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Comment by nullc | Hacker News Reader

My experience with Israeli companies suggests that a culture which values intellectual achievement and competition is more widespread there.

Similar cultural enclaves exist elsewhere in the world and are presumably similarly effective, but they just aren't as large a portion of the population.

Even small cultural differences can have outsized effects because of pollination-- e.g. it's easier to learn from an expert in a domain if there are more experts around you.

I think your question isn't really that much different to asking why the bay area has "punched above its weight" in terms of producing successful tech companies compared to other regions around the US... or why other regions have had a lot more success in other domains.

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My experience is the exact opposite. There is a culture of laziness and most offices are carried by a handful of outstanding people and propped up by significant foreign investment.

The difference with Israel, specifically in regards to hacking, is purely the amount of government support and protection independent actors receive for things that might otherwise be considered nefarious in other countries.

Also humans self-segregate. All else being equal a human who has property A will prefer to live with other humans who have property A, rather than humans with property B. Skin colour, favourite icecream flavour, late risers versus early birds - anything. We can deliberately make adjustments at policy level to reduce the harmful consequences (or of course, we can do stuff like red-lining to make it worse) but that's what they naturally do.

So these cultural affects will snowball.

Do you have a source to cite here, or can you refine what kind of properties you're talking about? I urinate standing up and prefer to live with someone who urinates while seated. This is the prevailing preference amongst people who urinate while standing.

This is colloquially referred to as "the big sort" in the United States - people moving to states where a higher portion of people share their political ideology. Your favorite search engine should point to many sources with this search term, though some are more dubious about the strength of the effect than others.

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