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Japan was the future but it's stuck in the past (2023)

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Re: Japan was the future but it's stuck in the past (2023)

#51

Post by ben_w »

4bpp wrote: post #39
ben_w wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Having a sovereign language has allowed it to avoid so much brainrot in our culture today. それは、翻訳行為が高価である限りにおいてのみ機能します。 (That 'free' is also 'mediocre quality' does not help when the problem is 'brain rot': viral memes still be viral)

Well, for what it's worth, your machine-translated sentence is basically incomprehensible in Japanese, let alone in a position to go viral (except in the capacity in which exquisite gibberish sometimes does). I could only infer what I think you intended to say ("This only works as long as translation is expensive"...?) by translating it back literally coupled with guesswork about what English text could have given ri…

> Well, for what it's worth, your machine-translated sentence is basically incomprehensible in Japanese, let alone in a position to go viral (except in the capacity in which exquisite gibberish sometimes does).

I kinda assumed so — I kept changing the English until the English-Japanese-English round trip translation wasn't wildly wrong, but the fact I had to says how far Google Translate has to go before it's actually good.

Re: Japan was the future but it's stuck in the past (2023)

#52

Post by moandcompany »

davidsgk wrote: post #43
hackeraccount wrote: post #38

Total aside. In Neal Stephenson book Seveneves the technology of a future is in a few small ways described as weirdly un-advanced compared to the present. I wouldn't describe it as the focus of the book but it still seemed particularly implausible to me but ... I hadn't really thought about Japan. I've never been but I've read that in a few ways technology (fax machines were (are?) still popular just a few years ago)…

Bandwagoning onto this aside, I had really similar thoughts on both fronts. Are things really "retrograde" in Japan because they hang onto older technologies faster, or do they hang around longer because they make sense for their circumstances and needs? We don't say walkie-talkies on security guards are retrograde (not a perfect analogy, I know). And yep, I like to think of Seveneves as 3 books in a big trench coat…

Agree with your question...

"Older" is a relative measurement of time, but doesn't say anything about the marginal benefit or cost.

An example of your question I see from Japan relates to payment systems. People often critique Japan for its cash-oriented systems and have also observed the difficulty that digital payment systems have had in gaining traction in Japan... an example for why digital payment systems have had poor adoption is the existence of earlier, well-adopted solutions that provide many of the same benefits in the majority of practical scenarios (i.e. stored value IC cards: Suica/Pasmo/etc.). In cases like this, the "newer" and supposedly better technology doesn't provide as large of a marginal benefit. They already solved much of the problem.

Re: Japan was the future but it's stuck in the past (2023)

#53

Post by fluoridation »

woodPurchase wrote: post #49
fluoridation wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean, it's basically inevitable, isn't it? Cultural heterogeneity is born out of isolation. If two groups of people are in constant contact, they'll never ever stop speaking the same language and having the same traditions. Conversely, if two originally distinct cultures start to interact regularly (even more so if closely) they'll eventually merge into one. People are more willing to give up on traditions and cult…

>People are more willing to give up on traditions and cultural norms than to have constant friction with their neighbors Toshi would tear down his local shrine and import the third world because it's better than having some Judeo-Christian reporters call them names? The cultural and ethnic shifts happening are happening because banks, governments, and CEOs see it as being in their own interest. More working hands, mo…

>Toshi would tear down his local shrine and import the third world because it's better than having some Judeo-Christian reporters call them names?

He would have if those foreigners were similar in numbers to the Japanese, rather than being a minute minority.

Re: Japan was the future but it's stuck in the past (2023)

#54

Post by im3w1l »

fluoridation wrote: post #36
telchior wrote: post #23

It's interesting to consider that these "Japan is backwards" takes might persist in part simply because it hasn't melded with the global first world culture. I can go to various countries and very similar experiences at an electronics store, a hotel and a gas station. In Japan all of those (and many others) are distinctively Japanese. I've read travelogues from the 17th-19th centuries, and in a lot of them, all of th…

I mean, it's basically inevitable, isn't it? Cultural heterogeneity is born out of isolation. If two groups of people are in constant contact, they'll never ever stop speaking the same language and having the same traditions. Conversely, if two originally distinct cultures start to interact regularly (even more so if closely) they'll eventually merge into one. People are more willing to give up on traditions and cult…

It's not that simple. People in constant contact have in fact maintained separate cultures in some instances.

I think what makes it different this time is that we are using science to find the best culture. "How should we behave towards each other for the best possible outcome?" If a certain culture is clearly and demonstrably better, then that will lead to everyone adopting it.

Democracy might also be part of it, as in authoritarian states the person in power wield such a an outsized influence that their personal whims and fancies can turn into culture.

Re: Japan was the future but it's stuck in the past (2023)

#55

Post by somenameforme »

lannisterstark wrote: post #32
huy77 wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

us is the strongest in arm not civil

>us is the strongest in arm not civil the US economy is one of the (if not the, depending on who you ask) strongest economy in the world - and we're not talking military economy. To pretend otherwise is simply naive. Mississippi, the poorest US state, has both higher GDP Per Capita and GDP PPP Per Capita than most of Europe, much less the world.

It's not really the economy so much as international economics. The term to look up here is 'exporting inflation.' [1] Historically the US was able to engage in what would be unsustainable economic policy for most nations, but kept it going by exporting the normal consequences (inflation) of such. There's a lot of nuanced reasons for this but one of the most simple is that we were the largest consumer economy by an extremely wide margin. So imagine there's a place Carlandia - whose economy is largely driven by exporting cars to the US. And we print a bunch of money so the dollar starts to dump in value. Ostensibly this would initially be really nice for Carlandia because each of their cars would sell for even more dollars.

But in practice what happens is that Americans would simply stop buying so many cars from you, and then Carlandia's economy would start to tank. But there's a simple solution. Carlandia intentionally starts to devalue its own currency, precisely to maintain stable trade levels. So they do precisely this, as do other nations around the world. But as prices around the world start to normalize the inflation disappears, but the money we printed doesn't. So this gives us the freedom to print money and have it disproportionately end up being "real" as opposed to just inflationary, as it would be for most other nations. So you basically get a 'print GDP' button.

But this is also a liminal state of affairs. Not only is the world going multipolar but other economies are growing much faster than ours meaning are gradually losing dominance in terms of being a key market target. If we're not able to export inflation and demand/dominance of the dollar starts to slide, then things are going to get rocky, fast.

[1] - https://search.brave.com/search?q=exporting+inflation

Re: Japan was the future but it's stuck in the past (2023)

#56

Post by derriz »

alephnerd wrote: post #24
telchior wrote: post #23

It's interesting to consider that these "Japan is backwards" takes might persist in part simply because it hasn't melded with the global first world culture. I can go to various countries and very similar experiences at an electronics store, a hotel and a gas station. In Japan all of those (and many others) are distinctively Japanese. I've read travelogues from the 17th-19th centuries, and in a lot of them, all of th…

Most writers who give this "Japan is backwards" spiel all seem to have lived in the 80s or 90s. I'm much younger than these Gen Xers and Millenials, but it feels like Japanese style cultural impact is much larger now than "western style". Heck, KWave, KDramas, and Manhwa are heavily based on Japanese JPop, JDramas (the GOTO back in the 2000s before Sony made licensing expensive), and Manga. > view xenophobia, fear of…

Nah. Japanese global cultural impact probably peaked in the 1980s or early 1990s. To the extent that it was "common knowledge" at the time that Japan would become the dominant global power.

Particularly for young people - Japanese cultural impact at the time was intense. Arcade gaming basically emerged from Japan - 8 of the top 10 biggest arcade games ever were Japanese. Then home video gaming - first with Nintendo and later others. The Sony walkman was a cultural phenomenon - as ubiquitous and valued as mobile phones are now for 1980s teenagers. Manga comics started appearing in western comic book shops and Kurosawa movies in arthouse cinemas. Japanese branded VCRs represented a revolution - the earliest on-demand system for consuming movie/TV media - and was embraced by the youth of the time.

And that's just then influence on the kids, in the adult world, Japanese car brands destroyed the US and Euro competition, home consumer electronics were almost exclusively Japanese. Japanese massive positive trade balance of payments meant they were forced to invest outside of Japan which resulted in a massive buying spree.

Re: Japan was the future but it's stuck in the past (2023)

#57

Post by sgu999 »

akira2501 wrote: post #42
fluoridation wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean, it's basically inevitable, isn't it? Cultural heterogeneity is born out of isolation. If two groups of people are in constant contact, they'll never ever stop speaking the same language and having the same traditions. Conversely, if two originally distinct cultures start to interact regularly (even more so if closely) they'll eventually merge into one. People are more willing to give up on traditions and cult…

> Cultural heterogeneity is born out of isolation. What level of "isolation" forms that threshold though? We're nowhere near a single worldwide religion, for example, which is odd because it's the most existential of cultural beliefs.

> We're nowhere near a single worldwide religion, for example, which is odd because it's the most existential of cultural beliefs.

We have neoliberalism, at least

Re: Japan was the future but it's stuck in the past (2023)

#58

Post by itishappy »

davidsgk wrote: post #48
fluoridation wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean, it's basically inevitable, isn't it? Cultural heterogeneity is born out of isolation. If two groups of people are in constant contact, they'll never ever stop speaking the same language and having the same traditions. Conversely, if two originally distinct cultures start to interact regularly (even more so if closely) they'll eventually merge into one. People are more willing to give up on traditions and cult…

> I mean, it's basically inevitable, isn't it? Cultural heterogeneity is born out of isolation. When thinking about this cynically, I feel like this has some depressing ramifications. Cultural differences (and isolation) are often born from financial disparities as well. Does this mean that the path to global cultural homogeneity is basically just gentrification on a massive scale where economic -> cultural minoritie…

Trickle down globalism. I think you're onto something.

Re: Japan was the future but it's stuck in the past (2023)

#59

Post by oezi »

alephnerd wrote: post #19
moandcompany wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed. Japan's "lost decade" started 10-20 years before the rest of many Western (e.g. United States) and non-Western nations (e.g. People's Republic of China, Republic of Korea, etc).

The US had a lost decade similar to Japan in the 90s during the 1970s-80s with similar convos of a rapidly aging and backwards society ( https://www.nytimes.com/1981/05/24/us/rise-of-elderly-popula... // "malaise forever" - https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=czfKPaypNsU ) The biggest difference was the US was able to leverage white collar immigration to develop a substantial lead in the computing industry by the mid-90s.…

What mattered more white collar or illegal immigration?

Every country can chart its own way. South Korea is both more healthy innovation wise and less healthy demographically, right?

Re: Japan was the future but it's stuck in the past (2023)

#60

Post by woodPurchase »

fluoridation wrote: post #53
woodPurchase wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>People are more willing to give up on traditions and cultural norms than to have constant friction with their neighbors Toshi would tear down his local shrine and import the third world because it's better than having some Judeo-Christian reporters call them names? The cultural and ethnic shifts happening are happening because banks, governments, and CEOs see it as being in their own interest. More working hands, mo…

>Toshi would tear down his local shrine and import the third world because it's better than having some Judeo-Christian reporters call them names? He would have if those foreigners were similar in numbers to the Japanese, rather than being a minute minority.

If they were similar in numbers why would it be the Japanese ceding instead of the foreigners? Even if so, it's all the more reason to not let them in in the first place. Keep Japan Japanese for the Japanese
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