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Comment by nielsole | Hacker News Reader

This reads like thinly veiled racism. Replace "weird people" with "superior people" and "West" with "white" and this article leaves a bad taste.

> what it doesn’t need, and shouldn’t provoke, is ideological condemnations

The whole premise of western cultural superiority in this book is on very thin pillars, I'd venture to guess.

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As someone from the East, I look up to the West. The West has values such as "trust by default unless otherwise proven" that we in the East are hoping for. In the East, it is mostly "Distrust by default" which creates a lot of friction in the society. It goes both ways, the West could learn from the East in terms of beauracracy and regulations.

It is ok to point out differences. I also like to criticize cultures - yes. It should be possible to do this without offending people. Same thing with religion.

Racism is the following in my view: When you simply consider someone inferior purely by the way they look or the skin of their color or where they're from or their ethnicity. The definition of racism ends there.

It is difficult to criticize a person of minority without invoking the suspicion of being a racist - how can I criticize someone who is _____ (fill in a minority race of your choice) not based on their race but based on their actions?

We've got to grow a thick skin, it is increasingly difficult to criticize anything without offending someone, getting cancelled and getting excluded from social fabric.

I think that the onus is on the person who is getting offended and not the offendee for 99% of the cases. If humans constanly offend each other, we would create a massive echo chamber of a society - kind of like LinkedIn of the whole world... there is not a single dissenting opinion on LinkedIn, it is all pats on the backs and massive, pardon me for the language, circle jerk.

It’s not racism to point out differences between cultures.

Is it racist to observe that homosexuality is severely punished in Islamic societies?

It was severely punished in all societies until recently. Islamic societies have not developed yet, and its not entirely clear that it's because of Islam. First you have to accept that ideas, rather than the material conditions, are primarily responsible for changing society. That's not obvious, and it's not obvious that the material conditions primarily change society either. Both culture and material conditions are responsible, and things are unimaginably complex, to the point that we as humans collectively can't control the direction of history.

Using "western, educated, industrialized, rich, democratic" is more than "pointing out differences". It implies non western = poor, uneducated etc. aka of lesser value.

Indeed. Very "subtle and nuanced" racism as a friend of mine put it. The next generation of "The Bell Curve: Intelligence and Class Structure in American Life".

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