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22M Geniuses – China's Greatest Asset and America's Missed Opportunity

19 points by surprisetalk 1y ago

alyxya 1y ago
I dislike the framing around IQ. It feels like IQ here just refers to how advanced a country's education system is. The real missed opportunity is not creating the right incentives for learning.
- noir_lord 1y ago
  Education, Nutrition and basic physical needs met, the linked post equates IQ as if it's a national characteristic of a population which is kinda debunked and closing rapidly on "science" that ends badly. It also plays with statistics quite a bit (lies, damn lies and government statistics been the old refrain). All of that is putting aside that IQ itself is deeply flawed both because a) you can't reduce human intelligence down to a single number that way at best it's a weak measure of the type of intelligence been tested for b) IQ tests vary, both in type and scope and are deeply flawed when applied across socio-economic groups in the same society never mind across societies. There is always variation within a population but I suspect that culture plays a much bigger role. Case in point - Jewish people are 0.2% of the world population, they've won ~20% of all Nobel prizes awarded.
  - mjh2539 1y ago
    I'm not sure if this helps or hurts your point, but the IQ bump is only for Ashkenazi Jews, and not the Mizrahim, Sephardim, Temanim, Beta Israel, etc. So it's actually more remarkable.
  - tptacek 1y ago
    It's not so much "debunked" as it is "completely made up". Despite fraudulent claims to the contrary, there has never been a global country-by-country survey of "average IQ" across the populations of the world's countries.
    - noir_lord 1y ago
      Indeed and when you look at the people making such claims their motives rapidly come into focus as somewhat suspect.
  - bloak 1y ago
    I'm a bit suspicious of that sort of claim. You can go through a list of people who got Nobel prizes and investigate their ancestry and argue that lots of those people were "Jewish" but nobody does that sort of investigation on random members of the general population for a fair comparison. (And perhaps it would be impossible to do so: Nobel prize winners tend to come from social classes that have better records of their ancestry.) Also I've seen a huge range of values given for what proportion of the British population might be "Jewish", which shows the level of uncertainty involved. So the Nobel prize committee might not actually be racist ... :-)
- gdulli 1y ago
  In football there's a bit of absurdity where they'll pull out a measuring device after a play to measure, down to the millimeter, whether the ball has reached the magical first down line that the team on offense needs to get to. But before measuring, some referee has to take the ball from the player who was holding it at the end of the play and put it down at its official spot from which to measure. But they do this part so quickly and carelessly. It's amusingly incongruous with the pomp of the measurement. This makes me think of how data science operates on whichever data set happens to be conveniently available and then conducts very serious and literal downstream analysis as if the raw data is settled reality.
- decremental 1y ago
  [dead]
rramadass 1y ago
The author needs a strong dose of Nassim Taleb. The headline is just clickbait and not how you actually do statistics when there are tremendous levels of non-linear and random effective parameters in the system. An Introduction to Pareto, Power Laws, and Fat Tails (good summary of Taleb's important ideas) - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wcqt49dXtm8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wcqt49dXtm8 IQ is largely a pseudoscientific swindle - https://medium.com/incerto/iq-is-largely-a-pseudoscientific-swindle-f131c101ba39 https://medium.com/incerto/iq-is-largely-a-pseudoscientific-... In order to achieve success, you need to focus on five different aspects; 1) Timing 2) Context/Environment 3) Means/Tools 4) Talent/Hardwork/Self-Effort and finally 5) Random Chance. While all of them are important and must be considered, the effects of each will be substantially non-linear in the spectrum of Mediocristan (low to non-existent systemic effects) to Extremistan (very high systemic effects) events. See also Complex Systems - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Complex_system https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Complex_system The "advanced" western countries built an all encompassing political/economic/financial/social/etc. system where the first four are maximized to amplify the efforts of even just above-average people. Such a system does not exist in China/India and that is the reason Chinese/Indians do far better when they move to western countries rather than in their own countries. It is the overall system which matters the most. Also quality over quantity is the axiom in Science/Technology research.
assemblyman 1y ago
There are quite a few flaws with this way of thinking: 1. Flaws with actually measuring IQs in a population: While nutrition and education affect IQ distributions, there's also a question of language. Are there IQ tests in Kannada (since the author seems to make a point to contrast with India)? In Bengali? Is the sampled distributions biased in any way? 2. Even if IQs are measured correctly, as others pointed out, are high IQ people actually more intelligent? More creative? Do Mensa members win Nobel prizes and produce great breakthroughs? I never heard physicists and mathematicians discuss IQs when they discussed brilliant people. It was not even a factor and was considered cringe-worthy. 3. An addendum to my previous point, and a point the author mentions in passing, environment plays a big role in nurturing a creative mind. The great thing about America (and the West) is that young people actually do want to pursue something they like. This is often ridiculed in America but, as an Asian myself, it creates a far richer society than one obsessed with money, status, and a few professions e.g. law, medicine, engineering. 4. Industry has a unique way of killing "genius". Academia has traditional been the place where genius is nurtured or at least, left alone. Even the overhead of writing grants doesn't make it as painful as quarterly goals and achievements. If by "genius", one means high-earning individuals, that's not a genius in my book. Genius is something more - they might be high earning but they create breakthroughs that would not happen or take much longer if they weren't to do it. Einstein and Grothendieck come to mind. 5. I don't know the author but these types of articles reek of racial and ethnic superiority. This is a notion that has been debunked by both science and by the trash can of civilizations. These arguments seem to want to make the case that one group is destined to win/rule/succeed because of who they are. 6. My previous point leads to an interesting curiosity about many people. They take great pride in their group. This could be racial, ethnic, regional, national membership or even being a human being. After all, "look at what Einstein did and he was a person just like me." Eventually, your character and your actions matter. Greatness (or any other attribute except for physical ones) don't transmit by group membership. 7. There are some things different groups are good at. For example, someone noted that 20% of the Nobel prize winners are Jewish. Russians were (maybe still are) great at gymnastics and ballet. Romanians are great at math olympiads. Indians are great at chess and many Indian mathematicians seem to graviate towards number theory. The seed for these achievements is sometimes cultural and sometimes, a shared purpose arises out of the success of one member of the group at the activity. These are not signs of in-born genius for the activity. I should have done a better job of making my case but discussions about IQ and race/ethnicity/gender/pickyourchoice just generates very weird (and not factual) conversations. Lastly, while it would be great to get all the geniuses to America, the country will be fine either way.

19 points by surprisetalk 1y ago

I dislike the framing around IQ. It feels like IQ here just refers to how advanced a country's education system is. The real missed opportunity is not creating the right incentives for learning.

noir_lord 1y ago
Education, Nutrition and basic physical needs met, the linked post equates IQ as if it's a national characteristic of a population which is kinda debunked and closing rapidly on "science" that ends badly. It also plays with statistics quite a bit (lies, damn lies and government statistics been the old refrain). All of that is putting aside that IQ itself is deeply flawed both because a) you can't reduce human intelligence down to a single number that way at best it's a weak measure of the type of intelligence been tested for b) IQ tests vary, both in type and scope and are deeply flawed when applied across socio-economic groups in the same society never mind across societies. There is always variation within a population but I suspect that culture plays a much bigger role. Case in point - Jewish people are 0.2% of the world population, they've won ~20% of all Nobel prizes awarded.
- mjh2539 1y ago
  I'm not sure if this helps or hurts your point, but the IQ bump is only for Ashkenazi Jews, and not the Mizrahim, Sephardim, Temanim, Beta Israel, etc. So it's actually more remarkable.
- tptacek 1y ago
  It's not so much "debunked" as it is "completely made up". Despite fraudulent claims to the contrary, there has never been a global country-by-country survey of "average IQ" across the populations of the world's countries.
  - noir_lord 1y ago
    Indeed and when you look at the people making such claims their motives rapidly come into focus as somewhat suspect.
- bloak 1y ago
  I'm a bit suspicious of that sort of claim. You can go through a list of people who got Nobel prizes and investigate their ancestry and argue that lots of those people were "Jewish" but nobody does that sort of investigation on random members of the general population for a fair comparison. (And perhaps it would be impossible to do so: Nobel prize winners tend to come from social classes that have better records of their ancestry.) Also I've seen a huge range of values given for what proportion of the British population might be "Jewish", which shows the level of uncertainty involved. So the Nobel prize committee might not actually be racist ... :-)
gdulli 1y ago
In football there's a bit of absurdity where they'll pull out a measuring device after a play to measure, down to the millimeter, whether the ball has reached the magical first down line that the team on offense needs to get to. But before measuring, some referee has to take the ball from the player who was holding it at the end of the play and put it down at its official spot from which to measure. But they do this part so quickly and carelessly. It's amusingly incongruous with the pomp of the measurement. This makes me think of how data science operates on whichever data set happens to be conveniently available and then conducts very serious and literal downstream analysis as if the raw data is settled reality.
decremental 1y ago
[dead]

rramadass 1y ago

The author needs a strong dose of Nassim Taleb. The headline is just clickbait and not how you actually do statistics when there are tremendous levels of non-linear and random effective parameters in the system. An Introduction to Pareto, Power Laws, and Fat Tails (good summary of Taleb's important ideas) - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wcqt49dXtm8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wcqt49dXtm8 IQ is largely a pseudoscientific swindle - https://medium.com/incerto/iq-is-largely-a-pseudoscientific-swindle-f131c101ba39 https://medium.com/incerto/iq-is-largely-a-pseudoscientific-... In order to achieve success, you need to focus on five different aspects; 1) Timing 2) Context/Environment 3) Means/Tools 4) Talent/Hardwork/Self-Effort and finally 5) Random Chance. While all of them are important and must be considered, the effects of each will be substantially non-linear in the spectrum of Mediocristan (low to non-existent systemic effects) to Extremistan (very high systemic effects) events. See also Complex Systems - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Complex_system https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Complex_system The "advanced" western countries built an all encompassing political/economic/financial/social/etc. system where the first four are maximized to amplify the efforts of even just above-average people. Such a system does not exist in China/India and that is the reason Chinese/Indians do far better when they move to western countries rather than in their own countries. It is the overall system which matters the most. Also quality over quantity is the axiom in Science/Technology research.

assemblyman 1y ago

There are quite a few flaws with this way of thinking: 1. Flaws with actually measuring IQs in a population: While nutrition and education affect IQ distributions, there's also a question of language. Are there IQ tests in Kannada (since the author seems to make a point to contrast with India)? In Bengali? Is the sampled distributions biased in any way? 2. Even if IQs are measured correctly, as others pointed out, are high IQ people actually more intelligent? More creative? Do Mensa members win Nobel prizes and produce great breakthroughs? I never heard physicists and mathematicians discuss IQs when they discussed brilliant people. It was not even a factor and was considered cringe-worthy. 3. An addendum to my previous point, and a point the author mentions in passing, environment plays a big role in nurturing a creative mind. The great thing about America (and the West) is that young people actually do want to pursue something they like. This is often ridiculed in America but, as an Asian myself, it creates a far richer society than one obsessed with money, status, and a few professions e.g. law, medicine, engineering. 4. Industry has a unique way of killing "genius". Academia has traditional been the place where genius is nurtured or at least, left alone. Even the overhead of writing grants doesn't make it as painful as quarterly goals and achievements. If by "genius", one means high-earning individuals, that's not a genius in my book. Genius is something more - they might be high earning but they create breakthroughs that would not happen or take much longer if they weren't to do it. Einstein and Grothendieck come to mind. 5. I don't know the author but these types of articles reek of racial and ethnic superiority. This is a notion that has been debunked by both science and by the trash can of civilizations. These arguments seem to want to make the case that one group is destined to win/rule/succeed because of who they are. 6. My previous point leads to an interesting curiosity about many people. They take great pride in their group. This could be racial, ethnic, regional, national membership or even being a human being. After all, "look at what Einstein did and he was a person just like me." Eventually, your character and your actions matter. Greatness (or any other attribute except for physical ones) don't transmit by group membership. 7. There are some things different groups are good at. For example, someone noted that 20% of the Nobel prize winners are Jewish. Russians were (maybe still are) great at gymnastics and ballet. Romanians are great at math olympiads. Indians are great at chess and many Indian mathematicians seem to graviate towards number theory. The seed for these achievements is sometimes cultural and sometimes, a shared purpose arises out of the success of one member of the group at the activity. These are not signs of in-born genius for the activity. I should have done a better job of making my case but discussions about IQ and race/ethnicity/gender/pickyourchoice just generates very weird (and not factual) conversations. Lastly, while it would be great to get all the geniuses to America, the country will be fine either way.