he's attacking in the books are totalitarians, whether fascist or Stalinist. So it's neither bad faith nor partisan unless you count anti-totalitarian as a party, though I guess hacky is in the eye of the beholder.
You'll get my copy of The Integral Principles of the Structural Dynamics of Flow, by L.G. Claret, when you pry it out of my cold dead hands. I may never ram-chaw a partial chim set, but damned if I'm going to fear bolts, quams, squalcrats, or (especially) barms.