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[SalmonGod]

Continuing an off-topic tangent from the Holy Shit Japan thread.

The reason why I quoted that proverb is actually because it's Japanese, and very, very common.  No, not "the squeaky wheel gets the grease."  "The nail that sticks up gets pounded down."

I've read that, in Japanese culture, if someone says they like your tie then you're expected to stop wearing it--it means that it stuck out from the other ties.  When I was learning the language, I was taught to never express an opinion as true and preface everything with "it seems," especially as a woman.  Female students at the other school were chastised for saying any negative statement stronger than "Oh, my!"  This includes saying things like "drat."  In any circumstance.

In Chinese culture, they have sayings like "gold does not fear the fire" and so on.  My interpretation was that it was actually far more individualistic.  They don't have the same social hierarchies, rituals, and expectations of perfect social harmony.  It's hierarchical, but not in the same way.  Two politeness levels instead of four or so.  No bowing.  No need to memorize seating arrangement charts so that you will always know precisely where you need to sit, based on your personal ranking.

None of this "shikata ga nai" crap.  That literally means "there is no traditional way to do it."  Idiomatically, it means "it's impossible."


I don't know.  I think we're on different sides of a divide, where on my side I'm enraged at the status quo and want to disrupt everything, and you're... tired?  It's not that people who don't join should be tread upon; it's that I feel that I, and other people, will be tread upon--in a particularly negative way--if I'm not disruptive.

This may just be due to different life stages, though.

What you describe about the Japanese is exactly what I've always heard about the Chinese.  I've heard stories from people doing business over there who offered employees awards for excellent work, and ended up embarrassing them by singling them out.

In Japan, my impression is they put the same kind of effort into being accomodating towards each other without the need for uniformity.  They're like the bizarre fetish, hobby, and idea capital of the world.  Plus, they have a celebrity culture comparable to ours.  Their society works like a machine, but every gear in that machine is free to paint itself whatever crazy colors it wants so long as it continues to do its job unobtrusively.  That's my impression anyway.  I've never actually been there, and I know there's a bias as an outsider to notice only the outlandish.  I'm also pretty sure Japan used to be much much more conservative than they are today, so that often leads to mix ups.

But that's beside the point of the discussion, anyway.  Ultimately this is about the way different cultures go about disagreement.  My ideal resolution of any conflict is to cooperate calmly on figuring out which side of the debate has more merit, and if that isn't applicable or possible, then figuring out how best to co-exist. 

Growing up mostly in small town Indiana may have something to do with this, but American culture seems to be more about who can do more damage to the other (in ways that don't have to be related to the disagreement).  The loser is the first to hesitate at the stakes, and winner takes all.  If this way of going about things doesn't seem right to you to begin with, then you automatically lose.  It doesn't seem matter how petty the disagreement is.  If you're not willing to step up and do some damage over any personal challenge, you're not seen as mature, just weak.  I'm sick of being surrounded by people like this.  It feels like the entire country is a never-ending temper tantrum party.

And this isn't to say that I'm avoidant of conflict or anything like that.  I get equally frustrated with people being apathetic.  It seems like Americans will eagerly fuck up each other's lives over petty shit, while at the same time indulging a bottomless hunger for blue pills, and this bothers me to no end.  I just want people to make honest, mature attempts at actually resolving conflicts constructively.

This kind of turned into a personal rant.  I'm not even sure I should post it anymore... but I'll go ahead and see where it goes.

[Vector]

Gotta say, as far as Japan goes, everything I've heard about it, ever, discouraged that painting-the-self-crazy-colors thing.  It's been posited that the bizarre parts of Japanese culture are sort of pressure valves for the extreme self-regulation requested.  Those who indulge in it to the point where it could be noticed by others are ostracized.

I don't know if you've heard of para-para, but that's the synchronized arm movements fans learn and perform at concerts.  Seriously... I've never heard of any individual movement, ever.  Even the kids that dress up like Elvis and go dance in the streets do so in large groups, with set practiced moves.


I can't really speak to Californian culture about disagreement.  I know that in mathematical culture, disagreement is highly encouraged so long as it is productive.  You don't disagree with someone too many ranks higher than you unless you are pretty much 3000% sure you're correct.  Otherwise, you're expected to (at most) ask them to explain their reasoning.  If you ask something obvious that you'd be able to understand without feedback, they're allowed to shame you (often subtly).  Mathematicians, anyway.  Students don't have that privilege.  Those who attempt to pull rank on their professors often end up having vengeance taken upon them later as the professor in question pretends to be a bumbling old fool and ties them in knots.

It's kind of considered polite to tell someone that they're wrong and forbid them from finishing their sentence, because that saves everyone time.  Students have shouting arguments that seem to be instantly defused by arriving at the correct answer.  It's really weird to me, because I can go in other areas and people on the receiving end of such an argument will immediately become defensive.  I'll start arguing some point loudly, they start making big ad hominem attacks, everything falls apart.  I'm used to us shouting at each other for a long time, with lots of statements about things being obvious or 'don't object again until you understand this point,' and cussing.  Then, once we've got the solution, it's all clear.

It's statements that are made when you're calm that are considered fighting words, oddly enough.  They spawn disagreement.  Looking in someone eyes and saying "that's trivial" is basically a display of aggression greater than any snarling, chalk-spewing, arm-waving fight, and it's at that point that you basically stop talking to them politely and start trying to drag them down.

[SalmonGod]

It's statements that are made when you're calm that are considered fighting words, oddly enough.  They spawn disagreement.  Looking in someone eyes and saying "that's trivial" is basically a display of aggression greater than any snarling, chalk-spewing, arm-waving fight, and it's at that point that you basically stop talking to them politely and start trying to drag them down.

I get in trouble with this a lot.  I hate yelling.  I hate being overly animated.  It serves no purpose.  It feels like expressing hatred, which is not what I want to do.  When someone tries to make a point to me by yelling and waving their arms, my immediate impression is that they don't really have a point and just desperately want to be seen as right anyway and are going about it with a display of aggression, or they're just that eager to express their dislike.  Yet people either assume their superiority and/or get even more offended when I don't return that style of display.  This disconnect has always been a problem for me, and seems to be a common introvert/extrovert point of contention.

It's not just displays that I'm talking about, though.  Actual damage and raising of stakes with real consequences seems to be a common feature of conflict for no reason whatsoever.  "I'm right because I can fire you.  I'm right because I can beat the crap out of you.  I'm right because I can tell lies about you.  I'm right because otherwise I will kick and scream and break things and break you until I get my way."  Whoever's the first to make a threat the other can't match wins. 

[mainiac]

When I think of American cultures, I always think of subcultures.  I think of myself as American, but I think of myself as a very particular kind of American.  Until now, I've always kind of assumed that other cultures are like that, overarching cultural themes but with a thousand different cultural undercurrent underneath that an outsider won't pick up on.  But what Vector says makes me wonder.  Can the tendency towards subcultures actually be inhibited by social norms?

I read somewhere that while Japan is pretty deferential, Korea is the most deferential culture in the world towards authority.  Before they started training them to speak up, Korean co-pilots used to let planes crash because they didn't want to correct their superiors.

[Vector]

Ah, well, you wave your arms because you're communicating with them.  Like, in my experience:

Palm up, contracting fingers quickly like you're squeezing something: fundamental system of neighborhoods, nets, filters, particular neighborhood that is "nice"
Hand from A to B, then B to A: bijection/isomorphism
Arm from behind you to a quick jab upwards: embedding

There's all sorts of hand signals I've seen math people use, and they tend to be big so that they're completely unambiguous that you're signaling.  When you're talking quickly, they can be a real godsend.  Talking loudly is also partially about enunciation.  When you're discussing something with a lot of letters in it, it has to be very clear that you're talking about a homomorphism vs. a homeomorphism, or an isomorphism vs. an automorphism.  Your letters and pronunciation have to be completely unambiguous.  This often means that you get pretty loud, and you'll speaking extra-loudly on certain syllables and letters to make sure that the listener knows you're changing what you're talking about.  For example, if you have "s and s prime," you'd say the "prime" about twice as loudly, with a pause.

This isn't like angry yelling and screaming, though, it's just loud.  Chalk gets all over the place because you'll be writing on the board as you illustrate your points with two other media simultaneously, and you have to be writing a. rather large b. fairly darkly and c. quickly.  Why?  Because you have more than 10 different alphabets you're going to be picking the letters from, and the difference between script N and capital letter N without serifs can seriously change the meaning your reader will receive.

Furthermore, saying "but you are wrong!" and refusing to budge after you've explained your argument three times and written it all out for the other person to read is just plain reasonable.  Remember, it's not something either of you has an opinion about, or emotions invested in other than a sort of austere artistic appreciation.  If you're wrong, then you really want to close your mouth as soon as possible.

It's not about posturing, it's about doing whatever has to be done to communicate, and even though I say argument, a better word might be "shared explanation process."

Getting actually angry would just be pointless.

I read somewhere that while Japan is pretty deferential, Korea is the most deferential culture in the world towards authority.  Before they started training them to speak up, Korean co-pilots used to let planes crash because they didn't want to correct their superiors.

You read that in Malcolm Gladwell's book, Outliers =)

And yes, the Korean language has 7 politeness levels.  As a friend said, it's like Japan taken up to 11.

[chaoticag]

Speaking from the Chinese history class I took, I'd like to point out that China does have sub-cultures, but these are not how you'd think of subcultures per-se. It's kinda like the how the US has an overarching culture of individuality. China has an overarching culture of homogeneity, so pretty much the opposite. Subcultures there are more or less what people do, and they don't particularly want to stand out. Hell, in the cultural revolution, the closest thing I can think of in terms of in terms of teen rebellion, students got organized, wore the same uniform, and did the same activities. Within that subculture, you were pretty much considered an androgynous person in a uniform. So let's not dismiss Asian cultures as devoid of sub-cultures, we're just focusing on the overarching culture due to how different it is from ours.

[Armok]

This discusion looks to heated for me to really participate in, so I'll just provide some fodder instead:

Cultures to discus: Iceland (seem to have disproportionate amounts of niceness , formidability, and progressiveness), Finland (great exporter of badassery, and also seem to dominate a suspicious amount of online demographics)

What Vector is talking about seems a lot like http://www.sl4.org/crocker.html

Something I saw a while ago about china: http://www.ted.com/talks/martin_jacques_understanding_the_rise_of_china.html

[Vector]

... Suddenly, I feel more educated.  Thanks, Armok!

The only thing about that is that it seems to focus more on intentional self-adoption of certain rules, rather than an entire culture that has adopted them and expects you to figure it out or get out.  No one tells you "if someone has a higher rank than you, don't talk to them."  They just let you know that your attention is unwanted.

*sigh*

So, yeah, I guess that you could say the general mathematical society runs under those rules in general, though there are ways to let people know that you're actually attempting to perform aggressive behavior and issuing a challenge.  There is a competitive streak among peers, but in my experience it only shows up very rarely in any form other than "that person solved a problem I couldn't solve, so I have to study harder so that I don't fall behind."

[chaoticag]

One thing that bugs me about the TED Talk was the sheer amount of extrapolation of the Chinese economy, especially since an economy cannot grow indefinitely. If China wants to meet those projected numbers, they'll have a lot of hurdles to jump, especially since their growth rate was more due to changes in policy 30 years ago. You can doub;e production in a year by building your second factory, but once you get past small scale stuff, infrastructure can become a problem, demand, supply, and all that stuff as well. While China still has a good chance of overtaking the West, it just seems those projections were optimistic.