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Comment by hintymad | Hacker News Reader

A trajectory question: why do Americans worship toiling so much when it comes to sports, like Kobe Bryant's "have you seen the streets of Los Angeles at 4:00am" were repeated endlessly by the media, but despise toiling in school, like this: https://www.wired.com/2004/12/why-nerds-are-unpopular/, and this: https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2018/01/17/half-of-a...?

For someone who grew up in a different country, it appears to me that Americans do not hate working hard, they just hate working hard on academics, which is really strange.

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Your links don't really support your view that Americans despise working hard in school. As an American, my perspective is that working hard in school is widely respected and encouraged in US culture. The poll where a majority says "other people don't pursue STEM because they're lazy" is just another in a long history of American polls where respondents assume something incorrect about everyone else in the country. You should not put much stock in these opinions.

Paul Graham's "nerds" article is fairly out of date, and I would also encourage you to read between the lines a bit. Paul and his friends graded everyone by popularity and assumed everyone else was doing the same. Were they? In my experience, probably not. Popular kids generally just consider themselves normal and don't look down on the "nerds", so much as just not think about them much because they're in a different friend group that they don't interact with.

> Being smart seems to make you unpopular.

This is not true.

> most smart kids don't really want to be popular.

This is DEFINITELY not true, and you should be skeptical of anyone saying "I don't want to be popular" in the middle of a widely published essay about how smart and successful they are.

I attended high school many years after Paul, so it's possible what he describes was true at the time, but I don't think it is anymore.

Finally, you're right that Kobe Bryant is admired more than the average hard worker in school, and that's because he was among the best in the world. Results matter in American culture, and a kid in high school working just as hard as Kobe to be the best player on his team is not going to be as celebrated as Kobe Bryant, even if he's putting in just as much effort.

"Finally, you're right that Kobe Bryant is admired more than the average hard worker in school, and that's because he was among the best in the world."

All over the world, sportsmen and entertainment personalities are celebrated more than other workers who, in theory and intuitively, should be celebrated more. For example, among the celebrities, in theory and intuitively, we should find the best scientists, surgeons, and administrators that a country can offer. But do we? No, we don't.

To use a recent example, if you think about it, it is curious that the hype about Oppenheimer has been about the film itself, Nolan the director, and Murphy the performer, and not Oppenheimer the scientist and the Manhattan Project as a formidable government-sponsored science and technology initiative. Yes, there has been some minor residual interest in the real people, science and technology associated with Los Alamos on the part of viewers, but nothing particularly relevant.

Today, Mr. Oppenheimer, academic and/or govt employee, would have to work for 30+ years (probably more...) to earn the same money that Murphy earned pretending to be Oppenheimer in a movie. If that's not funny and ridiculous, I don't know what is.

Ya I don't think Americans dislike hard academic work and STEM is not every single job. Most jobs don't even really require a bachelor's degree and I think most Americans are aware of that. There just isn't a need for everyone to get a PhD from an elite university in STEM, that's a recipe for disaster. I actually think what OP is saying is kind of an offensive and inaccurate view of Americans.

I'd be happy that I was wrong, as I do hope the US value hardworking in school.

The US has a very strong anti-intellectual streak. Even the children feel it in schools; I know I did. And you can see it in our politics too.

I'm not sure exactly why, but I wonder whether anti-intellectualism has a religious origin.

> I'm not sure exactly why, but I wonder whether anti-intellectualism has a religious origin.

No but it goes hand in hand. Don't want to people to know what your good book actually says because it's easier to control and bilk them if they can't read.

An odd phenomenon I've seen in the last 15 years (I'm in South Texas) is a cohort of people that are actually proud to be dumb. For them ignorance is to be celebrated. I've even had several tell me that it lets them be more spiritual and in tune with the word of their god.

I wonder if it's in the US's pro-agrarian, anti-urban roots. Thomas Jefferson famously thought of America as an agrarian democracy, and you see this even today where "Main St", "the real America", "small town America", etc. are all callbacks to the nation's rural roots.

I don't buy that, not all rural people are moronic hicks or hillbillies.

Opportunity has often been their biggest hurdle. While most are just as smart as you or me, the chances for them to get a "proper" education and out of their situation isn't as easy as it is for an urban dweller.

I never said any of that. But a lot of the anti-intellectual rhetoric today, is also anti-elite and anti-urban.

Yeah that is a complex issue due in part to dems and liberals not having a real presence in rural communities.

It's easy to blame the rich and urban when your community is broke and you see all the "help" going to the big rich cities.

This is incorrect. Most of the help actually goes to rural areas and "red states" and that money is coming from the richer cities.

See farm price supports, rural roads, block grants of money on the federal level between states:

https://www.moneygeek.com/living/states-most-reliant-federal...

Describes me. I love hard work—love it—if it’s making me sweat. Will go ‘till I puke, keep going, then tell you I had a great time afterward. Sports, physical labor, any of that. Just don’t ask me to run for the sake of running—there’s hardly a more-boring activity on the planet, to me.

Intellectual work is soul-crushing and makes me want to stop and do literally anything else within a couple hours, by contrast. And I’ve got some natural talent for it! I can’t imagine how intolerable it’d be otherwise.

But the painfully-boring leave-me-a-husk-by-EOD intellectual jobs pay better and don’t (necessarily) ruin your body by age 40, so I tappy-tappy at keyboards instead of building fences or whatever. Sigh.

Same goes for academics. Studying’s draining. Doing baseball (or whatever) drills is awesome.

But maybe I only feel that way because I’m American. I dunno.

As an American, it is not strange to me! There is a long cultural tradition, going back to the Greeks or the English, putting an emphasis on "sportsmanship" and athleticism. Besides hard work, most sports put an emphasis on competing within a framework of rules, teamwork, and discipline.

I am not athletic or particularly interested in sports, but I think a love of sports is good for society. Excellence in academics, wealth, beauty are obviously really valued in our society as well. Most Americans value hard work in academics-- look what we spend on education!

> For someone who grew up in a different country, it appears to me that Americans do not hate working hard, they just hate working hard on academics, which is really strange

Really interesting way to put it.

> it appears to me that Americans do not hate working hard, they just hate working hard on academics

Not much machismo in academics but there's tons in sports and hard physical work. That's why truck/beer and other male oriented commercials never show someone reading a book, they show someone doing hard physical work or competing in a physical activity (edit: or getting laid). That's about all there is to it.

I don't think generalizing a country of 330 MM people is reasonable. Americans like sports, not all Americans like sports. Of those that do, not all of them idolize and worship sports. There are people who studied STEM that also like sports.

Ever try to study when you've been sitting outside eating hotdogs and drinking beer all day?

Now try doing the same thing, but watching sports.

> For someone who grew up in a different country, it appears to me that Americans do not hate working hard, they just hate working hard on academics, which is really strange.

I doubt this generalization rings true. Americans just enjoy sport more than many other nations…you can leave it at that without adding some idea of them hating academics. It’s not an either/or situation.

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