[Ignorance is bliss indeed, and maybe it's a good thing Hythlo is ignorant. More challenges to his quite naive worldview would likely do him no good, at least yet.]

...Do you think things could have been different for those people? 'Tis strange for me indeed to think that the impulse for self-betterment is not universal, but I've at least come to realize there is indeed much I do not know.

[The question is asked genuinely - he does want to learn, one way or another. Hythlo also reaches for a glass to pour himself a shot: it feels weird to leave Hien the only one drinking.]