It looks like the blowback is less about one side beinng better or worse than the other, and more about this whole thesis sounding like the most obnoxious fourteen year old you’ve ever met larping as a sociologist with zero substantiation to their sweeping statements
Late nineties to early two thousands on an arch-based distro is Ayanami Rei territory for sure
EDIT: could also be Serial Expeirments Lain or Major Kusanagi depending on your age and horniness in asking this question
You should read Firefall, by Peter Watts.
In which they do do that, in a way that is simultaneously the most absurd you’ve ever read, and the most hard sci-fi credible. Mostly so they can hibernate iirc.
They’re not entirely wrong, of course, but they’re really stretching this simple stereotype into some deep difference in psychologies and assigning it to this “concept of a marketplace of idea vs. rationality and enlightenment” oversimplification.
Honestly, as a European person who’s been through bits of both school systems, it mainly sound like an uninformed rant from an American who’s angry with the state of the US and who’s completely idealized Europe as a result – even though their only vista into EU cultures is a bunch of titles of unread articles from the part of the US media they most agree with.
Which would be fine if they hadn’t worded what amounts to an overindulged shower thought in such a peremptory fashion.
Basically they behaved like their own stereotype of “american psychology”, which we do have quite enough of at home thank you very much.