Review: The Dawn of Everything

 The Dawn of Everything comes with the subtitle A New History of Humanity. It stands proudly against books such as Sapiens and their glib, linear exposition of the dawn of civilization. Set against that, is that the book seems determined to be make its points obscure and as incomprehensible and incoherent as possible, so it's going to be a tough job to summarize its main points (since the authors seem unwilling or unable to write clearly!). But I'll try anything.

The book sets the stage by writing that the initial meetings of civilizations between the Western European cultures and the North American cultures were nothing like what is depicted in popular culture. For one, Europeans who lived amongst the native Americans would frequently go native, having discovered that the native American way of living was much less oppressive than the European society of the time. This persists even into the 1900s:

For two decades, Valero lived with a series of Yanomami families, marrying twice, and eventually achieving a position of some importance in her community. Pinker briefly cites the account Valero later gave of her own life, where she describes the brutality of a Yanomami raid.26 What he neglects to mention is that in 1956 she abandoned the Yanomami to seek her natal family and live again in ‘Western civilization,’ only to find herself in a state of occasional hunger and constant dejection and loneliness. After a while, given the ability to make a fully informed decision, Helena Valero decided she preferred life among the Yanomami, and returned to live with them.27 Her story is by no means unusual. The colonial history of North and South America is full of accounts of settlers, captured or adopted by indigenous societies, being given the choice of where they wished to stay and almost invariably choosing to stay with the latter. (Kindle Loc 460)

By contrast, Amerindians incorporated into European society by adoption or marriage, including those who – unlike the unfortunate Helena Valero – enjoyed considerable wealth and schooling, almost invariably did just the opposite: either escaping at the earliest opportunity, or – having tried their best to adjust, and ultimately failed – returning to indigenous society to live out their last days.  (Kindle Loc 471)

 Some emphasized the virtues of freedom they found in Native American societies, including sexual freedom, but also freedom from the expectation of constant toil in pursuit of land and wealth.31 Others noted the ‘Indian’s’ reluctance ever to let anyone fall into a condition of poverty, hunger or destitution. It was not so much that they feared poverty themselves, but rather that they found life infinitely more pleasant in a society where no one else was in a position of abject misery (Kindle Loc 486)

The common arguments were that such societies were primitive and poor, and that the price of egalitarianism and equality and freedom was poverty. The authors take various attacks against these common arguments, with varying success. The most effective argument they had was that it was clear that these tribal societies, far from being primitive and unthinking, had actually constructed their societies with deliberation and thinking.  In one particular account, a Wendat man frequently met with various French and Jesuit settlers and was judged a brilliant thinker and speaker of eloquence:

Some Jesuits went further, remarking – not without a trace of frustration – that New World savages seemed rather cleverer overall than the people they were used to dealing with at home (e.g. ‘they nearly all show more intelligence in their business, speeches, courtesies, intercourse, tricks, and subtleties, than do the shrewdest citizens and merchants in France’).26 Jesuits, then, clearly recognized and acknowledged an intrinsic relation between refusal of arbitrary power, open and inclusive political debate and a taste for reasoned argument. (Kindle Loc 971)

Thus the puzzle the authors pose is as follows: we know from lots of research that the adoption of cereal agriculture was one of the biggest mistakes humanity as a species could have made. Hunter/foragers had way more free time than the Western Farmers who invaded North America. So how did human beings (who were as smart then as we are today) fall into the trap of making their own lives worse? The traditional argument is the economic one: cereal agriculturist couples could produce a child every 2 years, compared to the hunter forager band who would produce one every 3-5 years. But of course, nobody says, "I will suffer and make my life much worse so that 5 generations from now my descendants will win!"

The argument the authors make in this book are as follows:

1. Many impressions of primitive cultures are wrong. For instance, throughout North America, different clans would occupy the same villages, and despite long distances you would find the same totem animals in use. This strongly suggested that many native Americans could travel far and wide.
2. The basic unit was not the family. It suggested that early humans have always lived in a somewhat virtual existence, where they could always move with their feet in if they didn't want to be told what to do:

The freedom to abandon one’s community, knowing one will be welcomed in faraway lands; the freedom to shift back and forth between social structures, depending on the time of year; the freedom to disobey authorities without consequence – all appear to have been simply assumed among our distant ancestors, even if most people find them barely conceivable today. Humans may not have begun their history in a state of primordial innocence, but they do appear to have begun it with a self-conscious aversion to being told what to do. (Kindle Loc 2628)

Even within cities that were built, leader selection was deliberate as opposed to the modern charismatic politician we expect to see today:

Those who aspired to a role on the council of Tlaxcala, far from being expected to demonstrate personal charisma or the ability to outdo rivals, did so in a spirit of self-deprecation – even shame. They were required to subordinate themselves to the people of the city. To ensure that this subordination was no mere show, each was subject to trials, starting with mandatory exposure to public abuse, regarded as the proper reward of ambition, and then – with one’s ego in tatters – a long period of seclusion, in which the aspiring politician suffered ordeals of fasting, sleep deprivation, bloodletting and a strict regime of moral instruction. The initiation ended with a ‘coming out’ of the newly constituted public servant, amid feasting and celebration.63 Clearly, taking up office in this indigenous democracy required personality traits very different to those we take for granted in modern electoral politics. On this latter point, it is worth recalling that ancient Greek writers were well aware of the tendency for elections to throw up charismatic leaders with tyrannical pretensions. (Kindle Loc 6890)

The authors spend chapter upon chapter arguing that essentially, historians/sociologists and other academics have been guilty of cherry picking their evidence to suit their arguments, that entire eons of history and civilizations that didn't exhibit the modern predilection to strict control, inequality,  and brutal control of humans were simply ignored or not studied. They pointed out that even in many cultures where the "King" was considered a god, couldn't command anyone who wasn't in direct earshot, and that there's a lot of evidence that in many such cultures, most people would chose to live a conveniently far distance from the king.

what happens if we accord significance to the 5,000 years in which cereal domestication did not lead to the emergence of pampered aristocracies, standing armies or debt peonage, rather than just the 5,000 in which it did? What happens if we treat the rejection of urban life, or of slavery, in certain times and places as something just as significant as the emergence of those same phenomena in others? In the process, we often found ourselves surprised. We’d never have guessed, for instance, that slavery was most likely abolished multiple times in history in multiple places; and that very possibly the same is true of war. Obviously, such abolitions are rarely definitive. (Kindle Loc 10099)

 I'm not a historian, archaeologist, or academic, so I have no rubric to judge the evidence or understand the believability of what they're saying. What is clear though, is that the native American Indians were given far less credit for bringing the concepts of freedom, individuality, and democracy to Western civilizations than most people would give them today, and that many societies today would do well to consider that the strictures that govern them need not be taken for granted. If the book was better written, its points would be clearer, but it makes very good points. I can't say this book wasn't a slog, but the ideas in it were valuable and interesting. Recommended.

Japan 2016: Thoughts and Conclusions

Japan is very kid friendly. Before we left Xiaoqin was told by people that strollers, etc. were a handful to manage in Japanese cities. We left the stroller behind, and that was a good choice, since it made buses, subways, etc. easy. What I noticed, however, was that every urinal we found in Japan was usable by Bowen. Everywhere we went, people loved both Boen and Bowen. Hotels and restaurants were happy to make accommodations, up to and including putting us in a room with a play pen, or having a nap area right next to the dining table. Our only problem was finding western style baby food (not because Boen couldn't handle Japanese-style baby food, but because the packaging was more convenient for travelers) and diapers, both of which were solved by having very helpful Japanese strangers put in extraordinary efforts on our behalf. So I'd happily travel in Japan with kids.

Bicycle travel really is a gift. I say that after this year's trip, because the contrasts between this year's trip and the 2009 Tour of Hokkaido couldn't be starker. Thinking back upon it, you might even have a hard time believing that it's the same country. My memories of the 2009 tour was gobs of hot springs, including isolated open air public springs where no one else was nearby. My memories from this year's trip is throngs of crowds at temples, except for those few days in Matsumoto. Country hostels, night markets that we happened to ride into, and wild isolated but pretty spots in Hokkaido were certainly missed.

All throughout our Hokkaido trip, I was continually told that "you're seeing the real Japan." At that time, I dismissed it to the similar (false) American creed that people in cities are not real, just the country side is real. What I now realize is that it's not just the country-side: it's that we were venturing out into a Japan that didn't speak English, where we interacted deeply with local people (despite my limited Japanese), and the terrain in a way that's denied to you when you're not traveling by bicycle or on foot.

In both cases, the Japanese are the most polite, ultra-helpful people you'll ever encounter in the world. I'll never forget the woman who took a half hour out of her day to try to help us find baby food in Shinjuku, the busiest train station in the world. She even apologized for it taking a long time! And of course, the brothers who ran Drum Kan who not only drove us to the hot spring and went in with us, but also cooked dinner and then played a Rock concert for us that evening! But as a cyclist you really do get treated differently than other tourists, and you have to interact with locals deeply in a way I never had to on this year's trip.

One of the subtlest thing in the 2009 tour was how we got cleaner and cleaner as the trip progressed. As cyclists we frequently used public baths, and were constantly exposed to how Japanese scrub and clean themselves. And when I say scrub I mean it: I swear by the time a Japanese person is done with their scrub, the entire upper layer of epidermis must have been gone! Over the 2 weeks of our bike tour, we got so inculcated with this that by the time we got home we were scrubbing like the locals. This time, because we mostly stayed at private hotels and AirBnB homes, that effect never happened. I never felt anything other than being a visitor, whereas in 2009, I truly felt like I'd traveled!

I've often said that I don't think I'll ever go back to Japan on a bike tour. The cycling is horrible compared to my beloved Bay Area: the mountain roads have too many tunnels, and views are few and far between: even on this trip, our short stint on the freeway brought better views than our travels in the mountains. The trains aren't bike friendly. Perhaps as my boys get older we'll contemplate some onsen-to-onsen hiking in some of the Japanese national parks, and that might expose them to the more cultural aspects of travel, but if that fails I might reconsider my prohibition against further cycling trips in Japan.

But of course, this time we got to experience a real Japanese Ryokan, and that's really something that's tough to arrange on a bike tour. You can't beat the service. A $800/night Ryokan in Japan provides far better service, food, and ambiance than a $2,000/night Four Seasons in Hawaii. It's expensive, but it's far better value for money, and I'm a cheap-skate of the highest order and would never consider the latter but the consider the former a nice occasional treat.

All in all, if I had the trip to do all over again, I'd spend more time in Kyoto, skip one night in Nara, and spend a day less in Tokyo. But that's all relatively minor. I'd highly recommend Sugimoto and Matsumoto castle, and spend more time on the Philosopher's Path in Kyoto.

Review: Sleeping Dogs Definitive Edition (PS4)

Sleeping Dogs is an open world game set in contemporary Hong Kong. The core game play is a Batman-style brawling mechanic with a side-dish of over-the-shoulder 3rd person based shooting. This is a striking combination of two of my favorite mechanics, and the game was on sale (both on Steam/$7 and on PS4/$15).

I bought this game after reading great reviews, and sat down to play it. And play it, and play it. The game's core mechanic as I mentioned before, was great, but what dropped my jaw is the story. If you're an Asian American male, by this point you're used to mainstream media constantly making Asian males (even protagonists played by Jet Li, for instance) effectively de-sexed characters:

Gene Cajayon, the Filipino American director of the 2001 film "The Debut," the first Fil-Am movie to be released nationwide in the United States, talks about the revised ending for the action movie "Romeo Must Die," a retelling of "Romeo and Juliet" where the R&B star Aaliyah plays Juliet to the Chinese actor Jet Li's Romeo. The original ending had Aaliyah kissing Li, a scenario that didn't test well with an "urban audience." So the studio changed it. The new ending had Aaliyah giving Li a tight hug. Says Cajayon, "Mainstream America, for the most part, gets uncomfortable with seeing an Asian man portrayed in a sexual light."

Well, the writers over at United Front Studios never got the memo. Wei Shen, the protagonist of Sleeping Dogs is virile, manly, and mould-breakingly gets laid with every date (NOTE: Like every video game out there aimed at a mainstream audience, there are no explicit sex scenes, but the dialogue heavily implies what's going on). No wonder the Publisher Square-Enix declared the game a financial failure despite it's amazing critical reviews. Shen is a Chinese American cop from San Francisco on loan to the Hong Kong police department because of his childhood connection with certain Triad members. As he infiltrates the gang and organization, he becomes torn between his personal loyalties to his childhood friends, his duty to the police organization, and his rising position as a "red pole" in the triad. This is a fairly familiar story to anyone who's watched any number of Hong Kong movies, but it's very well executed. In particular, Wei Shen is true to Chandler's statement: "the best man in his world and a good enough man for any world." The ending is satisfying, even if some aspects of it are predictable, and everything feels true to character. When Wei Shen goes to sleep, he wakes up with memories of recent events haunting him. You cannot help but empathize with what he's going through in order to do this job.

The game is very authentic. For instance, the opening of the game starts in Cantonese. And this isn't lousy Firefly-style acting, but the real deal. The accent is authentic, and by the end of the game you would have learned several choice Cantonese curses if you've been paying attention. Most of the storyline is in English, however, though certain characters who could never speak English would only speak in Cantonese while Wei Shen continues to reply in English (subtitles are provided for the non-Cantonese speakers, of course), which is completely acceptable.  Much of the English is also mixed in with Cantonese by the NPCs in authentic fashion. This is good stuff, and I did not expect it at all. Even the food you can get in the game (Pork Buns, Xiao Long Bao, etc) is authentic. And yes, every time you see Chinese characters in this game, they're correct!

The other parts of the game involving driving, car chases, gunshots and the stuff of epic movie-making, Hong Kong style. There are also side-missions where you do policeman-type duties (hostage crisis, car chases, and drug-busting, as well as serial killer investigations, etc) I didn't care too much about racing, so I didn't volunteer for too many races, but the ones I did were fun and more importantly to me, not set so hard that I got too frustrated. Even the collectible portion of the game isn't too frustrating, with the mini-map unlocking fairly early as a reward for going on dates with various women. As you unlock various martial arts moves and driving and shooting improvements, Wei Shen becomes more and more of a bad-ass. He can jump from a car to another to hijack another car. He can parkour with the best of them. At the highest level of martial arts, he starts making Wing Chun moves like Ip Man, one of my favorite modern martial arts movies. (There's even a costume to go with that!) Did I already mention, and he's good with the ladies? Oh, and he also has to do Karaoke a few times. One of the times he has to do it badly deliberately, and the animation is hilarious.

Speaking of combat: the game really comes into its own in the hand-to-hand martial arts combat. It's very reminiscent of the Jackie Chan movies where you can grab a person and use the environment to attack him. It beats the pants of all the other Batman-like games, including Shadows of Mordor. The opening foot chase sequence is also a lot of fun, and it's a pity that foot chases through a busy urban environment aren't used to as much effect in other games.

The game does have a few weaknesses. The early missions are exceedingly hard if you didn't run around and avail yourself of at least a couple of health upgrades, and drink/eat health and damage potions. This goes away fairly rapidly, but do spend some time looking for and upgrading your health and damage before going on any of the early missions. One of the DLC missions, Wheels of Fury, has a mission that stutters at sub-optimal frame rates, causing me to have to replay it a few times (it unlocks a car that even my wife said was a cool-looking car). The women Shen dates are all effectively one night stands,with no character development. In fact, one of the side mission has Shen stalking one of the women to see her cheating on him (she does, but yes, it's still a creepy thing to do and out of character for Shen) without there having any indication that there was a deeper relationship going on. Finally, the climax boss fight nerfs your hard-earned Dim Mak martial arts skill, which I thought was cheesy.

But these are nits. When I sat down to write the review of this game, I thought I'd write something like: "If you've ever complained about the portrayal of Asian men in media, put your money where your mouth is and buy this game." But now that I've thought it over, I realized that the statement would have been a disservice to this game. This is a superlative experience, well designed and executed in almost every way, and easily the best game I've played so far this year. That it's a few years old and hence relatively cheap makes it an amazing value. That it breaks every male Asian stereotype and makes mainstream America uncomfortable is simply icing on the cake. It deserves more success than it has had, and I have no compunctions about tagging it with my highest recommendations.

This one is worth every minute of its 25 hour+ play time (not including extended DLC content that comes as part of the definitive edition), and every penny of its full retail price ($18 on Amazon without any discounts). Buy it, and you'll play the heck out of it.

The definitive edition comes with 2 DLCs that are separated from the main game: Nightmare in North Point, and Year of the Snake. Both DLCs got lackluster reviews, but mostly for being short (90 minutes each). This is no big deal since you're getting it all packaged with the game anyway! Both DLC are somewhat interesting, though it's interesting that since I played them both after the main game they had a milder impact, since I didn't expect to be able to use any of the perks earned in the DLC in the main storyline! In any case, the lack of the RPG aspects in the DLC (you no longer earn any points towards powering up Wei Shen) means you're less likely to do side quests, but on the other hand, the game's core game play is still fun that the game hardly needs to bribe you into picking up the controller and playing the heck out of it. I wouldn't buy the DLC if I had to pay full price, however, so only pick it up if you're picking up the definitive edition for the PC or PS4.

Gaming the Coding Interview

Paul Graham's essay on how you can't really game startups had me thinking about the coding interview. Google had a lot of studies showing that the interview as practiced by Google wasn't very effective: in other words, interview scores don't really correlate with actual job performance. In part, this is because Google's not a startup any more --- political ability probably determines your promotions and effectiveness within Google than simply being good at engineering. But a major part is also that the coding interview is very susceptible to being gamed.

For instance, if you read Cracking the Coding Interview and were diligent about it (i.e., actually worked through the problems and practiced at them), you'd stand a good chance of doing really well during Google's interview process. Lest you think that this is a recent phenomena, even in 2003, Google's interview process was very similar. I remember being asked to reverse all the words in a sentence, and a few other puzzler type questions, and even during my interview, I remembered one interviewer telling the next one as the hand-off was happening, "this guy knows all the standard interview questions." Back then, Gayle's book didn't exist, but 10 years of interviewing for startups and interviewing at startups had hit me with every interview question that could be easily covered in a 45 minute session.

I will note that Facebook does have tougher interviews today than Google (they're hiring slower and therefore can be more picky), but from what I've seen their interviews are no less subject to being gamed.

When I look back at the interviewing process, there's really only one company that's stood out for having an interview process that couldn't be easily gamed, and that's Wealthfront in late 2012. I only include the date because in between, startups can change a lot and for all I know they could be interviewing like Google today.

The way Wealthfront conducted their interview was by pair programming. The candidate would come in, and pair program real problems with their "interviewer". The experience is intense, and in many ways eliminates the possibility of hiring someone who couldn't even write correct java syntax, or construct unit tests for code he'd just written. It's a good way to go and difficult to game, since you have to actually be able to design, structure, and turn ideas into code all the way to the testing and debugging steps.

Another good idea I've seen at certain startups is to put the culture fit interview first, before any technical interviews get done. The reason for this is if you get a candidate who's stellar on the technical side, it's actually very difficult to reject him for cultural reasons. I can attest to this, as one of my early hires at Google bombed out precisely for that reason, though without doing much damage. By putting the cultural fit interview first, you eliminate the bias to hire, even though you might waste a bit of time.

Review: How to Win Friends and Influence People

How to Win Friends and Influence People is currently $2.99 on the Kindle store. I'd gotten this far in life without reading the book, but a friend of mine told me she used a technique from the book and it worked, though she felt slimy about it afterwards. That's intriguing enough to get me to buy and read the book.

This is a great book, as far as being an effective politician and getting what you want from people goes. Fundamentally, the book is all about helping you tell people what they want to hear, as opposed to what reality is. For example, in one anecdote, the manager of a singer who refused to get on stage simply lied to him over and over again until he did so. In another example, Dale encourages you not to tell people that they are wrong, but to pretend that you could be wrong and asking to check the facts. In certain circumstances, that could easily win you favors, sales, and deals. In other circumstances, it could make you look like an easy pushover and mark, and you will get out-maneuvered by more politically savvy folks, especially if you're an engineer. Dale Carnegie, however, doesn't tell you how to distinguish between those circumstances. For instance, if Galileo had read this book, he might easily have avoided the Roman inquisition. It would have done immense harm to the scientific enterprise, however, so I'm glad the world is not full of people who've read Dale Carnegie's book.

People occasionally ask me for advice on their careers. Given that I'm completely oblivious to office politics, I'm a bad person to ask. But I do refer them to books such as Career Warfare. It's quite clear to me that How to Win Friends and Influence People is also a great book to read if you want to succeed at a large company, where perception is much more important than reality. Keep in mind, however, that if you're an engineer, you're a much worse liar than anyone who's not an engineer, so some of these techniques absolutely will not work for you.

Highly Recommended.

Review: The Temple of Gold

William Goldman, who wrote The Princess Bride, wrote The Temple of Gold as his debut novel. I'm a big fan of The Princess Bride, so when I saw they shared the same author and Amazon offered it for a low low price of $1.99, I jumped on the novel and bought it.

I shouldn't have. This is an awful, awful novel. The lead character is unlike-able, and does so many stupid things that at one point I just stopped reading because I just couldn't stand reading a novel about someone this stupid. This isn't even about him being an anti-hero, this is just stupidity. For instance, he recognizes when someone's really good for him in a relationship, but abandons the relationship anyway.

I eventually kept reading because I was stuck in a situation where I had nothing else to do, and kept hoping for a note of redemption in this novel. Unfortunately, there was none. Stay far far away from this book. I can hardly believe that the same person wrote The Princess Bride. Now I will hesitate to ever pick up another William Goldman novel again.

Review: The First 20 Minutes

The First 20 Minutes is a book about exercise physiology. It's been a number of very good years for exercise physiology since more and more research has been published about mind-body connection, and there's any number of fads and myths, which this book does a great job of debunking.

For instance, take barefoot running. It's been touted as the solution for everything related to running injuries, but it turns out that for instance, the natural walking position even when barefoot is heel striking first, not stepping on the balls of your feet. Interestingly enough, there's research showing that barefoot running doesn't solve all running injuries, and in fact may create different injuries, so choice of running footwear or lack thereof is largely a matter of personal taste.

The section on stretching is well known --- hopefully by now everyone knows that stretching before exercising is actually bad for you. What's oddly interesting is that she found research showing that most athletes overdo the warm up, wearing themselves out before the actual event.

Reynolds does a good job describing the difference between fitness and health, and points out that 20 minutes of exercise a day is all you really need to maintain health. But if you want to change your body shape, then you have to do quite a bit more (an hour a day). Worse, exercise isn't a great way to lose weight, unless you do a lot of it. She notes that vigorous intense workouts exceeding 800 calories burned do indeed give you an "afterburn", where your appetite gets depressed and your metabolic rate increases even post workout. Unfortunately, life's not fair. Apparently, this does not happen to women.

Ever wondered why women sweat less than men? This book has the answer. There's also sections on why more repetition at a lower weight is the preferred method for strength training now, and how exercise affects your brain (old hat to folks who've read Brain Rules), and how exercise affects your DNA at a deep level, provided you start early enough (in your 20s). There's also how exercise affects kids as well as older people (hint: it's good to start early, while the baby is in mom's womb!). All in all, the book is comprehensive, even more so than Which Comes First, Cardio or Weights.

I do have a few complaints about the book. First, Reynolds doesn't like cycling, so she gives cycling short shrift --- there's very little tips for cyclists that are useful, and she quotes an old study showing that 60rpm is more efficient metabolically than 90rpm. Anyone who does any amount of cycling knows that metabolic efficiency is unimportant in cycling --- cyclists are already the most efficient land animal on the planet. It's about endurance, and it's far easier to push a light weight for a long time than to push a heavier weight for the same amount of time.

With those criticisms aside, though, this is a great book and worth reading. Recommended!

The "Tiger Mom" Parenting Controversy

The blogosphere and quora controversy over Amy Chua's "Tiger Mom" parenting article has reached a fever pitched in the part of the internet where I sit. As a non-parent I normally would try to stay out of this discussion, but since I grew up in Asia and had such a parenting regime, I feel qualified to make a few notes about this.

But first, a note from the author of the article (via Christine Lu):

I did not choose the title of the WSJ excerpt, and I don't believe that there is only one good way of raising children. The actual book is more nuanced, and much of it is about my decision to retreat from the "strict Chinese immigrant" model.

Note that the Quora responses come from people brought up in America under the Asian model. There's a huge amount of negativity about this "hot house" environment for bringing up kids from Asian Americans. I can believe it. If I had been brought up in Asia like this, I would have been comparing myself to the non-Asian kids who had the freedom to do what they like, and then resented my parents for not being as cool as other people's parents. The truth is, many middle class kids in Asia were all brought up like this, and not knowing any different, there's no resentment. Note that this "hot house" environment is not unique to Asia. Plenty of non-Asians have used this method to develop high achievers. The book, Talent is Over-rated, for instance, describes a Hungarian couple which deliberately set out to raise 3 daughters to become grandmasters in Chess, just to prove a point about how education should be handled. They succeeded, and while their kids eventually gave up Chess, they were hardly scarred for life. Similarly, I know plenty of non-Asian parents who obsess about getting their kids into the right daycare, the right Montessori school, or the right prep school. My favorites are the ones who spend gobs of money on an expensive school district for their home, and then decide that even that expensive school district is not good enough and send their kids to private schools. And of course, in the field of sports, non-Asian parents seem to be exactly what Asian parents are as far as academics is concerned. I have no doubt to my mind which emphasis is most likely to lead to a productive member of society.

If the environment was solely responsible for such emotional/psychological scarring, then Asia should have an incredibly high crime rate/suicide rate. I think the real cause in this case is the huge contrast between that "hot house" environment and what the rest of America values. Certainly, myself and my two brothers are emotionally well-adjusted and our family doesn't show any of the psychological scars and resentment between ourselves and our parents that many of those who visit Quora describe.

It all depends on your goals as parents. One of my friends recently told me over lunch about his philosophy behind parenting: "Your kids will turn out fine, so my goal is to enjoy my time with them while they are kids." Many Asian parents would be horrified to hear that, since their goal is to raise high achievers. I remember having a conversation with a Netscape millionaire in the late 1990s. This was a man who'd arrived from Taiwan with just the clothes on his bags and a suitcase of cash, and was now successful by anybody's standards. He said to me, "My kid has a trust fund, so now I have to make sure she has a work ethic." My response to that was, "That's absolutely the wrong goal for her! She doesn't have to work if she doesn't want to, so what's going to make her life miserable is if she is a poor judge of people! If someone cons her out of her trust fund, then all the work ethic you inculcate in her will not keep her from being unhappy." (No, I don't know how to teach you how to be a good judge of character, but the point is: work ethics, etc aren't the most important things in life)

Ultimately, I don't think that the "hothouse environment" is something every parent should strive for, but it's clearly useful for some parents, and it works for some families in some environments. For me, it was more helpful than hurtful, and I'm sure for others the inverse was true, but it certainly doesn't merit the kind of hysteria one way or another that the internet forums appear to approach the subject.