At the risk of causing this to devolve into a discussion of politics, I’m not clear on how Japan, Israel, or South Korea are supposed to look like good startup points in this regard.
These qualities don’t seem to have allowed any of them to run their countries exceptionally well. If you want to construct a high rationality country, I don’t think that any of these three would be particularly good starting points.
Japan at least manages to rank highly on many societal health indices, but their educational system tends to emphasize rote memorization and prestigious affiliation over original thinking and personal achievement.
Between countries, differences in mean intelligence are almost certainly going to be trivial in comparison with differences in social values. You’d want to look, not at which countries tend to have smarter people, but which promote more rationalist-friendly values.
My off the cuff answer is that you might want to try looking at various Scandinavian countries, but since I don’t think the basic idea is particularly plausible, it’s not something I’ve invested a great deal of consideration in.
At the risk of causing this to devolve into a discussion of politics, I’m not clear on how Japan, Israel, or South Korea are supposed to look like good startup points in this regard.
The idea was just that they are more than averagely interested in tech, and israel is also higher than average IQ because of the ashkenazi jews.
These qualities don’t seem to have allowed any of them to run their countries exceptionally well. If you want to construct a high rationality country, I don’t think that any of these three would be particularly good starting points.
Japan at least manages to rank highly on many societal health indices, but their educational system tends to emphasize rote memorization and prestigious affiliation over original thinking and personal achievement.
Between countries, differences in mean intelligence are almost certainly going to be trivial in comparison with differences in social values. You’d want to look, not at which countries tend to have smarter people, but which promote more rationalist-friendly values.
Any ideas for that?
My off the cuff answer is that you might want to try looking at various Scandinavian countries, but since I don’t think the basic idea is particularly plausible, it’s not something I’ve invested a great deal of consideration in.
Scandinavia has a problematic culture of humility: Jante Law