gwern comments on Rationality Quotes August 2013 - Less Wrong

7 Post author: Vaniver 02 August 2013 08:59PM

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Comment author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 06 August 2013 04:38:36PM 5 points [-]

Was extremely democratic. Do we know this is still true?

Comment author: gwern 06 August 2013 09:58:41PM *  18 points [-]

"The Collapse of the Soviet Union and the Productivity of American Mathematicians" comes to mind as an interesting recent natural experiment where the floodgate of Russian mathematical talent was unleashed after the collapse of the USSR and many of them successfully rose in America despite academic math being a zero-sum game; consistent with meritocracy.