Comment by atoav | Hacker News Reader

Comment by atoav | Hacker News Reader

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I watched that evaluation yesterday and I think it is spot on and I second your recommendation. Many western officials (as most people) seem to be unable to put themselves into this different environment and framework of values. Knowing a lot about a country helps, but judging them by the values you'd have doesn't help you a bit.

Edit: Take the below with a grain of salt, this is one personal experience which can/should not be extrapolated from. There are good/bad people in all nations.

When I was 16 we were on vacation and played waterball in a pool against a russian family. When they realized we were winning (all members of my family were playing handball for life, so this was no wonder) they started to do things like pulling pants and punching underneath the water surface, scratching with the fingernails etc. They still lost.

Back then I could not understand why anyone would deploy such methods in a game during their vacation. For me personally, it would be entirely unpleasant and unenjoyable to envolve myself that much in a non-serious game. But maybe the answer is contained in that video: Maybe it is just much more normal to deploy the whole arsenal of what you can do in russian culture. I guess if you don't try everything and then loose you are seen as an idiot or as a weak person. I grew up in a culture where the rules of society are taken comparedly serious, so for me playing unfair is a sign of weakness (proof you cannot win by the rules).

Wow. When I was a kid I was on holiday playing together with Russians, Brits, Belgians and other German kids.

While the Russian kids were playing by the rules (at least not significantly outside of that) especially the British kiddos did everything they could to win the medals we received in these games from the hotel.

So what does my anecdata tell us? Nothing. I have great experiences with Russian people while I was cheated by Brits. Should I deduce all Russians are great people? Or all Brits are cheaters? Probably would be a bad idea.

There clearly are different cultures. But talking about that as if this means people a a homogenized blob of that culture does not pay justice to the people who went to the streets in Russia to protest against the war for example. Or to the people that only know the propaganda side of this war on any side.

> So what does my anecdata tell us? Nothing.

You are surely right there, but having played with a ton of kids from all nationalities as well (football, handball, whatever) this episode still stood out for me, because it was much more brutal than anything else I had experienced out of tournaments and "serious" games. The game in question here was not even a hotel tournament, it was just a "hey, wanna play a round"-kind of game.

However: as you rightly mentioned it is unwise to extrapolate from this one experience onto the character of a group of people (I added this in the post above). This was not my intention here, it was just a very memorable experience and I never quite understood why it escalated the way it did.

Should I judge all individuals by the country they come from? Within your own country, have you met people who are great and others who are not? Even within your own school or workplace?

Although governments that run countries would have you believe there is such a thing as a country - this is merely a fiction that is commonly believed. There are no countries, just beliefs. There are no collectives either - that too is a belief.

There really are individuals though.

Yes ofcourse we are all the same, people. But we people have been brought up in different cultures and been fed different naratives so we act differently depending on what we have been brought up to. We can learn to be one way or other to a certain degree.

Going on a different tangent, I watched an interesting video [1] from The Behavior Panel podcast attempting to discern tactics from Putin's social cues in parallel to the trustworthiness of his messaging and, whether the historical context he provided were reliable or not.

I think I can reasonably conclude from watching their perspective that he's masterful in deception.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VCXGQzuaNic

Do you think you should worry about Putin's social cues, or the one's our governance leaders give? Which is more meaningful in your life?

Always seeking to understand human behavior, when people say things to justify their otherwise contradictory actions. A simpler example would be reading HN from your own voice and not properly conveyed by others as human emotions are most often sterilized in text form.

Oi. Let us enjoy some anecdotes.

We all know that pretty much all of us here have nothing to really add to the discussion, so we might as well have some fun.

> Should I judge all individuals by the country they come from?

Interesting question, but not one that my post circled about. As someone who grew up at the border between three nations/languages I can assure you that even within a 100 mile radius differing history and culture can change how a average person from that nation behaves. This is curious and one can spend a lot of time pondering about where these slight differences come from – and learn a lot about other cultures and maybe even your own on the way.

What one should – however – not do is extrapolating the character of individuals from their perceived nationality (something I never suggested would be a good idea).

> There are no countries, just beliefs.

Citation needed. I also believe that the idea of the nation is indeed a story we tell ourselves. But firstly stories we tell ourselves are incredibly powerful: They shape actual physical reality and individual actions, and secondly the difference in languages does shape our thinking and our actions and this also has been studied. Nation borders are often also language borders.

I've only lived in 3 countries and all I have learned is that some people are good/nice/polite and some people are bad/ugly/rude regardelss of their nationality, religion or culture.

Do we need some kind of -ism for jerks? Or maybe just the term "jerks" is enough.

I fucking hate jerks. But sometimes jerks move in and out being classified as jerks, probably myself included, probably you too, dear reader. But when they're being jerks I fucking hate jerks. But if I haven't met them yet, then I haven't defined them as a jerk because in my life's experience I've met jerks that cross any and all classification boundaries; tall and short, old and young, male and female, American, Chinese, Canadian, Australian, Vietnamese, German, white-skinned, dark-skinned, olive-skinned, blue eyed, hazel-eyed, blonde-haired, ginger-haired, bald, purple-mohawked (that's actually not true, I've never come a cross a purple-mohawked jerk, but I'm sure someone has).

Everyone should rally against jerks, but there's no way to recognise one quickly and easily without going through the unpleasant interaction that tars them with the jerk brush.

And that's why we should dislike them, because they disguise themselves so well, and that's a learned skill of the jerk, because it'd be too difficult to go around being a jerk if there was an easy way to tell them all apart from the majority of nice people that make the world worthwhile enough to put up with jerk-kind.

> Do we need some kind of -ism for jerks?

We have one. narcissism, which is characterized by: Lack of empathy. Having an inflated sense of self-importance. Entitlement. Manipulative behavior. Needs constant admiration. Expects special treatment. Exaggerates achievements and talents. Reacts negatively to criticism, immediately will go on the offense. Being preoccupied with fantasies about power, success, and beauty. Secret anxiety due to feelings of inadequacy.

In man's search for meaning the author draws the same conclusion, describing Jewish prisoners who would cheat their fellow inmates for a priveledged position, and Nazi soldiers, who were also a bit hungry, because food was scarce, sneaking food to give to prisoners of the labor camps.

"There are two races of men in this world - the decent man and the indecent man."

-Viktor Frankl, 'Man's Search for Meaning'

Are you then claiming that 70% of Russians are jerks? Because that's the current approval rate of Putin according to the latest post-war poll by Levada. [1]

[1] https://www.levada.ru/2022/02/04/odobrenie-institutov-polozh...

Not if the media are state controlled.

Yes, ergo this take of ”people are either good or evil, regardless of country, religion etc.” is proven false

My grandfather was an actual Nazi, so I kinda know what the wrong culture can make of people.

The common people are not "all the same". They can be made to hate and kill others, and under some leaders, in some eras and so on.

Yet — extrapolating from predominant culture in a country to everybody living in it is wrong as well.

I grew up in a 40% right wing environment and I got out of there as soon as I had the chance. Others either don't have the chance or can't so it because other things bind them to a place. The free spirits in such places suffer immensly. Yet you could argue that you are not helping them if you just tolerate their outrageous leaders.

No offense but I don't see much difference between this and "a black person was mean to me once".

Indeed, but this was an entire family of mean people, so the prejudice has been justified!

I'm not sure if it's in the same vein, and I'm showing my youth here, but:

In primary/elementary school there were a couple of Russian students. One called Vova was in my class. One day he stole my Pokémon game. Fair(ish) enough, others had stolen other stuff at that school occasionally. But no, he wiped my save file and then went on a tirade of lies to the teachers that it had been his game all along.

It utterly baffled young me as to why you'd go to those lengths.

This reminds me of the way my troop used to play "greased watermelon" in boyscouts in America. Basically get a watermelon greased up with vaseline, throw it into the lake and let everybody battle royale over it. There were usually some black eyes by the end of it, but it was a lot of fun.

That’s a real thing?! I thought it was a random Always Sunny plotline haha. What a strange game.

https://youtu.be/AV2cy84Qh8U

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