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Why Romania excels in international Olympiads

palladiummag.com

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Re: Why Romania excels in international Olympiads

#111

Post by saagarjha »

trallnag wrote: post #99
Kudos wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

None? > Much of Lasker's work and commentary focuses on race and IQ, and he has promoted eugenics.

So talking about eugenics in a positive way equals racist commentary? I have a genetic mutation (de novo) that leads to a disability and that I don't want to pass on. Natural approach: Die, due to the lack of therapeutic modalities. No chance of offspring. With the help of medicine, I am alive. Now, to prevent passing on mutated genes but still have children, I could use something like IVF and reproductive genetics.…

Given that humanity has had a bad track record discussing eugenics positively, yes.

Re: Why Romania excels in international Olympiads

#112

Post by saagarjha »

ivan_gammel wrote: post #71
avs733 wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Yet another possibility is that Romania has an undersampled ethnic group that overperforms, but whose schools aren’t tested very well. The only group this might be is Romanian Jews and using them as an explanation is problematic for two reasons. The first is that there are too few to realistically explain Romanian Olympiad performance. The second is that we know the identities of Olympiad participants from Romania,…

This one is not odd and was worth mentioning before rejecting. Just look at American IMO team of 2024, in which most team members have Asian ancestry - some ethnic groups may indeed perform better than others. Picking Jews for this matter wasn’t unreasonable if you know the history of Eastern Europe.

This is not because people with Asian ancestry are smarter.

Re: Why Romania excels in international Olympiads

#113

Post by saagarjha »

alexey-salmin wrote: post #40
_alternator_ wrote: post #33

This magazine regularly publishes neo-fascist works that are clothed in techno-libertarian garb. Take this article [1]. Highlights include fawning homages to Werner von Braun while failing to mention his ardent pro-Nazi views, support for Cortes’ conquest of the new world, and a general vibe supporting the ubermensch/great man theory of history (as here). They’ve recently toned things down a bit, but it’s hard not to…

> neo-fascist works that are clothed in techno-libertarian garb. Take this article [1]. Highlights include fawning homages to Werner von Braun while failing to mention his ardent pro-Nazi views, support for Cortes’ conquest of the new world, and a general vibe supporting the ubermensch/great man theory of history (as here). I like how you imply that celebrating the space program, the Age of Discovery and math Olympia…

Yes, it does.

Re: Why Romania excels in international Olympiads

#114

Post by oytis »

zerr wrote: post #87

I believe the original intent of such Olympiads was to test how pupils equipped with only standard school education would tackle non-standard puzzles. Eventually this turned into pupils attending special schools, having coaches, doing such non-standrdad puzzles all day long during their studies in order to win medals. A leetcode grind all the way down.

I think it's the other way round. There were special schools or special groups in regular schools that prepared Soviet children to STEM careers by making them solve a lot of puzzles. Then IMO appeared on top of that to celebrate highest achievers

Re: Why Romania excels in international Olympiads

#115

Post by alecco »

hemabe wrote: post #102

I noticed this phenomenon several years ago and came to the following conclusions: Romania is strongly multi-ethnic. Germans from Saxony and Swabia immigrated to Transylvania 800 years ago. A thousand years ago, people from northern India immigrated, whom we now know as Gypsies and who make up 8-10% of the population. In the south, the country was besieged by the Ottomans/Turks for 400 years. The cognitive difference…

Absolutely. That whole region (let's say Balkans+) has several different groups of people who are very different culturally and ethnically. And for some reason the press would blame whole countries for the crimes of specific minority groups. "Bulgarian gangs stealing cars", "Romanian gangs exploiting the UK benefits system", and so on.

I lost count of how many times I had to clarify to friends and family: "No, that's not representative of that country at all. I have friends and coworkers from there who are very well educated, hard workers, and good people. And you couldn't tell them apart from the rest of Europeans. Many of them won math/programming competitions and are smarter than me."

While most companies have a negative image of those countries due to media portrayals, investment banks in London figured it out so they fly whole recruiting teams there to hire graduates, _every year_. Some Big Tech companies figured this out, too. I've seen it first hand.

Re: Why Romania excels in international Olympiads

#116

Post by naijaboiler »

hemabe wrote: post #102

I noticed this phenomenon several years ago and came to the following conclusions: Romania is strongly multi-ethnic. Germans from Saxony and Swabia immigrated to Transylvania 800 years ago. A thousand years ago, people from northern India immigrated, whom we now know as Gypsies and who make up 8-10% of the population. In the south, the country was besieged by the Ottomans/Turks for 400 years. The cognitive difference…

I disagree that there are cognitive differences between large ethnicities of people. Almost always, what we attribute as cognitive differences is differences in opportunity and societal power structures

Re: Why Romania excels in international Olympiads

#117

Post by generic92034 »

ahartmetz wrote: post #90
ddalex wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, but that's not why he was elected president. Well, not directly. His Olympiad results led to him getting a doctorate at Sorbonne, which led to him speaking french, which led to impressing Macron who threw France's weight into supporting Dan. It was a power move to replace the German influence with French influence (previous praesident was ethnic German)

Germany and France are fairly aligned these days, no big deal :>

Tell that to the people involved in or suffering from the power struggles regarding FCAS ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Future_Combat_Air_System ).

Re: Why Romania excels in international Olympiads

#118

Post by naijaboiler »

zerr wrote: post #87

I believe the original intent of such Olympiads was to test how pupils equipped with only standard school education would tackle non-standard puzzles. Eventually this turned into pupils attending special schools, having coaches, doing such non-standrdad puzzles all day long during their studies in order to win medals. A leetcode grind all the way down.

This!

Re: Why Romania excels in international Olympiads

#119

Post by oytis »

slt2021 wrote: post #42

Romania is wasting taxpayer money to groom bright students and then let them leave Romania for some higher GDP country

That's a problem with the opportunity in the country rather with the schools. Being able to produce exceptional students is an advantage, now figure out how to make them stay.

Re: Why Romania excels in international Olympiads

#120

Post by GeoAtreides »

borski wrote: post #85
GeoAtreides wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Edit: cannot reply What do you mean you cannot reply?

HN has limits on replies for threads that are popular, in order to prevent what it thinks is a back-and-forth flame war. It can be overzealous at times.

Yes, but it does that by flagging and hiding the thread, not closing comments.
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