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Comment by jerojero | Hacker News Reader

Unless you believe racially japanese people are significantly different to people from other asian countries. No.

What really are the genetic basis to say Japan is a country that's markedly different from other asian populations?

The people living in Japan have not lived there for long enough for their genetic to become too different from those of other asian countries. Culture on the other hand changes much more rapidly. Culture is the "genetics" of society, it is passed down from generation to generation and it mutates and these mutations are also hereditary... it's just much faster than biological processes.

But ultimately, it seems very unlikely (and as far as I know, there's very little evidence that suggests this is the case) that race and genetics will have a huge effect on culture. Specially given that countries with similar genetic populations will have vastly different cultures.

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I’m not sure why it’s so hard for people to believe that evolution can indeed affect our brains just like everything else.

Keep in mind the culture of the various regions could easily cause fast natural (?) selection. I’m no expert on Japan’s history, and even less so on China/Korea/etc. I know enough that Japan had periods of pretty constant war, and that the young and the brash would essentially volunteer to be mercenaries. It seems to me that could pretty quickly weed out the most aggressive genes in a population. It would be different, of course, if soldiers were conscripted instead.

That’s just one example and as I said, I’m not a historian. Another example would be America. People always come up with silly reasons why we became the dominant world power. In my opinion the reason is simple: the people that immigrated here were risk takers, hard workers, and dreamers. Their kids would inherit those genes.

So, I’d say culture begets genetics which begets culture…

I would suggest you read up on the history of mercenaries worldwide and the history of youth volunteering for wars worldwide. These are by no means traits particular to Japanese people. I would also suggest you read up on the United States global positioning before and after WW2. It was regionally isolated from the brunt of the war, which allowed it to loan money and sell weapons and resources at very favorable rates for the majority of the war. This can’t be excluded from a simple explanation of its global dominance.

I'm very well aware of what people's argument is for why the US became dominant, and I'm sure it was a factor.

Yet that didn't happen to other regionally isolated countries like Mexico or Brazil - hell, or even Canada.

And yes, youth always volunteer for wars. Like I said, I'm not a historian and my example was just an example of how things could guide selection. That said I don't think many countries had something similar to what ronin, or even samurai, were. It was a fairly unique system.

China's Great Leap Forward would be another example of something that could guide who lived to procreate and who didn't.

"I’m not sure why it’s so hard for people to believe that evolution can indeed affect our brains just like everything else."

because publicly acknowledging this obvious reality comes at a cost: you WILL be attacked. most people do not want to be attacked and would rather take the easier route of pretending to not notice this or anything that's going to cause them a problem.

they have even done studies with 1 day old babies where the scientist holds the baby's nose shut and guess what, babies of different races react in different ways. same as when they take baby boys and girls and put them in a room the boys go for the toy trucks and the girls go for the dolls. i'm sorry but that study doesn't need to happen if you don't live in an ivory tower and have to act like a politician because you have so much money to lose for having the wrong opinion.

> The people living in Japan have not lived there for long enough for their genetic to become too different from those of other asian countries.

The Ainu’s skin tone is more like Caucasians than East Asians and the majority population, (Yamato?) are noticeably shorter than the Koreans to whom they are most closely related. There’s clearly been enough isolation, for long enough, for some differentiation. That’s not to say the distribution of traits doesn’t overlap. We’re not talking Sardinians and Swedes here, never mind Bantu and Basque.

A lot of the pros and cons of Japanese society could apply to Korean society too. There is a lot of overlap.

Seoul, like Tokyo, could also be described as a HNer’s dream city. Ultra safe, ultra clean, amazing transit. And like Tokyo, a city like Seoul could never exist in the US for similar reasons.

(Then again, cars and public transit coexist somewhat harmoniously in Seoul, with cars being an aspirational item for many Koreans, so maybe it’s not a dream city for the banallcars HNer crowd)

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