Can you tell the difference?

bazza
April 01, 2008, 04:40 PM posted in General Discussion

This is an interesting test: http://www.alllooksame.com/

I only got 7 out of 18 on faces, I thought I would do better than that. 

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majamaya
April 01, 2008, 05:57 PM

I got 14...I think being able to "tell the difference" is crucial - if you label Japanese people Chinese (or vice versa/confuse them with other nationalities), they're not gonna be happy, though a lot of them seem to have got used to this and are therefore forgiving. I don't tend to get to scandalized either, although constantly being referred to "that gal from, you know, Mexico, or er, Brazil, isn't it?". It's a very delicate issue - so many people have been lumped together as "Hispanic" or "Asian" (not to mention "black"). Still, even those general terms are very diverse in a way: When you speak of Asian, most Brits will think of Indians/Pakistanis, in Germany this expression is used to refer to Thai or Vietnamese people (even pejoratively called "Fidschies", as though they came from the Fidschi-Islands...). I couldn't care less about being "correctly classified", but cases where plain ignorance leads to derogatory terms or even outright discrimination are just awful. It's great there are initiatives to counteract this kind of ignorance. (Please do not take offense, bazza, I wasn't implying that you're ignorant ;-) ) I'm interested in which features you used as a guideline for your classification of the 18 people in the pictures. By the way, I only got 6 out of 18 in that "Food Origins Quiz"...looks I'm not too food-savvy. (Just being curious - is it painfully obvious from my writings that I'm not a native speaker of English?)

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bazza
April 01, 2008, 06:30 PM

Just tried it again and got 11. I got 9 on modern art, 10 on traditional architecture, 9 and 8 on the travel photos ones.

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bazza
April 01, 2008, 08:01 PM

On the faces one, I got 16 on the 4th attempt and 18 on the 5th attempt. ;)