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Comment by rayiner | Hacker News Reader

> About half of Americans (49%) and Germans (47%) agree with the statement, “Our people are not perfect, but our culture is superior to others;” 44% in Spain share this view. In Britain and France, only about a third or fewer (32% and 27%, respectively) think their culture is better than others.

The French only say that because they disagree with the "our culture is not perfect" bit.

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There's an unstated assumption that could be clarified:

- our culture is superior to some others

- our culture is superior to most others

- our culture is superior to all others

My answer would change depending on which of these I thought the question was asking. Would a native French speaker make a different assumption from a native English speaker? Would linguistic differences make all three equally possible in Spanish but only one possible in German? In other words, is it possible that language difference is significantly distorting our ability to spot attitude difference on this question?

Also remember that most people don't study culture and might think that means along the lines of "well my friends / people in my area are generally nice but I heard people in other countries are raping and killing each other".

What I'm trying to say is that as part of the study, asking people who responded what they thought culture meant might be really valuable to gauging the value of this question.

Oh look, French bashing, how very avant-garde.

rayiner's joke is aimed at this category of people :

>3. WE KNOW NOTHING ABOUT THE REST OF THE WORLD in this article : https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6037848

So, for people who only know France through Pepé le Pew, that is a good joke !

So are you saying it becomes funnier if you are more ignorant about the subject?

Pretty much, milking a stupid cliche. Most Americans' only exposure to France is stereotypes they've seen, or if they're more well traveled, exposure to Parisians. Which is like if I came from another country, visited NYC, and concluded that Americans were generally pretentious, almost never made eye contact, and paid obscene amounts for rent.

Ironic that you mention the cliche joke, then follow it up with a stereotype about Americans exposure to culture.

Yes and irony is often hilarious.

That stereotype is largely true, in my experience, having grown up in the US. There are, of course, exceptions, but they're exceptions. The snotty Frenchman is the exception, though, probably borne from our disproportionate exposure to Paris. So in that case the stereotype isn't warranted.

In fact, I love the French. But I'm not above making a low-brow joke for easy karma.

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