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Why Romania excels in international Olympiads

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Re: Why Romania excels in international Olympiads

#181

Post by wizzwizz4 »

medvezhenok wrote: post #170
wizzwizz4 wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sound arguments from faulty premises are still sound arguments – but identifying whether premises are valid is hard . My heuristic, "if a sound argument concludes that racism is true, there's something wrong with the premises", is pretty effective in telling me where to look, but doesn't eliminate the hard work of distinguishing truth from falsehood. That this heuristic has never failed doesn't actually prove that al…

Well, take racism out of it. Do a thought experiment. Take a genetically identical starting population with identical culture, customs, etc. Split them onto two islands, island A and island B. Island A has temperate weather, plentiful food, resources, and no natural predators. Island B has natural disasters, brutal seasons, intermittent food shortages, etc. Check back in on both populations (assuming they lived exclu…

Of course there would be differences between the populations. There would probably be genetically-linked psychological differences, too! But would B-islanders be more cooperative, because they needed to band together to survive? Would they be more competitive, because those who hoarded resources for themselves reproduced better? Would A-islanders be better at analytical philosophy, because ability to publish in analytical philosophy journals was sexually selected for? Would that have no impact, because analytical philosophy skill has no significant genetic correlate, or would they actually be worse at analytical philosophy because ability to publish in analytical philosophy journals is a poor proxy metric? Or would A-islanders decide that analytical philosophy nerds are undesirable mates, and select against such an ability? Would cultural factors on island B result in a better, safer society where a decade's worth of preserved food is kept at all times, and nobody has to venture out into storms, while the A-islanders become their own predators and destroy each others' food supplies until they suffer entirely-avoidable famines?

Would all these various effects cancel each other out, leaving no phenotypical variation except skin colour (due to the selective effects of melanoma and vitamin D deficiency), and no significant psychological differences except those caused by unselected genetic drift, which are utterly erased by the first generation of interbreeding? There is no way to tell, from the information you have provided. Your thought experiment reveals your (and my) own biases, nothing more. Thought experiments only work in mathematics and physics, not (except in extremely simple situations) evolutionary biology.

Re: Why Romania excels in international Olympiads

#182

Post by petre »

vixen99 wrote: post #146
laserbeam wrote: post #68

As a Romanian who has been very involved in Olympiads as a kid, I can tell that most of this is accurate. I’ve also lived in Denmark at university for several years and can contrast educational systems from first hand experience. The sorting the author describes absolutely DOES happen in Romania. Exactly as he describes it, “getting into a good school” is incredibly important for students and parents here. I’d also l…

Here's one issue. Romania has a really lousy motorway system, what there is of it. I gather that corruption has much to do with this apart from construction difficulties involving the Carpathians. As an example there isn't even a motorway between Bucharest and Brasov (88 miles or 141 km apart), the latter being a favorite destination for tourists and wealthy and not-so wealthy second home owners alike. The trip by ca…

It's a bit more nuanced.

The teachers will just move to cities with more schools. Qualified workforce too. Rural areas are already depopulated.

Yes, the trip by car to Brasov is quite daunting on a Friday evening or Saturday morning. But infrastructure is getting better thanks to the EU. The politicians learned that motorways with EU and government funds is a great way to get them voted and they created a current account deficit.

Brasov is nice. What's not that nice about it, is brown bears roaming freely at night on the streets. Trivia: was also named after Stalin during stalinism. It also had a Hollywood like sign post cut in the treeline on the main hill with the dictator's name.

Re: Why Romania excels in international Olympiads

#183

Post by DonaldFisk »

chatmasta wrote: post #56
patel011393 wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, a numerate population as assessed by national averages matters. A more numerate population reasons better about economic policies and may vote more wisely. Numeracy is closely tied to the ability to work in a variety of occupations. If we consider probability and statistics, the implications are especially salient.

A numerate and literate population matters for many reasons, but in theory it’s possible to field a strong team for the Olympiad despite an abysmal national average literacy level. Just look at North Korea for example. They’ve got a “fat right tail” of sophisticated hackers but on average their literacy is terrible.

> Just look at North Korea for example ... on average their literacy is terrible.

Where do you get that information from? According to the CIA, it's 100% (https://www.cia.gov/the-world-factbook/about/archives/2023/f...). North Korea Info (https://www.northkoreainfo.com/why-does-north-korea-have-a-h...) gives a slightly lower estimate of 97%-99%.

Re: Why Romania excels in international Olympiads

#184

Post by tptacek »

medvezhenok wrote: post #167
jojomodding wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I have Ashkenazi friends that also love to point out how many of the winners of international Olympiads are Jewish. Does that make them sus too?

If it's a point of cultural pride, no. If it's a detached observation of racial intellectual superiority, yes.

Re: Why Romania excels in international Olympiads

#185

Post by tptacek »

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?

Not remotely; he operates in the phlogiston area of the science he makes claims in: old twin studies, Richard Lynn's overtly fraudulent numbers, &c. There is a vibrant field of research on these topics; he is not part of it. Search for his name alongside Turkheimer's on Twitter for some backstory.

Re: Why Romania excels in international Olympiads

#186

Post by Agingcoder »

Quote ‘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’

Let’s say that there are probably many ways of interpreting this sentence, but I can’t find any nice one. I understand this as ‘it makes sense for a group with skin color X and hair color Y to be better at school’ followed by ‘it must be Jews’.

What am I missing ?

Re: Why Romania excels in international Olympiads

#187

Post by tptacek »

medvezhenok wrote: post #170
wizzwizz4 wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sound arguments from faulty premises are still sound arguments – but identifying whether premises are valid is hard . My heuristic, "if a sound argument concludes that racism is true, there's something wrong with the premises", is pretty effective in telling me where to look, but doesn't eliminate the hard work of distinguishing truth from falsehood. That this heuristic has never failed doesn't actually prove that al…

Well, take racism out of it. Do a thought experiment. Take a genetically identical starting population with identical culture, customs, etc. Split them onto two islands, island A and island B. Island A has temperate weather, plentiful food, resources, and no natural predators. Island B has natural disasters, brutal seasons, intermittent food shortages, etc. Check back in on both populations (assuming they lived exclu…

I hear this argument a lot and I don't know what you think it demonstrates. Put two groups of people on separate islands for 1000 years. Check back up on them. They will be overwhelmingly phenotypically similar. It's not like one of the groups is going to become the X-Men. Really, these analogies mostly seem like a device for smuggling in the premise that innate intellectual ability is less like color vision and more like eye color. Maybe it is, but you have to make and ground that argument.

Re: Why Romania excels in international Olympiads

#188

Post by tptacek »

Agingcoder wrote: post #186

Quote ‘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’ Let’s say that there are probably many ways of interpreting this sentence, but I can’t find any nice one. I understand this as ‘it makes sense for a group with skin color X and hair color Y to be better at school’ followed by ‘it m…

You're not missing anything. The author is a "race scientist".

Re: Why Romania excels in international Olympiads

#189

Post by kolbe »

progbits wrote: post #101
laserbeam wrote: post #68

As a Romanian who has been very involved in Olympiads as a kid, I can tell that most of this is accurate. I’ve also lived in Denmark at university for several years and can contrast educational systems from first hand experience. The sorting the author describes absolutely DOES happen in Romania. Exactly as he describes it, “getting into a good school” is incredibly important for students and parents here. I’d also l…

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.

Do you have any reason to believe you have a good algorithm to predict who these privileged few will be? Anecdotally, I've seen little evidence that being a good student at age X is reason to invest more heavily in that person going forward.

Re: Why Romania excels in international Olympiads

#190

Post by FirmwareBurner »

nikolay wrote: post #70

Bulgaria has been performing pretty well despite of the declining quality of education, which was stellar during Communism. Nobody was pushing us to advance in Math and Science; there was just nothing better to do. I wish these times could come back. Right now, kids are faced with all kinds of distractions and little incentive to go into studying seriously.

>Nobody was pushing us to advance in Math and Science; there was just nothing better to do

Not true. Being a child prodigy at math or science in communism, meant you'd get a ticket to move the the nation's capital or other such big academic cities and have cushy desk jobs, instead of being stuck in underdeveloped rural areas doing nothing but backbreaking agricultural work. That was the big motivator. That's how my dad ended up in the big city from the poorest city of the country.

> Right now, kids are faced with all kinds of distractions and little incentive to go into studying seriously.

Why would kids today want to "study seriously" when they see top online streamers, influencers and serial hustlers(scammers) making way more money than lines of white collar people with academic degrees which are now filling the unemployment lines due to the economy. Kids want instant gratification, they want to make money quick and easy, not study for 16 years then get replaced by offshore workers or AI.

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