I guess my language in the original comment didn't really convey the full context of the discussion. My use of the phrase "passion" was referring to what appear

I guess my language in the original comment didn't really convey the full context of the discussion. My use of the phrase "passion" was referring to what appeared to be the observed success of these countries in the fields of mathematics, statistics, and computer science I thought were disproportionate to other measures of human developent. For example, the OECD data indicates that Hungary invests a lesser proportion of its budget into education compared to other countries mentioned in the article, or even other OECD countries[1]. However, Hungary is clearly established itself as a creator of serious mathematical talent based on the IMO stats shared by the author of the post (even thought the math skills used to win gold at the IMO are very different from what's needed to advance the field as a whole[2]). At a very superficial level, the question is akin to, "Why does Argentina have such a successful national soccer team, when there are other countries with a strong cultural link to soccer and much more capable of pouring money into building a good team?". There is clearly some nuance I was missing when diving into this question but, I don't know what I don't know. I started by asking the question to learn more. 1: https://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/sites/7688ce27-en/index.html?itemId=/content/component/7688ce27-en https://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/sites/7688ce27-en/index.html?i... 2: https://x.com/dwarkesh_sp/status/1712221099344458092 https://x.com/dwarkesh_sp/status/1712221099344458092