 Is it safe for Asians to move to America right now or is the risk of danger just out of control? Welcome everybody to the hotpot boys David and Andrew here what are we talking about today? Oh there was a Reddit thread where somebody from China was asking is it safe to move to America right now or is the anti-Asian hate violence and sinophobia just gotten so crazy that I'm not gonna have a good life. Listen there was a lot of thoughtful and complex answers because the answer is spoiler alert not yes or no it depends but we have three main points that are going to help you think about this topic so if you're ready for this please hit that like button check out other episodes of the hotpot boys and please turn on your notification bell because we are dropping hot topics that are also important so David what's the first point the first point is that your safety is a conditional probability formula what do you mean by that basically there's a lot of factors in everybody's life I know in the Reddit thread some people were trying to say oh yeah should you move to the northeast should you move to the midwest should you move to the pacific northwest should you move to the south guys even within those states there's a ton of cities and even within those cities there's a ton of neighborhoods and even within those neighborhoods there's a ton of buildings and a ton of houses and a ton of streets it could vary so much and it even matters what you do for your job what's your risk exposure some people were saying oh well I lived in Houston my whole life and I'm just the IT guy that works from home my brother works in retail and he heard a hundred times thousand times more racist things than I ever did because he meets like 500 strangers every day who are mad at him yeah I mean to put it plainly I mean it's a fairly it looks like a simple mathematical equation but basically you just plug in the probability of different factors and they stack up on each other you multiply them and then you get the overall probability of something happening so it's like if yo is anything bad gonna happen to me if I move to New York City well obviously tons of people are safe but also yeah some bad things do happen so it kind of depends on where do you live where do you spend time at night are you walking the streets alone are you male are you female are you intimidating looking or are you not intimidating looking yeah there could be two buildings in New York City Andrew that are right across the street from each other and one building has a completely different risk exposure as an Asian living in it than the building across the street literally we're talking about like 100 feet separating a completely different life so I don't like it when people are trying to categorize like geographic regions that sounds like way oversimplified to me somebody could be super safe anywhere but yeah it's just different depending on like what life you live where you live what times you're out who you're seeing what kind are you having upside downside neutral interactions but listen guys it's all an equation and I guess Andrew to say that that is a more mathematical way of saying street smarts yeah have street smarts but street mathematics but but the street smarts stack on top of each other you know it's not just I don't want to just say oh be more street smart because it's like well how do you it's like listen if you want to think about things in a mathematical way guys your safety is an equation so just plug and chug those variables and you'll kind of know like nobody knows the exact numbers right oh you live in Upper West Side how much safer is that 40 or 80 percent safer is a 20 percent safer we don't know those exact numbers but you kind of know if it's positive or negative if it's high or it's low okay a shout out to the conditional probability formula this was brought up by somebody who was a mathematics statistics major point number two Andrew America is just a very complicated place that is sometimes very chaotic and very layered wait wait wait David David David you telling me that a country with different climates with different population different immigrant populations different freedoms the ability to have guns and even do drugs to a certain extent you know you're telling me that this country's complex yeah I don't believe it somebody in the comment section was from China and was like yeah it's pretty interesting because uh US is only 25 percent of the population of China but honestly it is probably like 1000 times more diverse in the lifestyle the type of people and their way of life I mean yeah I don't know if it's a thousand but it's it's way more diverse for sure guys and we know this because there's different like laws and systems that kind of make it more diverse I mean even just look at the whole abortion thing going on right now it's like insane dude state to state capitalism does uh you know allow for a lot of diversity because there's a lot of different socioeconomic and by the way that's why America is such an interesting fascinating textured place to live that in my eyes is so interesting but man it can get really crazy and we just spent a bunch of time in Canada less layered less chaotic for sure I don't want to say Canada is less interesting I mean we were in Toronto I had a great time and the people are really nice but it is less diverse and a little bit more in the middle everything's like kind of pushed down from the top and pulled up way more social compression less poor people less rich I will say this the homeless people in Canada they seem less erratic they seem a little bit more smiley and I think it's because they get universal health care somebody was saying yeah you know it's crazy sometimes you meet somebody that tells you go back to China and then the next white person you meet their kids study Mandarin and love Chinese culture yeah and he was just like yeah it's just person to person it took a very so incredibly much uh I used to work retail very azn job I used to sell telecom wireless in college and Andrew in the zone I was working in sometimes I would meet 200 people a day in terms of me being Asian I had people not want to shake my hand because they thought I had SARS some people saw I don't want to do business with that guy get somebody else to sell me a Blackberry he's not going to give me a good deal he's an Asian to other people saying oh give me the Asian he's going to get me in and out of here the most efficient build a Toyota Lexus style way possible and I had other people a lady who worked at Microsoft with a bunch of Asians go why are you doing this job you need to be moving up the corporate ladder at Verizon instead of working retail with all these other bums she almost tried to like save me when I was like hey I'm just an undergrad in college right now it was a good job for me right now I mean whatever your job is listen a lot of people they don't face racism during the weekday but during the weekend you go to different places you're out on the street more it could be more dangerous and I will say this one thing that they didn't mention in the reddit post Andrew sometimes you need to activate your agent like let's say for example you're a regular Asian on the street uh yeah people would have to be pretty racist it happens though obviously we've all seen the cases of this extremity the extremity imagine if you were an Asian cop or an Asian politician something now you have two charged identities on you the layers are there and that's like a double whammy now I would imagine that Asian cops Asian judges Asian politicians where they have to knock door to door being like I'm running for city council I'm trying to represent you and solve your problems person who's completely different from me they might hear a hundred thousand percent more crazy things about their race you know good and bad yeah um okay moving on to our third point that you gotta remember David what is it Asians just need to make sure that they're not only becoming safer in a dangerous environment but also being proactive to make that environment just overall safer yeah so I think it's kind of like about playing defense and offense you know I think a lot of Asians that I know know how to survive they know how to how to avoid Matisse all defense the offense yeah but they don't know how to make things safer and I do think that obviously in America as an immigrant group whether you're one g2g3g which is referring to first gen second gen third gen shout out to the reddit guy who used that I think that's a kind of cool way to refer to it but depending on what level you're at you feel different levels of ownership over the country and I do think that people who feel more confident and ownership over how they live in their identities they're more willing to step out and like do like I don't want to say like mini police work in their community but just like be more proactive in their safety for sure like like talking to people asking people keeping an eye out or asking kids like oh where your parents at or even if you're a bunch of like buff Asian guys or just you're talking about you're referring to just being a good steward and having camaraderie within a community yeah because I think a lot of immigrants who feel like oh this isn't my country I don't have any ownership I don't want to get involved but that doesn't make your area any safer I'm not saying I don't understand that feeling but at some point you need to be able to step up yeah I think that Asians um are getting to that point more and more Asian Americans that are born here but I think that obviously anytime you notice something like sinophobia which is very more on a macro media level and then the anti-Asian hate which is more visceral because you could see that and feel that depending on you know your own risk exposure and who you've come across um I think it's easy to look at a baseline threshold situation and go oh if I increase my cautiousness or my scaredness I will be able to control my probabilities but there also has to be to be said something for care taking and improving the situation playing offense I'm not saying everybody gotta be Batman guys I'm talking about Robert Pattinson Batman but not everybody should be this guy in Batman the Asian guy in the beginning of the movie who was getting picked on by everybody here's my last little thing listen I know and this is for Asian guys out there because we're always wondering like what more can we do within reason right without becoming like all MMA fighters and getting like a tactical vest on and training like how police people do whatever I'm just saying like uh you know as as as healthy young Asian guys if you're in a group together like you have to understand that you essentially also double not just as a friend group but as security detail for other Asians or anybody for that matter so you just have to know as a group of guys together especially at a time like this there is a little bit of an expectation that maybe you guys are thinking about not just your own safety but other people's safety a little bit too right at least in a radius zone yeah like you know like a radar like if you like hanging outside of your friends bars like sometimes we hang out outside of our friends restaurants and whatever but I'm not gonna lie when it's New York City and I'm outside I I do have my head on a swivel I'm looking like uh you know who's like is everything gonna be safe are we safe is other people safe like I'm not saying I'm I'm a save the day and I'm a superhero right but it's on my mind yeah so I think that that's something that we would like to put out into the ether into the universe hopefully people you know the more they hear it that at least the more they think about it come to your own conclusions I'm not here to tell anybody how to live their life I couldn't control you even if I wanted to so again to run down the points and recap guys your safety is a conditional probability formula the long story short Andrew that's just street IQ but providing I'm just using a book smart IQ way to describe street IQ point number two America is a very complicated layered place with a lot of complex and potentially chaotic layers to it that's what people like about it that's what people hate about it this is the country that we live in it's a great place for a lot of opportunities and opportunities that are positive and a lot of bad opportunities too you need to know how you interface with that chaos or do you just want to remove yourself from and move to Irvine California point number three Asians just need to make sure they are training offensively as well as defensively you got to play both sides of the ball guys you can't just be a pure offensive player like buddy healed and you can't just be a pure defensive player like Matisse Thible both of those guys getting benched right now guys it's the playoffs both guys unplayable in the playoffs hey man don't just be a buff guy for the IG and the EDC guys be a buff guy for your community so anyway like we said Reddit thread a lot of really interesting stuff in there people were talking about microaggressions people were talking about this that we chose to derive these three main points from it we'll link you to the Reddit thread below please let us know what you think in the comment section below I know there has been an uptick in crime nationally but is it safe for Asians to move to America I think it's all about probabilities and how you manage them hopefully you get to a point where you can manage them for other people a little bit as well hey and one person said it's kind of sad that we have to say it depends as an answer to that question but that's where we're at guys please let us know like subscribe turn on your notifications until next time it's the hot pop boys we out peace