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Eight Out Of China’s Top Nine Government Officials Are Scientists

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Re: Eight Out Of China’s Top Nine Government Officials Are Scientists

#61

Post by xiaoma »

geebee wrote: post #19
baguasquirrel wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's funny... Americans don't have an economically rational aversion to becoming movie stars in much the same way.

yeah, that is an amusing observation. of course, President Obama and various talking heads don't fret about the shortage of Americans in film school. The serious question is whether we should launch a PR campaign to encourage young people to make decisions that may lead (at least according to RAND) to long training times with poor pay and career prospects relative to other paths typically available to the "best and b…

If the issue is public policy, then the goal should be public good, not individual good.

It's very possible that the best and brightest could live in greater comfort as criminals than scientists, but even if that were the case, any rational government would encourage them to be scientists since that would be better for the country.

Edit: Seriously? Care to explain your reasoning, downmodders? Why would a government encourage decisions that are destructive to society?

Re: Eight Out Of China’s Top Nine Government Officials Are Scientists

#62

Post by Zaak »

lionhearted wrote: post #6

But, but, but... they're not democratic! If only they'd put more power in the hands of the common man, they too could enjoy such luminous choices for statesmen as McCain vs. Obama, Bush II vs. Kerry, Bush II vs Gore, Dole vs. Clinton, Bush I vs. Clinton... ...we gotta keep saber rattling that our way is better than theirs. Boo China, boo. Edit: To the downvoter - okay, I'm joking around. But which of these premises d…

The reason why democracy is a good thing is not because the general public is good at running a country, or even good at selecting people who are good at running a country.

The reason why democracy is a good thing is it forces the people in power to care about the effects their decisions have on the general public.

Re: Eight Out Of China’s Top Nine Government Officials Are Scientists

#64

Post by dimmuborgir »

Countries should be led by economists, not scientists/engineers.

The Chinese economy is one giant mess. Too many imbalances, over-investments and bubbles. The spectacular 10% GDP growth rate was possible mainly because of bullying i.e., artificial depreciation of yuan giving unfair advantage to Chinese exporters.

Re: Eight Out Of China’s Top Nine Government Officials Are Scientists

#65

Post by Eliezer »

Eight Out Of Nine American Bloggers Cannot Distinguish Between The Concept of A "Scientist" (As In Someone Who Devises Reproducible Experiments To Test Ideas To Determine Whether They Are Right Or Wrong, And Rejects The Wrong Ones) And Anyone In A Technical Profession.

Re: Eight Out Of China’s Top Nine Government Officials Are Scientists

#66

Post by geebee »

xiaoma wrote: post #61
geebee wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

yeah, that is an amusing observation. of course, President Obama and various talking heads don't fret about the shortage of Americans in film school. The serious question is whether we should launch a PR campaign to encourage young people to make decisions that may lead (at least according to RAND) to long training times with poor pay and career prospects relative to other paths typically available to the "best and b…

If the issue is public policy, then the goal should be public good, not individual good. It's very possible that the best and brightest could live in greater comfort as criminals than scientists, but even if that were the case, any rational government would encourage them to be scientists since that would be better for the country. Edit: Seriously? Care to explain your reasoning, downmodders? Why would a government e…

That's not at all a bad point. There are some activities that economists view aS rent collecting (or even wealth destroying) that are lucrative for the individual. Scientists and engineers are generally seen as the opposite of this (unless it's financial engineering). Almost every government actively tries to poach engineers from abroad...

Still, I recommend you read the rand study. They discuss ways to make sci/eng more appealing rather than launching a pr campaign to merely make it appear more appealing. The second could end up creating an even greater aversion to this career path.

Re: Eight Out Of China’s Top Nine Government Officials Are Scientists

#67

Post by [deleted] »

Wuzzy wrote: post #51
llcoolv wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not really. For one, China is still a totalitarian (communist is really wrongly used here) country. And also my impression is that Tymoshenko is more of an isolated case - my guess would be that most of the current post-totalitarian leaders are either former officers (Putin, Borissov, Basescu), humanitarian/law majors (Komorowski, Parvanov, Orban, Gasparovic) or economists (Havel). Unfortunately most of them come fro…

I don't know much about the other ones, but Havel most assuredly is not an economist. He has a cultural background and is an author of a number of theater pieces. His successor at the post of Czech president (Klaus) is an economist, so maybe that's where the confusion comes from. Just as a matter of interest - the current Czech prime minister, who, at least in theory, has more power than the president, has graduated…

[deleted]

Re: Eight Out Of China’s Top Nine Government Officials Are Scientists

#68

Post by ww520 »

run4yourlives wrote: post #25

While this is no doubt going to be unpopular here on HackerNews, I'm going to posit the following: This is almost as bad as have 8 of 9 people being Creationists. Better than 90% of a council making decisions for the whole country being of the same persuasion is prone to severe group think. Scientists (or rather, engineers, if you RTFA) aren't immune to this any more than any of us are. If you look at the best run bu…

"If you look at the best run businesses, they are often composed of people with variable backgrounds - people that approach problems from different perspectives."

Do you have cited studies to back this up?

Re: Eight Out Of China’s Top Nine Government Officials Are Scientists

#69

Post by podperson »

Zaak wrote: post #62
lionhearted wrote: post #6

But, but, but... they're not democratic! If only they'd put more power in the hands of the common man, they too could enjoy such luminous choices for statesmen as McCain vs. Obama, Bush II vs. Kerry, Bush II vs Gore, Dole vs. Clinton, Bush I vs. Clinton... ...we gotta keep saber rattling that our way is better than theirs. Boo China, boo. Edit: To the downvoter - okay, I'm joking around. But which of these premises d…

The reason why democracy is a good thing is not because the general public is good at running a country, or even good at selecting people who are good at running a country. The reason why democracy is a good thing is it forces the people in power to care about the effects their decisions have on the general public.

Or to put it another way, it's the system that is most likely to throw complete and utter incompetents out of office in a reasonable period of time.

"Indeed, it has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time."

http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Winston_Churchill

Re: Eight Out Of China’s Top Nine Government Officials Are Scientists

#70

Post by run4yourlives »

maxklein wrote: post #58
run4yourlives wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The one child policy was only enacted in 1978. It stands to reason then that the 15-64 bracket isn't fully representing the effects of the policy. The only brackets that properly account for impact of the policy are the more recent ones.

Just look at it backwards. Even before the 1 child policy, both china and india have had a gender imbalance favouring males. After the 1 child policy in china alone, both india and china had a strong growth in gender imbalance, with china being only somewhat stronger. Your "control" without the 1 child policy also exhibited the same strong growth. A scientist would reasonably conclude that the 1 child policy seems to…

Both China and India share pretty much exactly the same imbalance until the last two age-cohorts as you suggest, but while both increase, China's does so substantially more. This can't be ignored as being "exactly the same manner". To do so is being scientifically irresponsible.

My take is that both cultures have very prominent views on the preference for male children. You can see this even in the large Chinese and Indian communities here in North America. What has most likely happened is that the one child policy has simply enabled those cultural preferences in China much more than the exist in India.

It's also interesting that India itself has at several times flirted with restrictive population polices, including forced sterilization at right around the same time as China introduced their family planning program.

While that doesn't suggest that the one child policies are the only cause, I think there is enough evidence there to suggest they are a factor.

Nonetheless, all of this wasn't actually a real focus of my original point at all.

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