CJK people actually do look very similar anyway, which is not surprising as there are a lot of shared genetics.
The way people tell them apart is going to be mostly based on current popular fashion, which is quite difficult to do with these bust shots and what I'm guessing are older pictures
The problem is I put like 70% as Chinese, because I guarantee there's a Chinese person in the world who looks exactly like the portrait. China is so mixed that it's a total wildcard.
I remember taking it as a freshman in college and getting well above random chance. 60–70% correct? A year later I took it with my sophomore roommate, from China. Again, 2/3-ish correct. He scored about random chance from what I recall.
I've always thought you could tell. Not 100% of the time; there's plenty of genetic mixing, Japanese people and Koreans share somewhat recent genetic history, Korea and China border each other, China is a ton of different ethnicities, etc. But certainly better than random chance if you've been around enough East Asians in your life.
I agree with a descendant above who said fashion is really useful. That's super true. I used to joke at uni that an East Asian wearing pastels was invariably Korean (this is very much NOT the case in SK these days). Japanese have had very distinct youth fashions for twenty years, as I lived there and witnessed them, and nowadays I can be across the playground with my kids and see a woman and immediately know by what she's wearing that she's from Japan.
China, being enormous, is a mixed bag.
That being said, there's facial structure stuff. It's kind of hard to put into words. It's a vibe you get. There's a university (Penn State or something?) that has a professor who puts his huge survey sociology class online. He talks about this, that early and constant exposure to some group(s) makes you better, for the rest of your life, and recognizing them. Has to do with attractiveness, too.
He brings white girls up to pick which Asian guy is the most attractive, and you can tell they really struggle to articulate it. But he brings Asian girls up and say exactly which one and explain why from his clothes, his facial features, etc.
It really is like if you aren't around (in this case) Asian people growing up, you have a kind of facial blindness where they alldolooksame.
Yeah, none of these were obvious to me. China is an especially massive country and none of these people would look out of place in parts of China (I've seen every one of these facial types in China speaking native Mandarin). Most of the "signal" is gonna be from fashion, and/or the biases of the test-maker in what they choose to represent and how closely those faces match stereotypes.
I got 12/18 on faces as an American-born Caucasian living in Japan for over 10 years. Since the subjects were photographed in New York City (and from the other comments, at least a decade ago), cues from fashion and makeup only helped me get about 4 of them, another 6 had pretty strong ethnic features. Of the remaining 8, it was a bit of a tossup and I did worse than guessing, getting only 2 correct.
13/18 on food. Even with a lot of the same general types of food, the presentation and specific ingredients made a lot of them somewhat simple. I got tripped up on a few, though, where I overthought it ("a Japanese X is usually not like this") or ones where it was really a tossup for me between Chinese and Korean since I'm less familiar with those foods.
What’s really wild to me is having spent time in both Mexico and Thailand, I have seen some people in Mexico that could have a twin in Thailand. That was really unexpected.
I'm from NZ (mostly european but part Maori heritage) and have had people talk to me in foreign languages, ask me in the supermarket if I'm from Spain (weird), give me random discounts etc.
I also get "you look/feel so familiar" a lot.
Happy to know I'd fit in in a number of places haha
I got 6/18 for the faces ("Obviously, very bad.") I thought I would get at least 50%. Interestingly, of the ones I felt very sure about, I did much better (got about 4 out of those 6).
Obviously, random chance...
It's a bit ignorant/racist to expect people from different countries to look distinctly different (fashion notwithstanding), when genetics are so overlapping
The about page at https://alllooksame.com/about/ seems to indicate that the author who is of Japanese descent is not able to differentiate between them himself and made this website to test the assumption
In any case, I thought the "you all look the same" racist trope is that east asian people look similar to one another individually? is there an actual expectation of being able to tell the actual ethnicity/countries apart?
> is there an actual expectation of being able to tell the actual ethnicity/countries apart?
Facial structure, there are some obvious ones in ALS. But generally speaking, it's fashion that gives it away. I can spot a (relatively recent) Japanese immigrant from a hundred feet away by her clothes. It's a bit like if you see someone in Europe with a baseball cap, you can be almost certain they're American. Sandals with socks? German. Etc.
My recollection is that this website says that a 50% score is bad when the expected value of random chance of picking the correct option among 3 is 1/3. A 50% average score means there is some signal there. If it was impossible to guess, the average score should be 33%
>this is what happens generally when you fight against anything out of anger. It’s not that you have no justification for fighting; the real problem is that your efforts only make the situation worse, not just for others, but for yourself also.
Problem is that it's hard to recognise that something is worth our moral efforts without feeling angry at the same time. Stoicism is constant work.
I got 3/18. I'm not sure what to think of that. I live in a city full of Asian people, international students, tourists etc etc. One of my best friends in high school was Korean. One of my closest friends at uni was Japanese. One of my close friends now is Chinese.
I'm a white American from the middle of nowhere who grew up with Taiwanese friends and went to uni in Japan and got 12. I think when I took this test two decades ago, I got 12-13 but that was a long time ago.
It's too slow. It takes at least five seconds to load the next picture after you answer. You should probably just preload all the pictures client-side. I wasn't able to get through it.
That's not what preload is for. You don't wait for the extra images on the first page. You start loading them after the page is complete, so that the next page loads faster.
The architectural version is interesting to me. There's really a world of difference, but you need to know some history and some of the "cultural vibes" particular to each country to understand.
Very uncultured and untraveled caucasian here. I got 10/18, surprising myself. Probably plenty of luck, but at least 5 or 6 I was quite confident about. Not sure how.
Why would you think a site trying to compare Chinese, Japanese and Koreans has forgotten about India of all places? They must've also completely forgotten Mongolia, all nations of SE Asia and Russia's Far East exist.
Check the About section. The author is Asian and can’t tell them apart. The website isn’t meant to shame those who can’t do it, it’s to prove they can’t.
I played this quite a few years ago and felt pretty certain that they deliberately chose photos that were atypical of each ethnicity. That said, there kind of is no typical Chinese look since it's such a huge country. Those in the north are taller and have similarities to Koreans, those in the south will have more similarities to Vietnamese.
Am asian myself, got 6/18 too.
CJK people actually do look very similar anyway, which is not surprising as there are a lot of shared genetics.
The way people tell them apart is going to be mostly based on current popular fashion, which is quite difficult to do with these bust shots and what I'm guessing are older pictures
Ditto (albeit Eurasian)
The problem is I put like 70% as Chinese, because I guarantee there's a Chinese person in the world who looks exactly like the portrait. China is so mixed that it's a total wildcard.
>are older pictures
I am pretty sure it's 20+ years old. Just based on when I remember taking it.
https://web.archive.org/web/20021206055155/http://alllooksam...
Sep 14, 2001 it was taken out of beta.
I remember taking it as a freshman in college and getting well above random chance. 60–70% correct? A year later I took it with my sophomore roommate, from China. Again, 2/3-ish correct. He scored about random chance from what I recall.
I've always thought you could tell. Not 100% of the time; there's plenty of genetic mixing, Japanese people and Koreans share somewhat recent genetic history, Korea and China border each other, China is a ton of different ethnicities, etc. But certainly better than random chance if you've been around enough East Asians in your life.
I agree with a descendant above who said fashion is really useful. That's super true. I used to joke at uni that an East Asian wearing pastels was invariably Korean (this is very much NOT the case in SK these days). Japanese have had very distinct youth fashions for twenty years, as I lived there and witnessed them, and nowadays I can be across the playground with my kids and see a woman and immediately know by what she's wearing that she's from Japan.
China, being enormous, is a mixed bag.
That being said, there's facial structure stuff. It's kind of hard to put into words. It's a vibe you get. There's a university (Penn State or something?) that has a professor who puts his huge survey sociology class online. He talks about this, that early and constant exposure to some group(s) makes you better, for the rest of your life, and recognizing them. Has to do with attractiveness, too.
He brings white girls up to pick which Asian guy is the most attractive, and you can tell they really struggle to articulate it. But he brings Asian girls up and say exactly which one and explain why from his clothes, his facial features, etc.
It really is like if you aren't around (in this case) Asian people growing up, you have a kind of facial blindness where they alldolooksame.
Yeah, none of these were obvious to me. China is an especially massive country and none of these people would look out of place in parts of China (I've seen every one of these facial types in China speaking native Mandarin). Most of the "signal" is gonna be from fashion, and/or the biases of the test-maker in what they choose to represent and how closely those faces match stereotypes.
13/18 Maybe growing up in NZ and hanging out a bit with people from different cultures helps.
I got 12/18 on faces as an American-born Caucasian living in Japan for over 10 years. Since the subjects were photographed in New York City (and from the other comments, at least a decade ago), cues from fashion and makeup only helped me get about 4 of them, another 6 had pretty strong ethnic features. Of the remaining 8, it was a bit of a tossup and I did worse than guessing, getting only 2 correct.
13/18 on food. Even with a lot of the same general types of food, the presentation and specific ingredients made a lot of them somewhat simple. I got tripped up on a few, though, where I overthought it ("a Japanese X is usually not like this") or ones where it was really a tossup for me between Chinese and Korean since I'm less familiar with those foods.
11/18 :)
What’s really wild to me is having spent time in both Mexico and Thailand, I have seen some people in Mexico that could have a twin in Thailand. That was really unexpected.
I have an Indian friend who often gets mistaken for Hispanic in the Southern US.
I'm from NZ (mostly european but part Maori heritage) and have had people talk to me in foreign languages, ask me in the supermarket if I'm from Spain (weird), give me random discounts etc.
I also get "you look/feel so familiar" a lot.
Happy to know I'd fit in in a number of places haha
I got 6/18 for the faces ("Obviously, very bad.") I thought I would get at least 50%. Interestingly, of the ones I felt very sure about, I did much better (got about 4 out of those 6).
I'm not sure it's bad at all. China has around 1.5 billion people and officially recognizes 55 ethnicities.
Some of them look more like non Chinese people than like I he Chinese ethnicities.
9/18 and I lived in China & Japan for 10 years altogether. It's a tough test! There were only a couple that were obvious.
Obviously, random chance... It's a bit ignorant/racist to expect people from different countries to look distinctly different (fashion notwithstanding), when genetics are so overlapping
The about page at https://alllooksame.com/about/ seems to indicate that the author who is of Japanese descent is not able to differentiate between them himself and made this website to test the assumption
In any case, I thought the "you all look the same" racist trope is that east asian people look similar to one another individually? is there an actual expectation of being able to tell the actual ethnicity/countries apart?
> is there an actual expectation of being able to tell the actual ethnicity/countries apart?
Facial structure, there are some obvious ones in ALS. But generally speaking, it's fashion that gives it away. I can spot a (relatively recent) Japanese immigrant from a hundred feet away by her clothes. It's a bit like if you see someone in Europe with a baseball cap, you can be almost certain they're American. Sandals with socks? German. Etc.
My recollection is that this website says that a 50% score is bad when the expected value of random chance of picking the correct option among 3 is 1/3. A 50% average score means there is some signal there. If it was impossible to guess, the average score should be 33%
Is this still around? I think this site was from 20 years ago.
Domain created 2001-07-18
12 years ago from last submission (2 points) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7446493
2026 minus 2014 is 12 years
Thanks! I'm sure that's what gnabgib meant so I have taken the liberty of correcting the typo.
Seriously. I remember distinctly playing with this in 2004-5.
Little houses, on the hillside...
From older version of the site:
https://archive.ph/http://alllooksame.com/
https://archive.ph/CeR00
>this is what happens generally when you fight against anything out of anger. It’s not that you have no justification for fighting; the real problem is that your efforts only make the situation worse, not just for others, but for yourself also.
Problem is that it's hard to recognise that something is worth our moral efforts without feeling angry at the same time. Stoicism is constant work.
I got 3/18. I'm not sure what to think of that. I live in a city full of Asian people, international students, tourists etc etc. One of my best friends in high school was Korean. One of my closest friends at uni was Japanese. One of my close friends now is Chinese.
Is it good or bad? I don't know.
I am a Chinese person living in Japan, I got 3/18 too.
I'm a white American from the middle of nowhere who grew up with Taiwanese friends and went to uni in Japan and got 12. I think when I took this test two decades ago, I got 12-13 but that was a long time ago.
I'm Asian, grew up in Vietnam, got 8/18. Without the specific hair styles, I can see all of them being Vietnamese
It's too slow. It takes at least five seconds to load the next picture after you answer. You should probably just preload all the pictures client-side. I wasn't able to get through it.
Right? I was thinking how come it takes such a simple site to load. Then I saw the footer, it's 25 years old.
It's a 25-year old website and most people were on slow dial-up connection. No one would've stuck around for 17 images to be pre-loaded.
That's not what preload is for. You don't wait for the extra images on the first page. You start loading them after the page is complete, so that the next page loads faster.
The architectural version is interesting to me. There's really a world of difference, but you need to know some history and some of the "cultural vibes" particular to each country to understand.
Very uncultured and untraveled caucasian here. I got 10/18, surprising myself. Probably plenty of luck, but at least 5 or 6 I was quite confident about. Not sure how.
I got 5/18, whoops.
You forgot to add North East Indians to this list
Why would you think a site trying to compare Chinese, Japanese and Koreans has forgotten about India of all places? They must've also completely forgotten Mongolia, all nations of SE Asia and Russia's Far East exist.
OP is not the one who made this 25yo site.
It looks site is down.
No it’s just sloooooowwwwww
1/18 must be some new low. Inverse genius it told me.
Exceptional! Can I short your whole portfolio? :)
Speaking as another inverse genius, at your own peril.
In my second go around I scored 11/18. Genius learn fast.
Now do England, Ireland, Germany, France :)
to be fair I'd love such a quizz
Exactly! I'm sure most Asian people would fail that test. What a silly thing to measure.
Check the About section. The author is Asian and can’t tell them apart. The website isn’t meant to shame those who can’t do it, it’s to prove they can’t.
https://alllooksame.com/about/
it's a trap: they are all chinese
I played this quite a few years ago and felt pretty certain that they deliberately chose photos that were atypical of each ethnicity. That said, there kind of is no typical Chinese look since it's such a huge country. Those in the north are taller and have similarities to Koreans, those in the south will have more similarities to Vietnamese.
3/18