“There are people who can see and others who cannot even look” • Hacker News Board

Re: “There are people who can see and others who cannot even look”

#81

Post by dooglius » Tue, May 20, 2025, 12:09 PM UTC

godelski wrote: post #12

h2zizzle wrote: post #7

>The painter naturally visited Nadar’s studio fo a portrait; it captures an artist of fierce intelligence: As true as it might be in many cases, I've begun to think that there might be something fundamentally groady about basing assumptions of intelligence on appearance. A brief meeting is bad enough, but a single photo? It's poetic to think that they tell us more about a person than they do.

> I've begun to think that there might be something fundamentally groady about basing assumptions of intelligence on appearance I find this odd to hear. Not because I think we should base our opinions on someone's appearance but because I thought it was a common belief that we shouldn't. Or rather that you would be committing a faux pas by making such a statement publicly. That people at least wanted to paint the ima…

I don't think it was ever a social taboo. PSAs and the morals in children's stories are intended aspirationally to change social norms rather than reinforce existing ones; you don't see PSAs about how you should wear clothes or knock before opening someone's door, for instance.

Re: “There are people who can see and others who cannot even look”

#82

Post by ajkjk » Wed, May 21, 2025, 3:29 AM UTC

pavel_lishin wrote: post #53

ajkjk wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well yeah, that's why it has that disclaimer. Everyone knows there's an obvious bias there.

Sure, just feels like a weird thing to call out, especially when you've admitted the bias is there.

This notion is everywhere and it's just dead wrong. It's still possible to think in the presence of biases. The fact that your opinion may be subject to some unconscious biased in some direction does not invalidate your opinion. Maybe it weights it in a way you're not aware of---but maybe not. Maybe they are fully aware of the fact that they could have some bias here but have enough data to think that their observation is still true in some significant way.

Re: “There are people who can see and others who cannot even look”

#83

Post by vanderZwan » Wed, May 21, 2025, 5:22 AM UTC

deanCommie wrote: post #80

ajkjk wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

American smiles in photos are mostly not fake, fwiw.

You will never convince Europeans of this. They simply seem to be unable to grasp that (1) cultural norms about introversion/extroversion and friendliness are not universal, and so the default baseline IS more outgoing, social, friendly, and extraverted in North America, and (2) because of the other differences in service industry culture [not necessarily themselves all positives but nevertheless relevant], the servi…

That's because the reference point of most Europeans is not the actual lived experience of people in the US but the picture painted by the media.

When I visited the US the smiles seemed sincere‚ no doubt about it. The interactions also felt strangely shallow, which was of course to be expected and even sensible in the cultural context (why go into depth with someone you barely know and will never see again), but that is the real reason it felt jarring compared to what I was used to, and often made it confusing to make sense of whether the politeness was sincere or not.

This was in California, and I have to add that I was 17 at the time so "making sense of other people" wasn't a highly developed skill yet to begin with.