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I'm glad Krugman has taken to sharing his reading life on his blog. You know it has to be a rich one. Usually too rich for my blood. But he has pointed the way to an interesting science-fiction series that I might be game for: Charles Stross's "Laundry" series. It might even make my summer reading.

Current Mood: curious

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I want to share an observation, because I am curious to know if it is merely due to coincidence or because of more general, cultural reasons.

I have noticed that even when giving a technical lecture, Americans will slip in 1-2 personal anecdotes into their talk. This seemed a bit weird. After witnessing this quite a few times, I asked a speaker, who explained that he thought it helped his audience connect with him better. Another writer (also American), who blogs about her work mentioned that she gets a more favorable response from her audience, (mainly American) on those posts where along with the description of some technology if she also mentioned how she felt about it.

I have not seen people from other countries do it nearly as much. In addition to Twitter, professors keeping online journals is still mainly an American phenomenon. I am curious, is this a cultural thing? Do you find that you like Krugman more, now that he has been revealing more of his non-professional interests by writing in his journal?

I do not know if my comment was all that clear. Perhaps an example will help:

Assume that it is a discussion about a difficult topic. The speaker tries to make it easier for the audience by presenting a hack he has developed.

An American might say something like ``You know, last week, I was struggling with the same stuff you see now. I was trying to find out if there was some pattern to it, when my computer died & I had no choice but to go for a walk. And that is when it hit me...(go on to describe the details).'' It is not a story - just a few short words that give a personal touch, prior to moving on to the details.

On the other hand, most discussions by other folks tend to be like: ``Here is the output. It is hard to make out a pattern from it. Fortunately, here is a technique that can help us...(go on to describe the same details).

Do you see what I am getting at? Both speakers are being friendly. But it is just that they do it in different ways. I am wondering if this is a cultural habit?

Funny, I cannot leave comments or replies with my hardblue account. Let's see if this works.

I do like Krugman more because of his more personal blogging. I'm surprised by the idea that this is an American thing, or do you think it's a Western European/American thing?

Sadly, it could be that Americans really are disadvantaged educationally, and aren't comfortable about keeping it all on the technical level. I don't how it is with scientists lecturing graduate science students, but in other cases, it may be that the technical stuff is over our heads and the personal stuff makes us feel more at home.

It also could be that our focus on individualism makes more of a cult out of the personality. We perhaps tend to understand everything as taking place within personal narratives, and this may make things more authentic for us.

``I'm surprised by the idea that this is an American thing, or do you think it's a Western European/American thing?''

No no! It is definitely an American thing! :-)

``...it may be that the technical stuff is over our heads and the personal stuff makes us feel more at home.

It also could be that our focus on individualism makes more of a cult out of the personality. We perhaps tend to understand everything as taking place within personal narratives, and this may make things more authentic for us.''

Your 1^st reason has not been true in my experience, but I agree with your 2^nd reason. Actually, I think it is a rather astute observation, because besides social quirks, it also explains stuff like how a normal election can generate so much excitement in your country!

In any case, I have found Americans not different from folks in other parts of the world i.e. mainly a pleasant/friendly people. I guess all of us have our own cultural quirks. This is great because it would be horribly boring if everybody behaved the same way.