<story><title>Ask vs. Guess Culture</title><url>https://jeanhsu.substack.com/p/ask-vs-guess-culture</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>huijzer</author><text>I‘ve gone through a ton of comments below and see a lot of contradicting evidence to your thoughtful suggestion. Also my girlfriend and I are both from north Europe and I notice a similar difference. Maybe the difference is mostly&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; she had been brought up to feel extreme insecurity&lt;p&gt;This reminds me of a quote from Buffett from about 40 years ago. He said something along the lines of &amp;quot;when women are raised, they hear and see a million reasons why they cannot do things whereas men see and hear a million reasons why they can do things&amp;quot;. If I would be convinced by the world that I am not good, then sure I would treat guests amazingly well. If I would be convinced by the world I‘m amazing, then why bother treating guests well? They can say it if they need anything.&lt;p&gt;I‘m happy to hear counterarguments if you have them</text></item><item><author>quacked</author><text>I am from the northern US (Protestant Scandinavian&amp;#x2F;German) and my wife is from the southern US (Protestant English&amp;#x2F;German) [1]. In the first several years of our relationship, we had several big disputes about how to treat each other, and how to treat guests. After a while we realized that she had been brought up to feel extreme insecurity over responding to the needs of guests, and I had been brought up to be blithely ignorant to the needs of guests.&lt;p&gt;Over the years I definitely insulted several southern guests by mostly ignoring them, and she definitely projected insult onto several northern guests by assuming that they were secretly judging us for not being better hosts. We&amp;#x27;ve since realized that southerners tend to prefer &amp;quot;guess&amp;quot; culture and northerners tend to prefer &amp;quot;ask&amp;quot; culture, to use the terminology from the article. There are certainly many exceptions, but this generalization has taught her to chill out a little over hosting duties, and taught me to pick up some slack when taking care of guests.&lt;p&gt;We still both greatly prefer our native cultures. I don&amp;#x27;t like being fawned over or offered things I don&amp;#x27;t want, and she is extremely recalcitrant when it comes to asking for anything.&lt;p&gt;[1] I mention the distant ancestral backgrounds because it&amp;#x27;s amusing to me how well I get along with northern Europeans who are plainly spoken and &amp;quot;rude&amp;quot; by US standards, and how a lot of proper hosting culture from the UK reminds me of how her family operates. She finds Scandinavians and Dutch incredibly rude, whereas I find the English hilariously polite, even to their own detriment.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>quacked</author><text>&amp;gt; I‘ve gone through a ton of comments below and see a lot of contradicting evidence to your thoughtful suggestion.&lt;p&gt;When you make a huge generalization like &amp;quot;the northern states I&amp;#x27;m from primarily developed their culture from Scandinavia and Germany and tend to be more &amp;#x27;ask&amp;#x27; than &amp;#x27;guess&amp;#x27;&amp;quot;, it&amp;#x27;s possible to immediately find tons of counterexamples. It tends to make people feel good to find flaws with generalizations, but they then argue too far the other way. &amp;quot;Since there are many counterexamples, your claim that the North is mostly &amp;#x27;ask&amp;#x27; and the South is mostly &amp;#x27;guess&amp;#x27; doesn&amp;#x27;t hold water.&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;But what exactly are they saying? The Northern US and the Southern US are exactly the same? There&amp;#x27;s no possible generalization to make about the cultures from either place?&lt;p&gt;Instead, at every possible delineation people have made in their counterarguments (poor vs. rich, urban vs. rural, man vs. woman), I find the same generalizations mostly apply. A poor northerner is likely more &amp;quot;ask&amp;quot; than a poor southerner, based on who I&amp;#x27;ve met. Northern men are generally more &amp;quot;ask&amp;quot; than southern men. My wife&amp;#x27;s father is certainly less intensely curious about my needs than my own mother, but he&amp;#x27;s far, far more curious about my needs than my father, and almost every other northern father I&amp;#x27;ve met. I&amp;#x27;ve met a great many people, and lived all around the US, so I&amp;#x27;m not just shooting from the hip here.</text></comment>
<story><title>Ask vs. Guess Culture</title><url>https://jeanhsu.substack.com/p/ask-vs-guess-culture</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>huijzer</author><text>I‘ve gone through a ton of comments below and see a lot of contradicting evidence to your thoughtful suggestion. Also my girlfriend and I are both from north Europe and I notice a similar difference. Maybe the difference is mostly&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; she had been brought up to feel extreme insecurity&lt;p&gt;This reminds me of a quote from Buffett from about 40 years ago. He said something along the lines of &amp;quot;when women are raised, they hear and see a million reasons why they cannot do things whereas men see and hear a million reasons why they can do things&amp;quot;. If I would be convinced by the world that I am not good, then sure I would treat guests amazingly well. If I would be convinced by the world I‘m amazing, then why bother treating guests well? They can say it if they need anything.&lt;p&gt;I‘m happy to hear counterarguments if you have them</text></item><item><author>quacked</author><text>I am from the northern US (Protestant Scandinavian&amp;#x2F;German) and my wife is from the southern US (Protestant English&amp;#x2F;German) [1]. In the first several years of our relationship, we had several big disputes about how to treat each other, and how to treat guests. After a while we realized that she had been brought up to feel extreme insecurity over responding to the needs of guests, and I had been brought up to be blithely ignorant to the needs of guests.&lt;p&gt;Over the years I definitely insulted several southern guests by mostly ignoring them, and she definitely projected insult onto several northern guests by assuming that they were secretly judging us for not being better hosts. We&amp;#x27;ve since realized that southerners tend to prefer &amp;quot;guess&amp;quot; culture and northerners tend to prefer &amp;quot;ask&amp;quot; culture, to use the terminology from the article. There are certainly many exceptions, but this generalization has taught her to chill out a little over hosting duties, and taught me to pick up some slack when taking care of guests.&lt;p&gt;We still both greatly prefer our native cultures. I don&amp;#x27;t like being fawned over or offered things I don&amp;#x27;t want, and she is extremely recalcitrant when it comes to asking for anything.&lt;p&gt;[1] I mention the distant ancestral backgrounds because it&amp;#x27;s amusing to me how well I get along with northern Europeans who are plainly spoken and &amp;quot;rude&amp;quot; by US standards, and how a lot of proper hosting culture from the UK reminds me of how her family operates. She finds Scandinavians and Dutch incredibly rude, whereas I find the English hilariously polite, even to their own detriment.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>morby</author><text>I generally agree. A lot of contradictory statements and I would only add to that. I feel like people tend to pigeonhole each region in the US, the US itself, and indeed any other country into what “people act like”. There might be a common thread that is statistical but it’s not monolithic in any sense. Micro cultures exist and interplay with the macro culture especially in a networked world.</text></comment>