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As an Indian, I think here some points I think western world needs to know about India. * "Gaming the system" to get your desired outcome is widely accepted in

As an Indian, I think here some points I think western world needs to know about India. * "Gaming the system" to get your desired outcome is widely accepted in Indian society. Especially if it doesn't involve breaking any laws (not ethics). Even in many cases Gaming the system by breaking the law is considered OK as long as one doesn't get caught doing it. (In fact this might be the only way to come up in politics in India, but that's another debate.) Once they are caught the general attitude is "they had it coming". Consider this highflying Indian start up, Unacademy[1][2]. Here is their anthem [3], "Let's crack it". This "crack it" is basically about "Gaming it" and succeed at it any how. * Majority of Indians have a lot of attraction towards free. I have seen even people from millionaire families, spend 10-15 minutes of their time to get something free that is of $1 or $2 in value. The attitude is like, am I doing anything else productive here? If not I might as well do this and earn Rs. 100. In fact this attitude is cultivated from childhood in certain business class families. Don't let go of any opportunity of earning a profit, however small it might be. Here we are talking about student population which is generally low on cash anyway. So if you are any company offering something free to Indians, expect them to come in droves, and milk you as much as possible. Here I think Digital Ocean doesn't mind being well known in Indian students. Many of these Indian Students are going to make purchasing decisions on servers in a few years to come. Unfortunately, it's the OSS community suffering because of it now. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unacademy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unacademy [2] https://unacademy.com/ https://unacademy.com/ [3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XvIfiblHz1I https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XvIfiblHz1I

jokethrowaway 6y ago
I wouldn't say it's an Indian only phenomenon, plenty of that everywhere
- throwaway_pdp09 6y ago
  But to that intensity, ingrained-ness? That's not how it is in the UK[0] - to anywhere near that degree I mean. edit: the UK is the only culture I'm really familiar with
  - avighnay 6y ago
    you did rob us with unparalleled intensity over 300 years, is that ingrained? edit: I only know UK as an imperialist
    - pettycashstash2 6y ago
      This made me chuckle. I only know US as an immigrant.
      - throwaway_pdp09 6y ago
        Likewise. Had a good giggle, so who's so sensitive they have to flag and kill?
    - throwaway_pdp09 6y ago
      Ah, sorry :) More seriously, I have heard on a TV programme, and I have NO DATA for this, that britain put more resources and/or cash into the US than it ever got out (edit: until the US became independent, which is about the 300 years the poster mentioned). Does anyone know reliable sources that can verify, refute or somehow qualify that statement? Edit: why is the parent post flagged and dead? Flagging should be used for proper offence, which I did not take and led me to an interesting question.
      - avighnay 6y ago
        Glad that no offence was taken, my intent was to throw spot light on the root comment where it is easy to generalize on any human community. We all need to restrain ourselves from that urge. I don't mind it being flagged either, it does happen when perspectives are not fully understood either side.
  - avereveard 6y ago
    well check out italy, you can substitute italian with indians and keep the entire paragraph almost word for word. I suspect it's a common theme of countries that managed to keep an identity while under a long foreign domination. when the state is the enemy for generations, the ethics and norm about law and legality become a lot more flexible.
- fetbaffe 6y ago
  Sure, but you always have to ask, to what degree? If it is more prevalent than in other societies then you can definitely call it a phenomenon.
  - srtjstjsj 6y ago
    It's pretty well correlated to wealth inequality. The more wealthy cheaters there are, the more the masses are pro-cheating for themselves.
jnsaff2 6y ago
I live in a post-soviet country and the ~50 years of soviet planned-economy, arbitrary laws and constant shortages combined with an illegitimate regime (as any foreign power that is ruling by force on your turf is by definition) meant that people got a pretty deep ingrained attitude of "gaming the system" even tho there's almost 30 years of self rule. It is slowly fading away and being replaced by the capitalist "growth hacking" which I'm not sure is a lot different.
- Farbklex 6y ago
  Can agree. Gaming the system was the norm in Russia. E.g. you couldn't buy or sell apartments. If you wanted one, you had to "move in" with someone and the other person would then "move out" later. Payment was handled under the radar. Hearing the stories from my parents, just getting furniture for a new apartment was already hard, since sometimes it just was not available. This mentality now still lives on in a lot of us.
- unishark 6y ago
  > It is slowly fading away and being replaced by the capitalist "growth hacking" which I'm not sure is a lot different. There's definitely a blurry line there. I'm not completely clear what "growth hacking" means, but I definitely think SEO crosses a line (basically hacking google's algorithm to mislead them and their customers). Even worse would be things like paying for fake traffic to drive up ad revenue. People generally understand there is a line between legitimate business and scamming people, even when greed/desperation drives them to bend the rules somewhat and rationalize it.
  - teddyh 6y ago
    To quote myself: “I’ve yet to see something called a “growth hack” that wasn’t unethical.” — https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16829121#16829957 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16829121#16829957
- bovermyer 6y ago
  Estonia?
unmole 6y ago
> his "crack it" is basically about "Gaming it" and succeed at it any how. While I don't disagree with the rest of your comment, this is not accurate. Unacademy focuses on test prep and thier anthem while sappy and gung ho, doesn't really have any references to gaming the system. Crack it is in the same vein as Cracking the Coding Interview,
- k_sze 6y ago
  Which is gaming the system, if you ask me. Cracking coding interviews would be considered “overfitting” in statistical learning parlance. You may ace the interview, but for most people the performance at coding interviews has no correlation with performance in actual work.
  - unmole 6y ago
    Overfitting? Sure. But gaming the system? I disagree. Hell, I've heard of companies giving candidates the book to help them prepare for the interview. It's not ideal but this is what the system expects.
    - brunoc 6y ago
      "Don't hate the player, hate the game"
      - rutthenut 6y ago
        Can still hate them for playing the game, if that involves disdain for ethical principles one actually believes in
    - belval 6y ago
      FAANG will usually send you a few slides on what algorithms and data structures to prepare.
      - MertsA 6y ago
avighnay 6y ago
One more very Indian thing perhaps also is we like to gladly flog ourselves and jump at the chance of discrediting our people. We will start with "As an Indian" but end with "They" instead of "We"
- aniforprez 6y ago
  I'm frankly kind of sick of the constant denigration and apologies being written slavishly to foreigners on behalf of all Indians by Indians. As an Indian, I accept there's a lot of cultural problems and crap in the country but to the degree that people will prostrate before the Western elite reminds me of our colonial days. Like, literally everything in that paragraph could be written about literally any part of the world cause humans are just that shitty. In this particular case, the person making the video made it in Hindi so it very specifically created a spike from Indian users I wish my fellow Indians would stop this constant self flagellation and appeasement and have some goddamn pride
  - solarengineer 6y ago
    We do go the other extreme and take credit for what Indians do and "Ancient Indians" did.
  - plibither8 6y ago
    Couldn't have said this better myself. "For many Indians, self-flagellation is a sign of their intellectual arrival". This was a line I read long ago and it desribes the situation so well.
  - jsjohnst 6y ago
    > I wish my fellow Indians would stop this constant self flagellation and appeasement and have some goddamn pride I don’t see it as an Indian thing (or a Greece thing as someone else replied). It’s a failing of all of global humanity that anything you can get away with is “ok” to 10-49% of the world’s population (have no concrete source, but I “feel” it’s below 50%, but still a significant number). The US President got up on stage just this week and essentially answered the question “why did you pay so little taxes in 2016-2017?” with the response “because I could! Don’t like the tax laws? BLAME JOE!”, taking zero responsibility for his own actions.
throw0101a 6y ago
> If not I might as well do this and earn Rs. 100. In fact this attitude is cultivated from childhood in certain business class families. Don't let go of any opportunity of earning a profit, however small it might be. The Ferengi from Star Trek come to mind when I read this. * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ferengi https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ferengi * https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Ferengi https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Ferengi The Rules of Acquisition are always a fun read: * https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Rules_of_Acquisition https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Rules_of_Acquisition In this case Rule 3 would probably apply: > Never spend more for an acquisition than you have to.
- test1235 6y ago
  I always used to wonder if the races in the star trek universe had any correlation with human ethnicities.
  - zentiggr 6y ago
    I wouldn't say ethnicities... The Ferengi serm to be a personified contrasting ideology against the "we don't need money anymore" of the Federation. Not to say that people won't overlay their own prejudices over what's actually there, but i see just an explicit contrast of ideas about economies.
  - fennecfoxen 6y ago
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ferengi#Comparisons_with_anti-Semitic_stereotypes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ferengi#Comparisons_with_anti-...
  - rightbyte 6y ago
    If you watch the first appearence of the Klingons they are obviously Mongol raiders. Later they are vikings?
  - krapp 6y ago
    Less ethnicities than cultures and metaphors. Darmok notwithstanding. The Klingons were originally intended to look Asiatic and resemble Mongols or Japanese samurai, with the Klingon Empire being essentially the Soviet Union In Space. And there is an uncomfortable elephant in the room that Klingons, a species mostly known for violence and bloodlust, are all (or almost all) black coded. While the implications are obviously unintentional, it's impossible not to draw parallels in the history in sci-fi and fantasy to the "swarthy, dark-skinned savage" archetype. Speaking of which here[0] is a video on Klingons and the history of racial coding in Star Trek if anyone is interested. The relationship between Cardassians and Bajorans is clearly a metaphor for post-war Germany, with the former being Nazis and the latter Jews. Romulans, obviously, are Space Romans. The Borg clearly represent the dehumanizing effect of technology and collectivism, making them a perfect foil for the Federation with its techno-utopian ideals. I've heard but can't prove that the Borg were meant to be a parody of Japanese business culture. There are alien stand ins for racial prejudice from "Let That Be your Last Battlefield" and nonbinary gender persecution from "The Outcast," and the Trill species in general. In cases like these, the aliens are meant to serve as a mirror to some aspect of humanity. And of course the Ferengi have already been discusssed here. Although in one egregious case (TNG's "Code of Honor")[1] the "aliens" were literally just African caricatures in space. And of course TOS gives us planets with literal space Nazis, space Romans, space Cowboys, space Greek Gods, space whatever costumes they could scrounge from the Desilu lot that week. [0]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cqbSQWKV_T8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cqbSQWKV_T8 [1]https://trekmovie.com/2020/06/14/jonathan-frakes-and-denise-crosby-cant-see-star-trek-tngs-racially-charged-code-of-honor-playing-now/ https://trekmovie.com/2020/06/14/jonathan-frakes-and-denise-...
_dbdw 6y ago
"Gaming the system" is also a cultural thing in Greece. In fact, it's so expected that you are perceived to be either out of the loop or a fool for not going the extra mile. I broke friendships with people who claimed that "it's all subjective at the end of the day" whenever I was raising ethical/moral concerns. Imagine not being able to provide a reasonable argument to justify your actions, beyond of "because I'm allowed to do it".
- farias0 6y ago
  The exactly same goes for Brazil. Am I seeing a pattern here, i.e. countries that are supposed to be great but really aren't?
  - fetbaffe 6y ago
    Pattern is high trust societies vs low trust societies.
    - disgruntledphd2 6y ago
      Yeah, personally I think this has a lot to do with post-colonialism. I'm Irish, and there's a lot of this in our society. It was much more accepted in my parents generation, and appears to be reducing a little bit as we become a richer society.
      - rbanffy 6y ago
        I heard from an Irish colleague (I'm a Brazilian expat in Dublin) that this attitude, in particular towards taxes, changed after the independence from the UK.
        disgruntledphd2 6y ago
        So yes and no. My parents are pretty old (they had kids late) and they really don't like telling revenue (the taxman) anything, and would be inclined to overlook tax avoidance and whatnot. My wife's parents are of a similar age, and also similar on this. Now, all of them were born a generation after independence, so it's definitely not just that. However, when the government has historically not given a crap about you (as the British government did not), it leads to a disconnect from the society and institutions that increases the probability that you'll be OK with tax dodging and not have as much trust in the overall society (because historically, it didn't care about you). So, I'd say that it's slowly changing because we're not a colony anymore, but it definitely didn't just disappear in a puff of smoke in 1921.
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swiley 6y ago
Pathological behavior being part of a culture isn't an excuse for it. If everyone acted this way open source couldn't exist.
- exabrial 6y ago
  I know your comment is in good faith because the core of what you're saying is correct, and I'm certainly not accusing you of anything... Instead of 'part of the culture' though I would phrase it as 'correlated with the culture' to avoid accidentally giving supremacists ammunition. The point being, you have to rise above your circumstances. Just because everyone you grew up with is doing something gravely immoral doesn't make it correct. No culture should exude pathological behavior as a trait.
  - cotelletta 6y ago
    Your attempt at couching your comment in disclaimers is hilarious. You don't just give supremacists ammunition, you make everyone laugh at the absurdity. "Part of the culture" is bad... And "correlated with the culture" is good. But "exude pathological behavior" is where you end. Have you figured out yet that language policing is just tiptoeing around the things you're not supposed to notice?
- DanBC 6y ago
  http://www.paulgraham.com/founders.html http://www.paulgraham.com/founders.html > 4. Naughtiness > Though the most successful founders are usually good people, they tend to have a piratical gleam in their eye. They're not Goody Two-Shoes type good. Morally, they care about getting the big questions right, but not about observing proprieties. That's why I'd use the word naughty rather than evil. They delight in breaking rules, but not rules that matter. This quality may be redundant though; it may be implied by imagination. > Sam Altman of Loopt is one of the most successful alumni, so we asked him what question we could put on the Y Combinator application that would help us discover more people like him. He said to ask about a time when they'd hacked something to their advantage—hacked in the sense of beating the system, not breaking into computers. It has become one of the questions we pay most attention to when judging applications. Everyone breaking a rule will say that they're doing this. They'll claim they're just bending the rules. Even when they're engaged in massive law breaking behaviour they'll claim that those laws don't really matter and that the ends justify the means. Hacktoberfest highlights the problem with this paragraph of Graham's. Hundreds of thousand of people being "naughty", hacking the system, cause problems for other people.
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viro 6y ago
This is one of the reasons Indians cheating on the OSCP is such an issue. I don't know if they realize that destroys the value of the cert for everyone... cool you got the cert but now its worthless.
ssivark 6y ago
This has less to do with India, and more about what happens when there’s no prior culture of open source, to balance against the willingness to “hustle”. The fact that a lot of these PRs might originate in India is only relevant insofar as there are a lot of people willing to hustle, and don’t have much open source experience. Chances are that they are oblivious to what happens on the other side of the table, and open source projects are abstract entities (which might as well be run by Github, or some other bureaucracy!) A useful reminder that the celebrated “hustle” is susceptible to the unintended consequences of Goodhart’s law. If this was Sean Parker with Napster or Zuck with early Facebook, we’d be celebrating it. (For all those who advocate for growth hacking techniques, or annoying ads, this is exactly how scummy most such techniques / dark patterns feel to users. I don’t think that is geographically localized in any way.)
edoloughlin 6y ago
It might be a post-colonial cultural artifact. Speaking as an Irish person, we have a similar regard for bending rules, which is only beginning to show signs of change recently.
teawrecks 6y ago
Now all they have to do is convince the middle class that they are temporarily embarrassed millionaires, and India will start to become the US.
desi_ninja 6y ago
You could have explained it without using negative connotations like gaming the system. Student crowd in US also games the system. Humble bundles and exploiting regional pricing of Steam are few examples.
sreekanth850 6y ago
Well Said pritam. I am also from India and i see many of my friends run away for free thing. eg: Till September 30 They used google meet for their online classes and now they are searching for another free alternate. It is very sad to see this culture of spamming and gaming. Infact this is one reason why many Saas Companies dont prefer India as a matured market as they will use the free system and wont ever upgrade to a paid plan.
lubujackson 6y ago
I have to say, I love this. Yes, things get fouled up from time to time but this is really the same as the old hacker ethos. It is the mindset that led to Woz building a computer from scratch, the internet being an open system and the concept of open source thriving.
goodrubyist 6y ago
I can attest to this. In fact, in India, it's considered very stupid and laughable by a very large number of people to buy digital books and music, because they are available for "free" on pirate websites. Read that again: I'm not just saying that people pirate stuff, instead, I'm saying they consider it unimaginable and stupid to spend money because it's available for "free." Ethics never enter the picture, I promise you. Also, it's considered acceptable and clever to order clothes, use them at an event, and return as "defective." Quaint concepts like morality are not even considered relevant.
- tn5421 6y ago
  On the other hand, there is a reason that India is banned wholesale from more reputable communities.
- yahnu 6y ago
  Usually it will have to do with purchasing power parity. The low pricing in one country doesn't translate to low pricing in another country, especially with digital goods. Things are changing though now. Many streaming services are doing well in India as prices are appropriate and people are educated on the value of the goods. It is also related to strong laws/enforcing of laws as well, which is also improving in my opinion. All of which are not necessarily unique to India.
  - goodrubyist 6y ago
    Okay, so let's say some people can't afford to buy digital goods. How does that, by itself, explain a general belief that the few who do that are stupid because they "don't realize" that they are available for "free"? Now, you or I might say that they aren't really available for free (they're stolen/pirated), but any thoughts of that kind just don't appear in many people (amoral, not immoral).
908B64B197 6y ago
Before seeing the video I posted my theory here [0] on where the spam was originating from and it seems this pretty much completes the explanation I gave that it's a classic case of academic spam [1]. That type of spam, especially on GitHub (so by folks trying to get into IT) really only reinforces the stereotype that 95% of Indian IT students can't code [3] [4]. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24645000 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24645000 [1] https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/41687/what-is-behind-the-indian-undergrad-research-experience-spam https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/41687/what-is-b... [3] https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/tech/ites/95-engineers-in-india-unfit-for-software-development-jobs-report/articleshow/58278004.cms https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/tech/ites/95-engineers-... [4] https://restofworld.org/2020/india-engineering-degree/ https://restofworld.org/2020/india-engineering-degree/

jokethrowaway 6y ago

I wouldn't say it's an Indian only phenomenon, plenty of that everywhere

throwaway_pdp09 6y ago
But to that intensity, ingrained-ness? That's not how it is in the UK[0] - to anywhere near that degree I mean. edit: the UK is the only culture I'm really familiar with
- avighnay 6y ago
  you did rob us with unparalleled intensity over 300 years, is that ingrained? edit: I only know UK as an imperialist
  - pettycashstash2 6y ago
    This made me chuckle. I only know US as an immigrant.
    - throwaway_pdp09 6y ago
      Likewise. Had a good giggle, so who's so sensitive they have to flag and kill?
  - throwaway_pdp09 6y ago
    Ah, sorry :) More seriously, I have heard on a TV programme, and I have NO DATA for this, that britain put more resources and/or cash into the US than it ever got out (edit: until the US became independent, which is about the 300 years the poster mentioned). Does anyone know reliable sources that can verify, refute or somehow qualify that statement? Edit: why is the parent post flagged and dead? Flagging should be used for proper offence, which I did not take and led me to an interesting question.
    - avighnay 6y ago
      Glad that no offence was taken, my intent was to throw spot light on the root comment where it is easy to generalize on any human community. We all need to restrain ourselves from that urge. I don't mind it being flagged either, it does happen when perspectives are not fully understood either side.
- avereveard 6y ago
  well check out italy, you can substitute italian with indians and keep the entire paragraph almost word for word. I suspect it's a common theme of countries that managed to keep an identity while under a long foreign domination. when the state is the enemy for generations, the ethics and norm about law and legality become a lot more flexible.
fetbaffe 6y ago
Sure, but you always have to ask, to what degree? If it is more prevalent than in other societies then you can definitely call it a phenomenon.
- srtjstjsj 6y ago
  It's pretty well correlated to wealth inequality. The more wealthy cheaters there are, the more the masses are pro-cheating for themselves.

jnsaff2 6y ago

I live in a post-soviet country and the ~50 years of soviet planned-economy, arbitrary laws and constant shortages combined with an illegitimate regime (as any foreign power that is ruling by force on your turf is by definition) meant that people got a pretty deep ingrained attitude of "gaming the system" even tho there's almost 30 years of self rule. It is slowly fading away and being replaced by the capitalist "growth hacking" which I'm not sure is a lot different.

Farbklex 6y ago
Can agree. Gaming the system was the norm in Russia. E.g. you couldn't buy or sell apartments. If you wanted one, you had to "move in" with someone and the other person would then "move out" later. Payment was handled under the radar. Hearing the stories from my parents, just getting furniture for a new apartment was already hard, since sometimes it just was not available. This mentality now still lives on in a lot of us.
unishark 6y ago
> It is slowly fading away and being replaced by the capitalist "growth hacking" which I'm not sure is a lot different. There's definitely a blurry line there. I'm not completely clear what "growth hacking" means, but I definitely think SEO crosses a line (basically hacking google's algorithm to mislead them and their customers). Even worse would be things like paying for fake traffic to drive up ad revenue. People generally understand there is a line between legitimate business and scamming people, even when greed/desperation drives them to bend the rules somewhat and rationalize it.
- teddyh 6y ago
  To quote myself: “I’ve yet to see something called a “growth hack” that wasn’t unethical.” — https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16829121#16829957 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16829121#16829957
bovermyer 6y ago
Estonia?

unmole 6y ago

> his "crack it" is basically about "Gaming it" and succeed at it any how. While I don't disagree with the rest of your comment, this is not accurate. Unacademy focuses on test prep and thier anthem while sappy and gung ho, doesn't really have any references to gaming the system. Crack it is in the same vein as Cracking the Coding Interview,

k_sze 6y ago
Which is gaming the system, if you ask me. Cracking coding interviews would be considered “overfitting” in statistical learning parlance. You may ace the interview, but for most people the performance at coding interviews has no correlation with performance in actual work.
- unmole 6y ago
  Overfitting? Sure. But gaming the system? I disagree. Hell, I've heard of companies giving candidates the book to help them prepare for the interview. It's not ideal but this is what the system expects.
  - brunoc 6y ago
    "Don't hate the player, hate the game"
    - rutthenut 6y ago
      Can still hate them for playing the game, if that involves disdain for ethical principles one actually believes in
  - belval 6y ago
    FAANG will usually send you a few slides on what algorithms and data structures to prepare.
    - MertsA 6y ago

avighnay 6y ago

One more very Indian thing perhaps also is we like to gladly flog ourselves and jump at the chance of discrediting our people. We will start with "As an Indian" but end with "They" instead of "We"

aniforprez 6y ago
I'm frankly kind of sick of the constant denigration and apologies being written slavishly to foreigners on behalf of all Indians by Indians. As an Indian, I accept there's a lot of cultural problems and crap in the country but to the degree that people will prostrate before the Western elite reminds me of our colonial days. Like, literally everything in that paragraph could be written about literally any part of the world cause humans are just that shitty. In this particular case, the person making the video made it in Hindi so it very specifically created a spike from Indian users I wish my fellow Indians would stop this constant self flagellation and appeasement and have some goddamn pride
- solarengineer 6y ago
  We do go the other extreme and take credit for what Indians do and "Ancient Indians" did.
- plibither8 6y ago
  Couldn't have said this better myself. "For many Indians, self-flagellation is a sign of their intellectual arrival". This was a line I read long ago and it desribes the situation so well.
- jsjohnst 6y ago
  > I wish my fellow Indians would stop this constant self flagellation and appeasement and have some goddamn pride I don’t see it as an Indian thing (or a Greece thing as someone else replied). It’s a failing of all of global humanity that anything you can get away with is “ok” to 10-49% of the world’s population (have no concrete source, but I “feel” it’s below 50%, but still a significant number). The US President got up on stage just this week and essentially answered the question “why did you pay so little taxes in 2016-2017?” with the response “because I could! Don’t like the tax laws? BLAME JOE!”, taking zero responsibility for his own actions.

throw0101a 6y ago

> If not I might as well do this and earn Rs. 100. In fact this attitude is cultivated from childhood in certain business class families. Don't let go of any opportunity of earning a profit, however small it might be. The Ferengi from Star Trek come to mind when I read this. * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ferengi https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ferengi * https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Ferengi https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Ferengi The Rules of Acquisition are always a fun read: * https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Rules_of_Acquisition https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Rules_of_Acquisition In this case Rule 3 would probably apply: > Never spend more for an acquisition than you have to.

test1235 6y ago
I always used to wonder if the races in the star trek universe had any correlation with human ethnicities.
- zentiggr 6y ago
  I wouldn't say ethnicities... The Ferengi serm to be a personified contrasting ideology against the "we don't need money anymore" of the Federation. Not to say that people won't overlay their own prejudices over what's actually there, but i see just an explicit contrast of ideas about economies.
- fennecfoxen 6y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ferengi#Comparisons_with_anti-Semitic_stereotypes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ferengi#Comparisons_with_anti-...
- rightbyte 6y ago
  If you watch the first appearence of the Klingons they are obviously Mongol raiders. Later they are vikings?
- krapp 6y ago
  Less ethnicities than cultures and metaphors. Darmok notwithstanding. The Klingons were originally intended to look Asiatic and resemble Mongols or Japanese samurai, with the Klingon Empire being essentially the Soviet Union In Space. And there is an uncomfortable elephant in the room that Klingons, a species mostly known for violence and bloodlust, are all (or almost all) black coded. While the implications are obviously unintentional, it's impossible not to draw parallels in the history in sci-fi and fantasy to the "swarthy, dark-skinned savage" archetype. Speaking of which here[0] is a video on Klingons and the history of racial coding in Star Trek if anyone is interested. The relationship between Cardassians and Bajorans is clearly a metaphor for post-war Germany, with the former being Nazis and the latter Jews. Romulans, obviously, are Space Romans. The Borg clearly represent the dehumanizing effect of technology and collectivism, making them a perfect foil for the Federation with its techno-utopian ideals. I've heard but can't prove that the Borg were meant to be a parody of Japanese business culture. There are alien stand ins for racial prejudice from "Let That Be your Last Battlefield" and nonbinary gender persecution from "The Outcast," and the Trill species in general. In cases like these, the aliens are meant to serve as a mirror to some aspect of humanity. And of course the Ferengi have already been discusssed here. Although in one egregious case (TNG's "Code of Honor")[1] the "aliens" were literally just African caricatures in space. And of course TOS gives us planets with literal space Nazis, space Romans, space Cowboys, space Greek Gods, space whatever costumes they could scrounge from the Desilu lot that week. [0]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cqbSQWKV_T8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cqbSQWKV_T8 [1]https://trekmovie.com/2020/06/14/jonathan-frakes-and-denise-crosby-cant-see-star-trek-tngs-racially-charged-code-of-honor-playing-now/ https://trekmovie.com/2020/06/14/jonathan-frakes-and-denise-...

_dbdw 6y ago

"Gaming the system" is also a cultural thing in Greece. In fact, it's so expected that you are perceived to be either out of the loop or a fool for not going the extra mile. I broke friendships with people who claimed that "it's all subjective at the end of the day" whenever I was raising ethical/moral concerns. Imagine not being able to provide a reasonable argument to justify your actions, beyond of "because I'm allowed to do it".

farias0 6y ago
The exactly same goes for Brazil. Am I seeing a pattern here, i.e. countries that are supposed to be great but really aren't?
- fetbaffe 6y ago
  Pattern is high trust societies vs low trust societies.
  - disgruntledphd2 6y ago
    Yeah, personally I think this has a lot to do with post-colonialism. I'm Irish, and there's a lot of this in our society. It was much more accepted in my parents generation, and appears to be reducing a little bit as we become a richer society.
    - rbanffy 6y ago
      I heard from an Irish colleague (I'm a Brazilian expat in Dublin) that this attitude, in particular towards taxes, changed after the independence from the UK.
      - disgruntledphd2 6y ago
        So yes and no. My parents are pretty old (they had kids late) and they really don't like telling revenue (the taxman) anything, and would be inclined to overlook tax avoidance and whatnot. My wife's parents are of a similar age, and also similar on this. Now, all of them were born a generation after independence, so it's definitely not just that. However, when the government has historically not given a crap about you (as the British government did not), it leads to a disconnect from the society and institutions that increases the probability that you'll be OK with tax dodging and not have as much trust in the overall society (because historically, it didn't care about you). So, I'd say that it's slowly changing because we're not a colony anymore, but it definitely didn't just disappear in a puff of smoke in 1921.

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swiley 6y ago

Pathological behavior being part of a culture isn't an excuse for it. If everyone acted this way open source couldn't exist.

exabrial 6y ago
I know your comment is in good faith because the core of what you're saying is correct, and I'm certainly not accusing you of anything... Instead of 'part of the culture' though I would phrase it as 'correlated with the culture' to avoid accidentally giving supremacists ammunition. The point being, you have to rise above your circumstances. Just because everyone you grew up with is doing something gravely immoral doesn't make it correct. No culture should exude pathological behavior as a trait.
- cotelletta 6y ago
  Your attempt at couching your comment in disclaimers is hilarious. You don't just give supremacists ammunition, you make everyone laugh at the absurdity. "Part of the culture" is bad... And "correlated with the culture" is good. But "exude pathological behavior" is where you end. Have you figured out yet that language policing is just tiptoeing around the things you're not supposed to notice?
DanBC 6y ago
http://www.paulgraham.com/founders.html http://www.paulgraham.com/founders.html > 4. Naughtiness > Though the most successful founders are usually good people, they tend to have a piratical gleam in their eye. They're not Goody Two-Shoes type good. Morally, they care about getting the big questions right, but not about observing proprieties. That's why I'd use the word naughty rather than evil. They delight in breaking rules, but not rules that matter. This quality may be redundant though; it may be implied by imagination. > Sam Altman of Loopt is one of the most successful alumni, so we asked him what question we could put on the Y Combinator application that would help us discover more people like him. He said to ask about a time when they'd hacked something to their advantage—hacked in the sense of beating the system, not breaking into computers. It has become one of the questions we pay most attention to when judging applications. Everyone breaking a rule will say that they're doing this. They'll claim they're just bending the rules. Even when they're engaged in massive law breaking behaviour they'll claim that those laws don't really matter and that the ends justify the means. Hacktoberfest highlights the problem with this paragraph of Graham's. Hundreds of thousand of people being "naughty", hacking the system, cause problems for other people.

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viro 6y ago

This is one of the reasons Indians cheating on the OSCP is such an issue. I don't know if they realize that destroys the value of the cert for everyone... cool you got the cert but now its worthless.

ssivark 6y ago

This has less to do with India, and more about what happens when there’s no prior culture of open source, to balance against the willingness to “hustle”. The fact that a lot of these PRs might originate in India is only relevant insofar as there are a lot of people willing to hustle, and don’t have much open source experience. Chances are that they are oblivious to what happens on the other side of the table, and open source projects are abstract entities (which might as well be run by Github, or some other bureaucracy!) A useful reminder that the celebrated “hustle” is susceptible to the unintended consequences of Goodhart’s law. If this was Sean Parker with Napster or Zuck with early Facebook, we’d be celebrating it. (For all those who advocate for growth hacking techniques, or annoying ads, this is exactly how scummy most such techniques / dark patterns feel to users. I don’t think that is geographically localized in any way.)

edoloughlin 6y ago

It might be a post-colonial cultural artifact. Speaking as an Irish person, we have a similar regard for bending rules, which is only beginning to show signs of change recently.

teawrecks 6y ago

Now all they have to do is convince the middle class that they are temporarily embarrassed millionaires, and India will start to become the US.

desi_ninja 6y ago

You could have explained it without using negative connotations like gaming the system. Student crowd in US also games the system. Humble bundles and exploiting regional pricing of Steam are few examples.

sreekanth850 6y ago

Well Said pritam. I am also from India and i see many of my friends run away for free thing. eg: Till September 30 They used google meet for their online classes and now they are searching for another free alternate. It is very sad to see this culture of spamming and gaming. Infact this is one reason why many Saas Companies dont prefer India as a matured market as they will use the free system and wont ever upgrade to a paid plan.

lubujackson 6y ago

I have to say, I love this. Yes, things get fouled up from time to time but this is really the same as the old hacker ethos. It is the mindset that led to Woz building a computer from scratch, the internet being an open system and the concept of open source thriving.

goodrubyist 6y ago

I can attest to this. In fact, in India, it's considered very stupid and laughable by a very large number of people to buy digital books and music, because they are available for "free" on pirate websites. Read that again: I'm not just saying that people pirate stuff, instead, I'm saying they consider it unimaginable and stupid to spend money because it's available for "free." Ethics never enter the picture, I promise you. Also, it's considered acceptable and clever to order clothes, use them at an event, and return as "defective." Quaint concepts like morality are not even considered relevant.

tn5421 6y ago
On the other hand, there is a reason that India is banned wholesale from more reputable communities.
yahnu 6y ago
Usually it will have to do with purchasing power parity. The low pricing in one country doesn't translate to low pricing in another country, especially with digital goods. Things are changing though now. Many streaming services are doing well in India as prices are appropriate and people are educated on the value of the goods. It is also related to strong laws/enforcing of laws as well, which is also improving in my opinion. All of which are not necessarily unique to India.
- goodrubyist 6y ago
  Okay, so let's say some people can't afford to buy digital goods. How does that, by itself, explain a general belief that the few who do that are stupid because they "don't realize" that they are available for "free"? Now, you or I might say that they aren't really available for free (they're stolen/pirated), but any thoughts of that kind just don't appear in many people (amoral, not immoral).

908B64B197 6y ago

Before seeing the video I posted my theory here [0] on where the spam was originating from and it seems this pretty much completes the explanation I gave that it's a classic case of academic spam [1]. That type of spam, especially on GitHub (so by folks trying to get into IT) really only reinforces the stereotype that 95% of Indian IT students can't code [3] [4]. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24645000 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24645000 [1] https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/41687/what-is-behind-the-indian-undergrad-research-experience-spam https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/41687/what-is-b... [3] https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/tech/ites/95-engineers-in-india-unfit-for-software-development-jobs-report/articleshow/58278004.cms https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/tech/ites/95-engineers-... [4] https://restofworld.org/2020/india-engineering-degree/ https://restofworld.org/2020/india-engineering-degree/