Comment by crazygringo | Hacker News Reader

Comment by crazygringo | Hacker News Reader

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Putting aside Gladwell for a moment...

By the end of the article, you realize that the whole point is about the negatives of "culturalism". He says:

> Like racism, culturalism distracts away from asking more meaningful questions, and obscures pertinent facts.

> Like racism, culturalism puts a large group of people beyond rational understanding.

> like racism, culturalism destroys individual agency.

> Culturalism causes real harm. It obfuscates the truth.

But he hasn't backed this up at all, except for a single lengthy anecdote about Gladwell's chapter. Speaking as someone who has lived in in several different countries besides the US (including 8 years in one), cultural attitudes are extremely important everywhere you go and can explain lots of important things.

Just look at Geert Hofstede's "Cultures and Organizations" if you want empirical data for it.

Seeking cultural explanations for things is no different from seeking any other kind of explanation. Even if it winds up not being true, it's perfectly valid to wonder if cultural things are at work. Looking for cultural explanations is not a distraction, and it does not put anyone "beyond rational understanding" -- to the contrary, it tries to explain things rationally.

I understand that the author is bothered by speculation about Korean culture, but honestly, that's just silly. It's not emblematic of some kind of anti-Korean attitudes in US media or anything, and the author's done nothing to show that it is.

I completely agree with you - as someone who is deploying the same technology system, with the same team, in eight different countries (USA, Brazil, Luxembourg/Germany, UK, Portugal, Singapore, Australia, Malaysia) - I can tell you that having a clear understanding of the culture prior to engaging with the customer significantly enhances our chances of success in each endeavor.

One example - Germany has a reputation as being a rule oriented/structured country, so taking an extra few days of preparation prior to deployments, was very much appreciated there, and we went to the extra effort to do so (and totally enjoyed having an appreciative audience for our wonderfully laid out test plans).

We also discovered in Brazil, that if the customer showed up 5 or 6 minutes late for a conf call, that we shouldn't stress or be concerned that there was a problem - but that culturally, meetings/calls don't always start exactly on the minute. We also learned to be careful to leave an extra 30 minute window for meetings to end a little later than they were scheduled.

Contrawise, We were always careful to dial in within a 30-45 second window at the start of a call when working with the UK. And those meetings (almost) always ended precisely on time.

These are things that you need to be aware of if you want to work effectively in different countries. Don't always expect that other people's expectations of what's appropriate are the same as yours.

This is what I mean - these are things that completely vary from one person to another and one company to another and somehow this is being attributed to countries. Within any country, there are rule-oriented structured companies and individuals and relatively unstructured companies and individuals. There are companies and individuals who don't care if you're late to meetings and there are companies and individuals who do. If someone is telling you, this is how things work in this country, in regards to this kind of variation, you're being lied to and it would be obvious to you someone tried to tell you the same thing about your own country.

And no, you can't have a clear understanding of the culture by having someone tell you a couple of things before meetings - most people have no idea how a different subculture in their own country is like, let alone having a reasonable picture of the national culture. A foreign culture with which you have a brief contact? Clear understanding? Get out of here.

Our briefings on what to expect, and how a particular country might be different from the "American Median" comes from our in-country teams. I.E. People who were born there and have had to deal with American Companies.

You can certainly have variability around an average, but, it's also certainly the case that average norms for various countries can be (dramatically) different.

And, as one who has travelled quite a bit, I can tell you German Culture and (for instance) Hong Kong Culture, around things like queues/rules, are so different as to make your head spin. The meeting thing in Brazil is really true. And, if you come out to Silicon Valley, 90+% of engineering companies are fine with you wearing a T-Shirt. Strongly suspect that's not the ratio you would see in London. Culture is real.

Except almost no one has any idea what the American median is, or the Brazillian median is. These are large diverse countries with huge internal variation to which you have not been exposed. New York is a lot more like London than Silicon Valley, even though New York and Silicon Valley are part of America and London is part of England. Even within New York. there's huge variation that most people are unlikely to have full understanding of. A small design studio in Dumbo, a large financial institution in financial district and an advertising company in Midtown are going to have completely different cultures and norms.

If someone tells you, in our country, people are like this, the chance is that you're being mislead. Lots of people tell me that in their country of origin, there are no gay people or something along those lines. People have a very narrow view of what constitutes their own national culture, largely oriented around their own peculiar and individual experience.

I recommend this submission:

If Correlation does not imply causation, then what does? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6030627

I totally agree with you here. Culture != race, and to ignore culture means that you are not seeing the whole picture. Anybody who works internationally and ignores cultural issues is going to have a bad time. Acknowledging cultural differences does not have to be negative, and it certainly does not make someone racist.

Citing of cultural differences is often (I'd even say usually) code for citing racial stereotypes as if they were common sense.

I'd say that it's worth discussion that the cultural differences cited by Gladwell about Korea are the same as 150 year old stereotypes of Chinese culture.

It was my understanding that the author is not disputing that culture is important. What I got he's trying to say is: - Culture is not always the reason something happens - Culture is not used as an explanation when something happens related to some countries. I think this point is valid. I'm reading 'The Second Sex' and Simone de Beauvoir talks about how machism is a way to turn the women into the _Other_, to put men into the center, as something neutral. I think it's the same thing with culturalism; it's not that somethings may be caused by culture but it's turning other cultures into Other, it's putting our culture as if it were something neutral, the standard.

That's the first thing that struck me, as I have also lived in several different countries and even the ones with a similar Anglo-Western cultures, the differences to the approach of important things like risk, truth, trust, authenticity and authority is significant enough to be dangerous at times.

The other part is that I don't believe it's fictitious pilot folklore about the specific training to deal with the cultural issues that had to take place. Not just Korean, I've heard similar things about Vietnamese pilots too.

It is extremely provocative for TheKorean to equate judging a culture with judging someone by their genetics. His goal all along was to persuade you to feel guilt in doing so even when it is warranted.

TheKorean understands the tricks of rhetoric. He wrote an essay on it on his blog. He did not write this article in an attempt to consider an issue in the spirit of open minded inquiry. He did it to discourage you from making judgements of other cultures in all cases.

This is the same person who said it was perfectly ok in Korea for a woman to walk up to a girl on the subway and _slap_ her because the woman believed the girl was disrespectful.

Why was it ok? According to TheKorean, because by the cultural standards in Korea say it is ok. He is wrong.

He is not a rational open minded thinker. He is using rhetorical tricks (appealing to your skepticism to convince you that judging cultures is wrong) in an attempt to protect his own people.

This board has smart, rational people. Let's look at motives and not just arguments.

Aren't you asking the OP to disprove a negative? Understandably, the OP has a bone to pick with Asian stereotypes, but it seems more effective to evaluate his critique on its own merits: does it properly represent - and refute - Gladwell's assertions?

There's nothing wrong with looking for cultural explanations, but as the OP points out, there could be perfectly valid non-cultural reasons, such as the economic and technological history of Korean industry.

The problem with cultural/ethnic explanations, in general, is that they are so strongly rooted in our psychology...a big part of that is influenced, of course, by our culture. Ask anyone who works in casting for ad campaigns.

>The problem with cultural/ethnic explanations, in general, is that they are so strongly rooted in our psychology

And that they come first. To look for an individual explanation involves studying an individual or an incident in detail. Resorting to a handy stereotype is far easier. I've never run an airline or been a pilot, but I may have met a Korean or two, and have an easily accessible array of stereotypes about Asians.

http://blog.rongarret.info/2013/07/are-korean-airlines-unsaf...

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