[ExI] Really? and EP

[Aware]

On Wed, Apr 22, 2009 at 5:27 AM, Lee Corbin <lcorbin at rawbw.com> wrote:

> Even *ten* years ago, a white kid I knew
> mentioned that he went to a math competition
> here in the bay area, and out of a hundred or
> so kids there, he was the only white.
>
> That's just the reality. Go to the elementary
> classrooms yourself, and try to talk to kids
> about math or chess or something, if you don't
> believe me.
>
> Now it's *EXTREMELY* unfashionable to point these
> things about, but either you are afraid of the
> truth or you're not.

Lee, you make a good point and I don't dispute that there's some
genetic component, but I think it's even more to do with culture.

I lived in Japan for a few years, and traveled and worked extensively
throughout Asia for over a dozen years.  I felt at home with the
people there, to the extent that the culture shock coming "home" to
big brash barbaric California was greater than the adjustments I made
as an expat.

And I saw the same kinds and ranges of personality there as here, and
roughly the same distribution of intelligence throughout the
population.

But the biggest difference I saw between smart there and smart people
here--which still jars me on a daily basis--is the western emphasis
(incoherent in my opinion) on what an object *is*, contra the Asian
emphasis on what an object means, based on its relations within
context.

Ironically, over several years on the Extropy list, you were my
biggest test case.  Trying to see whether a smart, highly verbal,
highly motivated "rationalist" could ever cross the divide.

- Jef