We Aren't the World: Why Americans Make Bad Study Subjects 450
Lasrick writes "This is just fascinating: Joe Henrich and his colleagues are shaking the foundations of psychology and economics, and explain why social science studies of Westerners — and Americans in particular — don't really tell us about the human condition: 'Given the data, they concluded that social scientists could not possibly have picked a worse population from which to draw broad generalizations. Researchers had been doing the equivalent of studying penguins while believing that they were learning insights applicable to all birds.'"
What? (Score:5, Funny)
"Researchers had been doing the equivalent of studying penguins while believing that they were learning insights applicable to all birds.'"
Are they saying all the Americans are fat birds, unable to fly?
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
>Are they saying all the Americans are fat birds, unable to fly?
Not without an 'enhanced' at down. No.
Re: (Score:2)
at/pat. uck.
Re:What? (Score:4, Insightful)
I think they are saying, that in a couple small tests, many cultures, particularly less wealthy or more family oriented cultures, react differently than Americans, and therefore Americans make incredibly bad case studies.
Bullshit.
It's better to say, that we are in a different basic situation, so of course we make bad case studies WHEN BEING COMPARED TO OTHER CULTURES WITH DIFFEREING CONDITIONS. You can make that statement about ANY culture. And every culture will probably have a case of tests where it will be an incredibly bad study - particularly in areas where the influencing factors on an individuals decisions on the topic, are drastically different from those of other locations.
Re:What? (Score:4, Interesting)
I haven't RTFA either, but I suspect that someone along the line is overstating the point to attract attention, and that the real point is that many psychology papers extrapolate wildly from a highly biased population to universal human behaviour. Studies which use only North American subjects and claim that "people" (rather than "North Americans") statistically behave in a certain way would be one salient example, and another would be studies which use only students (easy to recruit if you're based in a university and willing to pay a very small fee for participation) and again claim that "people" behave in a certain way rather than "students at XYZ University".
Re:What? (Score:5, Informative)
Here's some figures to show you how drastic it is:
A 2008 survey of the top six psychology journals dramatically shows how common that assumption was: more than 96 percent of the subjects tested in psychological studies from 2003 to 2007 were Westerners—with nearly 70 percent from the United States alone. Put another way: 96 percent of human subjects in these studies came from countries that represent only 12 percent of the world’s population.
Among Westerners, the data showed that Americans were often the most unusual, leading the researchers to conclude that "American participants are exceptional even within the unusual population of Westerners—outliers among outliers."
Re:What? (Score:4, Interesting)
I haven't RTFA either, but I suspect that someone along the line is overstating the point to attract attention
Basically, the test in question was a bribery test. People from cultures more attuned to bribery (euphemistically referred to as "gift-giving" in the study) turned out to be faster to use it and more generous with their offers. Big surprise. The more developed your country is, the less likely you are to try to openly bribe a stranger with cash. Again, big surprise. This couldn't possibly shock anyone who has been to the third world before (and had to pay regular bribes to the locals for everyday shit like "passing through your village").
Re:What? (Score:5, Insightful)
Or, as we call it, "tipping".
Tipping (or "gift-giving") is a degrading and corrupting practice. It implies that the receiver is temporarily whoring himself to the tipper.
Re:What? (Score:5, Insightful)
The worst thing about tipping is the stupid calculations people come up with for it... an example:
Restaurant A: waitress is decent but rarely stops by and takes forever to fulfill simple requests like drink refills
Restaurant B: waitress is perfectly attentive and anticipates our needs before we even realize we have them (drink refills, extra napkins, other things I can't remember).
I gave waitress A a $2 tip, and get yelled at by my friends for under tipping.
I gave waitress B a $3 tip and this same group of friends wants to reduce their tip accordingly because they think it is "too much".
The difference? The meal at location A cost double what the meal at location B cost. Everyone calculates based on the price of the meal, not the quality of the service - this is what is retarded about tipping nowadays. Like expensive food is somehow more difficult to carry across the room than cheaper food.
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:3)
The receiver IS temporarily whoring himself to the tipper. What makes you think they aren't?
It's the same at any job. If I go to work at some company writing software, I'm whoring myself to that company for 8 hours/day (or more, when it's a salaried position). I do a job, I get paid for my time spent. It's the same with waiters, except they serve multiple customers at once and none of them last very long (usually an hour at most). Tipping just allows the customer to pay what they think is fair, rather t
Re:What? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3)
So here's a crazy idea: read the fucking article before adding you ill-informed comments.
Re:What? (Score:5, Informative)
I think they are saying, that in a couple small tests, many cultures, particularly less wealthy or more family oriented cultures, react differently than Americans, and therefore Americans make incredibly bad case studies. Bullshit.
Yes, what you've said is bullshit, because that's not what they're saying:
social scientists could not possibly have picked a worse population from which to draw broad generalizations
Of all the populations they could have picked - no matter how bad it is to make such generalisations in any case - the US was the worst one to pick for making such generalisations. So you could have summed it up as:
many cultures, particularly less wealthy or more family oriented cultures, react differently from each other, and that if you want a generalisation of the entire human population, America is the worst place to look.
I see that it's automatically something to be offended by, though.
Re: (Score:3)
Simply reality the test subject have been corrupted by saturation 24/7/365 mass marketing designed by psychopaths with degrees in psychology to manipulate the behaviour and choices of all possible test subjects. See not so clear cut if you stop and think about it.
Now of course the rest are catching up to the destructive saturation marketing system and are also losing normal balance. So time to stop the excesses of psychologically destructive marketing.
Re: (Score:3)
I think they are saying, that in a couple small tests, many cultures, particularly less wealthy or more family oriented cultures, react differently than Americans, and therefore Americans make incredibly bad case studies.
No.
They are saying that *culture* is what decides the results to these tests, and not inherent characteristics. Their entire point is that in these couple small tests the results differed everywhere. These "couple small tests" are tests we have traditionally held to be universal. We assume, for example, that in the same circumstances the $100-problem the author described people would universally settle on offering a "fair" 50/50 trade. People didn't expect that "fairness" was subjective even in somet
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You need some work on the proper use of American (you're not your).
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I have a feeling you meant English.
Re:What? (Score:5, Funny)
Are they saying all the Americans are fat birds, unable to fly?
In Third World countries, only the rich can afford to be fat.
In America, only the rich can afford to be thin.
And in America, almost everyone can afford to fly. Which is unfortunate, if you get the middle seat, between two fat folks.
Re:What? (Score:4, Insightful)
Hmm, based on your post, I would posit that wherever you're from, the people there can't read a full article and come to a proper conclusion.
duh (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re:duh (Score:4, Informative)
Since we're talking about sociology here, the "rich" should be referring to income and wealth of individuals (the objects being studied). So, something like GDP or GNI per capita, probably adjusted for purchasing-power parity.
You're talking about government debt, which probably doesn't influence sociology much, unless you ask how people feel about the government's debt. But regardless, the US national debt is about 100% of GDP, depending on how you count it, which is a bit above Canada and the EU nations with good finances and a bit below some EU nations with bad finances. It's about half of Japan's debt (per GDP). (But, to be fair, it's 200 times North Korea's debt. It must be nice to be that rich.)
Re: (Score:3)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_the_European_Union [wikipedia.org]
Average for EU as of Q3 2012 is 85% of GDP. Only five nations of the 27 EU members have a debt of above 100%.
The US are highly in debt. Especially if you consider absolute numbers, not the ones relative to GDP.
The way of the world (Score:2)
Lord Bradley: Precisely. But, if our economy was threatened, then it would be our duty to protect our intrests.
Anna Leonowens: Our economy?! Our interests?!
Lady Bradley: The ways of America are the ways of the world, my dear.
Who is human? (Score:4, Insightful)
If one was trying to scientifically "draw broad generalizations" about humans, why would you ever select samples from just one nation (regardless of which one)?
Use a dozen nations, some more developed than others. Heck, use one hundred nations. How else would you be abled to defend statistically valid results?
Leaving out any arbitrary set of 330 million humans would seem to lead you further away from meaningful conclusions. Are Americans not also human?
Singling out one country for inclusion or exclusion sounds like something other than impartial, apolitical science for drawing "broad generalizations".
If you don't like America (or wherever), that's fine and dandy... but please don't call your hand-picked findings the "human condition". Especially if you're going to choose the humans based upon any one individual's peculiar set of ideals.
Re:Who is human? (Score:5, Interesting)
Everyone is human, but Americans are outliers. If you could only study a small handful of people, they would be an awful choice. They are not representative of the average. That is one of Henrich's minor points. If you were trying to predict the average human behaviour, and had to leave out a country, the US would be one of the best choices, because it is so different.
The trend of studying only Americans was a result of cultural blindness. Paraphrasing the article: multiculturalism purports that all cultures are unique and special and have interesting intrinsic attributes, but academics refuse to discuss them because they don't want to be accused of racism or stereotyping. To avoid the question, they assumed that everyone was alike, and just chose to study people who were readily available (usually the undergrads at their campuses.)
Henrich et al. have shown this to be a bad decision, and have presented data that shows the study samples were not only deeply skewed by being from a Western, (culturally) European, industrialized, rich, and democratic country, but also that the United States was very atypical of other countries that met those same criteria.
The ultimate goal of the article isn't to claim that Americans are somehow no longer worth study, though, just that you can't make assumptions about everyone else based on how they act. They're accusing everyone else of cherry-picking, and want to encourage samples from around the world to be considered equally. That being said, though, the article doesn't discourage studying any particular group: it has a couple of observations about differences amongst American populations, too.
I'm kinda getting the vibe that you're a radical isolationist. You may wanna work on that.
There is no "average" (Score:3)
I'm not sure you could pick any single population of people (other than the human race as a whole) and call them an "average representation." I'm guessing that in some aspects, every culture will have some attributes in which it differs markedly from the average.
In the particular subset tested, Americans were different, but it seems to be drawing a bit of a broad brush to say that it follows that all sociological studies run on Americans will come out different, while implying that other study subjects wou
true, but fits the implicit instrumental goal (Score:5, Insightful)
The instrumental goal underlying a lot of psychology and economics research is "what should we do in the U.S.?" It's all dressed up in basic-science, idealistic language, but ultimately what the penguin taxpayers funding the research most care about is penguin economics and penguin psychology, not so much the rest of the birds...
Re:true, but fits the implicit instrumental goal (Score:5, Insightful)
Us penguins use our penguin research to try and extrapolate how we should help African Swallows.
No wonder our attempts at shaping non-Western countries has spectacularly and repeatedly failed.
Explains outsourcing (and the American backlash) (Score:2)
To begin with, the offers from the first player were much lower. In addition, when on the receiving end of the game, the Machiguenga rarely refused even the lowest possible amount. "It just seemed ridiculous to the Machiguenga that you would reject an offer of free money," says Henrich.
"They just didn't understand why anyone would sacrifice money to punish someone who had the good luck of getting to play the other role in the game."
The big corporations were way ahead of the curve.
American Exceptionalism! (Score:5, Funny)
Now scientifically proven! ;)
Flamebait? (Score:4, Insightful)
It should be possible to mod an entire article as flamebait...
*grabs popcorn*
The myth of the "universal" westerner. (Score:2)
Studies show that Western urban children grow up so closed off in man-made environments that their brains never form a deep or complex connection to the natural world.
So what does their study say about "western" who have been raised rural?
Re: (Score:3)
So what does their study say about "western" who have been raised rural?
You may safely assume they fall under the "primitive, gun-loving hillbilly rednecks" [slashdot.org] stereotype and omit them from humanity as well. Given contemporary social science I suspect any America "raised rural" would necessarily occupy the "least human" end of the humanity continuum.
This could be a hit. (Score:4, Funny)
Yeah, I thought of the same (Score:3)
We aren't the ones who make a brighter day
So lets stop giving
There's a choice we're making
We're saving our own lives
Ain't true we'll make a better day
Just you and me
Mod summary off-topic. (Score:5, Insightful)
The article isn't actually about the Western world, or how Americans are "bad study subjects". Rather, the research TFA talks about is indications that Western assumptions about cognition are based on Western culture, rather than biological design*. In essence, the researchers acknowledge that some of the basic fundamental ideas of perception may not be so fundamental.
It really has nothing to do with Americans being inherently bad study subjects. Rather, it accuses the field of anthropology of focusing too heavily on a single (though changing) culture throughout its history. In other words, sampling bias exists.
* "Design" In the "structure and function" sense, not the "somebody intentionally built this" sense.
Re:Mod summary off-topic. (Score:5, Informative)
It really has nothing to do with Americans being inherently bad study subjects.
It really has.
It has a lot of words about how the Americans often are located far at one side of the bell curve and very seldom "just average humans".
Re: (Score:2)
No fucking shit. (Score:3, Insightful)
social scientists could not possibly have picked a worse population from which to draw broad generalizations
Uh, that's because America is diverse as fuck. Hell, humanity is diverse as fuck.
Trying to draw accurate yet broad generalizations about humanity are impossible.
Holy Crap (Score:5, Informative)
This summary has almost nothing to do with the underlying article, and the headline draws a completely erroneous conclusion. It isn't about Americans being bad study subjects at all, but rather the idea that extrapolating between two cultural groups that have vastly different environments is much harder than previously thought.
Re: (Score:2)
It isn't about Americans being bad study subjects at all, but rather the idea that comparing apples to oranges is much harder than previously thought.
FTFY.
Hmm, not sure even I realize how profound that 'correction' happens to be...
Experimental differences (Score:4, Insightful)
A sentence from the cited article might explain the different behaviour experienced when running the "Ultimatum" game with the Machiguenga
The stakes Henrich used in the game with the Machiguenga were not insubstantial—roughly equivalent to the few days’ wages they sometimes earned from episodic work with logging or oil companies.
So if one offers a valuable and rare commodity to people living a life near sustenance, one gets other results than if one does the same experiment with people who have most of their needs (over)fulfilled and do not need the stakes of the game? That is IMHO not surprising but quite in line with Maslow's hierarchy of needs [wikipedia.org].
Maybe social scientists (and economists) should start to evaluate the context of their experiments more carefully. Alas they are missing the 'laws of nature' [slashdot.org] whose violation leads to checking every plug.
Shock term for attention (Score:2)
Research published late last year suggested psychological differences at the city level too.
Some of the differences they've found actually are interest
Difficulty in teaching languages / cultures (Score:2, Interesting)
As a foreign language instructor for adult students I've certainly struggled with the American mindset. In every class there's always a few who I call anti-culturalist. They just can't comprehend that there's other ways of doing things that aren't wrong but simply different. The more a person has traveled the less they seem to struggle with this. Everyone should spend a year or two living somewhere really foreign, that would do a lot for human relations. Maybe the size of the United States just makes th
Obvious (Score:2)
Occam's Razor (Score:2)
In other words: the concept of ceteris paribus [wikipedia.org] is utter bullshit.
Film at 11.
USA is very rich. (Score:4, Insightful)
In the last election cycle the Republicans tried to point out that what America calls poor would not be called poor in most other nations. But they got lots of flak and backed off. But there is some truth in noting that "there is no food in the fridge in my kitchen" sounds crazy to people who don't have homes, and those who do don't have kitchens, and those who do dont have fridges! It like the story about the poor written by a rich kid. "There was a poor man. His butler was poor, His chauffeur was poor, His cook was poor and so was his maid.
A household barely on the poverty line in USA [givingwhatwecan.org] is richer than 80% of the world! About 10% of the world, [globalissues.org] or 700 million people or twice the population of USA, lives in less than $365 a year! Again these dollar figures are not the foreign exchange rate based dollars. These are "purchase power parity" dollars. Which means the $365 buys in the poor country, what $365 would buy in the USA.
So the conclusions of this study are rather obvious.
No sh*t, Sherlock: (Score:5, Informative)
In the late eighties, I (like many other undergrads) were required to "volunteer" to be the subjects of psych and sociology studies when we were in intro psychology classes.
I talked a good bit with a particular political science prof whose specialty was survey research and the measurement of public opinion. I noted that no reasonable researcher would try to extrapolate such a biased sample to be representative of the world population. He pretty much agreed and lamented the situation.
Yet, that was exactly what was being done. Ignoring the myriad flaws in the research I could see with just the viewpoint of participating, none of the people doing the studies that I talked to saw any reason to control for the completely unrepresentative sample.
They were quite happy to make predictions equally about inner city youth, Appalachian rural elderly and middle aged residents of The Hamptons all from studies that were exclusively late teen early twenties college students.
I was appalled that this "goop" might end up being used as the basis for social policy decisions.
Game as presented seems flawed (Score:5, Interesting)
The stakes Henrich used in the game with the Machiguenga were not insubstantial—roughly equivalent to the few days’ wages they sometimes earned from episodic work with logging or oil companies.
Henrich's approach to the ultimatum game seems flawed. He mentions that he offers the equivalent of a few days wages, which is probably too much. The game is usually played for significant, but smaller sums, such as the value of a free lunch. For a sufficiently large starting sum, even tiny portions are enough to be worth something. For example, if you were asked to decide on a split of $200 out of a total $2000, you would probably want to spite the splitter. But you would also probably be overruled by your desire to get a free $200. It's only when we start looking at a smaller total with similar proportions -- say, $2 out of $20 -- that we start to see small portions being worth sacrificing to spite the other guy.
Proportionality is a bad metric in this scenario, and he should probably use some thing like "hours of equivalent labor" instead. (And in that case, he better hope everyone is used to making equal amounts of money in such an hour, which is certainly not true in Western societies.) By sticking to proportionality as a metric long after it becomes meaningless, Henrich buries the signal in noise. He has made it too easy for the splitter to "buy off" the decider.
The Pacific Standard description of the game also misses the point when they say that (for Western subject) the game tends towards and average 50/50 split. The average isn't nearly as interesting as the highest refused split/lowest accepted split, which tells you exactly how much someone is willing to sacrifice to spite the other party/the minimum "fair" proportion. This figure tends to be down near 30%. (It is up for debate how the subjects are internalizing this number as fair... whether it is closer to, say, "half of an even share (25%)," or "half of what the splitter makes (33.33%)," or some other figure.)
He is correct in that it will be culturally influenced. That is a big part of the point. In fact, when the experiment was originally devised, it was considered surprising that people would refuse any split at all. It is, after all, free money split between anonymous parties in exchange for no work at all. The reason people behave in this "illogical" manner is because reputation has worth, and if you want to avoid being cheated in society, it pays to have a reputation for being spiteful and willing to take a small loss to inflict punishment on those who wrong you. No transaction happens in a vacuum. The point is that the social gaming conditioning "leaks through" into our behavior even though the experimenter has (usually) done his best to remove all social components that would reward such spiteful behavior.
Now, Henrich has spent a few years doing this sort of thing, and it's been looked over by plenty of competent people, so I'm presuming his team's understanding is really not so shallow as it is presented here. But still, it is a bit odd to look at this collection of anecdotes that seems to demonstrate "culture matters" and come away with the conclusion that Westerners, and especially Americans, are weird. This is especially true when so many experiments of the previous century were aimed at identifying cultural behaviors and disentangling them from basic human response... in essence, all experiments which prove both that humans are similar (because they respond similarly under highly controlled conditions) and that culture matters (because that what influences them to behave slightly differently under different conditions). An experimenter has to be keenly aware of the culture under test, because experiments can amplify subtle differences if it doesn't account for them.
Tribal Behavior (Score:3)
From the experiment with the Machiguenga (follow link in summary) , the split between players matters less then it does in 'Western' (i.e. American) society. They are much more likely to share their wealth among the tribe after the game is over. So it doesn't matter who walks away with what amount during the game.
From a practical point of view, the giver in the game has more certainty of getting his share up front than he does in trusting the (outsider) sociologist to give the remainder to the other participant as agreed. So get the money now and split it with the village afterwords.
Re:If you wanted to know about humans, (Score:5, Insightful)
Ummm... We certainly aren't primitive.
As far as gun loving rednecks, that's just a small, overly-vocal part of our community. Every community has the small group of overly vocal nut-jobs that makes them look bad. Hell, yours has you, doesn't it?
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Nuh-uh, I don't live in a community you stupid American. Dumb Americans always assuming stuff about other peoples.
Re:If you wanted to know about humans, (Score:5, Informative)
Nuh-uh, I don't live in a community you stupid American.
According to TFA, this makes you exceptionally close to the typical American, who have been shown to be the group of humans most likely to view themselves outside a culture or community.
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Oh yeah, cuz 'm betting the rest of the planet admires and is impressed with our fascination for steel underground zombie apocalypse shelters...
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Must be French...
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
small? there are 300 million guns in this country.
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Owned by 32% of the population.
Re: (Score:3)
Another AC made the same point. But do you really think that every one of those people owns exactly 3 guns? There are probably a fair number of people who have a single pistol, shotgun, or rifle, and a fail number of people who need to use one for work... I don't know if I'd call such people "gun loving".
We have 1.5 million active military personnel, and another 1.5 million reservists. That's a full 1% of our population. Another approximately million Americans work as sworn officers of some kind. I couldn'
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Roughly 30% of the population was all it took to throw the British out on their ear. It may be a minority in terms of simple math but in all reality having 30 percent of a people invested into any ideaology in a society of our nature is substantial at the same time.
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
1. Destroyers [wikipedia.org]
2. High-Tech Choppers [wikipedia.org]
3. Fighter Jets [wikipedia.org]
4. Battle Tanks [wikipedia.org]
5. Flying Death Robots [wikipedia.org]
The list goes on and on... Glad you think your little AR-15 is the sound of freedom, but good luck throwing off THAT government.
Re:If you wanted to know about humans, (Score:5, Insightful)
Winning wars happens when the soldiers with the above decide they like the rebels better than the entrenched government. That's what happened in the US Revolution and many other successful revolutions.
If you really think a government run by the MAFIAA, banks, etc. is going to remain more popular than one that opposes them forever if they continue to turn the screws, you will be very surprised someday when the tides suddenly turn.
Re:If you wanted to know about humans, (Score:5, Interesting)
Way to entirely miss the point.
First of all, the American rebels started with just hunting rifles, with no cannon or other serious military gear of the time. The Revolutionary War got started because, against all odds, the rebels sucessfully captured armories.
But really, that's not the point. If you're fighting against actual military equipment, it will be a civil war, and both sides will have actual military equipment - that's not why you need an armed populace. Tyranny never starts with the Army being sent against civilians - that just defines the point at which tyranny has won.
Tyranny starts with Brownshirts. Unofficial (but government sponsored) death squads that pull people out of their houses in the middle of the night and disappear them, or just shoot them right there in the street. That beginning is where an armed populace can fight back. There are historically only a handful of people willing to be Brownshirts. If only 10% of that armed 30% are brave enough to actually fight back, then the Brownshirts lose, and tyranny falters.
Re:If you wanted to know about humans, (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm sick and tired of people who believe that US governmental tyranny exists talking about it as though it is a Us vs Them argument.
In the real world, not some fantastical universe you have created, but in the REAL world, there exists an extremely large portion of the population who does, (or who will, in this universe you have created) agree with the government. They may agree that your guns should be taken away from you, or that you should no longer be able to ban gays from marrying, or that you should not be able to have tax-free churches any more...all of which are things, by the way, that many tea-tards have used as example of "tyranny" by the government.
In the REAL world, if you were to rise up against this government, you'd also be rising up against the (approximately) half of the US population that put that government in place.
This is not called "rising up against an oppressive government."
This is known as a CIVIL WAR, and we've already had one.
So think about that the next time you want to "rise up against the government." You'd actually be rising up against a whole lot of average americans who VOTED to put that government in place, and if you think they will take kindly to your attempts to "take your country back", you will have another thing coming.
Re:If you wanted to know about humans, (Score:5, Interesting)
The Revolutionary War got started because, against all odds, the rebels sucessfully captured armories.
Well, that and massive military support from the French government. The hugely unpopular and undemocratic war debts from which campaign then led to the collapse of that government in the French Revolution. Which then led to the death of 40,000 in the Terror, the rise of the dictator Napoleon and another huge English-French world conflict. Yay freedom, I guess.
So basically, if you want to argue from history, if a ragtag band of rebels wants to overthrow a tyrannical regime by force they pretty much have to have the support of another tyrannical regime that hates the first one and wants to use the rebels as a proxy war. But that doesn't make for a nice Hollywood movie.
Re: (Score:3)
Its even worse than that... you seen the armed camps in Wyoming and Montana? You think any one of them could play nice with another for more than a Fortnight? Sorry, once you start playing the "My way or the Highway" game you're gonna have 5,000 little pissed off fifedoms yanking in different directions. The larger organized system will swat you like a bunch of flies.
All of this presumes the government has any intention of doing anything to you at all. If it all went to hell tomorrow, what makes you think t
Re:If you wanted to know about humans, (Score:5, Insightful)
The British of 1776 didn't need any of that stuff - they didn't really lose any major battles other than Yorktown, and they only had that because of the intervention of the French navy. If it weren't for the French that battle would not have been decisive, but the overall outcome of the war would probably not have changed much (though it might have been more drawn out, or diplomatic in resolution - which could have made the US look more like one of the Commonwealth nations).
The American Revolution is a classic example of how you can win almost every battle and yet lose a war. 30% of the population being armed means that anything an opposition army does results in LOTS of people dying on all sides. Sure, you can bomb cities into ruins, but you can't just march in and take over with any kind of continuity. Few really want to stomach that kind of mess, so there are limits on what any government can accomplish. The British might have won Lexington/Concord, but 300 casualties in a single day wasn't really anything the citizens back home really wanted to hear about, and it just set the tone for the entire war.
Just look at Iraq. It isn't exactly smooth sailing for the US over there despite a huge advantage in military power.
Re: (Score:3)
Americans have fought other Americans several times in our history. The side currently in power will declare any resistance as terrorists, murders, and nut job radicals so our armed forces have little problem pulling the trigger on them.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Secondly, those combat troops would be more likely to join in overthrowing the government than they would be to shoot at American people.
Ah, just like police riot squads would rather shoot tear gas grenades at their fellow officers than at unarmed street protesters?
Part of the problem is ... (Score:3)
Re: (Score:3)
Those leaders were being informed that if they applied weapons of mass destruction on their own people they'd have the UN and the US climbing up their nethers... Who would threaten the US Guberment that way???
Re: (Score:3)
People in the army have families.
East to kill people - not so easy to keep others from killing everyone you care about.
Re: (Score:3)
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Iraq failed because Rumsfeld couldn't find his own rear end with arrows in his panties to guide the way.
We aren't currently winning Afghanistan because the country is a nasty mountainous, hell hole that's chewed the ass off every army that ever marched through it. Nobody has ever won a war against the locals, because it always degenerates to a guerrilla war with people who know the home field better than you and are willing to make it a war of attrition over decades to wear you down. Worse, if we'd have jus
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If I'm generous to your point and assume that the distribution of guns per owner is normal about the average of 3, then that leaves 50% of the guns in 16% of the people's hands. I suspect the distribution is skewed toward even fewer people owning most of the guns.
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Not everyone who merely owns a gun is a gun nut.
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Around half of your voting population continually chooses the GOP. Ignore the theoretical ideals you place on the GOP, listen to what the candidates say and how they try to obtain votes. Do it objectively and critically. I think that says it all.
I'm not saying the Dem's are any better, they're not, but they do make appeals to a more sophisticated electorate as well as pandering to the lowest common denominator.
It's all lies on both sides, but as an outsider, the GOP are certainly far more primitive than the
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Our students. Our. Yes, I realize I will get flamed for that...
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Re:If you wanted to know about humans, (Score:5, Insightful)
Rednecks are a very small part of the gun culture. They happen to be the most vocal of us. Kind of like how the really weird and disgusting LGBTQ people seem to be the most vocal of those people.
I assume this is at -1 for Unpleasant Truth?
It never ceases to amaze me how self-proclaimed "intellectuals" have the exact same hangups about unpleasant but true speech as all the folks they like to pretend they outsmart.
Re:If you wanted to know about humans, (Score:5, Insightful)
I assume this is at -1 for Unpleasant Truth?
It never ceases to amaze me how self-proclaimed "intellectuals" have the exact same hangups about unpleasant but true speech as all the folks they like to pretend they outsmart.
You sure are reading a whole lot of context into nothing more than a couple of down-mods. What do you make of the fact that the original post about "gun-loving hill billy rednecks" was also down-modded to -1? How do you know it wasn't "self-proclaimed intellectuals" who did that too because they realize that neither stereotype is particularly accurate?
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Just a normal ecosystem, nothing to see here, move along.
Re:If you wanted to know about humans, (Score:5, Informative)
Ummm... We certainly aren't primitive.
Especially when you consider the subjects for most of these tests are undergraduate university students, mostly from prestigious universities.
Anyway, if you don't want to read the article, here is are a few of the differences mentioned:
1. Americans are more likely than any other group to be "fair" to anonymous strangers, and expect those strangers to be "fair" to them.
2. Americans are more likely than any other group to ignore consensus, and make independent judgements.
3. Americans are more likely than any other group to perceive "unnatural" straight lines and right angles.
Re:If you wanted to know about humans, (Score:5, Interesting)
The first two seem like positive things to me.
The point of the article is not that they are good or bad, but that they are not normal. Americans are not just different on these issues, they are the most extreme. In no other society is "fairness" to strangers more given or expected. Americans are not only more likely to offer a "fair deal" to a stranger, but they are also more likely to pay a price to punish an unfair defector.
The researchers found that in some societies, not only is stinginess tolerated, but excessive generosity is punished. The reason given is that in these societies, accepting a gift incurs an obligation to reciprocate. So the generosity is rejected to avoid the future obligation.
Americans are often surprised when they travel abroad, and see foreigners walk unconcerned past someone in obvious need of assistance. We are also sometimes surprised at other societies' intolerance for dissent or non-conformity. Americans say "the squeaky wheel gets the grease", but the Japanese equivalent is "the nail that sticks up will be hammered back down," which expresses the opposite sentiment.
Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:If you wanted to know about humans, (Score:5, Funny)
I use the three shells where I live on the east coast of America.
I figure that must be bash, ksh and what? csh? zsh? ash? Don't keep us in suspense here!
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Ha, he doesn't know how to use the three shells!
Re:If you wanted to know about humans, (Score:5, Funny)
The internet does as well. In fact it has made the minority seem like a majority for a long time. It is amazingly easy to create an echo chamber here.
I agree- good point!
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It is amazingly easy to create an echo chamber here.
It IS amazingly easy to create an echo chamber here.
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This is a general challenge with free societies (democracies etc). A small vocal minority can control the framing of issues and you can end up with a choice between
1) Guns and freedom.
2) No guns and no freedom.
Or whatever combo of polarizing issues. This makes me want to go back to ancient Greece (Thebes?) where democracy didn't mean voting it meant participation. Leaders were drawn by lot you had to serve if chosen or forfeited your citizenship (which is a fair balance between rights and obligations to you
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Men raised in the honor culture of the American South have been shown to experience much larger surges of testosterone after insults than do Northerners.
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why would you study a bunch of primitive, gun-loving hillbilly rednecks?
You seem to be thinking of southerners, not Americans...
... and a subset of a subset, at that.
So, to answer the original question: Because you don't really know the proper way to do research.
Re:That only works in an sorta uniform population (Score:4, Insightful)
The US is completely fractured ... To try to come to conclusions with that - and I haven't read the article, but I'll wager it's a very small sample size - is ludicrous.
You're simultaneously completely missing the point of TFA, and yet hitting it dead on. According to TFA, not only aren't Americans uniformly distributed, but the whole world isn't, in ways that haven't been considered before. Certain assumptions, like having a perception based on interpreting straight lines in a 3D context, turn out to only be valid among a Western population who, for example, grew up with straight walls. The researchers in TFA aren't saying that Americans are particularly bad study subjects, but rather that even basic perceptions long thought to be universal are really influenced by culture.
Re:That only works in an sorta uniform population (Score:5, Interesting)
Outstanding perspective on a sensitive subject.
I have long thought that focusing on an insistence on commonality between race because of guilt for colonial history for example was missing the point that there are cultural differences which do influence behavior.
Now we have a valid framework to examine how cultural differences can collide and through a proper examination of cultural difference to begin to resolve problems that we have not had any mental equipment to figure out solutions to. These are groundbreaking ideas with so much promise to help us understand our divided world better.
This isnt about how Americans, Hispanics, Blacks or Stone age tribes are wrong, its about why the error in thinking that they are all "the same underneath" has a rational explanation in cultural difference and how this is a sensible route for western analytical science to start addressing the problems that it brings.
Great!
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But by that definition there is no right either. It might be fair to say that there is no left or right in mainstream American politics anymore. The vast majority pretty much agrees that a police state is what we want, need, and deserve.
The only difference is in verbiage. The two sides flap their lips a bit differently either to appeal to CEOs of giant evil corporations or to jealous angry people who want to more or less get rid of anyone who makes more money than they do.
Democrats: blah, blah, blah, soak t
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It's more widely used outside the US.
Re:Wow! (Score:5, Insightful)
This headline is the most hateful and prejudiced comment about Americans I have heard all day!
Wow, you must live a very sheltered existence. I would be flattered if someone said that about me. I don't want to represent the average.
Just to make your day even more interesting: I have noticed at least 3 posts from people living in the US who took offence at this article. This means that some >0 percentage of the US population who can both read and write, either don't know what "make bad study subjects" means, or they aspire for their nation to be totally average in every way.
There, what I just wrote is now the most hateful and prejudiced comment about 'Americans' you have heard all day.