Peoples who would rather die than admit their culture is flawed
Posted by John T. Reed on
I am reading a book titled Getting Risk Right as research for my book How to Spot dishonest arguments and Keep Your Own Thinking Straight. It is a book about medicine. I just finished the chapter on Aristolochia—a Chinese herb and an Eastern European weed.
It kills people but so slowly that it took centuries to figure that out. And those who figured it out had to overcome a ton on Eastern Hemisphere cultural bull!@#$.
There was a higher incidence of a certain kidney disease in Yugoslavia and Taiwan—China too, but they do not publish the stats that would reveal it.
Then a bunch of women in Belgium showed the same pattern. Belgium is in the Eastern Hemisphere, but they do not suffer the horrific cultural dysfunction in the more eastern portion. Turned out they were getting the poison in a Chinese herb at a spa.
The doctors investigating the problem had a helluva time getting cooperation from the Serb, Croatian, and Bosnian doctors, whose hatred of each other is a higher priority than their Hippocratic Oath. Freud called that the narcissism of small differences.
Then there is China. China thinks it is the bee knees. Their name for their country essentially translates as center of the universe.
They also brag that their culture is best because it is 3,000 years old. Bull! everybody’s culture is 3,000 years old. But most other cultures have the ability to admit they’re wrong or that not-invented-here-syndrome is self-destructive.
The West admits China invented gunpowder. If we had invented it, the Chinese would still be refusing to use it. This is why the least successful Chinese on earth are the ones in China.
One bit of evidence they are superior is their writing. It is idiotic. They have been forced to use the Latin alphabet for computers and Morse Code. But they still use those chicken scratching hieroglyphics.
Then there are their 500-year-old medical books that they still use. Modern medicine contradicting the 500 year-old book pisses them off and is therefore banned and people die rather than admit they got it wrong.
The correct approach to finding the truth is the scientific method. Logic. Facts. Well-constructed studies. Big enough samples. Reproducible results.
It kills people but so slowly that it took centuries to figure that out. And those who figured it out had to overcome a ton on Eastern Hemisphere cultural bull!@#$.
There was a higher incidence of a certain kidney disease in Yugoslavia and Taiwan—China too, but they do not publish the stats that would reveal it.
Then a bunch of women in Belgium showed the same pattern. Belgium is in the Eastern Hemisphere, but they do not suffer the horrific cultural dysfunction in the more eastern portion. Turned out they were getting the poison in a Chinese herb at a spa.
The doctors investigating the problem had a helluva time getting cooperation from the Serb, Croatian, and Bosnian doctors, whose hatred of each other is a higher priority than their Hippocratic Oath. Freud called that the narcissism of small differences.
Then there is China. China thinks it is the bee knees. Their name for their country essentially translates as center of the universe.
They also brag that their culture is best because it is 3,000 years old. Bull! everybody’s culture is 3,000 years old. But most other cultures have the ability to admit they’re wrong or that not-invented-here-syndrome is self-destructive.
The West admits China invented gunpowder. If we had invented it, the Chinese would still be refusing to use it. This is why the least successful Chinese on earth are the ones in China.
One bit of evidence they are superior is their writing. It is idiotic. They have been forced to use the Latin alphabet for computers and Morse Code. But they still use those chicken scratching hieroglyphics.
Then there are their 500-year-old medical books that they still use. Modern medicine contradicting the 500 year-old book pisses them off and is therefore banned and people die rather than admit they got it wrong.
The correct approach to finding the truth is the scientific method. Logic. Facts. Well-constructed studies. Big enough samples. Reproducible results.
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