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Locaha comments on Open thread for December 24-31, 2013 - Less Wrong Discussion
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Anyone else finds it rather annoying that the anglophone internet is full of USA citizens who consider themselves to be the default human condition (not to mention those who seems not to even realize anyone but Americans actually exist)? You ask a question about something and people casually throw FDA this, IRS that, like they are fucking universal constants.
/rant off
I do.
See also this old thread.
Just include your country (or just "I am not an American") explicitly in your question.
Trust me, it used to be much worse ten or more years ago. I remember people switching into panic mode after discovering that someone in their virtual environment didn't share all their cultural background. (I guess it felt like if you went to your high-school reunion, and suddenly some quiet guy in the corner takes a mask off their face and you see a strange brown man with a long beard looking dangerously in your eyes and screaming: Allahu Akbar!) And I don't blame them... the prior probabilities were on their side. More precisely, the prior probabilities of a random English-speaking person on internet not being an American were slowly changing and they still used a version from five or ten years ago when they developed their internet habits. The internet didn't feel like an "outside" place for them.
These days they may assume you are an American, but if you correct them, you won't become the topic of the week. :D
Ten years in the future maybe we will read complaints about people assuming that someone is from outside of India.
This illustrates a general principle-- if you know people are likely to offer advice which is irrelevant to you, do a pre-emptive strike to head it off.
The hard part is to balance the benefits of preempting the wrong answers with the harm of priming the readers. :D
I'd love to see that.
And the resulting problem of thinking your country is like USA.
If you don't want people to treat you as an American it might make sense to put your country of origin in your profile.
Not really. I don't usually check people's profiles before answering questions.