
The Western Elite from a Chinese Perspective - monsieurpng
https://americanaffairsjournal.org/2017/11/western-elite-chinese-perspective/
======
11thEarlOfMar
"... randomness is not merely the noise but the dominant factor. And those
reasons we assign to historical events are often just ex post
rationalizations. As rising generations are taught the rationalizations, they
conclude that things always happen for a reason. "

I didn't realize it until contemplating this statement, but this applies to
interpersonal relationships as well as nations. It is the root of tolerance
and acceptance. People wind up where they are largely through circumstance,
not intention. Circumstance may be as finite as meeting a person in a purely
random situation who then goes on to change your life.

Yet we lionize persons we deem successful and study what led them there,
rationalizing that the set of attributes that we can observe about them must
be the cause of their success. And in speaking with them personally, you'll
find, in many cases, impostor syndrome because they understand the randomness
that played in their favor.

I make a conscious effort to keep that in mind. It helps keep me from becoming
judgmental.

~~~
alexasmyths
"People wind up where they are largely through circumstance, not intention. "

There may be a lot of randomness on the way to becoming, or almost becoming a
doctor, but you don't get to be a doctor by randomness.

See what I mean?

You get to be a doctor only with quite a very long term intent and
perseverance, by stacking the odds, and rolling the dice a lot.

Though I get what you are saying - I also don't think that most people as of
yet realize how much actual control they have over themselves and their lives,
and they can possibly make it better. That's still a huge hurdle for a lot of
people.

I suppose those that have jumped that hurdle could often learn a little
empathy for those with bad dice :)

~~~
zxcmx
Well if you really want to maximise your odds of becoming a doctor, the best
thing you can do for yourself is choose your parents wisely.

Don't choose to be born in a slum in a third world country, or a trailer park,
thats gonna hurt your chances. Make sure you don't pick a family that will
abuse you as you grow up. Try to make sure you at least get average genetics
for general intelligence and memory (50% of people won't...).

Ideally, choose to have at least one doctor as a parent (increases your odds
by more than an order of magnitude). A good mentor or role model at the right
time could substitute though.

Of course, people _can_ control their own lives, but most people who succeed
at becoming doctors were both lucky AND hard working.

And I'd be willing to be that though they did work like hell to do it, a lot
of doctors "sleepwalked into it" because a teacher at school or a parent told
them thats what they should do.

~~~
alexasmyths
" the best thing you can do for yourself is choose your parents wisely."

Maybe.

I'd rather have a good worth ethnic than 'rich parents' on the road to
becoming a doctor anywhere in the Western world.

There are innumerable lazy rich kids and they won't be getting into med
school.

~~~
yostrovs
Amazing how downvotes correlate with the political opinion of the people here.
And then you see comments like "I haven't even seen anti net neutrality
arguments at all.. Why would the FCC do that?" You choose to close your eyes,
you get a seemingly dark world.

------
PoliteTwig
I find it interesting that the author only considers America from the top down
- from the perspectives of institutions (Stanford, Goldman Sachs, Costco) and
slogans (American Dream, All people deserve to live healthy lives). Part of me
wonders if that’s due to America's own marketing, or due to his upbringing in
a more totalitarian government, but for most Americans these perspectives are
just as foreign.

At dinner tables and in churches all across the country, you hear people say
"God is in control”. You’ll hear reminders to be humble and appreciate what
you have, because anyone can get ill at any time, or lose all all their
belongings in fire, or any number of bad events. The chaos out there is real,
whether one believes in it or not. And there's an even bigger danger in trying
to control the chaos, and history has plenty of examples (Mao's China and USSR
most recent). The limited government in America was founded on a distrust of
power, top-down control, and people who want to control the world. Without
that bottom-up perspective, America will never make sense.

~~~
jraines
This is a good point, but there's an awful lot of post-hoc Just World fallacy
wrapped up in those same statements of faith. The really spurious ones - like
9/11 or Katrina being divine punishment - get media coverage but there're more
bland ones that are actually more harmful; like disease or disaster being all
part of God's plan. It's all good for living a life where you have to cope
with what you can't directly control, but not so good when it comes to
supporting policy that aims to take action on healthcare, climate change, etc.
I'm not saying this to support any specific existing policy proposal, just
that when/if the "right" one comes it's unlikely to undergo a rational debate.

~~~
icebraining
How does that tie with the statistics showing US citizens - and in particular
more religious people - as good donors for charities and disaster victims?
Seems contradictory.

~~~
jraines
It's complicated & kind of orthogonal. I am not trying to paint all religious
people with the Pat Robertson-style example that I pointed out as egregious.
This isn't an anti-religion post; it's just about the downside of thinking
something was destined/planned/ordained just because it happened.

~~~
icebraining
I wasn't accusing you of being anti-religion, just honestly curious :)

------
thetruthseeker1
I thought it was a good/enjoyable article and it shed light on many things for
me.

Reading some of the comments below, and having known some Chinese people ( I
am not east asian) I want to point out that it seems like many people missed
the intention/ tone of the author. I think his intention was not to brag as
some people have misunderstood, but to provide context to how he got to where
he got to.

His communication style is different compared to the western style of
communication. There is no single coherent message he is trying to drive
purposefully or tacitly, but my guess is he was hoping you learn whatever you
can from his experience and his way of thought.

Sure the article title could have had the words ‘random’ and ‘musings’ in the
same sentence..... meh!

~~~
matt4077
I got a sense of a sort of extremely dry, British humour, with a hint of self-
deprecation, from it. Which I thoroughly enjoyed.

------
bespoke_engnr
> Her life, up to that point, was very similar to the life that I have been
> living. And I am sure that, at the time, she was as optimistic about her
> life as we are today about ours. But she went to the UK in 1935, and she
> went back to China around the founding of the People’s Republic of China.
> Her education abroad, in a capitalist country, and her belief in individual
> rights and freedom often placed her on the wrong side of various political
> campaigns and the Cultural Revolution. She lost numerous friends and family
> members, including her husband and daughter during these years. She barely
> survived a long period of imprisonment herself. It was not until the 1980s
> when she managed to get a passport and could move to live with her relatives
> abroad. On the ship to Hong Kong, she kept thinking about her decision to
> return to China all those years ago.

For those of you wondering, the book he was reading is "Life and Death in
Shanghai" by Cheng Nien. For me, that was the most interesting part of the
article.

I know very little about modern Chinese history and this seems like an
interesting place to start.

[https://www.amazon.com/Life-Death-Shanghai-Cheng-
Nien/dp/080...](https://www.amazon.com/Life-Death-Shanghai-Cheng-
Nien/dp/0802145167/)

~~~
solidsnack9000
> (Someone once said that it is necessary to know English in order to learn
> about China. Important perspectives on China are only available in English
> and are generally not accessible on the mainland.)

I wonder what other books fall into this category?

~~~
daltonlp
[https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/775647.The_Private_Life_...](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/775647.The_Private_Life_of_Chairman_Mao?from_search=true)

------
roberthluo
Reading about the west from a Chinese perspective is a breath of fresh air.
Similar in background to the author, I have come to the same conclusion; that
everything in life is based on a bit of luck and achievement. He also
absorbed, which is somewhat unusual in my opinion the differences between U.S.
and the U.K. I think he has a much more nuanced view of all three societies
that he has written.

~~~
grot
I also come from a similar background, and his points also seem poignant to me
-- the first, in my reading, is about the lottery of birth; would he or I or
you have been successful (with presumably our predisposition to succeed in
academia) in China merely 70 years ago? Perhaps not. The second, related, is
that we should be grateful for the achievements which might naturally appear
as the product of our own labor, and (I think) also to forgive others for the
achievements that appear to be the product of their labor.

Though implicit, I think this article actually makes an interesting
implication about jealousy. What exactly is there to be jealous of in another
person if luck, and randomness plays so much in our fortunes?

This article is also a warning against self-help. So much determines our
fortunes besides the advice we can take or the effort we make. The best is
what -- rolling with the punches --

~~~
roberthluo
I agree with your points, except the part on jealously and warning against
self-help. I view his life similar to investing, as he mentioned: being "long
term greedy." I thought him and his parent's story illustrated this. It is
unlikely that his parents had the best schooling in the world, but they were
successful financially somewhat. When their son struggled in school, they
enrolled him somewhere else and gave him more resources. He used that and
achieve more by attending the most prestigious institution in the world. While
it is likely that luck played a huge role, ie. China's market liberalization
and growth, U.K. schools wanting to make more revenue, his stint at GS. He and
his parents needed to be there in position the first place to take advantage
of all of that. I do not think this is his point to warn against self help,
rather than an examination of why and how he got to where he did.

Luck only comes when you are in position to seize it. Yes despite your best
efforts, it might never come. But it can come when you never expect it because
you are in the right place and the right time.

------
paulpauper
_Eventually I was able to meet the chief financial officer of my favorite
company, Costco. He told me that they don’t hire any MBAs. Everyone starts by
pushing trolleys. (I have seriously thought about doing just that. But my wife
is strongly against it.) Maybe, I thought, that is why the company is so
successful—no MBAs!_

that's pretty amazing..is this really true? So if someone applied for
marketing or accounting, they would still have to push carts?

~~~
k4ch0w
I did some consulting work at Costco. Their IT is all people that were once
cashiers/trolley pushers. They pride themselves having staff loyal to the
company and in turn take care of them. I would assume it's true pretty much
everywhere else around the company.

~~~
edflsafoiewq
Costco is infamously obsessed with seniority.

------
stevenwoo
Slightly off topic, but in the early 90's I had to help rewrite the resume of
the Chinese friend of a Chinese friend and she was very proud of the fact he
graduated from the number one university in China. He had very poor English
writing skills so I just unmangled it, did not have difficulty conversing with
him, but I was not aware of the admissions difficulty being so high there
compared to the Stanford/elite US universities as the writer says, this was
about the time the WWW came online so was not so easy to google the answers
back then.

~~~
vostok
> I was not aware of the admissions difficulty being so high there compared to
> the Stanford/elite US universities

China has a population of 1.4 billion. Peking University has 33k students and
Tsinghua has 45k.

Obviously this isn't a great comparison because lots of foreigners come to
study in the US, but I think it does give a sense of scale.

~~~
mlevental
us has a population of about 300 million and Harvard has a student body of
size 6,700. looks almost exactly proportional

------
brobdingnagians
1\. People who believe they can affect their own future and have control over
there circumstances tend to have higher self-esteem and happiness. That tells
you at least something about what you might _want_ to believe.

2\. Montesquieu had a theory that people in history rode the wave of what was
happening at the time, so Napoleon would not have become Napoleon if he was
born in a different time, _but_ if Napoleon had not take control, someone else
would have, since circumstances were ripe. Therefore, a person who knows how
to read the events & choose a good strategy for the time in which they live
will usually be at least moderately successful, and someone incapable of that
will nearly always be mediocre. There are outliers and extremely fortunate or
unfortunate events, but part of strategy is not becoming a negative outlier
and optimizing for higher success. You may miss a specific opportunity, but if
you are always looking for opportunity, you will find one of the ones that
come along.

------
throw2016
Its an interesting piece and some of the responses here seem uncharitable even
defensive, as if he has questioned sacred gods.

It's not individuals reacting but jingoism, our generation was brought up on
the idea of globalism and humanism, that we can connect as individuals. But as
one gets older it seems jingoism is as alive as ever, only concealed better,
where some things are taken for granted and not to be questioned while
pointing fingers at others, judging others and making negative assumptions is
perfectly ok.

Reluctance to introspect on your own society while cheering on those who
criticize their own is a losing game.

------
SadWebDeveloper
> UK’s university system is considered superior to China’s,..., about one in
> ten applicants gets into Oxbridge in the UK, ...,but in Hebei province in
> China, where I am from, only one in fifteen hundred applicants gets into
> Peking or Qinghua University

"western universities" aren't only for "the best and brightest" but also for
those who can afford it, this narrowly reduces the number of applicants.

------
mlinksva
> One class was about strategy. It focused on how corporate mottos and logos
> could inspire employees.

Probably not intended as such, but I'll take it as a hilarious send up of
"strategy" and will recall it whenever I witness "strategy" being used
vacuously.

~~~
grot
I think he meant it. His English is very fluent throughout the article.

~~~
wolfgke
As a non-native speaker I say that there is a huge difference between
speaking/writing fluent English and doing this in a way that satisfies
"unwritten cultural conventions".

For my English, for example, native speakers tend to say that it is actually
quite correct, but I have a tendency to use words in a specific way in which
few native speaker would use them.

~~~
grot
I am a non-native english speaker too; I guess I bristle at the the reading
that this man isn't in control of his english when he writes with obvious
proficiency, a reading I suspect, would not at all be in question were his
name John Foster Edwards, or Henry Wickham or whatever Anglo-Saxon name you
wish to replace his name with.

I see your point though. I think he does use words in ways that native
speakers do not use, but in his anecdotes -- I think he's actually playing up
his Chineseness for the comic effect, and he's very much aware of what's
happening.

------
isoskeles
> So I bought a heart rate monitor and checked my resting heart rate. Right
> around 78. And when the professor said to me in class “Puzhong, I can see
> that story brought up some emotions in you,” I rolled up my sleeve and
> checked my heart rate. It was about 77. And so I said, “nope, no emotion.”
> The experiment seemed to confirm my prior belief: my heart rate hardly
> moved, even when I was criticized, though it did jump when I became excited
> or laughed.

Yikes.

> In Communist China, I was taught that hard work would bring success. In the
> land of the American dream, I learned that success comes through good luck,
> the right slogans, and monitoring your own—and others’—emotions.

I don't understand the value of this analogy. In Communist China, I was
_taught_ (something that is done to you) something _false_ , but in the U.S. I
_learned_ (note: not taught, learned) something _X_.

Is it true or false? Because it matters whether or not something is true or
false. I'm sure the author thinks what he is writing is true, otherwise, why
write it? But he just directly compared something he decided on his own to
something he was taught to be true that was actually false. This is really
murky, and I don't care enough about his feelings about Cambridge or Stanford
or Costco to try to make any more sense of it.

~~~
Nomentatus
It's not an analogy, it's a juxtaposition. He agrees with Rubin, and has told
anecdotes that support that position. You just don't want to believe his
conclusion, and Rubin's. That's your right, but to say that he has no
position, that it's all murky and there is no conclusion; therefore you can
reject his conclusion, is literally absurd.

------
dibstern
I’m only part way through this so far, but it seems like you think in terms of
absolutes -> either the world is entirely random, or it is entirely causal.
Why can it not be a mix of both, of coincidence and causal relationships, some
of which are intentionally planned.

------
t3rseCode
I'm curious for other immigrants with kids, how difficult is it to break from
the more deterministic "study hardest for success" vs relaxing a bit to
optimize for happiness and embracing the impact of luck.

~~~
rsync
"... break from the more deterministic "study hardest for success" vs relaxing
a bit to optimize for happiness and embracing the impact of luck."

Ahh, yes - the third generation ...

"We are an immigrant nation. The first generation works their fingers to the
bone making things; the next generation goes to college and innovates new
ideas. The third generation snowboards and takes improv classes."[1]

[1] [http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2012-10-11/business/ct-
bi...](http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2012-10-11/business/ct-biz-1011-bf-
donaghy-quotes-20121011_1_quotes-jack-donaghy-business-etiquette)

~~~
SadWebDeveloper
The fourth generation lives from the third and two well, the fifth generation
again works their fingers to the bone making things.

~~~
nine_k
...unless all the factories are already overseas.

------
rdtsc
> My parents by then had reached the conclusion that I was not going anywhere
> promising in China and were ready to send me abroad for high school.

Maybe the title should be "The Western Elite from a Chinese Elite
Perspective". Surely sending kids to school to UK as plan B is not in the
average Chinese family's abilities. Doesn't mean we should discount the
article or its ideas but it's useful to keep the author's background in mind.

~~~
hollerith
Also relevant is that fact that the article contains that statement, "I am the
child of modest workers".

~~~
usaar333
> Yet I had to do it every day. At the end-of-year exam, I scored second from
> the bottom of the class—the same place where I began in first grade. But
> this time it was much harder to accept, after the glory I had enjoyed just
> one year earlier and the huge amount of effort I had put into studying this
> year. Finally, I threw in the towel, and asked my parents to send me abroad.
> Anywhere else on this earth would surely be better.

Given his academic performance in his high school, it's unlikely he got a
scholarship to a leading UK private high school (Hurtwood House checking his
Linkedin). Parents who can afford to send their kid to an overseas high school
that charges $40k/year are not modest by Developed country standards, much
less Chinese, and even less so Hebeinese.

~~~
egor598
He doesn't say his parents were poor or blue-collar workers, he compares
himself to a child of aristocrat. Context is everything.

> He was a child of aristocrats; I am the child of modest workers.

When a one-digit millionaire compares himself to a billionaire like Bill
Gates, using "modest" to describe one's wealth would be appropriate in this
context.

~~~
garmaine
Child of “modest workers” in a communist country can have different meaning.
Maybe they’re party elites? We don’t know. Something just doesn’t add up
though.

~~~
1wd
In another article he writes: "In China, where I was born, there are a lot of
people who work much harder but could not enjoy similar results. The
difference is that I was lucky enough to have had the chance to move abroad at
a young age, thanks my parents. In other words, as Warren Buffett said, a
large part of life is the lottery at birth."

[http://www.economist.com/whichmba/mba-diary-standing-
oration](http://www.economist.com/whichmba/mba-diary-standing-oration)

------
not_that_noob
Probably better titled “Life is a random walk”. I completely agree with his
premise - ‘success’ in life, however defined, seems largely a function largely
of luck. Those who see the world for what it is - rather than what received
dogma teaches - understand this truth.

~~~
jumpyhamster
I study testing of the sort he focuses on, and is at the core of a system he
points out is more similar across Chinese and Western societies than people
think.

What I've come to realize is that everything he wrestles with in the essay is
not hidden away, it's right there within the testing system. It's studied
empirically, the markets are there, it's all in plain view. It doesn't require
any special wisdom or insight and anyone trying to simplify things either way
are wrong.

These tests that are scrutinized bear only a modest relationship with what
they are trying to measure, and what they are trying to measure is only weakly
related to what people want to know. That is, the best estimates suggest that
they're only correlated about .30 or .40 with actual ability or understanding
in any deeper sense at most. And this is over the entire range of ability,
meaning that it includes comparisons between people who score in the 2nd
percentile and those who score in the 98th percentile -- a huge portion of
that correlation is surely due to gross comparisons of that sort.

What's sobering to me is that we know this. We know these tests are not only
imperfect, but severely so. And yet we fetishize it. The money being put into
the testing field is astounding.

The reason of course, is because, while these tests are poor measures, they're
the better than nothing. And we know that they tell us something about people,
on average, across many people.

I'm not sure why we overrely on these things, why these discussions are often
framed in extremes, where either a test is the criterion for success, or react
to it with claims that the tests are completely invalid.

------
Hendrikto
> Eventually I was able to meet the chief financial officer of my favorite
> company, Costco. He told me that they don’t hire any MBAs. Everyone starts
> by pushing trolleys.

The CFO went to university himself. What an ass...

------
throwaway71324
It's rather poetic that the author who was marinated in the cold-hard "we know
best" culture of Communism, then in its self-congratulatory more stochastic
variant of occidental capitalism, to come back to what was once the core
wisdom of the orient, yet not appreciate it.

Pity that while the Europeans destroyed the traditions of much of Asia's
(incl., sadly, much of India's), that the Chinese themselves destroyed a large
part of their own heritage.

------
zcase
"Rather, the increase in inflation was due to things like tax increases,
exchange rate fluctuations, oil price moves, etc."

It seems to me that tax cutting could lead to increased consumption and
therefore a reduction in GDP slack and upward pressure on prices (inflation).
Why is it that tax increases would lead to inflation?

~~~
thyrsus
It depends on what the tax increase or tax decrease affect. If a tax cut goes
predominantly to those who invest in greater productivity, then increased
supply can drop prices - but only if that investment is more efficient than
consequently relinquished government investment. These things are horribly
difficult to measure. Perhaps Ukrainian defense spending is a total waste, and
should cease with a corresponding tax cut. Perhaps it is preventing a transfer
of common wealth to an oligarch, and is the most important investment the
country makes. I'm quite sure I don't know.

------
sgt101
Success or failure - these are the wrong perspectives. Happiness, fulfilment
and experience; when you're on your death bed you'll not think back warmly to
all the money you made, or the great job titles you held.

------
hacker314159
"I told him about the black swan I kept on my desk as a reminder that low
probability events happen with high frequency"

Uh... wouldn't low probability events happen with low frequency? Am I missing
something?

~~~
iakh
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_swan_theory](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_swan_theory)

------
mcguire
Could someone explain the point of this article? All I'm getting are:

* Everything is random.

* A generic Chinese man, who did really well on one test is smarter than most people in Britain.

* Americans, who are capitalists, don't seem to want to focus their lives on the supposed end goal of capitalism.

* MBA programs are nuts, especially if you are on the spectrum.

I'm probably wrong about most of those, but like the author, I just don't see
the coherent picture.

~~~
thedevil
* luck has more to do with results than we think

* "focus on the process, which we can control, rather than the result"

This is also well explained by Scott Adams: "Goals are for losers... try
systems that improve your odds of success."

~~~
bousaid
He more so explained his story, which was essentially: “I studied hard, got
into a good school, and got a great job,” rather than explaining how he
focuses on the process. The only example of “process” was his discovery during
his internship that he _should_ focus on process.

~~~
addicted
But the story you're describing isn't accurate. His story is more like "I
studied hard, did not do well, as a result my parents sent me to a good school
in a different country, and got a great job".

If he had done better than he did in his Chinese High School, his parents may
not have sent him to the UK, in which case he may not have been as successful.
So it still aligns with the idea of the story that we really discount the
value of luck in our successes.

------
binarysolo
Looks like the author also arrived at a similar conclusion:

“It's not about the cards you're dealt, but how you play the hand.”

~~~
pessimizer
It seems to me like the author arrived at nearly the exact opposite
conclusion: "I learned that success comes through good luck, the right
slogans, and monitoring your own—and others’—emotions."

------
kk58
His connclusion mirror's the central tenant of bhagavad gita. "Karmanye vadika
raste ma phalechu kadachana". Do your duty as best as you can , without
expectation of results

~~~
trowaybloway
I think there's a logical contradiction. Without _expected return value_ , how
could one measure how good "as best as" could be? The only resolve I can think
of is to try to adjust to a blacklist instead, maybe don't expect results, but
at least know when you have failed. To me, this is the same thing expressed in
inverse logic.

What's the negative of "expectation of results", ie. the normalization of the
expression "no (expectation of results)" in constructive terms. I guess it
would have to be _perhaps expect failure_

~~~
matt4077
The word "duty" is a clue here, and the word "result" is misunderstood. It is
asking you to do what must be done, but to be modest in what you expect as
return.

It is rather close to the definition of _integrity_ : To do the right thing,
even when nobody's looking.

------
typetehcodez
This story immediately reminded me of Scott Adams. He spent some time working
on financial models before writing Dilbert. If you can stomach polarizing
political viewpoints from a cartoonist, I would highly recommend reading his
non-Dilbert books and giving his blog a thorough reading. His reflections on
life touch on the role of luck, the limitations of prediction models, and
framing worldviews from multiple perspectives as a way to narrow down on
success, influence, and the very meaning of life.

~~~
erikb
This is the second time someone suggests him. But there is a lot to read. Can
you make suggestion for a place to start? Like what's your favorite article?
How did it change your view on the world?

------
bsaul
I can't help but think that the conclusion being "whatever happens happens,
and your actions have very little to do with what your life's going to be" is
a very zen / taoism / asian philosophy cliché.

Maybe the reason the west is successful lies in the belief that individuals
matters. If that's the case, then i suppose the OP still has a long way to go.

~~~
wu-ikkyu
Maybe there's a balance to be struck between the two ideologies: that
seemingly insignificant individual actions can have profound effects, while
also accepting the fact that there are infinite environmental variables that
we have negligible control over which influence every single one of those
actions.

~~~
bsaul
i don't think you need to "accept" the fact that there are infinite variables,
or that you're not all-that-powerful. It's pretty much a given, and it's
something you realise at 2 year old, when you really want to play with that
ball, or lift that rock, or pretty much anything grown up do, but you can't.
And as you're growing up, nature is always there to remind you that you're
nothing.

IMHO, the role of education in the most general sense (encompassing the
cultural background you're evolving in) is to help you think that you need to
keep trying to make a difference, and not give up, because maybe one time in
your life you'll accomplish something, and that'll be worth it.

~~~
wu-ikkyu
>you realise at 2 year old, when you really want to play with that ball, or
lift that rock, or pretty much anything grown up do

Most two year olds can't form complex sentences, and so have yet to be
indoctrinated into their culture's ideologies. It seems like the context of
this whole thread is moreso about economic ideology than basic physics.

------
stuartaxelowen
All patterns are post rationalizations.

------
Exo_Tartarus
I'm not exactly sure what the point of the article is or what the author is
trying to say. It's pretty much an abbreviated biography bookended by some
attempts at philosophizing. It is interesting to hear how much easier the
author found his British curriculum than his Chinese. I was also amused by how
he mocked his Stanford MBA curriculum, and how the career office people were
dismissive of his passion to make money.

Smart hard working people succeed much more often than they don't. Born into
difficult circumstances, their probability of 'success' (accumulating prestige
and wealth) is much higher than for others.

Of course sometimes circumstances are too oppressive to overcome, and
sometimes the stupid and lazy are elevated in spite of themselves... But these
are exceptions.

~~~
addicted
"Smart hard working people succeed much more often than they don't."

A smart hard working person today might be a hard working computer scientist.

Their skills would be absolutely worthless even a few centuries ago. Their
skills would be absolutely worthless even today depending on where they are
born and to the parents they are born.

I'm not convinced "smart and hard working" are not post hoc descriptors
themselves.

~~~
ebola1717
Plus, that sentiment is only true with a narrow set of upper middle class,
white collar assumptions. What about hard working retail workers or factory
workers? Or look how vast the race and gender disparities are...

~~~
Exo_Tartarus
Maybe they don't want to be anything other than retail or factory workers?

Many people don't have ambition, or they have limited ambition.

~~~
timthelion
maybe they don't want to be anything other than factory workers. That doesn't
mean that they are fundamentally less valuable and less worthy of being paid
their fair share.

~~~
Exo_Tartarus
What's their fair share? You think you're worthy to determine that?

------
gleenn
"Have I gotten smarter? Or is it just that British people are stupider than
the Chinese?"

Wow, false dichotomy and either racism or ego, take your pick.

Hard to keep reading after that.

------
bouvin
> "In Communism, the future is certain; it is only the past that might not be"

A fine essay, the above quote gave me a chuckle.

~~~
kunimu
I'm not so sure what is meant by it. Adherents of Marxism-Leninism utilise the
method of dialectical materialism to analyse the past and to provide a model
for the structure of the future based on the resolution of dialectical
contradictions. The contradictions of feudalism led to capitalism, and the
contradictions of capitalism (the value-form in particular, class antagonism)
lead to Communism.

~~~
ordu
It is simple. In the future the Communism will be built, and all the people
will be happy. It is absolutely certain. Every current event proves this
statement, if you think otherwise, you should educate youself better by
consuming mass media.

But the past is not so certain, because the past is under control of the
government, and the past undego changes sometimes. The past has its blank
spots, there are some unmentionable events in the past that do not make
communists proud. So no one really knows what happened.

If you are interested, you might want to read Orwell's 1984, he described
extreme case of such a world view.

~~~
kunimu
Communism is not a 'utopia' in the sense that everyone is happy all the time.
It aims simply to do away with certain problems, just as public health
services don't do away with every problem in your life. Your insinuation that
I or any other Communist thinks this way is a strange one, though not unheard
of.

>you should educate youself better by consuming mass media.

Is this not precisely the opposite of mass media? Marxist social critic
Herbert Marcuse wrote about how, beacuse Communism is a subversive movement,
and indeed the Left, it cannot gain mass media time, because of its nature as
subversive; it can only be snuck in under capitalism, as capitalism is willing
to accept any ideology for the sake of profit. I would recommend _One-
Dimensional Man_ on the topic of what problems Communists have with late
capitalist media and production, and the hiding of information.

>If you are interested, you might want to read Orwell's 1984

I have; although it's a little funny to see Orwell used to rebut the Communist
project, seeing as he was a Socialist himself who fought on the side of
anarchists in Spain, there's a deeper point here that _you_ are missing.
Orwell wrote about very obvious misdirection - "war is peace", "peace is war".
However, you are missing the fact that it is not this easy to see.

Nowadays, as I am sure you know, the contradiction and control is hidden not
in the sentence but within the noun. In words such as "freedom", "democracy",
"control", etc. the actual meaning can be discerned only by the _speaker_ of
the word and the historical time period. Please read Marcuse on this topic. I
don't know where you're getting the idea that I'm in favour of rewriting the
past from.

~~~
ordu
_> Is this not precisely the opposite of mass media?_

Under all existing or existed communist government mass media brings The
Truth, the government's interpretation of events. If you live here you should
know this interpretation, or you risk to show political illiteracy and to be
critisized for that. It can damage your career, or you will be forced to
attend to courses of political literacy, or both. I believe it didn't work for
blue collars, they had more freedom in this sense, but for white collar
political illiteracy was a real threat. It was like now in USA with
microagression of white males (as I see it from other side of ocean): if you
catched on some sort aggression at female, you could be fired and get a "wolf
ticket" (in short, it is markings in papers that does not allow to find white
collar job), or attend to some sort of training, bring public apoligies, and
so on.

 _> Nowadays, as I am sure you know, the contradiction and control is hidden
not in the sentence..._

Are you trying to persuade me that USSR was not as bad as it seems from USA? I
know that. And USA is not as bad as it seemed from USSR. But I have no
intentions to discuss it here. It is a contraversial topic, and it is like
swamp: you step there and cannot get out of it. Moreover I see no point in
discussing: there is no USSR now. Was it bad, or not so bad -- it does not
matter now.

 _> I don't know where you're getting the idea that I'm in favour of rewriting
the past from._

Not you, but all communist states I know about.

~~~
kunimu
I agree, however the Communist form is merely a re-telling of the capitalist
form, it results from the same contradictions, the same process, and has the
same result. Under the states of the past the control is unhidden and in fact
presented unashamed by the powers that be. In the present day, the
infiltration of the new rationality pervades not only media but all experience
within modern society. When you hear Bach in the supermarket or watch the news
or go to the voting booth, it is exactly the same domination, but in different
forms.

This is why both the USA currently and the USSR formerly deserve the same
criticism, and we need to move beyond this rationality of unfreedom, and the
answer to this I belive lies firmly within the realm of revolutionary
Communist movements, but only after realising exactly what inspired the
controlling rationalities of the US and the USSR.

The US (as it continues) and USSR both institute(d) a policy in which the only
freedom is that which you are told you are supposed to have, and that any
freedom which transcends is called either "Socialist" or "capitalist". These
are projected as 'bad' because they appear within their respective societies
to reach 'the limits of reason itself'. To the American taken in by his
'freedom', Socialism is not only unreasonable, irrational or unjustifiable but
it is impossible itself, because to him what is rational is production, the
pervasiveness of technology and relentless consumption. Similar things can be
said about the USSR and its descendant Marxist-Leninist states.

Within the USSR, there was no qualitative change, there was only quantitative
change, and indeed due to their rationality, Socialism could only be seen as
quantitative change, a sliding axis between capitalism and Socialism. This is
because they were fixed by controlling rationality in which Communism has
become quantitative, obscuring the fact that it is truly qualitative, Marx
said as much all along: Communism is the rejection of all established notions,
Communism abolishes all notions of morality, justice, freedom and indeed
stands in opposition, contradiction to all previous societies.

------
lilfatbitch
>I had the second-worst grades in the class and had to sit at a desk
perpendicular to the blackboard so that the teacher could keep a close eye on
me

Maybe he had the second-worst grades from not knowing the meaning of
"perpendicular" even though he studied math

------
alexasmyths
The most odd thing for me was the bit about how he didn't understand how
'long-term greedy' would not inspire most people.

Also - we should consider that the kinds of kids who grow up super talented,
go to Goldman and top Schools etc. are probably not very representative of the
Chinese population.

------
fahayekwasright
Interesting that in one section, he casts doubt on the notion that
mathematical models can accurately describe reality, and in another, he uses a
heart rate monitor to conclude that he doesn’t have emotions.

~~~
analog31
I thought it was brilliant. He "innocently" exposed the whole class as a hoax.

~~~
fahayekwasright
Are you really so sure? It’s not an easy thing to maintain awareness of the
workings of one’s emotions, especially for someone raised in a repressive,
collectivist culture that doesn’t value the internal life of the individual,
and especially if that individual is on the spectrum, in which case the
emotions are “buried” even deeper.

~~~
ordu
If his emotions are buried so deep, that there no way to see real world
consequences of them, than maybe it is better to say, that there are no
emotions?

I think, that mottos in Western culture are just pathetic ones. Western
culture knows nothing about how to raise steady emotions in people. I was born
in USSR, and I saw how it should be done. But there is one consequence: with
experience comes tolerance to external attempts to raise my emotions by some
lovely motto. Now it is really hard to. "All people deserve to live healthy
lives" \-- what is it? I was grown on ideas of Worldwide Communist Revolution
and bringing freedom from damned capitalists to all people? I read books, I
watched films, discussed this in a classes, I learnt world history in terms of
societies struggling to make one more step toward communism. And after that I
hear motto for preschool kids. The topic for boring school essay about role of
Communism in bringing healthy life to everyone. I had eaten tons of this shit
before I came to a school. I have eaten even more in school. Why I should have
any emotions now?

Really, I can hardly believe that any adult can be touched by such a motto.
I'm unable to understand it, even when I try to imagine how it could be, if I
was not born under ideologic pressure.

The Black Swan can be a good motto, because it is a symbol of some non-trivial
idea, because it reminds me something that I can forget to think through one
more time. It reminds me about ideas which I want to think through again and
again. But "healty lives for everyone" is something like communism, it will
not be like that in the overseeable future. It is just one more ideologic lie,
which is must be spoken due to some social protocol. Pointless tradition.

~~~
pessimizer
I've never heard a good case that emotions exist. I'm a believer that we have
both a sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous system that are activated
reflexively by the same types of stimulation that activate them in other
animals; and as humans who deal with abstractions as physical metaphors, those
abstractions stimulate our sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous systems by
activating the same ancient reflexes.

As humans are rationalizers, they construct reasons for these nervous
activations after the fact. If you inculcate them with simple slogans that
become habitual, they will interpret themselves in terms of those slogans.
It's a failure of introspection, or rather a rerouting of any rational
introspection through a lens of theory-theory[1].

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory-
theory](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory-theory)

~~~
Paradigma11
Are you arguing against dualism? What kind of existence could emotions have
that is not "rooted" in the material biological world? Emotions are a useful
concept that helps explain and predict human behaviour and makes human
interactions more predictable/rational. If a person is sad at t0 i know that
his answer to go to a party at t0+1 will be lower than if his emotional state
was happy at t0. That you can describe emotions by biological processes is
inconsequential. See also:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Concept_of_Mind](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Concept_of_Mind)

------
iheartstartup
he misses many points, including the meaning of the phrase "long-term greedy".
It is not about "everyone else in the market was short-term greedy and, as a
result, we took all their money. Since traders like money, this was
inspiring.", but a philosophy of enlightened self-interest, which I suspect
would resonate with the class and professor more. Yet he subtly uses this as
an anecdote about how MBAs are dumb and the classes "herd mentality". What
aarogance!

------
KaoruAoiShiho
> In Communist China, I was taught that hard work would bring success. In the
> land of the American dream, I learned that success comes through good luck,
> the right slogans, and monitoring your own—and others’—emotions.

FTFY:

> In highschool, I was taught that hard work would bring success. In college,
> I learned that success comes through fooling people with good marketing.

