pedroma

>This clearly surprises you. It is indeed shocking: that's how far the USA has fallen, globally, in only a year or so.

No, I'm the one who brought up this topic of how Europeans have an increasing unpopular opinion about the US. How is this surprising to me? I literally brought it up. The reason I don't consider East Asia relevant, is because East Asia and Europe do not have the same existential issues. East Asia's dependency on the US is far greater than Europe, and from East Asia's political point of view, Europe may as well not exist at all. Its primary political relations are with the US, SEA, and China. European sentiment about the US holds no relevance there, as it is not Europe, and they are not Europeans. This may surprise you, but the world does not revolve around European sentiment.

Let's not extend this beyond the European opinion, especially since it's obvious that East Asia does not share the same point of view. East Asia and Europe have very different threats that shape their opinion of the US fundamentally. Europe does not have China breathing down their neck, and with Russia bogged down they have even less to worry about. Europe can freely reject the US, which is what this chain of comments is about, the popular European sentiment. In contrast, if there's anti-US sentiment in Taiwan, it would be in a minority and publicly disagreed with as their nation's existence hinges on positive US sentiment. To a lesser degree, the same thing in other East Asian countries.

The other poster mentioned the opinions about the US and China being multi-faceted, I like to see it with vectors. My question is, given all the vectors, can you provide an average magnitude and average direction of the vector? If the average vector points left the opinion favors China, if it points right the opinion favors the US.

The American point of view is, yes we did make a claim towards Greenland which is European territory, but we also helped with European security. These are two separate vectors, right? Now average them. And plot China's vectors. I imagine the vectors China produces is much lower in magnitude, and as such provokes a lower emotional response in terms of opinions.

>This is not a scalar, it is a multi-dimensional array with tons of values that all individually can be ranked. One some of these the USA is better than China on others it is definitely not. You may want to collapse that all to a single 'but we're better' picture but that is just not how the world works.

This is correct... and like I said the common European sentiment. I think we've exhausted this dialogue. We're restating the same things in more words.

>And that's not true either because you clearly checked my account upthread to link it to Europe.

Your post I originally responded to says "Should have worn a suit." and also mentions Europe and Ukraine. That's basically the entire context of our back and forth. If you have many other posts about the US and Europe's relationship... well I have no knowledge of those posts.

Yeah I can see that. The other poster is right about it being multi-faceted. My question is intentionally somewhat provocative. It forces someone to pick between two bad options, and I always gain respect for people who decide to pick one instead of intentionally avoiding it and just saying "oh they're both bad, idk".

The reply chain got too long so I will respond here.

>You seem to be completely out of touch with the way the USA has been behaving towards the EU as of late, maybe get with the times and then report back. Last I checked China hasn't threatened to take over either Canada or Greenland, has not started any major wars for which they expect the EU to pay for cleaning up their mess, has reasonably sane leadership and on top of that has been a fairly trustworthy business partner that does not engage in whim driven economic warfare. They also have a bunch of very dark sides that I am going to assume we are all familiar with.

I'm aware of everything you've said. What I've noticed is Europeans just like to bash on the US given any reason. My original point is (proven by the exact quote of your words) that this type of European sentiment is accelerating a two-sided voluntary parting. Nothing much more than that. I am not defending the US's actions.

>Comparing yourself to China is not the flex you think it is.

Once again you are proving my point. Europeans are typically not willing to place the US above China. Any attempt to get them to do so will provoke this type of response.

>Your bio says that "Farming negative karma is not trolling when you're expressing your honest views." and that's all fine, you have a right to your honest views but if they're indistinguishable from trolling to the point that you feel you need to pre-empt that classification then maybe HN is not the place for you?

Calling me a troll is just an attack on me and not my argument. That's ok though, no offense taken. The bio is provocation for people who dig into people's profiles. I don't like to do that. I just take the person's posts as is.

>Why do I have to prefer one over the other? I don't like the way either is behaving on the world stage, and each for different reasons.

This is the perfect encapsulation of what I mean in my original response to you. This IS the popular European sentiment. And this is what is off-putting to many Americans. The weight of China and the US is not even worth preference, despite the US having contributed positively to the Ukrainian conflict and European defense. We are not even WORTHY of being placed above China, we're either just as bad or worse is the typical response I see.

Does this mean the person I'm responding to is a Russian disinfo agent?

Would you say we're worse than China these days (if so, what % of the time did China help Ukraine in the conflict)?

This sentiment is very popular in Europe. From the perspective of the American, it's like, help was offered for 90% of the time in the Ukraine conflict, then we took a break and suddenly we are more an enemy than China. From my point of view, the pushing away is not one-sided like Europeans like to portray, but has been mutual for awhile.

I've always been skeptical of happiness statistics. In many cases, self-reporting happiness offers an objective floor for happiness, but the ceiling is entirely relative/subjective.

The floor is universal: starvation, suffering, death.

The ceiling...

For someone who's starving & facing death, would simply be good health, easy access to food, healthy family, house & car.

But the ceiling for someone who already has these things is different. The ceiling for a billionaire is different.

The only way I can imagine not doing this type of subjective self-reporting is... maybe you can draw blood from populations and record cortisol and oxytocin levels?

Another point of irony: Elon was tasked with "draining" the swamp and the left immediately goes to burn Teslas.