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Why Romania excels in international Olympiads

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Re: Why Romania excels in international Olympiads

#241

Post by eric-burel »

scythe wrote: post #203
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…

I wonder if you can blame the climate and geography as some do in America. Bucharest is hot and sweaty in the summer (avg high 30 C, avg 68% rel H2O) and cold and snowy in the winter. The city lies on a flat plain, far from the mountains or the sea. Then you give people the opportunity to move to Amsterdam or Milan. Plus many other European countries have great infrastructure built up decades ago while Romania was un…

Yes that's my point, there is a shared budget so at least in some indirect way, the money a Romanian professional makes in another country may end up contributing to Romania's development and growth. I don't have number or what but this has to be taken into account.

Re: Why Romania excels in international Olympiads

#242

Post by Viliam1234 »

slt2021 wrote: post #226
Viliam1234 wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So what you suggest instead is that smart people from poor countries should stay where they are, even if it means they won't get the opportunity to fully use their talent (because that would be expensive, and the country does not have the money for that)? Like, maybe someone could go to USA and find a cure for cancer, but it's better if they stay in Romania and become e.g. a teacher instead? During communism, many co…

I think what China and India are doing is The right approach. Gainthe knowledge, experience from capitalists, accumulate initial capital, then go back and build your own country once you have a name and expertise, connections, little bit of capital. It doesn’t make sense for a Romanian to continue working for a capitalist and paying taxes that fund the genocide and oppression overseas. You are only making Zuckerbergs…

By the way, China is for all practical purposes a capitalist country.

> go back and build your own country once you have a name and expertise

I agree that this would be a great outcome. But whether your country allows it or not, that depends on the country, not you.

Re: Why Romania excels in international Olympiads

#243

Post by tptacek »

bxsioshc wrote: post #222
tptacek wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

[flagged]

You just read a comment that drew a distinction between racial supremacist claims and other claims and your rebuttal was that both kinds of claims are racial supremacist claims. Not interesting.

Re: Why Romania excels in international Olympiads

#244

Post by Agingcoder »

tptacek wrote: post #188
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".

Thanks - I should have done my homework, but didn’t expect things to be so clear cut.

I found this about Jordan Lasker https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2025/07/cremi...

Re: Why Romania excels in international Olympiads

#245

Post by bxsioshc »

tptacek wrote: post #243
bxsioshc wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

You just read a comment that drew a distinction between racial supremacist claims and other claims and your rebuttal was that both kinds of claims are racial supremacist claims. Not interesting.

> your rebuttal was that both kinds of claims are racial supremacist claims

I said nothing about anything being racial or not. Perhaps you found it not interesting because you didn't pay attention to it and instead read into it what you already expected the rebuttal to be.

Re: Why Romania excels in international Olympiads

#246

Post by slt2021 »

Viliam1234 wrote: post #242
slt2021 wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think what China and India are doing is The right approach. Gainthe knowledge, experience from capitalists, accumulate initial capital, then go back and build your own country once you have a name and expertise, connections, little bit of capital. It doesn’t make sense for a Romanian to continue working for a capitalist and paying taxes that fund the genocide and oppression overseas. You are only making Zuckerbergs…

By the way, China is for all practical purposes a capitalist country. > go back and build your own country once you have a name and expertise I agree that this would be a great outcome. But whether your country allows it or not, that depends on the country, not you.

Re China, I believe there is misunderstanding. China has free market economy, but China does not have big oligarchs running the country, the opposite of US.

In China, political and economic leadership are separate. Country is ran by the party, while economy is ran by small-med-large companies fiercely competing among themselves. Any oligarch trying to get political influence is quickly shut down (jack ma).

USA on the other hand are fully ran by the oligarchs, every single politician is beholden to special interest groups representing the big corporate capital, and nobody cares about the common man. Anyone trying to break into power representing the common man, at the expense of the big oligarchic capital, is quickly shut down (bernie)

Re: Why Romania excels in international Olympiads

#247

Post by casey2 »

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…

The problem with this line of thinking is that nobody is "predisposed" to intellectual work" It's entirely a system designed to recreate elites and study to tests. There is no scientific basis for the claim that teaching young students specialized mathematics is beneficial to their education

Re: Why Romania excels in international Olympiads

#248

Post by cvak »

Funny how somehow in discussions in our country I always have to defend that sorting students is a good thing. A lot of people argue, that best student in average classes will still be great, and will lift the others, from my experience that is not true.

Re: Why Romania excels in international Olympiads

#249

Post by tanjtanjtanj »

necovek wrote: post #228
petre wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 vo…

> OTOH I am very impressed with how Volodymir Zelenski turned out. Who would have thought? He played his cards so well that Ukraine now has 100k dead people, another 300k injured, so much destroyed infrastructure and so many cities turned into battlegrounds. Yes, "impressive". I am not saying he's to "blame" for this, but being "very impressed" is weird to me as well — whether it was possible to play the fine line be…

So do what Russia didn’t want them to do and give Russia less than they wanted and they would be like “okay, cool. We won’t invade you then”?

That solution flies in the face of the real world reality.

Re: Why Romania excels in international Olympiads

#250

Post by rciorba »

eric-burel wrote: post #240
rciorba wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Agreed but what I mean is that 15 years ago you wouldn't have thought about studying medicine in East Europe, or building startups etc. And now people study in Romania, Warsaw is perceived as a great place for entrepreneurs and so on. It's just my personal biased impression but it feels good.

Fair enough, this is a sign of clear progress for Eastern Europe.
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