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Why Romania excels in international Olympiads

palladiummag.com

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Re: Why Romania excels in international Olympiads

#171

Post by petre »

objektif wrote: post #134
progbits wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have mixed feelings. "Educating the masses" is important, at least to a certain baseline, otherwise we get failing democracies due to manipulation of uneducated voters. But it's important to still have a separate track for the best students. Those will grow up to do the important work and move the society forward. If you put them into a mediocre class it will waste their potential.

Unfortunately, in my class of students, being good at solving Olympiad level questions did not turn out to be a good predictor of their contributions to society.

Romania's current president is an international math olympic with two gold medals. We'll see how he turns out as a president. He's inherited quite some pressing issues and the President doesn't have all that much power. The parties made sure to neuter that institution. The alternative was a footbal hooligan with allegedly Russian funding behind him and a right wing discourse. Society is very polarised. Nearly half voted for the hooligan. Before, in the cancelled elections they voted for a nutcake Russian funded secret service puppet with a nicely sounding discourse void of any actual content and a very ballsy but quite dim witted woman, mayor in a small town. The Russians bet their money on multiple trojan horses, just in case one of them gets disqualified.

OTOH I am very impressed with how Volodymir Zelenski turned out. Who would have thought?

Re: Why Romania excels in international Olympiads

#172

Post by Kaethar »

corimaith wrote: post #147
lozenge wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, a lot of countries aren't worth leaving. Taking my home of the UK as an example, Wikipedia lists 19 countries with higher GDP per capita, but if I don't want to learn a new language, overcome bureaucratic obstacles and leave my family behind, there is nowhere to go and this criteria describes almost everybody who gets an education here, even the smart ones. Romania is #53 on the list and their EU membership mea…

I'm pretty sure there is a mass exodus of British Nurses to Australia.. And for tech or finance, America is the dream...

The finance sector is worth living in the UK for IMO.

Re: Why Romania excels in international Olympiads

#173

Post by rciorba »

eric-burel wrote: post #137

"Because Romania is a member state of the European Union, the people the country has put great effort into training and credentialing are easily able to leave the country and acquire jobs elsewhere" and "free movement of talent between countries, Romania ends up subsidizing talent discovery for other countries with less apt educational systems" Are pretty negative stances. UE is a union, so it's a pretty different si…

> And the migration exists in the other direction, you'll be amazed by how many French dentists are studying in Romania.

Those people don't really plan to stay in Romania. They intend to get their degrees then move back to Western Europe. Hell, most of my former high-school colleagues who became doctors or dentists, emigrated to Western Europe.

Re: Why Romania excels in international Olympiads

#174

Post by Lu2025 »

PunchTornado wrote: post #81

The author is Jordan Lasker (also known by internet handle Crémieux). Much of Lasker's work and commentary focuses on race and IQ, and he has promoted eugenics. On X and Substack, Lasker is known for compiling charts on what he calls the "Black-White IQ gap"

Yeah, he post things like "there are no more excuses to be fat". Nasty dude. Romania's overall educational system is unimpressive, as he pointed out himself. Yet he suggested to replicate it in different countries to "get more out of the smartest ones".

Re: Why Romania excels in international Olympiads

#175

Post by steveBK123 »

matthewdgreen wrote: post #169
steveBK123 wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Elite overproduction is an interesting topic and putting aside any suggestion that it's a precise mathematical predictor, it obviously creates societal problems. That is - you've created a large class of intelligent achievers with nothing for them to do. Arguably that just naturally produces increasing societal upheaval. Whether that means revolution or just chaotic increasingly populist elections is a matter of degr…

There is always something for a large class of intelligent achievers to do. The failure to put them to work is more of a societal failure than it is an indictment of the education system. (Maybe AI will change this, but only in the same way that it changes every part of our societal model.)

AI seems poised to create more underemployment rather than fix the existing level of it…

Re: Why Romania excels in international Olympiads

#176

Post by Lu2025 »

alephnerd wrote: post #163
fab13n wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it's questionable whether this is a net benefit for Romania as a whole. it depends what's most beneficial: having a few percents of very mathematically experts people in maths-heavy professions? Or having everyone somewhat decent at maths, even when it doesn't affect their productivity in their jobs? I don't have any hard data about this, but instinctively I'd bet on the former: I'd rather have a few hundreds more…

Yet Ilya Sutskever was not an Olympiad participant. Heck, he attended a correspondence college for 2 years (Open University of Israel) before his family immigrated to Canada and then attended UToronto (an amazing university, but not significantly selective by any means). Ilya is by definition an example of why heavily stratified systems are subpar for human capital development - they remove the opportunity to identif…

> Ilya Sutskever

And alternative explanation is that he's really nothing special. There are literally dozens of people like him in my social circle. Heck, my very spouse has a more impressive school record. The difference could be connections. He lucked out with his circle and a field of study.

Re: Why Romania excels in international Olympiads

#177

Post by miltonlost »

username332211 wrote: post #148
lukan wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you keep the masses intentionally dumb, then it makes sense to do the next step and also ban them from voting. And imagine to what kind of society this is leading.

Actually, voting is an excellent way to keep power away from the masses. A dictatorship has to constantly be aware of its approval ratings, whereas a parliament can ignore them for 3-4 years at a time.

This comment is insane.

Re: Why Romania excels in international Olympiads

#178

Post by miltonlost »

pillefitz wrote: post #88
PunchTornado wrote: post #81

The author is Jordan Lasker (also known by internet handle Crémieux). Much of Lasker's work and commentary focuses on race and IQ, and he has promoted eugenics. On X and Substack, Lasker is known for compiling charts on what he calls the "Black-White IQ gap"

Are his arguments sound, though?

Stop defending racism and racists

Re: Why Romania excels in international Olympiads

#179

Post by username332211 »

steveBK123 wrote: post #158
morsecodist wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am extremely skeptical of this mathematical model to predict history thing. There's just not enough history to do it and you bake in your biases when you go through the qualitative historical record and try to assign it to quantities. A lot of people analyze history and claim they figured it out and they've come to different conclusions and none of them have made reliable, specific conditions. If you say something…

Elite overproduction is an interesting topic and putting aside any suggestion that it's a precise mathematical predictor, it obviously creates societal problems. That is - you've created a large class of intelligent achievers with nothing for them to do. Arguably that just naturally produces increasing societal upheaval. Whether that means revolution or just chaotic increasingly populist elections is a matter of degr…

Can you name some examples? Virtually every major revolution or civil war I can think of, would involve intelligent achievers who've made it. In fact, the core of the rebellion would be a class that's often vital for the exercise for political power, but won't be allowed access to that same power.

English gentry, New England merchants, nobles of the robe, army officers, etc.

Only the Russian revolution would involve people who were nobodies before it, but they took charge after the disaffected elites that came to power in February spend most of 1917 undermining each other.

Re: Why Romania excels in international Olympiads

#180

Post by Kaethar »

jojomodding wrote: post #124
PunchTornado wrote: post #81

The author is Jordan Lasker (also known by internet handle Crémieux). Much of Lasker's work and commentary focuses on race and IQ, and he has promoted eugenics. On X and Substack, Lasker is known for compiling charts on what he calls the "Black-White IQ gap"

The way he investigates how many of the winners from Romania are "Jews" (because apparently you can tell that by looking at their name and picture or whatever) is also very sus.

Yeah I was wondering where that came from, I think his background clears it up a bit.
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