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Comment by exitb | Hacker News Reader

In some places it's shameful to show one's hair, or to eat while you walk in public. In some, people don't think about those things at all. In others, the ability to do those things can be an expression of personal freedom.

What you experience is a cultural difference.

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Well, not quite. Not showing your hair or not eating in public may have meaning in somebody's culture/religion, but it doesn't hurt anyone else either way. Playing video/music without earphones does. And surely people must have experienced it from the other side when people nearby were playing music they didn't care for. I think it is reasonable for people to ask themselves "Would I like it if someone near me did <X>?", and if the answer is 'No' to not do it themselves. Maybe this is "shame" or maybe simple empathy.

Eating in public places not mean for eating subjects others to the smell of your food in the same way that listening to something on speaker subjects them to unwanted sound. Hijabs are more indirect but I would disagree that it doesn't affect others.

Have you traveled Latin America? Loud audio in public is so normal there that immigrants to Europe often can't see what all this fuss is about when people complain about loud phones on public transport. This is very much a mutable cultural thing.

> What you experience is a cultural difference.

In that not all cultures recognize causing negative externalities as a bad thing?

Negative externalities is culturally dependent. The Japanese consider the sight of a person eating while walking to be a negative externality. Are we going to start complaining here on HN about people doing it? No, we recognize that those taboos vary across time and space.

The difference is some taboos are just based on tradition, and others are based on actual damage. Nobody is hurt by seeing someone walking and eating -- they can just not look at them and the problem is solved. You can't not just hear the noise people inconsiderate not to use headphones make.

In cultures where the sight of certain things is taboo, telling a local person that they have to direct their gaze elsewhere feels as much of a rude imposition as someone's phone audio reaching your ears. Please try to step beyond your own cultural upbringing and realize how arbitrary and mutable all these things are.

But then people get angry if you don't want those "cultural differences" in your daily life. And when people question why you prefer private transportation.

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