5 ms·

First hand experience is certainly better than second hand accounts bit it can be just as wrong. My example woild be, going to some foreign country, getting a f

• brokenmachine 2y ago
  And things might change after you leave that country.
• mr_toad 2y ago
  In some countries the part the tourists get to see are like a completely different country.
  • paulcole 2y ago
    Which countries are like this?
    • scrollaway 2y ago
      Greece, Italy, …
    • AzzieElbab 2y ago
      North Korea, China, Russia, and most Gulf and Central Asia countries.
    • greenchair 2y ago
      north korea?
    • lobochrome 2y ago
      Spain, Vietnam, Cambodia, Myanmar
      • djaouen 2y ago
        My favorite theory about Cambodia is that they subtlely threaten any tourist to post positive feedback about the country otherwise they get the Pol Pot treatment lol
    • shiroiushi 2y ago
      All of them, really. As a tourist, you don't have to work a regular job there, you don't have to rent an apartment or buy a home there, you don't have to deal with the locals on a day-to-day basis, you're usually not aware of the political issues (esp. at the local level). You just go to some popular tourist destinations, take photos, eat in restaurants, walk around a bit, and go home. Of course you're not going to get a very good idea of what it's really like to live there. You can, however, get a good feel for the place, especially if you step outside the tourist zones more, but it's going to be very incomplete because of the factors above.
      • deleted 2y ago
        [deleted]
      • em-bee 2y ago
        this is why, when i go somewhere i prefer to either stay with locals couchsurfing, or when i stay longer, rent a room or an apartment. i don't travel around but stay in the same place, make friends with locals, join their events, etc. i intentionally don't read about the places before going there, to avoid influencing my experience by the subjective reports of others. especially reports of other foreigners. i'll never experience the life and struggles as a local, especially not when the culture is very different, or the language or its a developing country. at best i get to experience what living in that place as a european, an expat, is like. but, where i am able to make friends or become part of a local family, i still get way more insights than any tourist would. while traveling in japan (where i was couchsurfing) i met a young european who claimed to have learned things about japanese culture that generally no foreigner ever finds out and his japanese friends would always be surprised when he told them about some of the things he learned. i could not verify his claim of course, but it was interesting nonetheless.
      • polishdude20 2y ago
        That's true but it's not like I don't need to feel with those types of issues back at home. Like, how much different is renting an apartment between Paris and London? Once you get into the groove of actually living somewhere, don't you just realize it's the same as everywhere else? It's the special stuff that makes a difference.
    • 1d22a 2y ago
      Bhutan, for one, restricts tourists to a subset of the country to limit the damage caused by overtourism.
    • Tao3300 2y ago
      Pretty much everywhere in the Caribbean, Mexico, and vast sections of Central America.
      • fuzzfactor 2y ago
        >Pretty much everywhere in the Caribbean, Like South Florida. Plus the more decades you go back, the more it was unlike the 50 states from Orlando on up.
    • kjkjadksj 2y ago
      Even the US is like this
  • deleted 2y ago
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• Tao3300 2y ago
  Similarly, a lot of people believe in what we could call "ghosts" based on firsthand experience, yet the expert consensus is that there is no such thing.
  • mistermann 2y ago
    Expert consensus does not define the state of objective reality, it only alters people's beliefs about it. Also, an absence of evidence is not proof of absence, though it usually appears that it is.
    • balder1991 2y ago
      This is one reason I really enjoyed reading Prometheus Rising. A significant part of the book is dedicated to show you just how little you actually know about reality when you discount beliefs you acquired either extrapolating experiences or simply adopting some dogma (even if it’s simply believing Positivism in science). In the end it’s impossible for us to even assess whether there is a reality out there.
      • mistermann 2y ago
        Thank you for the book recommendation, I am going to check it out. > In the end it’s impossible for us to even assess whether there is a reality out there. Well, I'd say ontologically / phenomenologically it's basically a sure thing, though whether the nature and ontology of it is anything near what it is said to be is a very different matter!
• Gormo 2y ago
  It'd bad to rely on a small selection-biased sample of anything as an indicator of the general case, regardless of whether the sample data is acquired firsthand or secondhand.