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Patrick Collison's Questions

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Re: Patrick Collison's Questions

#181

Post by donw »

fomine3 wrote: post #164
donw wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I live in Japan, and have for about a decade. You're bang-on when it comes to culture, but it has nothing to do with being optimized for tourism. Japan is a very conservative country. Change happens slowly here, and Japan does a lot to ensure that people raised here share a common culture, with a strong focus on stability and harmony. To provide some examples: - NHK, the national broadcaster, has several series of po…

> There is no "rural vs urban" divide in Japan. Hmm maybe not divided like US but exists. Tokyo vs other big cities(Osaka, Kyoto, Fukuoka, Nagoya,..) vs others is popular conflict. Young people move to Tokyo to get jobs or go to univ and never goes back, meanwhile rural areas are losing younger smart people. And all govs and most news are in Tokyo so not considering others well. I hope covid improves this situation.

You are correct, but maybe I should rephrase?

I have never gotten the sense that Tokyo people think that Japan would be better off if everybody living in rural areas were to drop dead tomorrow.

Rather, in grocery stores, foods and fruit proudly proclaim their prefecture of origin -- Iwate, Aomori, Hokkaido.

Tokyoites go to the countryside for vacation, for hot springs, to visit farms, that sort of thing.

Popular sentiment is that Japanese are sad that the countryside is dying, and there's a lot of push -- albeit with very limited success -- to get younger people back out there, because at some point, somebody has to grow the food.

Japan only produces 50% of the calories it needs to feed the population -- the rest are imported. That's a scary place to be in the world right now.

Rural brain drain is a real phenomenon, and related to the fact that Japan... and maybe all governments and large organizations, when I think about it, have a strong centralization pressure, to pack everything together in one place.

It takes active measures to resist that. Distribution is hard, but it pays dividends in terms of resilience and awareness.

Re: Patrick Collison's Questions

#182

Post by deanCommie »

paxys wrote: post #128
hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So, in other words, your statement "a safety record matching or surpassing most modern projects" is something you made up. Bringing up the stadium in Qatar only further highlights that point: I remember that building project getting tons of press outlining how shockingly bad the safety record was compared to what should be expected.

Take some time to research safety and deaths in large construction projects happening today at the scale of bridging the Golden Gate back in the 1930s. E.g. Channel tunnel - 10 deaths, Panama Canal Expansion - 7, Three Gorges Dam - 100+, Gotthard Base Tunnel - 8, Hong Kong–Zhuhai–Macau Bridge - 19, Istanbul Airport - 55. I'm not sure what statistics you are looking for, but construction isn't a no-risk profession eve…

You're getting downvoted because more than half of your examples are from non-Western countries with appalling safety regulations.

We already know authoritarian dictatorships (China, Turkey) can still achieve amazing infrastructure projects, damn the cost to human life or displaced poor people.

Fromt eh Western examples, Gotthard Base Tunnel work began in 1999 and it opened almost 17 years later, so that's less than 0.5 deaths/year. The Channel tunnel is then probably the only remaining example.

The other examples prove the point - safety standards have gone up and very few people die during major construction projects

Re: Patrick Collison's Questions

#183

Post by cloogshicer »

dalbasal wrote: post #179

I like the way " Is Bloom's "Two Sigma" phenomenon real? If so, what do we do about it? " is loaded. Touches on several "questions" in the vein of this article. One load is " why don't we know this with more certainty? " It's a useful thing to know. What is achievable? What's the bar? How good could education be, regardless of resources and other limitations. If true, that can be our 100% marker for instructional eff…

There's an assumption in this line of thinking which I think is unlikely to be true: that this stuff is measurable, at least in principle.

I think 'instructional effectiveness' can't ever be clearly and unambiguously defined, much less measured. As with anything that involves people. In my experience, most attempts to do so only cause more harm than good.

Re: Patrick Collison's Questions

#184

Post by james_s_tayler »

akirakurusu wrote: post #18

"Why are so many things so much nicer in Switzerland and Japan?" Figuring out why this is without fully attributing it to culture has been of great fascination to me. It really is mindblowing just how _good_ things are in Japan, perhaps they're just highly optimized for tourism? The cleanliness, the service, the great care people place in doing things and in their work is just amazing. Anyone here have more insights…

It's almost 100% cultural I feel. At least Japanese people always attribute it to their culture and self concept of what Japanese do / how Japanese (and therefore themselves) behave.

If there are non-cultural factors I would think they contribute a fairly small amount.

But there's a light side and a dark side to the cultural factors. It has some seemingly unavoidable side effects.

Feels to me very much like a trade-off.

Re: Patrick Collison's Questions

#185

Post by 082349872349872 »

SpicyLemonZest wrote: post #152
082349872349872 wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Considering that I use at least four languages[1] every day, and am thankful[2] to be living someplace that has not yet been completely overrun by chains and big box stores, I'd argue the assertion of a "heterogenous" US might need defending. On the original question: I think switzerland is nice for two reasons. (a) we didn't blow ourselves up twice last century, which meant that even with little absolute growth we w…

In the city I grew up in, official notices were routinely made in English, Spanish, and Vietnamese, and I regularly encountered people speaking Korean and Chinese as well. Even my grandma's rural town, with a population of under 5,000 and an hour's drive to the closest city, has people and restaurants representing four or five different nationalities. If you're perceiving the US as a country where everyone only speak…

Aha, things have improved since last century. When in California I did use spanish as well as english, and in Louisiana french as well as english — but back then the concept of "melting pot" was still current, so one of these languages was clearly the prestige dialect.

Looking at the current cabinet, I'm sure if I scrolled enough in @SecElaineChao I could find some chinese. Sorry for my outdated impression.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cabinet_of_Donald_Trump#Announ...

(For comparison, our excomm may have 4 germanophones, 2 francophones, and 1 italophone:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Council_(Switzerland)#...

but we utterly lack any mother-tongue sinophones. And although our current president, @s_sommaruga, has some romanche in her feed, she uses much more english.)

Re: Patrick Collison's Questions

#186

Post by Robin_Message »

badestrand wrote: post #171
nemothekid wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can, but it looks like everyone else in this thread is lazer focused on Japan (likely due to the prestige of Japanese culture). But that doesn't explain Switzerland. Is Switzerland closer to Japanese in culture than they are to Dutch? I think obviously not, but from the thread you would assume otherwsie.

Both countries (Switzerland and Japan) have a culture of a focus on quality, so they are very close in this trait. The Dutch are IMO very pragmatic people that, while quality is important to them, are more willing to sacrifice it for other things that are of higher priority. So it's not about a general sharing of culture but only about sharing the quality-focus aspect.

I had a colleague who insisted on quality in every bit of our software and the results were similar perhaps: locally, each thing might take more time and more care, but the global result was everything working better and being done more easily. So perhaps focusing in quality and assuming efficiency will come from global effects is a good strategy?

(Reminds me also of The score takes care of itself business book)

Re: Patrick Collison's Questions

#187

Post by totetsu »

hcta wrote: post #163
totetsu wrote: post #160

on "What's the right way to understand and model personality?" Personality is an outdated concept, personality types triply so. There is no fundamental stability of personality, just behavior context. Christian Miller - The character gap https://philosophybites.com/2019/02/christian-miller-on-the-... https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2016/06/24/4818596... Robert Sapolsky - Introduction to Human Behavioral Bio…

If you taboo the word 'personality', the underlying question here is still interesting. Do different people in the "exact same" situation always behave /identically/? (Obviously not.) What are the most informative features of the person explaining the divergence in response?

Christian Miller is arguing that while we do have phycological character traits and motivations, that persist between situations, how we actually behave is a complex interaction between these and our contexts. Divergence can maybe be explained as much by contexts as by characteristics. If I were to meet someone who works a similar job, has a similar social and familia situation, but divergent motivations, I might have more in common with them than I would have if I met the university student version of myself.

Re: Patrick Collison's Questions

#188

Post by james_s_tayler »

andrewstuart wrote: post #25
akirakurusu wrote: post #18

"Why are so many things so much nicer in Switzerland and Japan?" Figuring out why this is without fully attributing it to culture has been of great fascination to me. It really is mindblowing just how _good_ things are in Japan, perhaps they're just highly optimized for tourism? The cleanliness, the service, the great care people place in doing things and in their work is just amazing. Anyone here have more insights…

I visited Japan and was just astounded at how much better the society is run. As a tourist, my obviously naive impression was of a place that is incredibly well organised, that seems to have no trouble investing in its own infrastructure, that is extremely safe and clean and generally prosperous. Where the people seem to have a sense of joy and fun. Just. so. well. organised. I really loved Japan. My favorite country…

Depends which end of society you're on.

My sister's in law are up early and on a train for hours into the city where they work until well after dark and are home at about 11pm.

My wife who lives in my home country on the other hand runs her own business from home, sets her own hours and has a lot more free time and independence.

I feel pretty sorry for the workforce in Japan. It's pretty dystopian if you ask me.

It's amazing for kids, university students, senior citizens and if you ever get a day off.

Re: Patrick Collison's Questions

#189

Post by Robin_Message »

danans wrote: post #148
noirbot wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Textbooks aren't regulated in the governmental sense (though they are somewhat at the middle/high school level), but there's certainly been more "regulation" in the sense of schools trying to enforce what books are used for what class for their own enrichment.

> there's certainly been more "regulation" in the sense of schools trying to enforce what books are used for what class for their own enrichment. That has little bearing on the prices of textbooks. Also a school can't function without textbook standardization. That's hardly the same thing as regulation.

UK schools don't seem to have textbook standardisation in the way the US does, but the schools seem to function fine.

Re: Patrick Collison's Questions

#190

Post by james_s_tayler »

donw wrote: post #20
akirakurusu wrote: post #18

"Why are so many things so much nicer in Switzerland and Japan?" Figuring out why this is without fully attributing it to culture has been of great fascination to me. It really is mindblowing just how _good_ things are in Japan, perhaps they're just highly optimized for tourism? The cleanliness, the service, the great care people place in doing things and in their work is just amazing. Anyone here have more insights…

I live in Japan, and have for about a decade. You're bang-on when it comes to culture, but it has nothing to do with being optimized for tourism. Japan is a very conservative country. Change happens slowly here, and Japan does a lot to ensure that people raised here share a common culture, with a strong focus on stability and harmony. To provide some examples: - NHK, the national broadcaster, has several series of po…

The no rural vs urban divide thing...

I never ever thought about it before but I see _exactly_ what you mean. And I think you're spot on. There isn't this idea/phenomenon of country folks being very different than city folks, rather there is an extremely strong cultural narrative around how a Japanese person behaves and what it means to be Japanese that transcends the settings in which one lives. The cultural machine just continuously markets Japaneseness to it's citizens.

I agree it comes with good and bad, but for sure when it comes to safety and stability it's huge factor.

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