6 ms·

When I grew up, the media in my country kept telling us how great the geek culture in the US was, how deep down the stack the geeks were willing to go, and both

When I grew up, the media in my country kept telling us how great the geek culture in the US was, how deep down the stack the geeks were willing to go, and both adults and us kids were left in awe. The entire nation, for what I could tell, routinely reflected why we couldn't be like the US: educating and nurturing generations of geeks to be the best engineers and scientists in the world. Well, it was quite a reverse culture shock after I moved to the US. I definitely didn't know that "teacher's pet" was a thing, or my coworker, a brilliant engineer who went to a highly reputed public school, was chased off his school bus simply because he used some poetic words, or geeks were not that respected in schools, or a mile wide and an inch deep with great leadership is what the US people revered. In the meantime, I guess other countries more or less picked up the baton of the US culture, and grew their own geeks.

benreesman 2y ago
It comes in waves. In the 90s there was a monopoly so rapacious that the Department of Justice had to very nearly break it up before it strangled the Web in its crib. Grift and nepotism and cronyism and distorted markets were the norm then too. This is the first time it’s been so bad since, but I’m optimistic: we’re actually in a better position now because serious foreign tech dynamos don’t give a fuck about American mafia nepotism, we can’t just keep this in the family. I don’t know if this DeepSeek App Store thing will be the match that lights this thing up, but the grass is very tall and very, very dry.
int_19h 2y ago
Did you not see American movies? I'm also from a different country, but this part of the American culture is very much front and center in its exports, IMO.
- hintymad 2y ago
  Not really. Our English education was so bad that I could barely understand spoken English and I knew fewer than 5000 words when graduating high school. Ironically, I did fabulously well in English exams, which said a lot about our English education back then.
  - int_19h 2y ago
    Hm, in our market (where English is similarly poor - certainly not good enough on average to watch movies even with subtitles) they just dubbed them.
- exe34 2y ago
  I did watch American movies but somehow I also came away with the same conclusions as a child - I think I was influenced by documentaries that seemed to show such intelligence and hard work in the realm of the sciences and technology and assumed the whole culture supported it - films were supposed to be fiction after all. as an adult across the pond, I'm very disappointed by the US.
- aleph_minus_one 2y ago
  > Did you not see American movies? I'm also from a different country, but this part of the American culture is very much front and center in its exports, IMO. There exist quite a lot of US-American movies. I would claim that those who are less deeply centered around US-specific cultural traits are typically much more revered in other countries. There are, of course, exceptions from this rule (for example "The Simpsons", which excessively satirizes the USA's popular culture, but is nevertheless loved in many other countries), but I do think that the general rule of thumb does hold. In this sense: even if you watch US-American movies, it is rather easy to mostly ignore those who strongly show US-specific cultural traits and habits, in particular if these are considered to be annoying in the other country.
peepeepoopoo102 2y ago
That's just it: American tech companies aren't staffed by Americans anymore. Liang Wenfang, the founder of DeepSeek, made the point that he values developing domestic Chinese talent over importing foreign experts. It seems to have worked.
- black_13 2y ago
  [dead]
- looseyesterday 2y ago
  "It seems to have worked" I am sure he's a great manager, but whats really working for him is crazy high number of graduates and PHDs in China who are unemployed or underemployed
  - peepeepoopoo102 2y ago
    That would sound a lot like the languishing native STEM talent in the US if it weren't also for the fact that most of the DeepSeek team doesn't have PhDs.
    - addicted 2y ago
      The team may not have too many PHDs but they are from prestigious universities and have published many papers. The lack of a PhD probably has more to do with the structure of Chinese education but these people were basically studying like PHDs. https://www.firstpost.com/explainers/china-deepseek-ai-full-team-liang-wenfeng-luo-fuli-13857438.html# https://www.firstpost.com/explainers/china-deepseek-ai-full-...
      - justinclift 2y ago
        > published many papers. China has a reputation for being a "paper mill" place though, so not sure that publishing papers has any value whatsoever as a quality indicator.
    - 2y ago
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blased 2y ago
This is the sort of condescending, simplistic reduction of America that only a foreigner could make (one that apparently lives here nonetheless!).
whimsicalism 2y ago
large portions of america are anti-intellectual but i truly fail to see how you could have missed that from movies
- blased 2y ago
  > large portions of america are anti-intellectual Large portions of the world are anti-intellectual, at the same time intellectuals are often much worse than the average person and frequently do deserve scorn as a class of people in society.
  - whimsicalism 2y ago
    China is not anti-intellectual in the same way. I remember watching Xi’s new year speech a few years ago and he was highlighting specific scientific achievements, talking about astronauts, it was very different from a US presidential speech
    - blased 2y ago
      Well Biden can't really give a speech due to being undeniably old to the point of incoherence (what led to him dropping his candidacy). Trump did Operation Warpspeed and created Space Force, and openly talked about that, he also openly supports Elon Musk running his own scientific enterprises. So I'm not sure what the argument is for America not talking about its own scientific achievements.

benreesman 2y ago

It comes in waves. In the 90s there was a monopoly so rapacious that the Department of Justice had to very nearly break it up before it strangled the Web in its crib. Grift and nepotism and cronyism and distorted markets were the norm then too. This is the first time it’s been so bad since, but I’m optimistic: we’re actually in a better position now because serious foreign tech dynamos don’t give a fuck about American mafia nepotism, we can’t just keep this in the family. I don’t know if this DeepSeek App Store thing will be the match that lights this thing up, but the grass is very tall and very, very dry.

int_19h 2y ago

Did you not see American movies? I'm also from a different country, but this part of the American culture is very much front and center in its exports, IMO.

hintymad 2y ago
Not really. Our English education was so bad that I could barely understand spoken English and I knew fewer than 5000 words when graduating high school. Ironically, I did fabulously well in English exams, which said a lot about our English education back then.
- int_19h 2y ago
  Hm, in our market (where English is similarly poor - certainly not good enough on average to watch movies even with subtitles) they just dubbed them.
exe34 2y ago
I did watch American movies but somehow I also came away with the same conclusions as a child - I think I was influenced by documentaries that seemed to show such intelligence and hard work in the realm of the sciences and technology and assumed the whole culture supported it - films were supposed to be fiction after all. as an adult across the pond, I'm very disappointed by the US.
aleph_minus_one 2y ago
> Did you not see American movies? I'm also from a different country, but this part of the American culture is very much front and center in its exports, IMO. There exist quite a lot of US-American movies. I would claim that those who are less deeply centered around US-specific cultural traits are typically much more revered in other countries. There are, of course, exceptions from this rule (for example "The Simpsons", which excessively satirizes the USA's popular culture, but is nevertheless loved in many other countries), but I do think that the general rule of thumb does hold. In this sense: even if you watch US-American movies, it is rather easy to mostly ignore those who strongly show US-specific cultural traits and habits, in particular if these are considered to be annoying in the other country.

peepeepoopoo102 2y ago

That's just it: American tech companies aren't staffed by Americans anymore. Liang Wenfang, the founder of DeepSeek, made the point that he values developing domestic Chinese talent over importing foreign experts. It seems to have worked.

black_13 2y ago
[dead]
looseyesterday 2y ago
"It seems to have worked" I am sure he's a great manager, but whats really working for him is crazy high number of graduates and PHDs in China who are unemployed or underemployed
- peepeepoopoo102 2y ago
  That would sound a lot like the languishing native STEM talent in the US if it weren't also for the fact that most of the DeepSeek team doesn't have PhDs.
  - addicted 2y ago
    The team may not have too many PHDs but they are from prestigious universities and have published many papers. The lack of a PhD probably has more to do with the structure of Chinese education but these people were basically studying like PHDs. https://www.firstpost.com/explainers/china-deepseek-ai-full-team-liang-wenfeng-luo-fuli-13857438.html# https://www.firstpost.com/explainers/china-deepseek-ai-full-...
    - justinclift 2y ago
      > published many papers. China has a reputation for being a "paper mill" place though, so not sure that publishing papers has any value whatsoever as a quality indicator.
  - 2y ago

deleted 2y ago

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deleted 2y ago

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blased 2y ago

This is the sort of condescending, simplistic reduction of America that only a foreigner could make (one that apparently lives here nonetheless!).

whimsicalism 2y ago

large portions of america are anti-intellectual but i truly fail to see how you could have missed that from movies

blased 2y ago
> large portions of america are anti-intellectual Large portions of the world are anti-intellectual, at the same time intellectuals are often much worse than the average person and frequently do deserve scorn as a class of people in society.
- whimsicalism 2y ago
  China is not anti-intellectual in the same way. I remember watching Xi’s new year speech a few years ago and he was highlighting specific scientific achievements, talking about astronauts, it was very different from a US presidential speech
  - blased 2y ago
    Well Biden can't really give a speech due to being undeniably old to the point of incoherence (what led to him dropping his candidacy). Trump did Operation Warpspeed and created Space Force, and openly talked about that, he also openly supports Elon Musk running his own scientific enterprises. So I'm not sure what the argument is for America not talking about its own scientific achievements.