The negative reaction is probably because while you can argue this position from a perspective of wisdom (re impossibility to quantify cultural differences) many Europeans have plenty of prior experience with arguing this from a perspective of ignorance (i.e. failing to consider even basic things like the implications of language differences making you resort to sign language a few 100km from where you live.)
Technically your argument didn't necessarily show any signs of such ignorance, but statistically speaking it would have been quite likely.
I don't think we actually really disagree here at all. I was objecting mostly to the perceived sentiment that the idea of one culture being better than another is DOA.
There really isn't. Europeans consistently wildly overestimate the difference in cultures between countries. The language barriers probably don't help there.
Please don’t dismiss a cultural argument as a bias against a culture.
It should be perfectly fine to hypothesise about the impact of cultures. I’m a German living in Sweden, and I can tell you that even though the cultures are very similar, there are differences that have a massive impact. Sweden is highly digital, Germany feels like stone age in comparison. And that has almost exclusively cultural reasons: after decades of Nazi and Easy/West split, Germany became brutally cautious around anything involving privacy.
Hopefully this example illustrates that cultural reasons are an important factor in discussing societies, and should not automatically be dismissed as someone having a bias for or against a certain culture.
Remarking on possible cultural differences between countries is in no way a rebuttal of the actual point. A rebuttal of the actual point would be "In my country, men and woman both speak the same" not "I see myself as more polite than you because of the cultural norms for my country being different from the cultural norms for your country."
> Sure, you can find measurable differences, but measurability in and of itself is not a sign of significance.
I agree. The question now becomes whether in this particular case those measurable differences are in any way significant. Stereotypes are sometimes true in a statistical sense. Anyway, I don't have any data to answer this question; I was only trying to point out asserting probable cultural differences may be wrong in a factual sense, but it shouldn't automatically be treated wrong in a moral sense.
> relying on orientalist generalisations that were originally applied to people in Egypt by the French, before being reapplied to the Chinese and Japanese when the concept of the orient was moved east
I haven't thought about that (thanks to my rather small knowledge about the evolution of cultural stereotypes). Thank you for this insight, I'll keep it in mind.
Because I live in a western liberal democracy and have been indoctrinated to believe that differences between cultures have no qualitative bearing, they are merely choices among equal values, and as such I cannot possibly comprehend such blatant facts.
Sorry for the tacit assumption of the audience of HN, but I think that demanding constant awareness of all possible cultural differences is quite inadequate.
Anyway, I don’t see how those links disprove my point? Those cultures have different expectations; and my point is that those expectations are valid.
" In the 17th century, philosophers were remarking (in Latin, the universal language!) about how Descartes from France had more in common with Leibniz from Germany than either of them did with the average Frenchman or German. Nowadays I certainly have more in common with SSC readers in Finland than I do with my next-door neighbor whom I’ve never met."
The crux of the issue/problem. Distribution is non-uniform and very chunky. At this point I am convinced that if there exists natural 'types' of mindset and behavior, they cross cut (far less intrinsic) ethnic and cultural boundaries.
That this is some wishful thinking that the “differences” between incompatible parts of cultures are just language barriers.
It’s funny that everyone brings up Muslims while one is likely to have harder times finding English speakers in many parts of Europe than in many parts of the Middle East.
But somehow you don’t dehumanize French or Italian ruralists?
> About half of Americans (49%) and Germans (47%) agree with the statement, “Our people are not perfect, but our culture is superior to others;” 44% in Spain share this view. In Britain and France, only about a third or fewer (32% and 27%, respectively) think their culture is better than others.
The French only say that because they disagree with the "our culture is not perfect" bit.
I think the point being made was that the issue of communication across cultures is inherently low context, so it is not reasonable to assume a shared cultural context when talking across this boundary. This may mean it would be better to be clear and direct as to minimize misunderstandings.
Judging one lifestyle to be a superior society seems to be a value judgement.
It's hardly a nuetral unbiased assessment when it's literally Europeans saying "who has two thumbs and superior culture" as they photograph themselves amongst a pile of dead indigenous people and ship a bunch of heads home to pickle for the phrenologists.
Technically your argument didn't necessarily show any signs of such ignorance, but statistically speaking it would have been quite likely.
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