7 ms·

The Secret of Immigrant Genius

37 points by r4um 11y ago

zamalek 11y ago
I have a different theory on why this happens, as a potential immigrant myself: it's a giant sorted hash-set. My reason for immigrating is simple: in a developed country I'll make more of a difference with the same amount of effort. My "hash" inclines me to move to developed buckets (and also privileges me with the means to do so). Take Elon Musk as an example. If he attempted to start SpaceX in South Africa (his country of birth) he would have been hemorrhaging capital via the corrupt government tender process. There is also the added problem of a lacking employee pool due to the on-going brain-drain. His "hash" landed him in a developed country and is demonstrably an advantage because of many factors, including the support of the American government. I really don't think that immigration changes people; it's merely a tool that the inspired use to achieve their goals. The anthropic principle could be invoked here in a contrived way.
- laichzeit0 11y ago
  > There is also the added problem of a lacking employee pool due to the on-going brain-drain. Not to go off topic too much, but it should be noted that in South Africa there is also an extremely authoritarian form of affirmative action or black economic empowerment, etc. which effectively means you _have_ to employ people based on their skin colour when your business reaches a certain size or effectively you can't do business in the economy. It's a form of justified-racism directed at a minority group (< 10% of the population is white) that stifles the labour market and makes things like SpaceX impossible. The "brain-drain" you speak of is skilled white workers who are leaving the country because they can't get work or can't advance in their careers, etc. A completely stupid problem created by the government's own ineptitude.
  - zamalek 11y ago
    I've found that communicating the woes of that policy over the internet is somewhat impossible. If you live in an equality-developed country it's virtually impossible to believe what you are told about countries that have no racial equality. I've learned to only have conversations about South African racial inequality only in person.
  - ZeroGravitas 11y ago
    Unless you can demonstrate that it's actually detrimental to the average South African, then it's not really a problem or ineptitude is it? Notably, you didn't even try to make that argument, you were more concerned with the problems it causes for less than 10% of the population that used to benefit from an "extremely authoritarian form of affirmative action".
    - laichzeit0 11y ago
      Are you telling me you actually hold to the belief that having a policy which contributes towards driving away skilled professionals because of their race is a benefit to the average South African?
      - ZeroGravitas 11y ago
        Yes. A situation in which a large company can't find any roles for 90% of the population is clearly unsustainable and needs to be fixed. It's apartheid in all but name. Getting rid of that also had negative consequences for some individual people, but was clearly the right thing to do, and benefitted the average South African.
        laichzeit0 11y ago
        Yes because 90% of the population is clearly black engineers, doctors, scientists, etc. and the only reason they're not being hired is because they're black and there's some racist conspiracy going on and not because these people don't actually exist. You can't just "will" a skilled professional into existence.
        ZeroGravitas 11y ago
        If, as you claim, black doctors, engineers and scientists do not exist in South Africa and the country is > 90% black, then clearly that is a problem for the country as a whole, and fixing it will improve life for everyone. One supply-side fix for that is to send more people to school to learn these skills. One demand-side fix for that is to make sure that the people who have those skills get jobs. I can well imagine, that after decades of being systematically excluded from these positions, the transition will be hard. Unlike you, I'm not rushing to blame the current government for the impact of decisions that were made many years ago.
raverbashing 11y ago
I suspect it has to do also (in the basic idea of the article) to knowing a different way of doing things. Those who are born in one place and keep doing the same things won't know about ways of doing it differently The article seems that it's trying a bit too hard though.
- masida 11y ago
  I think that the gist of the article is that you can be more creative (i.e. come up with ideas that hardly anyone thought of before), if you have more distance from culture. In other words, people that are deeply entrenched in culture, can only think of doing things in the way that the culture is doing it now. Alan Kay tries to express this concept in his talk "Normal considered harmful", it may give a different perspective on the same concept. I think it's very good to point this out in relation to immigration right now. However, it's just one of the reasons we should be open to immigration: humanness (brotherhood); a better outcome for both parties ("immigrants" and "natives") in the long run if we give immigrants a possibility to start a "normal" life as fast as possible; we can share the workload and may alleviate the problem of ageing western societies; etc.
pervycreeper 11y ago
Humans are lazy thinkers. We need some impetus to break ingrained patterns of thought.
datalist 11y ago
> Freud is a classic case. As a little boy, he and his family joined a flood of immigrants from the fringes of the Austro-Hungarian empire to Vienna Freud a classic case of immigration? Příbor the fringes of the Austrian Empire? He moved at the age of four 130 miles southwest to the capital. The Austrian Empire included at that point parts of Ukraine. That is hardly immigration, let alone a classic case. > He wore lederhosen and played a local card game called tarock Neither "lederhosen" nor "tarock" is local to Vienna. Sorry Wall Street Journal, but please get your facts straight before writing rubbish. Also, as the article is drawing comparisons to the flow of migrants right now, it should be noted that the current events are not comparable to any of the given examples in the article.
- a_bonobo 11y ago
  >Neither "lederhosen" nor "tarock" is local to Vienna. Vienna had its own tarock type that did not survive WW1: http://i-p-c-s.org/pattern/ps-14.html http://i-p-c-s.org/pattern/ps-14.html Lederhosen were once popular all over the Alpine Region, so I'm sure that they were popular in Vienna, too.
  - datalist 11y ago
    > Vienna had its own tarock type that did not survive WW1 It is/was played there, but not exclusively. > Lederhosen were once popular all over the Alpine Region, so I'm sure that they were popular in Vienna, too. True, in the Alpine regions of Austria, Switzerland and Bavaria they are still somewhat common, mostly in the rural parts. Vienna has never been Alpine nor rural.
    - a_bonobo 11y ago
      >It is/was played there, but not exclusively. I don't think the author ever implied that tarock or Lederhosen were exclusive to Vienna, but that both were common there at the time, so Freud acquired both to fit in. I think you're reading too much into the text.
      - 11y ago
staunch 11y ago
Immigrant does not mean poor. Often immigrants are the most wealthy, connected, and educated people from their countries. Poor people are usually stuck wherever they are. A more accurate title would be: "The Secret of Rich Genius" But it's pretty obvious why the elite have such a huge share of success in all things.
- collyw 11y ago
  As has been pointed out on here before, usually rich immigrants are called expats.
- kbart 11y ago
  "Poor people are usually stuck wherever they are." Probably was true 100 years ago, but not anymore, when at least in my country, all you need is a valid passport and a cheap ~30 Eur one-way plane ticket. Millions of Eastern Europeans did just that after their countries joined EU.
ronotono 11y ago
I would say moving to another country itself takes lots of courage, and this can be one of the reasons why some of them can be successful and innovative.
- phillc73 11y ago
  I think it takes more inquisitiveness than courage to voluntarily move to another country. I'm specifically discounting those who move to another country as a refugee or asylum seeker. I've lived in four different countries for periods of 12 months or longer (including the country of my birth), on three different continents. I don't think it took or takes specific courage to make such moves, more like an innate sense of inquisitiveness and lust for adventure. I wanted to experience different people, cultures and norms. In someone much smarter than myself, this may help to encourage their genius. In my case, I mostly just had a good time, but also I believe became a much more tolerant person.
  - sumedh 11y ago
    > I don't think it took or takes specific courage I am assuming you are from a developed country and probably white which is why you are saying that. Ask people who are from developing countries who have to put a major chunk of their life savings to get a resident visa move to a different country use their savings again till they get a job in their own domain. People from developing countries also have to face the humiliation from their friends and families incase they dont get a job and have to move back. I think courage is the right word.
    - phillc73 11y ago
      Good points and agreed. I did specifically think of and note those refugees or asylum seekers who do for sure need courage. However, I didn't consider economic migrants from developing countries. I can see there is courage required for them too.
justaaron 11y ago
they forgot to mention that sometimes an entire nation/city has their head up their ass and pretty much anyone from outside can see it... i'm not referring to anyone in particular, so please, no butthurt...
sklogic 11y ago
Fusion of different schools of thouht brings unexpected results. Nothing to do with immigration, but highlights how important it is for the academics to communicate outside of their tiny local environments.
chipsy 11y ago
The argument made is a corollary of "openness to experience" indicators for creativity - just, with immigration, once you make the big leap more of the new experiences automatically come to you during ordinary life. If you're already seeing exciting new things happening around you(and they aren't the same exciting new things everyone else sees), you may be getting as much of the effect as needed.
Yenrabbit 11y ago
'Today, foreign-born residents account for only 13% of the U.S. population but hold nearly a third of all patents and a quarter of all Nobel Prizes awarded to Americans.' Nearly a quarter is 15% - not much more than 13%. Sensational writing for a fact that could also be explained by, perhaps, the fact that a large number of people go to the US specifically for education. The 'one third of patents' is more interesting, but even then I have to wonder how much of that is simply people with a dream moving to America to patent their invention and start a business. I am sure immigration can indeed spark creativity, or at least select for creative people, but the article reads as just a little too click-baity for my tastes.
- lentil_soup 11y ago
  a quarter is 25%
- nmjenkins 11y ago
  Err… a quarter means 25%, not 15%.
  - datr 11y ago
    I thought maybe at first GP meant the actual percentage of Nobel prizes awarded to immigrants was 15% and WSJ was rounding that up to a quarter but it seems they're actually rounding down. 30.7% of U.S. awarded prizes are given to immigrants [1]. [1] http://iir.gmu.edu/research/immigrant-nobel-prize-winners http://iir.gmu.edu/research/immigrant-nobel-prize-winners
acqq 11y ago
> (Einstein's) “miracle year” (...) occurred after he had emigrated from Germany to Switzerland. Does the author even know (or does he just want to hide) that Zurich is in a German-speaking part of Switzerland, and that Einstein surely didn't feel like an "immigrant" there? Isn't it annoying reading how Einstein is used by a lot of writers as an attempt to prove any claim they make? The claim that Freud's "immigrated" is equally absurd. Wikipedia has the name and the location of the place where he was born: "Freiberg in Mähren, Moravia, Austrian Empire." (Now it is in Czech Republic and called Příbor, but it's still the same place). He just grew up some 200 miles southwest from his birthplace, right in the capital of the Empire. His father actually brought him and the family to Vienna as Freud was only 4. He certainly never remembered any other place and went to all schools in Vienna.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
- david-given 11y ago
  > Does the author even know that Zurich is in a German-speaking part of Switzerland, and that Einstein surely didn't feel like an "immigrant" there? That's not precisely true. Zurich speaks German, true, but it's Schweizerdeutsch --- it's a quite different dialect to the Hochdeutsch they speak in Germany. I live in Zurich; a German-born work colleague is actually taking formal lessons in it so he can understand what the locals say. It's that different. Everyone here speaks Hochdeutsch too, or at least does now, so Einstein would probably have gotten along fine, but he most likely wouldn't be feeling like he was at home.
  - acqq 11y ago
    > That's not precisely true (...) Everyone here speaks Hochdeutsch too Linguistically, Swiss speak Hochdeutsch even when they speak Swiss German(!) Which a lot of Germans of Germany don't when they speak their dialect. So your argument is quite wrong and certainly not "precise." The German speaking people all have local dialects and have to adapt when they move. But these are all "just" dialects. Ask Germans, they aren't surprised when they have to get accustomed. Look at the map here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_dialects https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_dialects Note that all "upper" German regions are actually where "Hochdeutsch" (Upper German) comes from. Yes, "up" is on the South, down on the map. And the area includes Switzerland. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swiss_German https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swiss_German "Swiss German (German: Schweizerdeutsch, Alemannic German: Schwyzerdütsch, Schwiizertüütsch, Schwizertitsch[note 1]) refers to any of the Alemannic dialects spoken in Switzerland and in some Alpine communities in Northern Italy." OK, let's check Alemannic: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alemannic_German https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alemannic_German "Alemannic is a group of dialects of the Upper German branch of the Germanic language family." Finally, it follows that Swiss German dialects are actually all branches of "Hochdeutsch" family(!) They are just not the same as today's "standard German." Which is what people you communicate to probably mean when they say "Hochdeutsch": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_German https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_German See also DominikR's post here. He being an Austrian, his dialect also from the same "Hochdeutsch" family of dialects, wouldn't feel as an "immigrant" in Switzerland.
thesumofall 11y ago
Having lived in 4 countries for at least 9 months each over the last 5 years, I agree with the conclusion of the article but not necessarily with the underlying reasons. Yes, getting to know a new culture reveals new ways of thinking and behavior that one would otherwise have missed. But I think more critically, leaving another place also frees one from the constraints of that place (be it personally, socially or culturally) It provides opportunity to rethink ones priorities in life and to dare to do things differently
nightspirit 11y ago
There is probably more difference between German and whatever languages they speak in Syria than between Schweizerdeutsch and Hochdeutch. And this is in addition to the general cultural shock caused by moving from place where you can kill your daughter/sister for having unwanted sexual relationships to place where you aren't even expected to molest women for walking in public place without their husbands and face covers. https://www.hrw.org/world-report/2009/country-chapters/syria https://www.hrw.org/world-report/2009/country-chapters/syria http://newobserveronline.com/mass-invader-sex-attacks-in-stuttgart-hamburg/ http://newobserveronline.com/mass-invader-sex-attacks-in-stu...
- calibraxis 11y ago
  WTF? If you’re discussing Einstein, then how about comparing a war-torn Syria (caused by US invasion) to a Germany busy incinerating Jews, Roma, gays and whoever else? (And BTW why is it that racists are perversely obsessed with discussing sex, as if that's the only problem people face? Flagged.)
  - nightspirit 11y ago
    I tried to support accq's point that Einstein's "schema violation" was a joke compared to what's happening in case of Syrian refugees mentioned by the article. Those people migrate between vastly different cultures and relating their experience to Einstein's doesn't make sense. And I think you can't really compare Syria with Nazi Germany either. Nazi Germany was a government gone rogue, while in Muslim cultures, for some reason, the kind of stuff I mentioned is just the way things are and have always been.
    - acqq 11y ago
      > Nazi Germany was a government gone rogue, while in Muslim cultures the kind of stuff I mentioned is just the way things are and have always been. The West had its own problems long enough with antisemitism, almost for two thousand years, supported by the texts from the New Testament. (Here some quotes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antisemitism_and_the_New_Testament https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antisemitism_and_the_New_Testa... ) The view of Jews really changed only after WW II, and only as Christian religion started to be taken less seriously. Hitler didn't invent antisemitic ideology. What West today tries to ignore is that Islam as religion is actively antisemitic too and it bases it on its own "holy" books (quotes here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islam_and_antisemitism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islam_and_antisemitism ). Hitler is surprisingly (at least for those who never tried to read Quran) popular in Muslim-majority countries. And even if "all religions are fine and peaceful in essence" is repeated ad nauseam it doesn't make the claim true.
graeham 11y ago
The article has the causation backwards: being an immigrant does not make one bold and creative. Instead, people who are bold and creative are more likely to take the risk of packing up their lives for better opportunities.

37 points by r4um 11y ago

I have a different theory on why this happens, as a potential immigrant myself: it's a giant sorted hash-set. My reason for immigrating is simple: in a developed country I'll make more of a difference with the same amount of effort. My "hash" inclines me to move to developed buckets (and also privileges me with the means to do so). Take Elon Musk as an example. If he attempted to start SpaceX in South Africa (his country of birth) he would have been hemorrhaging capital via the corrupt government tender process. There is also the added problem of a lacking employee pool due to the on-going brain-drain. His "hash" landed him in a developed country and is demonstrably an advantage because of many factors, including the support of the American government. I really don't think that immigration changes people; it's merely a tool that the inspired use to achieve their goals. The anthropic principle could be invoked here in a contrived way.

laichzeit0 11y ago
> There is also the added problem of a lacking employee pool due to the on-going brain-drain. Not to go off topic too much, but it should be noted that in South Africa there is also an extremely authoritarian form of affirmative action or black economic empowerment, etc. which effectively means you _have_ to employ people based on their skin colour when your business reaches a certain size or effectively you can't do business in the economy. It's a form of justified-racism directed at a minority group (< 10% of the population is white) that stifles the labour market and makes things like SpaceX impossible. The "brain-drain" you speak of is skilled white workers who are leaving the country because they can't get work or can't advance in their careers, etc. A completely stupid problem created by the government's own ineptitude.
- zamalek 11y ago
  I've found that communicating the woes of that policy over the internet is somewhat impossible. If you live in an equality-developed country it's virtually impossible to believe what you are told about countries that have no racial equality. I've learned to only have conversations about South African racial inequality only in person.
- ZeroGravitas 11y ago
  Unless you can demonstrate that it's actually detrimental to the average South African, then it's not really a problem or ineptitude is it? Notably, you didn't even try to make that argument, you were more concerned with the problems it causes for less than 10% of the population that used to benefit from an "extremely authoritarian form of affirmative action".
  - laichzeit0 11y ago
    Are you telling me you actually hold to the belief that having a policy which contributes towards driving away skilled professionals because of their race is a benefit to the average South African?
    - ZeroGravitas 11y ago
      Yes. A situation in which a large company can't find any roles for 90% of the population is clearly unsustainable and needs to be fixed. It's apartheid in all but name. Getting rid of that also had negative consequences for some individual people, but was clearly the right thing to do, and benefitted the average South African.
      - laichzeit0 11y ago
        Yes because 90% of the population is clearly black engineers, doctors, scientists, etc. and the only reason they're not being hired is because they're black and there's some racist conspiracy going on and not because these people don't actually exist. You can't just "will" a skilled professional into existence.
        ZeroGravitas 11y ago
        If, as you claim, black doctors, engineers and scientists do not exist in South Africa and the country is > 90% black, then clearly that is a problem for the country as a whole, and fixing it will improve life for everyone. One supply-side fix for that is to send more people to school to learn these skills. One demand-side fix for that is to make sure that the people who have those skills get jobs. I can well imagine, that after decades of being systematically excluded from these positions, the transition will be hard. Unlike you, I'm not rushing to blame the current government for the impact of decisions that were made many years ago.

raverbashing 11y ago

I suspect it has to do also (in the basic idea of the article) to knowing a different way of doing things. Those who are born in one place and keep doing the same things won't know about ways of doing it differently The article seems that it's trying a bit too hard though.

masida 11y ago
I think that the gist of the article is that you can be more creative (i.e. come up with ideas that hardly anyone thought of before), if you have more distance from culture. In other words, people that are deeply entrenched in culture, can only think of doing things in the way that the culture is doing it now. Alan Kay tries to express this concept in his talk "Normal considered harmful", it may give a different perspective on the same concept. I think it's very good to point this out in relation to immigration right now. However, it's just one of the reasons we should be open to immigration: humanness (brotherhood); a better outcome for both parties ("immigrants" and "natives") in the long run if we give immigrants a possibility to start a "normal" life as fast as possible; we can share the workload and may alleviate the problem of ageing western societies; etc.

pervycreeper 11y ago

Humans are lazy thinkers. We need some impetus to break ingrained patterns of thought.

datalist 11y ago

> Freud is a classic case. As a little boy, he and his family joined a flood of immigrants from the fringes of the Austro-Hungarian empire to Vienna Freud a classic case of immigration? Příbor the fringes of the Austrian Empire? He moved at the age of four 130 miles southwest to the capital. The Austrian Empire included at that point parts of Ukraine. That is hardly immigration, let alone a classic case. > He wore lederhosen and played a local card game called tarock Neither "lederhosen" nor "tarock" is local to Vienna. Sorry Wall Street Journal, but please get your facts straight before writing rubbish. Also, as the article is drawing comparisons to the flow of migrants right now, it should be noted that the current events are not comparable to any of the given examples in the article.

a_bonobo 11y ago
>Neither "lederhosen" nor "tarock" is local to Vienna. Vienna had its own tarock type that did not survive WW1: http://i-p-c-s.org/pattern/ps-14.html http://i-p-c-s.org/pattern/ps-14.html Lederhosen were once popular all over the Alpine Region, so I'm sure that they were popular in Vienna, too.
- datalist 11y ago
  > Vienna had its own tarock type that did not survive WW1 It is/was played there, but not exclusively. > Lederhosen were once popular all over the Alpine Region, so I'm sure that they were popular in Vienna, too. True, in the Alpine regions of Austria, Switzerland and Bavaria they are still somewhat common, mostly in the rural parts. Vienna has never been Alpine nor rural.
  - a_bonobo 11y ago
    >It is/was played there, but not exclusively. I don't think the author ever implied that tarock or Lederhosen were exclusive to Vienna, but that both were common there at the time, so Freud acquired both to fit in. I think you're reading too much into the text.
    - 11y ago

staunch 11y ago

Immigrant does not mean poor. Often immigrants are the most wealthy, connected, and educated people from their countries. Poor people are usually stuck wherever they are. A more accurate title would be: "The Secret of Rich Genius" But it's pretty obvious why the elite have such a huge share of success in all things.

collyw 11y ago
As has been pointed out on here before, usually rich immigrants are called expats.
kbart 11y ago
"Poor people are usually stuck wherever they are." Probably was true 100 years ago, but not anymore, when at least in my country, all you need is a valid passport and a cheap ~30 Eur one-way plane ticket. Millions of Eastern Europeans did just that after their countries joined EU.

ronotono 11y ago

I would say moving to another country itself takes lots of courage, and this can be one of the reasons why some of them can be successful and innovative.

phillc73 11y ago
I think it takes more inquisitiveness than courage to voluntarily move to another country. I'm specifically discounting those who move to another country as a refugee or asylum seeker. I've lived in four different countries for periods of 12 months or longer (including the country of my birth), on three different continents. I don't think it took or takes specific courage to make such moves, more like an innate sense of inquisitiveness and lust for adventure. I wanted to experience different people, cultures and norms. In someone much smarter than myself, this may help to encourage their genius. In my case, I mostly just had a good time, but also I believe became a much more tolerant person.
- sumedh 11y ago
  > I don't think it took or takes specific courage I am assuming you are from a developed country and probably white which is why you are saying that. Ask people who are from developing countries who have to put a major chunk of their life savings to get a resident visa move to a different country use their savings again till they get a job in their own domain. People from developing countries also have to face the humiliation from their friends and families incase they dont get a job and have to move back. I think courage is the right word.
  - phillc73 11y ago
    Good points and agreed. I did specifically think of and note those refugees or asylum seekers who do for sure need courage. However, I didn't consider economic migrants from developing countries. I can see there is courage required for them too.

justaaron 11y ago

they forgot to mention that sometimes an entire nation/city has their head up their ass and pretty much anyone from outside can see it... i'm not referring to anyone in particular, so please, no butthurt...

sklogic 11y ago

Fusion of different schools of thouht brings unexpected results. Nothing to do with immigration, but highlights how important it is for the academics to communicate outside of their tiny local environments.

chipsy 11y ago

The argument made is a corollary of "openness to experience" indicators for creativity - just, with immigration, once you make the big leap more of the new experiences automatically come to you during ordinary life. If you're already seeing exciting new things happening around you(and they aren't the same exciting new things everyone else sees), you may be getting as much of the effect as needed.

Yenrabbit 11y ago

'Today, foreign-born residents account for only 13% of the U.S. population but hold nearly a third of all patents and a quarter of all Nobel Prizes awarded to Americans.' Nearly a quarter is 15% - not much more than 13%. Sensational writing for a fact that could also be explained by, perhaps, the fact that a large number of people go to the US specifically for education. The 'one third of patents' is more interesting, but even then I have to wonder how much of that is simply people with a dream moving to America to patent their invention and start a business. I am sure immigration can indeed spark creativity, or at least select for creative people, but the article reads as just a little too click-baity for my tastes.

lentil_soup 11y ago
a quarter is 25%
nmjenkins 11y ago
Err… a quarter means 25%, not 15%.
- datr 11y ago
  I thought maybe at first GP meant the actual percentage of Nobel prizes awarded to immigrants was 15% and WSJ was rounding that up to a quarter but it seems they're actually rounding down. 30.7% of U.S. awarded prizes are given to immigrants [1]. [1] http://iir.gmu.edu/research/immigrant-nobel-prize-winners http://iir.gmu.edu/research/immigrant-nobel-prize-winners

acqq 11y ago

> (Einstein's) “miracle year” (...) occurred after he had emigrated from Germany to Switzerland. Does the author even know (or does he just want to hide) that Zurich is in a German-speaking part of Switzerland, and that Einstein surely didn't feel like an "immigrant" there? Isn't it annoying reading how Einstein is used by a lot of writers as an attempt to prove any claim they make? The claim that Freud's "immigrated" is equally absurd. Wikipedia has the name and the location of the place where he was born: "Freiberg in Mähren, Moravia, Austrian Empire." (Now it is in Czech Republic and called Příbor, but it's still the same place). He just grew up some 200 miles southwest from his birthplace, right in the capital of the Empire. His father actually brought him and the family to Vienna as Freud was only 4. He certainly never remembered any other place and went to all schools in Vienna.

deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
david-given 11y ago
> Does the author even know that Zurich is in a German-speaking part of Switzerland, and that Einstein surely didn't feel like an "immigrant" there? That's not precisely true. Zurich speaks German, true, but it's Schweizerdeutsch --- it's a quite different dialect to the Hochdeutsch they speak in Germany. I live in Zurich; a German-born work colleague is actually taking formal lessons in it so he can understand what the locals say. It's that different. Everyone here speaks Hochdeutsch too, or at least does now, so Einstein would probably have gotten along fine, but he most likely wouldn't be feeling like he was at home.
- acqq 11y ago
  > That's not precisely true (...) Everyone here speaks Hochdeutsch too Linguistically, Swiss speak Hochdeutsch even when they speak Swiss German(!) Which a lot of Germans of Germany don't when they speak their dialect. So your argument is quite wrong and certainly not "precise." The German speaking people all have local dialects and have to adapt when they move. But these are all "just" dialects. Ask Germans, they aren't surprised when they have to get accustomed. Look at the map here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_dialects https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_dialects Note that all "upper" German regions are actually where "Hochdeutsch" (Upper German) comes from. Yes, "up" is on the South, down on the map. And the area includes Switzerland. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swiss_German https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swiss_German "Swiss German (German: Schweizerdeutsch, Alemannic German: Schwyzerdütsch, Schwiizertüütsch, Schwizertitsch[note 1]) refers to any of the Alemannic dialects spoken in Switzerland and in some Alpine communities in Northern Italy." OK, let's check Alemannic: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alemannic_German https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alemannic_German "Alemannic is a group of dialects of the Upper German branch of the Germanic language family." Finally, it follows that Swiss German dialects are actually all branches of "Hochdeutsch" family(!) They are just not the same as today's "standard German." Which is what people you communicate to probably mean when they say "Hochdeutsch": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_German https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_German See also DominikR's post here. He being an Austrian, his dialect also from the same "Hochdeutsch" family of dialects, wouldn't feel as an "immigrant" in Switzerland.

thesumofall 11y ago

Having lived in 4 countries for at least 9 months each over the last 5 years, I agree with the conclusion of the article but not necessarily with the underlying reasons. Yes, getting to know a new culture reveals new ways of thinking and behavior that one would otherwise have missed. But I think more critically, leaving another place also frees one from the constraints of that place (be it personally, socially or culturally) It provides opportunity to rethink ones priorities in life and to dare to do things differently

nightspirit 11y ago

There is probably more difference between German and whatever languages they speak in Syria than between Schweizerdeutsch and Hochdeutch. And this is in addition to the general cultural shock caused by moving from place where you can kill your daughter/sister for having unwanted sexual relationships to place where you aren't even expected to molest women for walking in public place without their husbands and face covers. https://www.hrw.org/world-report/2009/country-chapters/syria https://www.hrw.org/world-report/2009/country-chapters/syria http://newobserveronline.com/mass-invader-sex-attacks-in-stuttgart-hamburg/ http://newobserveronline.com/mass-invader-sex-attacks-in-stu...

calibraxis 11y ago
WTF? If you’re discussing Einstein, then how about comparing a war-torn Syria (caused by US invasion) to a Germany busy incinerating Jews, Roma, gays and whoever else? (And BTW why is it that racists are perversely obsessed with discussing sex, as if that's the only problem people face? Flagged.)
- nightspirit 11y ago
  I tried to support accq's point that Einstein's "schema violation" was a joke compared to what's happening in case of Syrian refugees mentioned by the article. Those people migrate between vastly different cultures and relating their experience to Einstein's doesn't make sense. And I think you can't really compare Syria with Nazi Germany either. Nazi Germany was a government gone rogue, while in Muslim cultures, for some reason, the kind of stuff I mentioned is just the way things are and have always been.
  - acqq 11y ago
    > Nazi Germany was a government gone rogue, while in Muslim cultures the kind of stuff I mentioned is just the way things are and have always been. The West had its own problems long enough with antisemitism, almost for two thousand years, supported by the texts from the New Testament. (Here some quotes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antisemitism_and_the_New_Testament https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antisemitism_and_the_New_Testa... ) The view of Jews really changed only after WW II, and only as Christian religion started to be taken less seriously. Hitler didn't invent antisemitic ideology. What West today tries to ignore is that Islam as religion is actively antisemitic too and it bases it on its own "holy" books (quotes here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islam_and_antisemitism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islam_and_antisemitism ). Hitler is surprisingly (at least for those who never tried to read Quran) popular in Muslim-majority countries. And even if "all religions are fine and peaceful in essence" is repeated ad nauseam it doesn't make the claim true.

graeham 11y ago

The article has the causation backwards: being an immigrant does not make one bold and creative. Instead, people who are bold and creative are more likely to take the risk of packing up their lives for better opportunities.