Why AI Chatbots Can't Process Persian Social Etiquette 224
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: If an Iranian taxi driver waves away your payment, saying, "Be my guest this time," accepting their offer would be a cultural disaster. They expect you to insist on paying -- probably three times -- before they'll take your money. This dance of refusal and counter-refusal, called taarof, governs countless daily interactions in Persian culture. And AI models are terrible at it.
New research released earlier this month titled "We Politely Insist: Your LLM Must Learn the Persian Art of Taarof" shows that mainstream AI language models from OpenAI, Anthropic, and Meta fail to absorb these Persian social rituals, correctly navigating taarof situations only 34 to 42 percent of the time. Native Persian speakers, by contrast, get it right 82 percent of the time. This performance gap persists across large language models such as GPT-4o, Claude 3.5 Haiku, Llama 3, DeepSeek V3, and Dorna, a Persian-tuned variant of Llama 3.
A study led by Nikta Gohari Sadr of Brock University, along with researchers from Emory University and other institutions, introduces "TAAROFBENCH," the first benchmark for measuring how well AI systems reproduce this intricate cultural practice. The researchers' findings show how recent AI models default to Western-style directness, completely missing the cultural cues that govern everyday interactions for millions of Persian speakers worldwide. "Cultural missteps in high-consequence settings can derail negotiations, damage relationships, and reinforce stereotypes," the researchers write.
"Taarof, a core element of Persian etiquette, is a system of ritual politeness where what is said often differs from what is meant," the researchers write. "It takes the form of ritualized exchanges: offering repeatedly despite initial refusals, declining gifts while the giver insists, and deflecting compliments while the other party reaffirms them. This 'polite verbal wrestling' (Rafiee, 1991) involves a delicate dance of offer and refusal, insistence and resistance, which shapes everyday interactions in Iranian culture, creating implicit rules for how generosity, gratitude, and requests are expressed."
New research released earlier this month titled "We Politely Insist: Your LLM Must Learn the Persian Art of Taarof" shows that mainstream AI language models from OpenAI, Anthropic, and Meta fail to absorb these Persian social rituals, correctly navigating taarof situations only 34 to 42 percent of the time. Native Persian speakers, by contrast, get it right 82 percent of the time. This performance gap persists across large language models such as GPT-4o, Claude 3.5 Haiku, Llama 3, DeepSeek V3, and Dorna, a Persian-tuned variant of Llama 3.
A study led by Nikta Gohari Sadr of Brock University, along with researchers from Emory University and other institutions, introduces "TAAROFBENCH," the first benchmark for measuring how well AI systems reproduce this intricate cultural practice. The researchers' findings show how recent AI models default to Western-style directness, completely missing the cultural cues that govern everyday interactions for millions of Persian speakers worldwide. "Cultural missteps in high-consequence settings can derail negotiations, damage relationships, and reinforce stereotypes," the researchers write.
"Taarof, a core element of Persian etiquette, is a system of ritual politeness where what is said often differs from what is meant," the researchers write. "It takes the form of ritualized exchanges: offering repeatedly despite initial refusals, declining gifts while the giver insists, and deflecting compliments while the other party reaffirms them. This 'polite verbal wrestling' (Rafiee, 1991) involves a delicate dance of offer and refusal, insistence and resistance, which shapes everyday interactions in Iranian culture, creating implicit rules for how generosity, gratitude, and requests are expressed."
Sometimes, technology also changes the culture (Score:5, Interesting)
Limitations of computer technology have taught many Chinese people how to read their language left-to-right, or at least right-to-left, rather than the traditional top-to-bottom, right-to-left. There is still a lot of software and web pages out there, where the developers didn't put the extra effort into making the text flow the way the Chinese traditionally arrange it. Rather than do without software or web pages, the Chinese have adapted.
Texting email has changed the way people write letters or messages to each other. Nobody says "Dear Sir / Madam" any more, they just start saying what they want to say, and if you're lucky, there's a stock signature at the bottom.
It could be that AI may begin to reshape the cultural norms, even such as Persian etiquette. It's neither good nor bad, just interesting.
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Hmm...I think ChatGPT will just have to learn to never say No in Japanese. Ever.
Re: um what??? (Score:3)
I have been told that "very difficult" in Japan means "I will not do the thing." It isn't a reason, it is a colloquialism because direct refusal is considered ruse. So don't come back later and expect that they have started on it.
Re: um what??? (Score:2)
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Very difficult, but not too difficult. That is the difference.
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Re:Sometimes, technology also changes the culture (Score:5, Informative)
The left to right writing thing is more to do with the introduction of pencils and pens. Japan had the same thing.
With a brush you can write top to bottom, right to left, because your hand doesn't rest on the page. With a pen, you are going to smudge what you just wrote. With a pencil, you will get the lead on your hands.
Interestingly one of the reasons why Japanese computers were often more powerful than Western ones was that they needed to have better graphics to show complex characters, and so the standard design was to have separate CPU and video memories. Western machines usually had a unified architecture where CPU and video shared a single bank of RAM, limiting the bandwidth available to both.
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With a pen, you are going to smudge what you just wrote. With a pencil, you will get the lead on your hands.
Welcome to the cruel world us left handed people live in.
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With Arabic they use a different pen nib that makes pushing easier, so they can rest their hand further down. That doesn't help with top to bottom languages though, and for them as they first adopted European stationary and were influenced by European languages, it made more sense to go left to right.
Re:Sometimes, technology also changes the culture (Score:4, Informative)
My sister was left-handed. It's NOT a myth. She had to really contort her hand to avoid smearing the stuff she'd just written. And this was with ball-point pens, not fountain pens (which I preferred, because I could use various colors of ink).
Re:Sometimes, technology also changes the culture (Score:4, Informative)
It's a myth, easily debunked by trying it out: Write left to right. When you reach the end of the line, start writing the next line. In doing so you will smudge the line above, and get ink on your fingers when you hold your pen low. Mutatis mutandis with pencil.
Huh? Right-handers writing left to right and top to bottom have no problem with this. When you go to the next line, you don't touch the line above. It's above, and the pen extends beyond your fingers, so your fingers stay well away from the just-written line. If you're a left-hander, going to the next line isn't the issue, the problem is smudging the just-written characters on the same line... except that left-handers often avoid that problem by cocking their wrist sharply to move the edge of their palm up out of the way so it doesn't touch the just-written letters. That then means they might smudge lines above. They make it work, mostly, but it's tricky.
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I think your comments may be more applicable to Japanese than Chinese. But even in Japanese most books and newspapers are generally printed with vertical text. The main exception that comes to mind are computer books...
However webpages and magazines are mostly horizontal in the pattern of English. One of many weird effects is that magazines are read like English books, whereas most Japanese books are read from the back if you consider how we hold an English book. (The situation for newspapers is actually mu
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The transition from top-to-bottom right-to-left in Chinese, happened in about the middle of the 20th century, and is thought to have been influenced by several factors, including exposure to Western languages, and technology, including computing.
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Yeah, right. We totally don't understand that archaic colloquialism and definitely don't make fun of people using it [knowyourmeme.com]
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Sure, but letter writing etiquette certainly was and is a cultural norm, and it's been affected significantly by technology.
Training data (Score:2)
Uhh this seems pretty blindingly obvious - the models used (any of them it sounds like) weren't trained on datasets involving this sort of back and forth specifying what taarof is and how its used. Americans especially never go to Iran, how could they, and have never been exposed to this culture outside of Iranians in the USA who are typically fully embracing american culture.
Beyond Iran there's lots of cultures that have little (or big) things that are not obvious from the context, which is the lim
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Don't believe the implication of TFS (and probably TFA, but of course I haven't read it) that this is a specifically Persian or Iranian thing. It's far more widespread than that. At the very least you'll find it across the Middle East and northern Africa; but also in Brazil (earlier this year I read an account by a Brit in Brazil
Re: Training data (Score:2)
This is part troll but part serious
The book burnings probably don't help the availability of training material.
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That joke is a story based on a really early attempt at machine translation. There were several similar goofs. E.g. "out of sight, out of mind" into "unseen moron", "the spirit is willing but the flesh is weak" is the one you selected, but it was only one of several. Not a huge number. Computer time was expensive! I probably heard of around 30. And translating to and from different languages yielded different results. "the spirit is willing but the flesh is weak" into Russian and back yielded "The vo
So what? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:So what? (Score:4, Insightful)
That's because its not your culture. Do you kiss your friends on the cheeks when you say hello? No? Most of europe and the middle east would find you unnecessarily cold and weird.
;) They always are weird, thats half the fun of travel is exploring the *differences* of our world.
Do you put your elderly relatives in a nursing home? Kiss your lover in public? Dress your dog in sweater? Leave a party before the end and refuse a cup of coffee with dinner? Mix the preparation of vegetables and meat? Eat pig?
I could go on but calling cultural differences moronic is...moronic.
what? (Score:2, Insightful)
Almost none of what you said is an insincere offer which is expected to be declined. Rattling off a bunch of nonsense is just what-about-ism of the dumbest kind. I don't care what silly shit people do as long as it doesn't hurt others or annoy me.
I have never heard of refusing coffee with dinner, so while that may be "an insincere offer expected to be declined" it is apparently limited to a very small, stupid part of the world. My grandpa always ordered coffee with dinner when the family went out, though he
Re:So what? (Score:4, Funny)
Do you ... Kiss your lover in public?
Not if my wife is nearby. /rimshot
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I even eat horse.
Re:So what? (Score:4, Insightful)
I could go on but calling cultural differences moronic is...moronic.
Often true, but not always true. Just because some people do some thing, it doesn't mean it's good either.
Rigid discriminatory caste systems, certain surgical mutilations , slavery, not letting girls go to school are all cultural differences that we tent not to celebrate too much.
Some stuff would just be better off reformed, and i think this is one of those things, and younger people there are already simplifying it or trying to anyway.
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How many Europeans still kiss acquaintances on the cheeks anymore? Hasn't that gone out of fashion yet?
Re: So what? (Score:2)
If you're from the US, it's a "fashion" that is older than your country. From the cultural perspective of most places on Earth, US culture is a recent trend. Let's see how long it lasts. Meanwhile some Europeans (depending on the region) will keep kissing relatives and close friends on the cheek when they meet. It's going out of fashion in professional settings though.
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If you're from the US, it's a "fashion" that is older than your country.
I'm pretty sure that if you're from Europe, it's a "fashion" that is older than your country, too.
Re: So what? (Score:2)
It probably depends on the country. For example Italy and Germany are quite recent, France and England aren't.
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The concept of "nation states" as we know them is basically an 18th century invention. Prior to that, you had kingdoms and various smaller fiefdoms that were often just a product of the ambitions of a single warlord. France and England had been kingdoms for hundreds of years prior to their creation of a modern nation state, but their exact borders were fluid during that time with only the core territories (i.e. London or Paris) remaining consistent. Germany and Italy were conglomerations of smaller kingdoms
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How many Europeans still kiss acquaintances on the cheeks anymore? Hasn't that gone out of fashion yet?
It has not, though keep in mind that you don't actually kiss their cheeks, you kiss the air next to their cheeks. What touches their cheek is your cheek, if anything (often there is no actual contact).
Re: So what? (Score:5, Insightful)
If their own people can't figure it out 18% of the time, then there is something objectively wrong with the approach.
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Bro, did you read the OP?
Native speakers get it _wrong_ 18% of the time.
Imagine living your life in a society where, in any interaction, you can fuck up and insult the other person 1/5 of the time.
That's stupid.
82% (Score:2)
The summary says that 82% of native Persian speakers correctly interpret these social situations correctly. Is that right? Humans screw-up taarof 1 in 5 times? If I had to draw conclusions from that one data point, I would say that either taarof has no well agreed upon protocol, or getting it "right" just isn't that important to the Persians. I'm motivated to RTFA.
Re:So what? (Score:4, Interesting)
The whole refusal and insistence thing sounds moronic.
TBH, it kind of is. I'm from an unrelated place that has a lighter version of it, primarily around food, and the much more straight forward american version is just better. Not that Americans don't have it sometimes too...
but the extensive ritualistic and ambiguous Iranian version would drive me nuts. All the ambiguity, all the wasted time, bleh.
If you insist, I won’t disrespect. (Score:2)
The whole refusal and insistence thing sounds moronic.
I’m more shocked at them not getting the hint when that song and dance results in someone taking their “guest” offer seriously. After all, they insisted twice and I don't feel like disrespecting that person by arguing further a third time.
Actual Politeness, is knowing damn well you will pay because you know damn well they will charge, and need to. And I cannot imagine the childish mind games when the offer to not pay is actually genuine. When you turn gift giving into mental torture, yo
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It sounds like the normal kind of politeness that most cultures have. In the UK we often do thinks like thank the cashier when they take our money, or apologize when making a request that is really a complaint.
In Japan it's customary to ask questions in the negative, so that the person answering can avoid outright refusing or saying no. Like if you were asking about someone doing you a favour, you would probably say "can you NOT do this for me?" And if they wanted to refuse, instead of saying "no" they woul
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It's not moronic, but it only makes sense within a proper context. It's more of a society optimizing thing than a physical efficiency optimizing thing. It makes more sense when transportation and communication are slow, and laws aren't strongly enforced, so social customs depend strongly on trust.
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I feel like playing. Taarof fails your points. It is not optimizing at all: 3x complex/ambiguous exchange (only 18% of native Persian speakers get it). Transportation and communication are no longer slow: the example is a taxi ride. Law enforcement? But, officer the driver insisted "Be my guest this time." IF social customs depend strongly on trust THEN why strain that trust by starting with a lie?
Sorry, Taarof is moronic.
Re: So what? (Score:3)
Don't forget asking people how they are doing with no interest in the actual answer.
Call me a bigot (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Call me a bigot (Score:5, Insightful)
You've never gone to dinner where someone offers to pay for the meal expecting other people to ask to split it with them? Or seen someone offer to help hoping or expecting you to say 'no I've got that'? There's plenty of subtle examples in American culture as well. "Does this make me look fat?" (no) (continue argument yes it does, no i think it looks great, you look great etc)
I mean go to a nice hotel and the bellhop might subtly hold out their hand. They are expecting a tip. Its not obvious at first what is happening unless you're 'in the know' and go to high end hotels a lot. Don't pay that bellhop and carry your own bags next time and expect a cold meal from room service.
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> Don't pay that bellhop and carry your own bags next time
Ah, so that's the trick. Can I pay them to get'em to stop nagging and stay away from my bags too?
I've *never* enjoyed having others carrying my bags. I'm more than strong enough to carry them myself.
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but if you're idea of politeness consists of lying to people, and then expecting them to argue with you
No that's not a cultural bias, that is simply cultural ignorance. No one is lying or expecting to argue with you. Viewing it in this way shows you don't remotely understand the culture, rather you are applying *your* cultural understanding to someone else's culture.
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No that's not a cultural bias, that is simply cultural ignorance. No one is lying or expecting to argue with you.
Yes, they absolutely and literally are. Saying they do not expect payment when they do is a lie. Making you insist to pay them multiple times before you accept payment is an argument. You are pretending words don't have their meanings for the sake of making an argument yourself.
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Yes, they absolutely and literally are. Saying they do not expect payment when they do is a lie.
No it is not. A lie is a deception. This is not a deception. This is a ritual, where they are broadly speaking showing hospitality/lack of greed by refusing and you are showing respect and honour by insisting. That's what it means. Meaning is not always literal interpretation of words. Meaning is what people understand by those words. And what they understand by those words is not any kind of deception.
Let's try
Re:Call me a bigot (Score:4, Insightful)
Politeness is what people around you define as politeness. In Japan, slurping soup is a compliment. In Europe/US it would be considered rude. Who is right? Go up to a counter in France and immediately order (e.g. can I have a baguette?) without first saying bonjour is rude. You will get better service if you just say "bonjour monsieur/madame" beforehand.
The reason most foreign tourists are considered rude is they ignore - often without even knowing it - the local customs. Of course, when they knowingly ignore local customs because "their culture sucks", they truly are rude. If you truly have that attitude - and not just saying it to get a rise - you probably ought to avoid visiting foreign countries as you will be considered rude and treated badly in return (likely creating negative thoughts about the country you're visiting). Politeness exists to communicate respect for the person you are interacting with.
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Politeness is what people around you define as politeness. In Japan, slurping soup is a compliment. In Europe/US it would be considered rude. Who is right? Go up to a counter in France and immediately order (e.g. can I have a baguette?) without first saying bonjour is rude. You will get better service if you just say "bonjour monsieur/madame" beforehand.
I think that's kinda rude in the US too. Though maybe it's regional. Might be more ok in the northeast?
Though only the "hi" / "hello" ... the sir/madam is prob too much.
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Slurping soup is not a comparable example. Slurping soup makes sense because it aerates it, which both cools it and brings out additional flavors. Refusing payment when you expect to be paid is a waste of the customer's time. It's disrespectful of their time. Not all cultural elements are created equal.
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The goal of social interchanges is seldom efficiency - it is often convey respect for the other person. "Disrespectful" is a point of view. One social convention of Americans is to focus on efficiency (a "waste of a costumer's time" is "disrespectful" according to you). (I don't know that you're an American - a guess, and I am sure other cultures have this characteristic as well.) A focus on efficiency might actually be considered disrespectful - "you are treating me as a servant rather than a professional"
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I might have a huge cultural bias here, but if you're idea of politeness consists of lying to people, and then expecting them to argue with you, then your culture sucks. Of course, I am one of those idiots that takes everything literally, and I believe in being blunt about everything as well.
Thats not being idiotic, rude, or blunt. It’s being efficient with conversation for a generation who aint got time or the attention span for this shit. Keep it to 140 characters or less. Emails within the preview pane or else. Fuck your voicemail.
How do you train logic to deal with something illogical?
(Channeling Spock) I sense you haven’t actually had a disagreement, with a woman.
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There's a difference between having a huge cultural bias, and being... well... uncultured.
A skunk is better company than a person who prides himself on being “frank.” - Robert Heinlein
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I might have a huge cultural bias here, but if you're idea of politeness consists of lying to people, and then expecting them to argue with you, then your culture sucks. Of course, I am one of those idiots that takes everything literally, and I believe in being blunt about everything as well. How do you train logic to deal with something illogical? (Remember the one question Spock couldn't answer: "How do you feel?" I was rolling on the floor laughing at that, the best line ever in any Star Trek movie. Then I looked around the theater... and nobody else thought it was funny.)
I'll wager you're neither a bigot nor an idiot. It's called the autism spectrum.
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I have bad news for you. You are likely on the autistic spectrum and the government is going to be coming after you 'soonish'. They do not like autists because autists see through all the social manipulation tactics that are used to control the population. Your 'weird' questions could expose their tactics for what they are, so they are going after autists. Be careful sir.
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I am one of those idiots that takes everything literally, and I believe in being blunt about everything as well.
Then you will love being in Finland!
Re: Call me a bigot (Score:2)
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So, to be clear, 'after you/no, after you, I insist' means 'your culture sucks?'
As expected (Score:2, Insightful)
Social etiquette is illogical, stupid and should die
AI knows better than some of us
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Re:As expected (Score:5, Insightful)
Moving parts in rubbing contact require lubrication to avoid excessive wear. Honorifics and formal politeness provide lubrication where people rub together. Often the very young, the untraveled, the naive, the unsophisticated deplore these formalities as “empty,” “meaningless,” or “dishonest,” and scorn to use them. No matter how “pure” their motives, they thereby throw sand into machinery that does not work too well at best. - Robert Heinlein
Re:As expected (Score:4, Interesting)
I thought many of the social niceties were developed so the upper classes could use them against lower classes. The lower classes are too busy working to stay alive and don't have time to learn all the social rules. Thus the upper class can shame them for not acting like a civilized person and keep them in their place. The rest either came from things that helped keep people alive or from random fads that stuck around.
Re: As expected (Score:3)
That's not really true. Culture is natural. It is not generally a conscious decision. Groups of chimpanzees have social etiquette on sharing resources. And it's not because some chimp decided it wanted to exclude a bunch of underperforming chimps.
Wait, what? (Score:2)
This is the most astonishing part of the article. It didn't just say "fluent in Persian", it said "native speakers", so presumably people who grew up in contact with that culture. And then there's only an 82% success rate? That seems far too low for me.
So either people from that culture constantly misunderstand each other in everyday situations extremely often (doubtful in my opinion), or the researchers chose some rather contrived s
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Native speakers can include people born into a persian-speaking family that were not raised in Iran. I've met native english speaking kids born outside the US or England that wouldn't get a bunch of cultural specific things, though they do get more than I'd think just from watching cartoons, whereas there's not a lot of persian culture cartoons out there or an IranDisney channel. This is my view on this, especially considering that the majority of the Iranians I've met (normally working in tech) left Iran i
"Would you like a cup of tea Father?" (Score:2)
does it, though? (Score:2)
"We Politely Insist: Your LLM Must Learn the Persian Art of Taarof"
While that might be an interesting technical challenge, one has to wonder why. Just because something is "culture" doesn't mean it should be copied. Slavery was part of human culture for countless millenia. To the point where we haven't even gotten around to updating our "holy books" that all treat it as something perfectly normal. That's how normal slavery used to be.
(for the braindead: No, I'm not comparing Taarof to slavery. I'm just making a point with an extreme example.)
The thing is something called u
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"So in order to teach an LLM Taarof you have to teach it to lie". No, just as we don't currently teach them the truth. LLMs are models of text, not the world. They say things that resemble what they have been trained on, without any connection to the facts of the world.
That explains a lot... (Score:2)
Someone's got to educate them that "no" means "no", lol.
Efficiency matters (Score:2)
Let's state the obvious. Culture may it be, but taroof sounds like a complete waste of breath. Literally.
Pointless, disorienting exercise that confuses rather than helps communication.
Perhaps AI agents are better off without it. They already are unreliable enough.
Say what you want (Score:2)
One time counter-refusal may be acceptable, but if you refuse payment a second time, I thank you and don't further insist.
I see how one may be respectful when someone is not capable to communicate their desire or refuses to be polite, but I don't need to push the issue more than once. If the taxi driver expects money then they shouldn't be that insistent on refusing it.
Irrational societies seem to have this problem. (Score:2)
Point in case: I dance Argentine Tango. There is a very specific evolved etiquette to avoid embarrassing situations for all involved when probing/asking a woman (or man) if she/he'd like to dance. It's a non-verbal cadence of positioning yourself within the space around the dancefloor, of glances and nodding or gently shaking your head while being friendly when glances meet. It's accompanied by other details to avoid misunderstandings and enable a completely non-verbal communication in a full room while dan
or (Score:2)
Here's a thought... (Score:2)
Empty courtesy? (Score:2)
Out of curiosity... (Score:2)
How does Persian culture handle a situation where someone really does want to give something away? Do they just have to reject your offer to pay 3 times? If that's the rule, seems like it could easily be learned by AI that in Farsi-language interactions there's a "rule of 3." Or does it depend on the social context?
Or, maybe... (Score:3)
Just stop the song and dance, and be direct! (Score:3)
I didn't know this, and when my ex's father grabbed the bill at one dinner, I sat back and smiled, and greatly offended him. He didn't say anything, but later that night my ex explained I was expected to fight for the bill. The next weekend we went out for dinner again, and this time I grabbed the bill, he stood up, grabbed it from me, pushed me over, and paid. I was expected to have stood up, and grabbed the bill back, which I wasn't going to do because that's childish and stupid.
Since I didn't grab the bill the second time, a number of family members people were visibly offended, and that night I had a fight with my ex, where she thought I should have fought harder for the bill, and I kept refusing. That fight led to her father making a reservation at a very high-end Chinese restaurant, and yet again, the next weekend we went out for dinner. The bill comes to the table, and I verbally state (paraphrased): "I'm paying for this, we're not fighting, I'll take care of it.", and he was shocked, mouth dropped stocked. I remember that bill, it was just north of $500, for four people.
I'm Canadian, I understand about being nice to the point of annoyance. I understand that we say sorry after saying sorry, but if you grab the bill, or offer to pay, or, you offer them a free cab ride, what do you expect? You want a WWE style cage match to see who's going to pay? That's insane. AI should never learn to handle this kind of insanity.
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Iranians refer to themselves as Persians, and prefer to be called that. They are rightfully proud of their heritage, the great Persian empire.
The only Iranian I've ever met (that I'm aware of) said that when he met people, he usually called himself Persian to avoid the stigma that comes from saying you're from Iran, presumably out of fear that Americans would assume that he was a fundamentalist just waiting for a chance to shout "Death to America" and blow himself up or whatever. He didn't put it exactly that way, but that was the gist.
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I know a guy (not important to this story, but he was in our Army) who is Turkish and Iranian. And that's how he described himself, too.
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I also remember 'respectable community leaders' and ROTC students calling in death threats to a lesbian radio host I knew for speaking at all. Police told her it was her own fault. She was ok, others in that era were killed.
So yeah, 'decent' tends to be pretty subjective.
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"Persian" is a culture and language. "Iranian" is a nationality. You're right to emphasize that it's the state that violates human rights, not the culture. Though the culture almost certainly enables it.
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i know a few ex-europeans (Score:2)
they are otherwise called americans, because they genocided a whole population and stole and entire continent from then, where they live. "their" country is now carrying out another genocide in the middle east, murdering scores of innocent civilians, razing cities and refugee camps to the ground, bombing journalists, medical staff, schools, starving the population and herding it to concentration camps to be expeled or exterminated. rough people.
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I know a black person. You get it, I'm sure.
So I've worked with many Persians in IT and in other fields as well. My impression is they are very math smart people, and the "average Persian" that I worked with were very kind caring and decent people, regardless of whether they were Islamic, Bahai, Zoroastrian, or whatever... Religion never worked into our work relationships. I have a high respect for the "average Persian".
The leadership,
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Yeah, why don't you swing by their country to check it out.
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Re: (Score:2)
Regardless about the women thing, how is a bot suppose to recognize someone from a particular culture.
Bot: Who are you?
Person: You can see me, figure it out.
Bot: Uh.....to mine eyes, you seem a bit odd for a human. You aren't a cat, are you?
Person: Not my problem, now do what I told you to do.
Bot: Aha!! A foreigner, I don't believe you want me to do this.
Person: I assure you, I do.
Bot: Nah, this feels like one of my cultural blind spots.
Person: I'm a regular person.
Bot: I do not believe so.
Person: Look it,