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Comment by paulerdos | Hacker News Reader

"The Chinese have a mob mentality." Uhm, racist flag anyone? Are you really seriously accusing the Chinese of being any different than us? Would you say that someone could look at our behavior in the past decade, and say that we don't also exhibit the same jingoistic behavior?

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The Chinese citizens are certainly socially notably different from Western nations; it has nothing to do with race and everything to do with culture, and to assume that they are just the same as us just because biologically they are no different is silly. People are a largely a product of their upbringing; Americans 50 years ago certainly are different than Americans today.

Several of my friends have spent years working in China and they all comment about how almost no one believes in individualism in the same way that the average American does; that they don't care about civil rights or liberties (or give lip service to such ideals). That really does sound "different than us" to me.

"The Chinese citizens are certainly socially notably different from Western nations; it has nothing to do with race and everything to do with culture..."

Probably not. Why would it be 100% cultural and 0% biological? Because it makes you uncomfortable to admit any other possibility? I'm sorry, but reality doesn't care about your comfort level. It could be 100% cultural and 0% biological, or 90/10, or 50/50, or 20/80. I don't believe that the 100/0 scenario is very likely, because--despite your baseless assertion to the contrary--there are in fact real biological differences between East Asians and Europeans (or East Asians and South Asians, or any other racial group).

Obviously I can't say for sure, all I can speak to is anecdotal evidence that racially Chinese in America observably seem the same as Caucasian Americans in my experience. Even if there is some genetic difference, it seems clear that the vast majority of the difference is cultural and not genetic.

"Even if there is some genetic difference, it seems clear that the vast majority of the difference is cultural and not genetic."

This is just a rephrasing of the original baseless assertion. The relative contribution of genetic and cultural factors to group differences is not at all clear.

You appear to be arguing that local cultural factors when growing up are not responsible for the vast majority of differences in individual cultural behaviour when compared to genetic differences. From this it would seem safe to assume that you believe that a lot of cultural behaviour is not learned, but is encoded within the genome as some form of cultural predestination, which is then presumably expressed at the neuronal level while growing up. This would seem to fly in the face of pretty much all studies into brain plasticity and childhood development, and also makes no sense given the range of genetic diversity of the population we are discussing, which is one that contains well over a billion people.

That's not at all what I'm arguing. Nice strawman though.

What is your position then? As you seem to be just criticising other people's positions without putting forward what you actually think the situation is. If your position is just that we just don't completely know the situation, then that is fair enough, but that doesn't mean that all possibilities are equally likely.

My position is that a 100% culture, 0% biology explanation for group differences is highly unlikely given the fact that statistically significant biological differences do exist between "races" (groups that were geographically isolated from one another until several thousand years ago). Yes, I'm just criticizing, but it's a criticism that needs to be heard. We've allowed ourselves the comfort of believing that there are no inherent differences between groups of people for too long, and, basically, science says otherwise.

Except my response that you flamed me for I specifically said that it could be true that it is not 100% cultural 0% biological. If you are purposefully trolling, it's really lame. If you aren't purposefully trolling then you are trying so hard to push your political point that it is indistinguishable from trolling and isn't going to convince or enlighten anyone.

You said, "Even if there is some genetic difference, it seems clear that the vast majority of the difference is cultural and not genetic."

I simply pointed out that this is not clear at all.

I don't think you are understanding me correctly. Maybe you understand mob mentality differently to I.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mob_mentality

Watch the video of this riot ( http://v.youku.com/v_show/id_XNDUzOTYzMzQ0.html ) and tell me that it isn't clear signs of mob mentality. The pictures of the damage look bad but when you see the video it looks like a social gathering with people laughing (e.g. ~0:35) and nothing really going on, other than a handful of hooligans causing damage.

What, you think Chinese people are the only assholes who have riots?

Here's a bunch of mostly white Canadians having a riot http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4VzOUKODdZ4

No. How exactly are the videos of the Chinese and Canadian riots comparable? The most the Canadians rioters are destroying stuff. The Chinese are barely seen damaging anything.

It sounds like, instead of what is commonly referred to as "mob mentality" (which has a strongly negative connotation), you are suggesting that Chinese people are drawn to large crowds.

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