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The world's most toxic value system (2001)

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Re: The world's most toxic value system (2001)

#61

Post by leohutson »

xelxebar wrote: post #51
sullyj3 wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What you're gesturing at is that it's illogical to make value judgements, period, without a standard that your object of interest is being judged against. This fact, which is blatantly obvious once pointed out, is obscured by the shortcomings of our language. Usually the standard is implicit, but obvious from context, for instance if we were talking about racing, we could say that a Mclaren is better than a Volkwagen…

Even more concretely, the terms better and worse are only capable of encoding relative positions on a linear scale. I find it instructive to look for those scales directly--e.g. rates of violent crime, GDP, life expectancy, etc. This also makes it more natural to recognize specific problems with such linear reductions.

All those scales are valued differently by different cultures.

If I show a conservative American gun crime statistics that we agree on and we agree that are caused by American gun culture, I cannot tell them that American gun culture is inferior, because I just get back "Thats the price of freedom!"

Life expectancy, "It's not the years in your life but the life in your years!"

GDP is the most hilarious one, because it's not even per-capita. Assuming that its a high median per capita GDP: "That's materialistic! We're much happier than those greedy capitalists"

Re: The world's most toxic value system (2001)

#62

Post by c3534l »

I'm not sure why the author lumps together so many of the attributes he does, and when he does acknowledge exceptions, rather than learn from them and understand why they exist, he simply waves his hands an says Japan wasn't honor-bound enough or not in the right way or whatever else.

His examples are cherry-picked and similar examples exist in the countries he holds up as exemplars. Saudi Arabia viewed cleaning as women's work, sure, just like nearly every country in Europe 100 years ago. Again, sexism is inexplicably considered to be part of this horoscope-level cultural complex of traits, as is apparently poor people excessively taking possessions from deceased relatives.

He blazes by picking one bad thing that happened in a given culture, offering no further analysis other than to gawk at how much better our culture is, then moves on to an entirely different society where he happens to know one bad thing about them and repeats the process.

The article appears to me to be little more than a post-hoc justification of the author's prejudices, with a few glib references and citations which give a glib appearance of being well-researched and substantive.

Re: The world's most toxic value system (2001)

#63

Post by hamilyon2 »

I don't understand author's position. Vendetta is obviously bad. Genocide and religiois fanaticism is incompatible with western sosiety. This is obvious too.

Other than that, well, sometimes it is perfectly rational to act agressively or overreact to show your seriousness or be impolite in response to some sort of behavior. It depends.

Re: The world's most toxic value system (2001)

#64

Post by interfixus »

leohutson wrote: post #49
sullyj3 wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What you're gesturing at is that it's illogical to make value judgements, period, without a standard that your object of interest is being judged against. This fact, which is blatantly obvious once pointed out, is obscured by the shortcomings of our language. Usually the standard is implicit, but obvious from context, for instance if we were talking about racing, we could say that a Mclaren is better than a Volkwagen…

> For instance, by the standard of the general wellbeing of African Americans, it's manifestly obvious that modern American culture is superior to American culture of the 1850s. But it might be hard to convince a 1850s white American to adopt that standard. It's tautological to say that as by definition 1850s white Americans culture is extremely distasteful to a modern HN commenter. Any culture that isn't similar you…

> It's tautological to say that as by definition 1850s white Americans culture is extremely distasteful to a modern HN commenter

Which definition would that be?

Re: The world's most toxic value system (2001)

#65

Post by leohutson »

interfixus wrote: post #64
leohutson wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> For instance, by the standard of the general wellbeing of African Americans, it's manifestly obvious that modern American culture is superior to American culture of the 1850s. But it might be hard to convince a 1850s white American to adopt that standard. It's tautological to say that as by definition 1850s white Americans culture is extremely distasteful to a modern HN commenter. Any culture that isn't similar you…

> It's tautological to say that as by definition 1850s white Americans culture is extremely distasteful to a modern HN commenter Which definition would that be?

We'll perhaps there are some HN commenters that have those values, but I hope not!

But 1850's American culture is distasteful to me and also to sullyj3 as they say:

"it's manifestly obvious that modern American culture is superior to American culture of the 1850s"

Re: The world's most toxic value system (2001)

#66

Post by techdragon »

baybal2 wrote: post #56
Declanomous wrote: post #7

This is interesting. At the risk of being lambasted for this view, I've often felt that this is the issue with a lot of places within the United States. For instance, I've always considered personal interactions in the South to be largely dictated by honor. I do not think it is coincidental that the poorest and least-educated areas of the country are the same area. I think a similar problem is at play in inner-city v…

I read it, and think it is a so so writing. The author piles too many things together. martythemaniak gets more of what it is to it. There are no such thing as an honour based society, and the author is imagining things. Popular explanation: what seems as an "honour" things to people in the west are often just egregious displays of social status. It is hard for Americans to naturally arrive to the way of thought of t…

I’m not an anthropologist but I’ve read a few things over the years.

Honour and social status are often correlated inside of honour valuing “subcultures” that often use the honour system they make up as the driver for the typical in group vs out group social dynamics that perpetuate the majority of subcultures. So it’s often hard to distinguish between different “honour systems” that can make some of the more extreme behaviour understandable.

For example the honour killing of wives can stem from absolute moral codes surrounding sexual behaviour combined with strong social stances on purity. Once “tainted” it is viewed as more honourable to kill the tainted wife than to allow her to remain in the family. She is no longer pure enough to remain a suitable partner for anyone thereby making death preferable. This relates back to my honour subcultures point because in this subcultures view, failing to “eliminate the taint” risks devaluation of their own social standing and creates sufficient incentives that some are driven to commit murder in the name of “honour”

Also it often happens that “both” people involved in the extra marital sex are killed in such honour killing cases.

Re: The world's most toxic value system (2001)

#67

Post by linkregister »

uiri wrote: post #58
linkregister wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that prosperity through the pursuit of opportunity leads to such changes. The author derides the continent of Africa, yet ignores enormous economic and public health improvement among most countries there in the last 30 years. Attitudes and “honor” culture have changed as well; nowadays commerce and transactions are the norm in cities, rather than violence based.

The article was originally written 16 years ago and last updated 6 years ago. How much of the improvement in the last 30 years has been over that time? How much of the improvement in the last 30 years has filtered its way into the popular perception of Africa? Or into how Africa looks from a statistical perspective? I am not surprised that the article gives a picture of Africa that is 20-30 years out of date.

At that time, various countries in Africa were struggling and at a nadir: Sierra Leone, Guinea, Burundi; others flourished: Kenya, Ghana, Tanzania, Zambia. Many others didn’t change materially: Egypt, Tunisia, South Africa.

It is as meaningful to lump all African countries together as it is to group all countries in Asia. There are more commonalities between North Africa and the Middle East than similarities with southern and central Africa.

Re: The world's most toxic value system (2001)

#68

Post by PhasmaFelis »

baybal2 wrote: post #56
Declanomous wrote: post #7

This is interesting. At the risk of being lambasted for this view, I've often felt that this is the issue with a lot of places within the United States. For instance, I've always considered personal interactions in the South to be largely dictated by honor. I do not think it is coincidental that the poorest and least-educated areas of the country are the same area. I think a similar problem is at play in inner-city v…

I read it, and think it is a so so writing. The author piles too many things together. martythemaniak gets more of what it is to it. There are no such thing as an honour based society, and the author is imagining things. Popular explanation: what seems as an "honour" things to people in the west are often just egregious displays of social status. It is hard for Americans to naturally arrive to the way of thought of t…

I don't understand what you're trying to express here. You agree that all of the things the author describes do happen, and pretty much for the same reasons the author describes, but you...still think he's wrong, somehow? Possibly because you don't like him using the word "honor," even though he went to great lengths to not do that?

Re: The world's most toxic value system (2001)

#69

Post by bryananderson »

nradov wrote: post #50
bryananderson wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Something this author gets that most people (of all political stripes) don’t: whether a culture is “better” than another is not even a well-formed question. We must ask “better at what?” We must define some criteria to measure, and speak in those terms, not in ill-defined terms like “just better”. The author speaks mostly in terms of specific consequences of different value systems. This is not the same thing as decl…

It's pretty easy to objectively measure which cultures are better. In general we can just look at long-term trends in voluntary migration rates by country / state / region (or whatever geographic area aligns with a particular culture). Sure there will be some noise in the data based on natural disasters and legal restrictions but those revealed preferences give a good first approximation.

You are simply picking a measure (immigration) and saying that “being better at my measure that I picked equals being better, period.” What if I threaten all my neighboring countries with nuclear annihilation unless all their citizens move to my country, so that I will be sure to top your list of greatest countries?

Be careful what you optimize for. ;)

Re: The world's most toxic value system (2001)

#70

Post by beautifulfreak »

I was reminded of Chapter 6 of Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell. The chapter is called "Harlan, Kentucky," and discusses the feuds that took place there. He makes an attempt to blame it on genetic heritability, tracing it back to Scotland and forebears who herded sheep and practiced honor culture, with mention of a psych study showing Southern students responded differently to insults. Higher testosterone levels? I can't remember. I think it's unsettled that genetics plays a role, but why not?
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