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Comment by throwaway2037 | Hacker News Reader

throwaway2037

I here this trope so much. It is tiring and closed-minded. Are you Western culture and male? Probably. I have seen whole blog posts dedicated to this matter. Really? This matter is so stressful that people need to write 100s of words about it? Sheesh.

Are you aware that it is polite to start a convo with people from South Asia with a small greeting? They wait for you to ack. If you don't ack, they will not continue.

It is an important part of intercultural communication to continuously adapt to different communication styles.

Why don't people write a tiny chatbot that applies to certain users? When the person says: "Hello." The bot can reply: "Hello!" It seems easy enough.

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Also some cultures put the pressure of communication on the listener.

Say, you're in the same town as a friend and want to meet them. The American approach might be to ask, "Hey, I'm in town. Want to hang out?" The sender has done their job of delivering a clear message.

But some cultures would just say, "Hey, I'm in town."

That removes the pressure from the other person to say no, I don't want to see you.

You can also bat it back and say, "Joe's is a nice place to eat if you like burgers," which hints that you're available to have lunch together, but it could also mean a polite "ok".

But the ack is there to make sure the other person is paying attention before delivering the message, so they don't misinterpret it.

I don't necessarily think one is better. TCP vs UDP. If it's an important message, an American might still say, "We have to talk."

> They wait for you to ack. If you don't ack, they will not continue

Which is possibly one of the (admittedly probably very minor) reasons why they were left so far behind economically. Focusing on form over function in communication can be very counterproductive.

Not that I'm saying that saying "Hello, how are you?" to someone is waste of time. However certain people/cultures really go overboard with this and expected outsider to comply with these norms when they have much better things to do is not the most sensible idea.

Who decides which side should do the adapting?

Oh, that one's easy.

You are entitled to no adaptation from others. Your reactions to their "errors" are your problem, and your responsibility, although of course you can choose to start a fight over whatever you want.

On the other hand, if you do not adapt to them, sometimes they will choose to start a fight over it, or be offended, or whatever. As such, if you want to improve your social outcomes, consider allocating energy to adapting to others.

See? Simple. No centralized decision-making necessary. Each person can ruin their own life however they choose.

This genuinely misunderstands people from internal-only diverse cultures like Mainland Chine and India where they make frequent social faux pas yet are convinced they could never be uncomfortable or offensive to other cultures because "my country is so diverse!". If I had one Euro for each I heard that, I would be richer.

My general rule: If you are from an externally diverse cultural then you need to adapt to non-diverse cultures (Japan Korea etc) or internal-only diverse cultures (South Asia, Southeast Asia). If you cannot adapt to other cultures, then what is the point of working in a multicultural setting?

Do you want to talk or do you want information? Asking a question gets you the requested information when I respond, and a Hello is a request to talk.

Asking for a hello is holding the information until I'm engaged, at which point we should just meet for 5 minutes because it will be faster.

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