Your comment is derisive and not useful or appropriate. Not only do you mock the parent poster, but you don't provide any counter evidence besides a mixture of anecdotes and opinions.
Please work on your civility.
Please work on your civility.
I was wondering if you could expand on this part of your comment:
>>>I'm not the one making outrageous claims about there being bigger cultural differences between US states than between countries. It's just not true...
It seems like you are making a positive claim about the truth of the parent's statement about cultural differences.
>>>I can't provide data on it because there is no way to measure such a thing.
Now it seems like you are claiming that there is no (scientific, reality-based, data-driven) way to make any positive claims about the truth of the parent's statement about cultural differences.
Americans underestimate how much more diverse and I mean EXTREMELY diverse Europe is. Even in tiny European countries with just 10 million people, the languages, dialects, traditions, mentality, civility, are insanely different. It's hard to described until you visit a few countries yourself.
Americans who have never left the country will be quick to chime in and say "we're diverse too, especially new york". But they still don't get it.
When you compare the North American continent with the European continent on diversity, you'd be a fool to underestimate Europe. Let me put it this way, America's a melting pot. Europe is a continent with hundreds of millions of people living side by side for thousands of years and they still don't get along, or speak the same lanugage, or see eye to eye on issues, they all have their own separate countries and governments and just recently tried to form a union (EU).
Diversity is a lot more than just skin color.
I have come to realize that this is just a general psychological phenomenon. People tend to, if not overestimate the differences within their own group, then greatly underestimate the differences in outside groups.
Like how all asians look the same.
The small differences you are used to distinguish between simply doesn't exist in the other group, and you are not trained to recognize the differences they see.