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PaperclipPerfector  8mo ago (text post)   2805 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for September 3, 2023

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

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Speaking purely about what I know, the Kyoto School is one of the most impressive philosophical movements of the 20th Century. Probably top ten rather than top five, but still great and largely unheard of in the West - for instance, I find Religion and Nothingness to deal with some Kantian problems in a way which both prefigured and exceeded modern Western Kant scholarship. Of course, they highly are influenced by Heidegger, who is sometimes called an existentialist, but at the least it's very expensive existentialism.

It seems like you're talking more about the humanities side of things than the STEM side of things.

I don't think someone could have written Umineko or End of Evangelion or Angel's Egg unless they were a distinctly intelligent and sensitive person. Or any of Basho's poetry, which is quite remarkable:

Even in Kyoto—

hearing the cuckoo's cry—

I long for Kyoto.

But perhaps all that is still swill for the masses. To each their own.

I do believe that there was a certain hypertrophy in the development of art and philosophy that occurred in the West that didn't occur anywhere else, although the Japanese are arguably in second place. Maybe that's because Europeans are just more creative than everyone else. Or maybe it's because the idea of "heavy intellectual content" outside the domain of STEM is an ill-defined and arbitrary social construct, and we can't expect other civilizations to have adopted the same arbitrary social constructs that we did. It's worth thinking about.

As for Japanese achievements in STEM, I dunno. Seems like the Mochizuki stuff didn't go anywhere. I would just refer you to the relevant publication metrics for whatever field you're interested in.

The way any nationality or ethnicity's intellectual powers are directed is in large part culturally mediated and orthogonal to their measured intelligence. Imagine all the collective brainpower that has been spent (or wasted, you might argue) by Ashkenazi Jews in debating the finer points of Talmudical hermeneutics or by Indian Brahmins in memorizing and reciting the Vedas for thousands of years. However high IQ those populations were or are, there isn't much there for you to read if you aren't into esoteric religious literature or have some personal connection to that culture. If your interest is as specific as modern science fiction novels for example, then you're probably going to get more out of a random western or western-adjacent country like Poland or Finland than anywhere in Asia simply for contingent historical reasons.

As far as the Japanese go, I'd say from my limited experience that their technical expertise in many areas of manufacturing seems indisputable, that they have made major advances in science above and beyond their neighbors in East Asia, and are pretty much the number 2 country in the world after the United States in terms of unique cultural exports (anime, manga, video games, movies, etc. that don't simply ape American forms like European or even Korean producers often do). The fact that they developed a vernacular literature and achieved nearly complete literacy before even most western nations also ranks them pretty highly in my book.

I find generalizations of the form "group X is stupid because it doesn't do Y exactly in a way I'd like people to do Y" more a failure of imagination and evidence of the narrow-mindedness than anything else. Maybe they don't have something like Three Body, or maybe they do - but making an impression on the whole culture by such a narrow measure sounds pointless.

they commonly come across as substantially and consistently dumber than other ESLs.

When I cooperated with Japanese people at my work (was some years ago) I (eventually) found out several of them did not speak English, and the English emails they regularly sent me are a product of an automatic translation. That explained a lot actually. It would be nice if they told me about it upfront, but I understand it may be harder for them to admit something like that. But none of those people were dumb - or dumber than any other very smart people I worked with, despite the occasional communication problems. Maybe if you understood Japanese you'd have a different impression?

On the other hand, if I would evaluate people by the content I find on the social media, I'd be forced to conclude that the vast majority of humanity are complete utter morons. I don't think it's actually true though, I think it's just how the social media works, unfortunately.

It's amusing in a post talking about translation and language prowess that you've actually made a (very common with Americans) grammatical error.

if I would evaluate people by the content I find on the social media, I'd be forced to conclude that the vast majority of humanity are complete utter morons.

This should be either "if I evaluated" or "if I were to evaluate", since it forms a subordinate clause to the second conditional, if you're interested. Mistakes of this form are nearly guaranteed with Dutchmen, which I always find interesting because their English is otherwise near-perfect, and typically more orthodox than the average, say, Brit.

I am not a Dutchman (not that there's anything wrong with that ;), neither I am a native English speaker, so I make such mistakes regularly, especially when I tweak the phrase several times before posting and forget to re-read the whole thing and see if it still sounds like a coherent and correct phrase. I do know about that rule, in fact, by a weird coincidence, I was reading an article about it just yesterday (even though I knew it before that), but of course that means nothing. I sometimes make such mistakes even in my native language. I appreciate you pointing it out, which reminds me of the necessity of paying more attention.

Describing the Japanese (at least the Yamato) as a distinct ethnic group isn’t really correct, is it? All the relevant DNA analysis suggests they’re well over 90% ethnically Korean in terms of ancestry. There hasn’t been the same ethnogenesis one sees in some Western European populations because there really wasn’t much mixing. They’re pretty much Koreans.

As regards cultural production I think Japanese film and literature has been in a dark age since at least 1970, for whatever reason. And as other users have said, the Japanese have a reputation for being more parochial and inward-focused than other East Asians.

Koreans, Japanese and Chinese find it relatively easy to differentiate one another just by looking at main physical features like the nose, jaw etc., or so I've heard.

As a white American they look very different to my eyes. Give me a large group of Chinese, Koreans and Japanese and I'll (almost entirely correctly) sort them. Koreans and Japanese look different, despite very recent common ancestry.

Koreans and Japanese do not look the same

Koreans tend to be more attractive, but in the same way Anglo-Utahns of 100% English descent look more attractive than most actual English people. All the stuff about eye tilt direction is pure weeb/koreaboo fiction. One even sees this in DNA tests where many Koreans and Japanese are shocked to find their results come back “40% Korean” (search Reddit) despite no Zainichi or colonial ancestry etc, and it’s because the markers are indistinguishable between Yamato and ethnic Koreans. Increasingly DNA testing sites are just merging the categories entirely since markers are so heavily overlapped.

Some Koreans have additional Siberian admixture, some Japanese have Ainu or otherwise indigenous ancestry. But yes, they’re the same race.

Koreans are more attractive because the beauty standards of Korea are more strict and conformist than Japanese beauty standards. Korean men aim for a butch/masculine military inspired appearance with short hairstyles and Korean women keep their hair black and makeup and clothes very simple. Japanese men and women are far more likely to use hair bleach and have ridiculous hairstyles as well as adopt more Western inspired individualistic fashions. Korea is much more conformist, in Seoul everyone on the train wears the same 3 colors (black, beige and gray) whereas in Japan everyone wears some random bullshit that they believe suits their personality. When I was in Seoul for a few months I would see really handsome Korean men just about every day whereas I would see a really handsome Japanese man in Japan much less frequently, maybe once a week or less. Likewise I would see an extremely beautiful Korean girl just about every day in Korea whereas extremely beautiful women in Japan are harder to find (I also attribute this to Japanese modesty and, possibly, covid malaise because I somewhat remember more beautiful Japanese women when I was there in 2017 but this could be a change in my personal perception)

Also mainstream Japanese are like 10 percent Jomon and 90 percent Yayoi, I don't think Koreans have Jomon ancestry but I'm too lazy to look up the stats right now so I could be wrong

Also, Japanese people have really a diverse range of skin tones and body hairiness levels from very pale to quite dark and completely hairless to fairly hairy. Koreans are broadly much paler and almost entirely hairless.

The Korean diet is also significantly healthier than the Japanese diet which I suspect contributes to the difference in health/general appearance between the two countries. (People I talk to often don't believe me when I say this but I have spent time in like 20 countries at this point and Japan is by far the most difficult country to eat healthy in, meat and vegetables are still expensive and hard to come by and usually deep fried and battered and very fatty cuts, it's also the only country I can't find a rotisserie chicken in and many of the food standards in the country seem weirdly stuck in the showa era)

Koreans tend to be more attractive

isn't beauty in the eye of the beholder (or attractiveness in this case)?

I feel somerhing similar with white people. Not in writing but speaking. I cant "connect" with them, as if they are automatons.

When I travelled through the Eaat Coast of the US, I felt like I had no issues jiving with blacks, latinos or asians but for some reason there was some kind of filter between me and whites, kind of as if only half of what I was saying was reaching them. Wasnt the case with the Amish though, lol.

Im brown and speak fluent english with no accent fwiw.

That's super interesting, have you ever been to Europe? There's a lot that's distinct about White Americans (the capitalisation makes sense here to draw attention to the group, they're not just Americans who happen to be white) compared to other Euro nations. If I'm to trade in unkind European characterisations, White Americans can be a bit insincere, plastic and not-quite-there. Maybe "hollow" would be a better term than "plastic", actually.

I wonder if these traits are what you noticed; "automaton-like" is not a bad match for this set of traits

Have you noticed any difference between cishajnals and transhajnals?

Yeah I have less of this issue with Eastern europeans and Scandinavians. Its mostly anglos that I experience this with.

Depending on where you travelled in the US on the East Coast, it's probable only a modest minority of the white people you encountered were Anglos (or substantially Anglos).

They certainly pull their weight in number theory.

This hasn't been my experience, but you could be experiencing selection bias.

Chinese, Indian, or Nigerian immigrants to the US tend to be some of the best and brightest from their respective countries. On the other hand, few Japanese tend to want to leave Japan since Japan is already the best country (kidding, sort of).

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