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Comment by StavrosK | Hacker News Reader

I came here to quote Feynman too, but a different part:

This question of trying to figure out whether a book is good or bad by looking at it carefully or by taking the reports of a lot of people who looked at it carelessly is like this famous old problem: Nobody was permitted to see the Emperor of China, and the question was, What is the length of the Emperor of China’s nose? To find out, you go all over the country asking people what they think the length of the Emperor of China’s nose is, and you average it. And that would be very “accurate” because you averaged so many people. But it’s no way to find anything out; when you have a very wide range of people who contribute without looking carefully at it, you don’t improve your knowledge of the situation by averaging.

It seems to me that they asked a bunch of people in the US why they think there is no looting in Japan...

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It strikes me as a theory with very poor explanatory power. We've seen many crises in the US as well, and Katrina was an exception. There have been a couple of others within my lifetime, but it's not politically correct to point out what similarities they may have. (I suppose I should point out this isn't a veiled reference to race, it's actually 100% cultural, but it's still not politically correct to discuss.) It is true in the US we always have to be at least a bit worried about looting, we can't quite completely write it off, but in general it doesn't happen, and we do have a very loose society by comparison to Japan's. Whatever the determining factor is, that is not it, at least not directly.

Sorry, not trying to anger anyone or anything, I am genuinely interested. Where in the US was there a natural disaster of significant scale where there was no looting?

I'm actually from Wisconsin, but was living in Cedar Rapids during the floods, and there was looting there. My neighbor was the cop chasing these guys down. I am just curious how other communities were able to avoid looting.

BTW, Cedar Rapids is in Iowa.

I'm from Cedar Rapids as well. You really need to qualify the claim there was looting in CR. The term is rather loaded and conjures visions of angry Iowans raiding the local Casey's on John Deeres. The burglary rates did rise somewhat; but there was definitely not a feeling on lawlessness or looting. During the height of the flood, thousands of citizens from across the city helped sandbag. The only thing that saved the last remaining water pumping station was a concerted effort to build a large sandbag wall against the Cedar River.

After the waters receded many groups helped clean up countless houses in the hard-hit areas. While I wouldn't say we have quite the serene calm of the Japanese, I think communities in the United States still can effectively work together.

http://www.sanitaryum.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/12/You-loo...

Not a disaster quite, but in Houston everyone evacuated from the hurricane and no one I knew reported any looting happening.

And people turned out to help, first to clean up their own blocks, then to help with citywide food banks.

In Japan and other Asian societies, individuals have stronger social ties to their families, neighbors, coworkers. In the US, economic ties are more important. The US was built by people who left their families, neighborhoods, and existing structures to seek their fortune in the US.

I apologize for a non-PC interjection. You can't totally separate race and culture in the US. When a group has differences in language, music, eating habits, values and other social interactions, it becomes useful to think about it as a subculture. At the risk of being non-PC, a 'black urban subculture' may license antisocial behavior that is considered more reprehensible in 'white suburban subculture'.

I hasten to add that people who are white may be strongly associate and be of high standing in 'black urban subculture' (ie Eminem), and people who are black may strongly associate and be of high standing in 'white suburban subculture,' (ie Obama) and that once you start making assumptions about people's values and cultural adherence based on the color of their skin you start crossing the line into racism, which I don't believe anyone of any race is entirely free of.

I think these sorts of occurrences have very strong group effects. If a few people start looting, soon many others will follow, even if they wouldn't really start otherwise. It may be that, in the case of Katrina, there just happened to be those few people who would start the looting.

If you can't even talk about the looting because of political correctness, then political correctness is part of the problem and not the solution.

>when you have a very wide range of people who contribute without looking carefully at it, you don’t improve your knowledge of the situation by averaging.

Modern democracy, anyone?

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