I voted up the article because I think it'd be fun to discuss, but I think its premises and conclusions are off. Let's start with this one: > Achievers score w

I voted up the article because I think it'd be fun to discuss, but I think its premises and conclusions are off. Let's start with this one: > Achievers score well on SATs and imbibe the poisonous assumption that success can be measured by the distance one travels from home. People who've traveled far from where they originated have been highly respected through almost all of history. Even in extremely anti-immigration/xenophobic places like Tokugawa Japan 1600-1850, travelers were always highly respected and sought after. There's a number of reasons for this. People who successfully migrate are looked upon as strong and healthy, because it's hard to move away from your support network. They have valuable different perspectives and understanding of culture, organizations, and technology. In sex and marriage, someone from further away reduces the chance of inbreeding and lets the dominant (usually more robust) characteristics from both parents take over, leading to more likely healthy and strong children. People from New York are more respected in Los Angeles than in NYC. People from California are more respected in New York than in Los Angeles. Migrating does take guts and it is hard, but by living in different places you get multiple perspectives on how the world runs. And yes, quite literally the further you go, the more diverse, varied, and valuable your alternative perspectives are likely to be. > Thus to achieve is to leave—shaking off the dust of a hick town and migrating to exotic locales with "diverse cuisine and more varied shopping." He missed the biggest part of leaving to an urban place - a variety of ideas. Someone who is highly intelligent starts to question society - but if everyone, literally everyone in a town of 3,000 belongs to the First Baptist Congregation, and you're starting to have thoughts like - how come the Bible contradicts itself? How come it advocates enslaving your enemies? Genocide? Religious wars? Well, these are interesting conversations to have, even if you remain Christian. But you can't even have that conversation in many places where everyone is conformist. Sure, New York probably has a better mix of restaurants than Iowa, but that's not why smart people leave. It's because there's a better mix of ideas, simply by there being more ideas that you can find someone to talk about with. If you're intelligent, you begin to question things other people take for granted. If you live somewhere where people don't appreciate having their core values questioned, then you have to leave to keep growing intellectually. So the intelligent people leave. It's not some rabid consumerism.