4 ms·

OK, your first paragraph is hard to comprehend. Language is "culture" but that's boring. Europe is more diverse - but trivially? Political, standard of living,

by bh42222 15y ago

OK, your first paragraph is hard to comprehend. Language is "culture" but that's boring. Europe is more diverse - but trivially? Political, standard of living, industry are apparently real differences according to you? And art somehow snuck in there too, but I guess the totally of language based art, poetry, books, etc, somehow is boring? If we are going to cherry pick how we compare places, I say let's start with climate. When talking about climate clearly Mississippi and Washington state are far more different than Sweden and Finland. Only an American could completely discount language and want to talk about GDP or GNP and industry composition. Very CIA fact book page. I freely admit by GDP and standard of living all of Western Europe is less different than Mississippi and any of the "blue" states. Hell if we're going to use CIA country fact book style information to measure differences then all of the OECD countries (this includes Japan, Europe, Canada and the US) are on average less different than just the US states. Now think about that. Does it make sense to say that just the US states are more diverse then a group with includes both Japan and most of Europe? I guess if you're an American and think language is "culture" and boring then yeah that can sound right to you.

jessriedel 15y ago
Yikes, calm down. > Very CIA fact book page My "CIA fact book" numbers were chosen because they're numbers, so they are objective and easy to obtain. I put "philosophy" first for a reason; that's what's important in the context of the OP articles. It's just that it's not easy to look up "average philosophical view for a country". Also, don't you agree that amount of education is extremely important to culture? >And art somehow snuck in there too, but I guess the totally of language based art, poetry, books, etc, somehow is boring? Art, poetry, books are not boring and are definitely interesting aspects of culture. (Although again, in the context of this article, serious academic art is less germane than standard of living.) But the mere fact that people use a different language is not. Yes, of course language can influence many arts, but it's ridiculous to think that language difference is a good metric for difference in art. >Europe is more diverse - but trivially? Europe is more diverse trivially when you use language differences as a metric for cultural differences. (I thought that conditional was clear from the placement of the parenthetical, but I guess not.) And it's trivial. Most countries in Europe have their own language, so obviously they are more diverse in this manner. Why would there even be a discussion? > If we are going to cherry pick how we compare places, You said "America's cultural differences are still very small compared to differences between old world neighbors" (emphasis mine) in the context of a comparison between California and New York. I interpret that to mean roughly that the smallest intra-country differences in Europe are bigger than the largest intra-state differences in the US. If I misinterpreted, let me know. > I say let's start with climate. Climate is interesting insofar as it influences culture. And yes, this is definitely part of the cause of cultural diversity in the US states, but it's probably not a great metric. I think wealth, especially in the modern era, is going to be more closely tied to culture than climate. Still, in comparing the cultures of Finland and Greece, wouldn't you agree that climate is, in fact, a better metric than language? >Hell if we're going to use CIA country fact book style information to measure differences then all of the OECD countries (this includes Japan, Europe, Canada and the US) are on average less different than just the US states. Now think about that. Does it make sense to say that just the US states are more diverse then a group with includes both Japan and most of Europe? The lack of diversity you're talking about comes from averaging, which comes from considering large population sizes of Japan/US/EU and comparing them to US states. In contrast, Maryland and Mississippi are within a factor of 2 in population to Sweden and Finland.
- bh42222 15y ago
  The lack of diversity I am talking about does not come from averaging a large number, but from the fact that unlike Mississippi, all of Japan, Canada and the EU have very high standards of living, nationalized health care, and very extensive social safety nets, as well as very high education levels. Simply put you and I have different definitions of culture. To me GDP, GNP, level of education, standard of living, etc, are all economic measures, which are indeed numerical and thus trivially easy to compare. But my definition of culture includes, language, national identity, customs (this is very different from laws), holidays, music, rituals, food, etc. And I would argue that those things don't change even as GDP and standard of living go through revolutionary levels of change. Prime example: Ireland. For a very long time Ireland was one of the poor, agricultural nations of Europe. Then legal and tax changes were introduced and a few years later people were talking about the Celtic tiger, and English laborers were going to work in Ireland for the first time ever. And even now after the real estate bubble has burst, modern Ireland is astronomically far away from potato famine Ireland in terms of GDP and standard of living. But culturally it is mostly still the same. China before communism, China after the economic reforms in the 1970s, China today, all economically VERY differently. Culturally there's been big changes too, but not nearly as huge as the economic ones. Right before Thatcher, Britain's economy was so bad, predictions had it reaching Albanian levels of prosperity in a decade or two. How culturally different is Britannia of that time compared to Tony Blair's cool Britannia of the booming 90s? So Massachusetts and Mississippi are very different in terms of GDP, education and median income. But to me they are both obviously American. That's very different from Holland and France, or the UK and Holland, or France and Spain. While the GDP there is much closer, they are very, very different cultures. Let's do a thought experiment: You go to Holland and try to grok how to live there. You have an iPhone translation app that can translate text you take pictures of and voices it hears. You use that to make your way, pick up some Dutch and figure out things like how to buy food, how to get a job, etc. Once you feel you get it, move to France and repeat. Then move to Spain or Germany, or Italy and repeat. At the same time lets find someone form Holland who does not speak English.... crap that's not really possible. Germany maybe, if we look hard enough and go for the older population I bet we can find a German who does not speak English. And we give them the same iPhone app and send them to a state in the US, and when they feel they grok it, we move them to another state. Assuming you both happen to be equally bright and grok your first state in the same amount of time, who do you think will to through 5 states first? You in Europe, or the German in the states? I'd argue that if you grok one US state, that's it, game over, you grok ALL of the US. English is spoken. Turkey day is Turkey day, as is July 4th. Food differences are slight, but the stores all sell overwhelmingly the same things. Except for a bit of local programming, same TV and music on the air, etc.

by bh42222 15y ago

jessriedel 15y ago

Yikes, calm down. > Very CIA fact book page My "CIA fact book" numbers were chosen because they're numbers, so they are objective and easy to obtain. I put "philosophy" first for a reason; that's what's important in the context of the OP articles. It's just that it's not easy to look up "average philosophical view for a country". Also, don't you agree that amount of education is extremely important to culture? >And art somehow snuck in there too, but I guess the totally of language based art, poetry, books, etc, somehow is boring? Art, poetry, books are not boring and are definitely interesting aspects of culture. (Although again, in the context of this article, serious academic art is less germane than standard of living.) But the mere fact that people use a different language is not. Yes, of course language can influence many arts, but it's ridiculous to think that language difference is a good metric for difference in art. >Europe is more diverse - but trivially? Europe is more diverse trivially when you use language differences as a metric for cultural differences. (I thought that conditional was clear from the placement of the parenthetical, but I guess not.) And it's trivial. Most countries in Europe have their own language, so obviously they are more diverse in this manner. Why would there even be a discussion? > If we are going to cherry pick how we compare places, You said "America's cultural differences are still very small compared to differences between old world neighbors" (emphasis mine) in the context of a comparison between California and New York. I interpret that to mean roughly that the smallest intra-country differences in Europe are bigger than the largest intra-state differences in the US. If I misinterpreted, let me know. > I say let's start with climate. Climate is interesting insofar as it influences culture. And yes, this is definitely part of the cause of cultural diversity in the US states, but it's probably not a great metric. I think wealth, especially in the modern era, is going to be more closely tied to culture than climate. Still, in comparing the cultures of Finland and Greece, wouldn't you agree that climate is, in fact, a better metric than language? >Hell if we're going to use CIA country fact book style information to measure differences then all of the OECD countries (this includes Japan, Europe, Canada and the US) are on average less different than just the US states. Now think about that. Does it make sense to say that just the US states are more diverse then a group with includes both Japan and most of Europe? The lack of diversity you're talking about comes from averaging, which comes from considering large population sizes of Japan/US/EU and comparing them to US states. In contrast, Maryland and Mississippi are within a factor of 2 in population to Sweden and Finland.

bh42222 15y ago
The lack of diversity I am talking about does not come from averaging a large number, but from the fact that unlike Mississippi, all of Japan, Canada and the EU have very high standards of living, nationalized health care, and very extensive social safety nets, as well as very high education levels. Simply put you and I have different definitions of culture. To me GDP, GNP, level of education, standard of living, etc, are all economic measures, which are indeed numerical and thus trivially easy to compare. But my definition of culture includes, language, national identity, customs (this is very different from laws), holidays, music, rituals, food, etc. And I would argue that those things don't change even as GDP and standard of living go through revolutionary levels of change. Prime example: Ireland. For a very long time Ireland was one of the poor, agricultural nations of Europe. Then legal and tax changes were introduced and a few years later people were talking about the Celtic tiger, and English laborers were going to work in Ireland for the first time ever. And even now after the real estate bubble has burst, modern Ireland is astronomically far away from potato famine Ireland in terms of GDP and standard of living. But culturally it is mostly still the same. China before communism, China after the economic reforms in the 1970s, China today, all economically VERY differently. Culturally there's been big changes too, but not nearly as huge as the economic ones. Right before Thatcher, Britain's economy was so bad, predictions had it reaching Albanian levels of prosperity in a decade or two. How culturally different is Britannia of that time compared to Tony Blair's cool Britannia of the booming 90s? So Massachusetts and Mississippi are very different in terms of GDP, education and median income. But to me they are both obviously American. That's very different from Holland and France, or the UK and Holland, or France and Spain. While the GDP there is much closer, they are very, very different cultures. Let's do a thought experiment: You go to Holland and try to grok how to live there. You have an iPhone translation app that can translate text you take pictures of and voices it hears. You use that to make your way, pick up some Dutch and figure out things like how to buy food, how to get a job, etc. Once you feel you get it, move to France and repeat. Then move to Spain or Germany, or Italy and repeat. At the same time lets find someone form Holland who does not speak English.... crap that's not really possible. Germany maybe, if we look hard enough and go for the older population I bet we can find a German who does not speak English. And we give them the same iPhone app and send them to a state in the US, and when they feel they grok it, we move them to another state. Assuming you both happen to be equally bright and grok your first state in the same amount of time, who do you think will to through 5 states first? You in Europe, or the German in the states? I'd argue that if you grok one US state, that's it, game over, you grok ALL of the US. English is spoken. Turkey day is Turkey day, as is July 4th. Food differences are slight, but the stores all sell overwhelmingly the same things. Except for a bit of local programming, same TV and music on the air, etc.