Unfortunately this comment is an example of what I am talking about, the kind of behavior that frustrates me.

Pop culture, news, and books give an incredibly limited and skewed perspective of what a country is actually like. Worse yet, if you remove these things from their context and then give them to someone who has a different culture, you end up missing large chunks. American pop culture is also stripped of realism and specificity to make it more broadly accessible to Americans and even abroad.

To draw a comparison which might be more familiar to the HN crowd, consider what happens when you learn programming by reading a bunch of blog posts, articles, and books about programming, but you never actually write a single line of code. You’ll have a very distorted idea of what programming or software engineering is like.

I’ve had similar conversations with both groups of people. A novice programmer might have an arrogant attitude and explain to me why the code base is terrible, or might have the attitude of a learner and ask me questions about the design decisions. A European might have an arrogant attitude and explain to me what the problems are with American race relations, or they could be more humble and ask me questions about what living in America is like.

I don't know man?

I think the Euros have perspectives that are just as valid as anyone else'. I mean, Americans get their ideas from the pop media too, and then we experience life through that lens. Americans are not somehow less susceptible to pop media influence than, say, Europeans, simply by virtue of being Americans. We are just as manipulated as they are. Probably more manipulated, since we consume more of our pop media.

The media changes the perspective of people. The perspective becomes the reality. Doesn't matter who those people are, or where they happened to grow up. The media you consume, shapes your perspective, which becomes reality for you. No one is immune to it. This is deeply ingrained psychological stuff. With several decades worth of study to back it up. (Along with countless billions in profits derived from exploiting that very human proclivity.)

To say that the European perspective is invalid because they didn't grow up here, would be like saying that Americans don't have valid perspectives on life in Europe or China, because we didn't grow up in any of those nations. Well, maybe we didn't, but we can have a perspective that is as valid as anyone else'. Doesn't make our perspective more "right" than anyone else', but I'd hardly say that our perspective on those nations is outright "wrong" just because we didn't grow up in them.

> Americans are not somehow less susceptible to pop media influence than, say, Europeans, simply by virtue of being Americans.

Of course they are! Propaganda is much less effective when you constantly see conflicting evidence with your own lying eyes.

There is a reason why trust in the mainstream media is at an all time low in the US.

???

Are you implying that Europeans can't see through propaganda? That, somehow, only Americans have this gift?

> Are you implying that Europeans can't see through propaganda? That, somehow, only Americans have this gift?

I’m saying reality is a hell of an antidote to propaganda.

I’m certain French people are far better at recognizing biased and misleading reporting concerning France than I am.

Just because one reads any number of American news outlets doesn’t mean they’re familiar with American race relations in the way the average American on the street would experience them. Most American ‘news’ is entertainment and is written and marketed that way. I read BBC, guardian, observer, independent almost every day to name just a few but I still don’t pretend to ‘know’ a thing about how life works on a day-to-day basis in London. Doing so otherwise seems entirely misguided and arrogant.

Also, there's no typical American. Its a country of 3.8 million square miles, as big as then entire continent of Australia. It has a 5000 mile border with Canada, 2000 mile with Mexico, 12000 miles of coastline. Half a million legal immigrants and half that many estimated illegal folk. Enclaves of culture for just about every region of the planet.

Entirely agreed. Shows the inherent bias in my thinking of culutres and customs as nationally-based when, in a place as diverse as America, there’s far more variation in perspective and manner. (Thank goodness for it)

Again, why can't Americans have a perspective on life in Europe or China? (And vice versa as well frankly.)

Is our perspective any more misguided or arrogant than the perspective of a European, or a Chinese person? Because if it is, then we can all stop complaining about Europe and China right? Because our perspectives are all just misguided arrogance.

Now I'm not saying that our perspective on foreign nations is necessarily "right" and "factual". I'm only saying that our perspective is certainly no more "wrong" than any other perspective. Perspectives are not objective realities, but they do become subjective realities for the people who hold them. (Read, "all of us".)

So here's the thing, whether or not those subjective realities are "misguided" or "arrogant" is not really a function of where the holder of the subjective reality grew up, it's a function of a lot of other factors unrelated to national origin. Everyone will have a perspective any given issue. Everyone may even have different perspectives on different issues, but whether or not one perspective is more valuable than another is usually not a function of things like citizenship. The relative value of different perspectives usually turns more on factors such as power and influence; sometimes on other factors like intelligence, and thoughtfulness. Outside of maybe power, rarely do these factors respect national borders.

In my book anyone is allowed to have any number of perspectives on any number of things and I consider those perspectives valid as human perspectives. Where I consider these perspectives ‘misguided’ or ‘arrogant’ is when the purveyor of these perspectives state their perspectives as fact like the op did in this sub thread. I think having a constructive conversation around a set of varying perspectives is to entertain your own perspective as a possibility (as you might others) without necessarily believing it. This way your perspective is just as valid as everyone else’s and is only held as an opinion after. Why try to advertise ones perspective as anything but a limited cache of experience prone to invalidation based on new information? Please, share the perspectives, have them, nurture them and then tear them down when more accurate information arrives; but don’t disingenuously push them as fact by stating them as unappealable facts.

I guess I just don't get too hung up about what people believe. For instance, if Southerners want to believe the Civil War was about state's rights and preventing Northerners from coming south to turn the family farms into factories, they should be free to have that perspective. (From my perspective it's asinine, but I mean whatever. I'm sure they believe my perspective on slavery to be asinine.) Point is, they aren't obligated to discuss their perspective, or entertain other perspectives if they don't wish to do so. That's what the freedom of thought is about, none of us are obliged to listen to any other of us as a matter of course.

If you want to discuss your perspectives on life with other people that's fine. (Actually I think it's admirable even.) There just shouldn't be the expectation that anyone else has to sit down and discuss their perspectives on life with you.

Other than that though, I think we're in agreement. Different people can have different perspectives that become subjective realities, but are usually not even close to being objective realities. People have the freedom to discuss, or ignore, other perspectives at their sole discretion. Thereby fulfilling the promise, and conveying to us the benefits, of freedom of thought.

As an American, I agree. I think one of the factors is that it's easy for the US to be a world unto itself. With 325m people versus the EU's 505m (soon to be 440m), and with roughly equivalent GDPs, it's really easy for Americans to stay in their bubble. E.g., hear only English, experience only one culture, deal with only one system of law. We can easily move a thousand miles and still be in a place where, well, people measure in miles.

There's some hope, though. As recently as 1994, only 10% of Americans had passports. But now that number is above 40%. [1] Part of that's due to to no longer having passport-free travel to our nearest neighbors since the 9/11-inspired security tightening. But I think part of it's real.

[1] https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-42586638