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Hikikomori: Why are so many Japanese men refusing to leave their rooms?

bbc.co.uk

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Re: Hikikomori: Why are so many Japanese men refusing to leave their rooms?

#181

Post by da02 »

lsc wrote: post #53
da02 wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That sounds like a business idea. Create retail services in a market filled with custom dealmaking. I'm guessing that might be hard in your case since it sounds like you have to deal with huge datacenters and network providers.

edit: re-writing my post; I... somehow misread you; I thought you were suggesting creating a service to do the negotiation for you. No, you were very clearly saying: >That sounds like a business idea. Create retail services in a market filled with custom dealmaking. I'm guessing that might be hard in your case since it sounds like you have to deal with huge datacenters and network providers. And this is, essentially,…

Thanks. You interpreted me correctly... and confirmed my suspicions of how hard it is.

Best of luck with your friend's new datacenter.

Re: Hikikomori: Why are so many Japanese men refusing to leave their rooms?

#182

Post by adomsed »

Asians in general have a high probability of genetically having less Oxytocin receptors. Oxytocin affects levels of self-esteem and optimism. It also has a strong effect on whether stress causes a person to withdraw from social situations or to seek help from others. It also affects empathy in a society.

The withdrawal symptoms shown in this article, and subsequent scorn by Japanese society (rather than sympathy) could be a indicator of this genetic predisposition.

Here is a breakdown of oxytocin receptiveness across some common racial groups. The more G's you have, the more resilient and social you are.

http://browser.1000genomes.org/Homo_sapiens/Variation/Popula...

Also the wikipedia article on oxytocin might be of interest for anyone who has Aspergers or Autistic tendencies.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oxytocin

It's interesting to ponder Oxytocin's effect on Asian culture as a whole... confucianism, book smarts, wrote memorization, suffer in silence, etc.

Re: Hikikomori: Why are so many Japanese men refusing to leave their rooms?

#183

Post by embolism »

scotty79 wrote: post #177
embolism wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Taxes are usually linked to property value, not land area.

If you own 1/1000 of property the tax is low.

No - an apartment usually costs more per sq metre than a house.

Re: Hikikomori: Why are so many Japanese men refusing to leave their rooms?

#184

Post by scotty79 »

scotty79 wrote: post #177
embolism wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Taxes are usually linked to property value, not land area.

If you own 1/1000 of property the tax is low.

@embolism: Apartment costs more than a house in the same spot?

If 1000 people share ownership of multistorey building also the land the building stands on, also the land tax, also roof, walls, infrastructure, it's bound to be far cheaper than 5 houses with 20 people at most occupying same space.

Re: Hikikomori: Why are so many Japanese men refusing to leave their rooms?

#185

Post by turbostrongjas »

michaelochurch wrote: post #133

The trigger for a boy retreating to his bedroom might be comparatively slight - poor grades or a broken heart, for example - but the withdrawal itself can become a source of trauma. And powerful social forces can conspire to keep him there. My observation is that mental illness often has a hurricane-like property wherein the storm is bearable but the social fallout (looting, arson, opportunistic crime) afterward is f…

The problem with mchurch that

He is obviously a big-time asshole; but He is not completely wrong It is easy to dismiss total morons (like the employee-book guy.) It is also easy to argue with nice, intelligent, articulate people (like all of us on eng-misc.)

But mchurch is a problem.

(See also the ingenious http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0117318/ on the topic.)

Joseph Janos - Arrogant Googler

Re: Hikikomori: Why are so many Japanese men refusing to leave their rooms?

#186

Post by embolism »

scotty79 wrote: post #184
scotty79 wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you own 1/1000 of property the tax is low.

@embolism: Apartment costs more than a house in the same spot? If 1000 people share ownership of multistorey building also the land the building stands on, also the land tax, also roof, walls, infrastructure, it's bound to be far cheaper than 5 houses with 20 people at most occupying same space.

The price of an apartment is determined by supply and demand for housing units, not by dividing the price of a house occupying similar land area by the number of units.

Taxes are typically levied on the value of each housing unit.

Re: Hikikomori: Why are so many Japanese men refusing to leave their rooms?

#187

Post by eli_gottlieb »

diminoten wrote: post #157
mikeash wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course it's a real thing. He never said it wasn't. What he said was that it doesn't explain anything, and that's true. Laziness is a symptom , not a cause. It's like diagnosing someone with a "cough". It may be correct, but it's pointless, because it's obvious and tells you absolutely nothing about what to do.

At what point is a personality merely a symptom? If everything about us is a result of our ailments, and all of our ailments have treatments, how does a person know which parts of his personality are him and which aren't? What am "I" then?

You're the little sane bit sitting on top herding the various cats of brain lobes, psychological disorders and just plain basic insanity into acting as a useful whole every day.

A sufficiently self-managing nutter is indistinguishable from a genius.

Re: Hikikomori: Why are so many Japanese men refusing to leave their rooms?

#188

Post by eli_gottlieb »

michaelochurch wrote: post #129
wisty wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, overshare can work both ways. All your friends are either having a fantastic time, or their life is ruined. Both can be a bit depressing to watch.

All your friends are either having a fantastic time, or their life is ruined. Both can be a bit depressing to watch. If you find it depressing that they're having a "fantastic time", then they aren't your friends in any meaningful sense. This isn't directed at you. Envy is a stigmatized but natural human emotion. (I rarely feel direct envy, but who doesn't second-guess the path they've taken? It's very easy to look f…

Plenty of people are jealous of our actual friends sometimes. There's just still a difference between, "Damn, I wish I had a nice apartment like Miles does" and "Wow, fuck you Miles, posting pics of your snooty-ass new apartment".

You can be jealous of the good experience without letting it poison your liking for the person.

Re: Hikikomori: Why are so many Japanese men refusing to leave their rooms?

#189

Post by lsc »

da02 wrote: post #181
lsc wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

edit: re-writing my post; I... somehow misread you; I thought you were suggesting creating a service to do the negotiation for you. No, you were very clearly saying: >That sounds like a business idea. Create retail services in a market filled with custom dealmaking. I'm guessing that might be hard in your case since it sounds like you have to deal with huge datacenters and network providers. And this is, essentially,…

Thanks. You interpreted me correctly... and confirmed my suspicions of how hard it is. Best of luck with your friend's new datacenter.

yeah. That's the sad thing though... what you originally suggested is what I've been wanting to do with the datacenter space. I'm pretty frustrated, really, that it doesn't appear to be possible... I mean, I'm in deep enough now that I can't just walk without consequence.

(as an aside, he.net does seem to be kinda doing it; I mean, their prices are mostly standard. Not really, though. And their power prices are absolutely terrible compared to the high end, as they make you buy a whole rack to run like five servers. I'm pretty pleased with their bandwidth, though, I mean, for the price. Way better than Cogent, for example, who can easily be more expensive.)

I mean, I can get the other guy to handle most of the custom dealmaking (at the cost, of course, of a smaller cut for me.) but changing the industry really was one of my goals... and it's just not going to happen this time around.

I don't know... I'm starting to think that a sincere will to 'change the world' is an inherently bad thing. The whole business side of things is full of [un]ethical compromises and gaining advantage through concealing relevant information (and this, if you are dealing with the most honest folks; if not, it's full of outright lies.)

Re: Hikikomori: Why are so many Japanese men refusing to leave their rooms?

#190

Post by scotty79 »

embolism wrote: post #186
scotty79 wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

@embolism: Apartment costs more than a house in the same spot? If 1000 people share ownership of multistorey building also the land the building stands on, also the land tax, also roof, walls, infrastructure, it's bound to be far cheaper than 5 houses with 20 people at most occupying same space.

The price of an apartment is determined by supply and demand for housing units, not by dividing the price of a house occupying similar land area by the number of units. Taxes are typically levied on the value of each housing unit.

Don't you at least agree that if you'd replace a block of flats for thousand people with houses for 10 you'd seriously reduce supply of housing in this spot without affecting the demand much and so you'd increase the value and tax on each housing unit in this spot?

I'm no sure how land tax works in the US but in my country it is calculated by multiplying tax rate for given region by area of the plot and then divided between people who own the plot. Share is usually proportional to the area of the buildings or parts of them they own on this plot.

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