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Living outside America

ryancarson.com

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Re: Living outside America

#191

Post by Jugglernaut »

gaelian wrote: post #162
spindritf wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> i see America as an overreaching empire that has had it's heyday And yet most of us are right now using computers designed in America, with an operating system written in America, posting on an American website. How is the USA not the centre of the world? From jeans to Katy Perry, from Google to McDonald's -- Americans totally dominated both the culture and the business. If I turn on the tv right now, I will have t…

> Why? Religious people commit less crime, get and stay married more, use less illegal drugs, donate and volunteer more... It would make more sense to fear people becoming less religious. Are you just playing devils advocate (no pun intended)? Because there seems to be a rather large creationism, abstinence only sex education, and homophobia shaped blindspot in your view. There's plenty of ostesnibly legitimate stuff…

I doubt that was the point the OP tried to make about being frightened by religious people. If someone can believe something without proof that was written down 2000 years ago then they can believe almost anything. That's scary to someone who isn't religious. It's just completely alien.

Not trying to step on any toes.

Re: Living outside America

#192

Post by adrianhoward »

jchrisa wrote: post #82
thetabyte wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Opening Note: Personal views- Practicing Jewish most of my upbringing, now agnostic by choice "If the Danish prime minister started confessing her belief in a god she'd be laughed out of the room." As an 18 year old American, active in American politics (I've done minor campaigning, father is a US History teacher), this is utterly strange. A politician that was not some denomination of Christianity would be, most lik…

Rare to find actively religious young people on the West Coast (at least Bay Area / Portland)

Very much not true if my experiences of living in Berkeley in the 90's are anything to go by (possibly my definition of "rare" is different since I'm from the UK).

I suspect it depends on who you hang out with :-)

Re: Living outside America

#193

Post by nickgeiger »

ralfn wrote: post #81
antidaily wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder if more Americans would travel through Europe if they knew how easy it is. EVERYBODY speaks English. And yet, you still get to experience the cultures and augment your worldview a bit.

Not really. You can talk in English with any dutch citizen, but without being able to read our books, watch our tv, hear us talk, you dont really get a clue. What you get is a not a first hand view, but a 2nd hand view, from the worst observer possibe. Im pretty sure, that language is key to any culture. And because of that Americans, even when they travel, will have less understanding of the culture, than the native…

> Want to learn about the world? Dont travel! Learn a language.

I read that to mean "Learn English", which makes sense, but is not very helpful to an American because only learning English as a second language gives the advantages you described.

I totally understand your point, but coming from the other side as an American, what language should we learn?

Disclaimer: my kids will be learning Mandarin Chinese.

Re: Living outside America

#194

Post by adrianhoward »

citricsquid wrote: post #66
brown9-2 wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a lot of confirmation bias in judging how non-religious folks are treated in America by using /r/atheism - the people that don't feel persecuted won't ever feel a need to join an online community to discuss it.

oh of course and I do not use r/atheism regularly, I find the entire place really disappointing because it's not about atheism, it's about how much religious people are morons (which I disagree with). My curiosity was because there are thousands of redditors that believe they're persecuted for their Atheism and I've never once seen someone from England claim that, it's only ever Americans, which leads me to believe t…

I'm from the UK. Something I remember from a road trip I took in the 90's across the US was, on multiple occasions, being told that I was "brave" or "courageous" when it came up in conversation that I was an atheist (technical agnostic, working atheist if you want to be picky :-)

This was from religious and non-religious folk. Nobody was mean about it to my face - but it felt like people expected bad things to happen because of it.

Re: Living outside America

#195

Post by adrianhoward »

tzs wrote: post #94

> When I moved to the UK, most people I met didn’t believe in God or Christianity. The UK is largely a non-Christian country. No, you've went into a field whose practitioners are largely non-Christian, and since you've probably acquired most of your social circle directly or indirectly through that you mostly meet non-Christians. If a kid who grew up in a religious family in London and went to a religious school most…

There's a good discussion of UK religious views in the 2010 British Social Attitudes survey results.

http://ir2.flife.de/data/natcen-social-research/igb_html/ind... (section 12 - religion).

From this survey 50% don't classify themselves as "belonging to a particular religion". Rising to 64% in the 18-24 age range. A generational change seems to be happening.

Re: Living outside America

#196

Post by sneak »

rdl wrote: post #181
khuey wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm curious: what country do you think would be better than the US for starting a bitcoin startup?

I wouldn't bother with a bitcoin startup, but for a real ecash startup, US for technology development, and then Hong Kong or maybe Singapore for server ops, deployment, and financial backing of currency issues. The key IMO to all of this is separating out software development from server operations from financially backing a currency from applications of the system from auditors from users. Banks suck at software dev…

KYC defeats the whole purpose of doing a payments startup (making money aside).

We already have a PayPal.

(Or have you unsubbed from cypherpunks?)

Re: Living outside America

#197

Post by gaelian »

Jugglernaut wrote: post #191
gaelian wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why? Religious people commit less crime, get and stay married more, use less illegal drugs, donate and volunteer more... It would make more sense to fear people becoming less religious. Are you just playing devils advocate (no pun intended)? Because there seems to be a rather large creationism, abstinence only sex education, and homophobia shaped blindspot in your view. There's plenty of ostesnibly legitimate stuff…

I doubt that was the point the OP tried to make about being frightened by religious people. If someone can believe something without proof that was written down 2000 years ago then they can believe almost anything. That's scary to someone who isn't religious. It's just completely alien. Not trying to step on any toes.

I agree that I probably shouldn't be projecting assumptions onto people I don't know.

For me at any rate, as a person who does not consider themselves religious in any conventional sense, I don't find the fact that someone believes something without proof to be frightening at all, in and of itself. The problem only comes when someone else uses those beliefs as the basis to impinge on my own life/liberties or the life/liberties of others who do not share their belief.

Re: Living outside America

#198

Post by rdl »

sneak wrote: post #196
rdl wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wouldn't bother with a bitcoin startup, but for a real ecash startup, US for technology development, and then Hong Kong or maybe Singapore for server ops, deployment, and financial backing of currency issues. The key IMO to all of this is separating out software development from server operations from financially backing a currency from applications of the system from auditors from users. Banks suck at software dev…

KYC defeats the whole purpose of doing a payments startup (making money aside). We already have a PayPal. (Or have you unsubbed from cypherpunks?)

KYC among a group of commercial customers, and then getting all the advantages of easy settlement, instant settlement, etc. You can layer identity and audit on top of the actual settlement system, since that part doesn't need to be in real time.

The idea is to use the same infrastructure for that, for non-financial mass-market anonymous stuff, and then if anyone wants to run it, for anonymous financial stuff.

End user retail purchasing on the Internet (which is what PayPal largely does now), and user to user small value transfer ($1-3k) which is also paypal, is kind of uninteresting in general. Credit cards are fine for purchasing, and user to user payments are a pretty niche thing.

Re: Living outside America

#199

Post by jetsnoc »

Upon graduating from High School I backpacked Europe for a month. I quickly learned not everyone felt the same way about America that I did. The tone wasn't hateful or angry (yes) but it was cautious as if people expected me to be arrogant, rude or flippant about their world views. There was a common joke between my friend and I: We should sport a Canadian flag on our backpack!

A few years later, I worked abroad for some time. Post "9/11" people were cruel and bitter. They really despised us! This year though, everyone was talking about Apple, Instagram and Facebook! I don't know if these are just hot topics but people were excited to talk with an American about them. I was glad to hear the tone had changed some.

Re: Living outside America

#200

Post by nicholassmith »

mc32 wrote: post #172
rdl wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I haven't lived in Germany (I've visited for maybe 3 weeks total), and in terms of quality of life, it wasn't that different from the US, at least for the things you see as a short-term tourist. Lots of stuff was more expensive (vs. SF baseline), and rural Germany around 2000 was pretty undeveloped, but Berlin would be more representative. I'm also using SFBA, NY, Boston, Seattle as exemplars of the US. I'd rather li…

W/re UK. Chris Kipllip did a photo documentary called "In Flagrante". NE England in the 80's (not sure about now) was a depressed place to be.

NE England is an interesting topic (I've lived here all my life), areas still are very depressed with some of the highest unemployment levels in the UK, married off to a rapid decline in our traditional industries of chemical & steel production.

Oddly we also seem to be developing one of the better tech hubs outside of London in Newcastle, so the rise of technology could see things improve.

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