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Comment by sidlls | Hacker News Reader

The proportion of Chinese stem graduates who aren’t simply copying their way around and are gifted enough to run these programs is likely about the same as the proportion anywhere else. Chinese people are no more or less intelligent than anyone else.

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In my country, and I guess otherd in western Europe, we often fail to appreciate the sheer power of those "other" countries such as Russia or China. Many are still stuck in the colonialist vision of things where Europe and US were vastly superior. This is not true anymore. And as you point out, intelligence is uniformly distributed.

Days when Russia could send problems to Mars are long over, so with regards to Russia reality ironically corrected itself to match the US expectations.

Well, I must admit picking Russia was a bit far fetched :-) However, I have the feeling Russia is still a strong player on the geopolitical level (see Syria, Ukraine -- although I'm sure civilian casualties say otherwise).

Not supporting OPs assertion, but. Even with same proportion they will have huge advantage in absolute nos. Also society and government are lot different, changing the way and proportion of people persevere for a particular career option.

let's put ideology aside. It's quite interesting to watch different societies, governance, cultures evolving, cooperating,competing among each other. Eastern world is more likely have low entropy societies while Western have high entropy societies.

Both have strength and weakness. Low entropy societies are more efficient, extremely good at building physical things. But tend to have less varieties. High societies are more chaotic, but also more innovative, more productive in spiritual domain. Not only in technologies but also arts ,etc.

It would be ideal that both societies can cooperate and share the benefits leveraging advantages of both worlds. But in reality it's quite complex and not going to a good direction in short term

This seems like a "just so" statement. Fifty years ago people would say that Western societies are more efficient and better at building physical things.

So I don't really see it. I don't think Western societies are necessarily always going to be better at technology and I think you really, really underestimate the chaos and varieties of many non-Western societies. In many ways the West is quite low-entropy.

Shocking that you have to state this fact. Is this HN or YouTube?

SMDH

On HN it seems like there is a huge anti-US/sinophile presence which seeks to elevate any achievement, no matter how minor or retread, as if it were some major accomplishment done in spite of insurmountable purposeful opposition by the evil colonial empire building westerners. When even the slightest accomplishment is so outlandishly propagandized it becomes hard to view actual ones in their proper light. Especially when it’s unclear whether they’re “standing on shoulders” or simply trying to pass the shoulders off as their own.

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