[ExI] Best and brightest

[Anders Sandberg]

Generally Europeans tend to be pretty mobile, even moreso if highly 
educated, while Americans tend to stay put in their country. This also 
leads to a clustering in popular countries like the UK, as well as 
formation of clusters as experts repatriate from periods abroad.

http://www.justlanded.com/english/Common/Footer/Expatriates/Expatriate-statistics-and-characteristics
http://www.parliament.uk/documents/post/postpn309.pdf
http://www.cap-lmu.de/fgz/statistics/brain-drain.php

While the US still has a pretty big draw on highly educated or ambitious 
Europeans, the draw has been noticeably reduced in recent years. Some of 
it is due to changed perceptions, some of it due to harder immigration 
rules.

A highly mobile workforce of best and brightest and a globalized world 
means that they can vote with their feet. If a country doesn't provide 
them with an environment that suits them - politically, economically, 
culturally, whatever - they move. I know at least three or four 
world-class scientists here in Oxford who explicitly say they left the 
US because they can't stand the current political climate. Maybe there 
is an equivalent number over there who were drawn by it, but I doubt it.

If one believes the importance of star scientists in creating successful 
research and technology
http://researchlibartssci.blog.asu.edu/files/2007/10/w13547.pdf
then the above might be cause for serious concern. There are plenty of 
people concerned about it already:
http://www.voanews.com/english/news/economy-and-business/US-Trying-to-Stop-Reverse-Brain-Drain-131899558.html
http://www.soc.duke.edu/globalengineering/pdfs/media/losingtheworlds/nam_usexperiencing.pdf
http://www.economist.com/node/13234953


Dennis May wrote:
>
> The funniest thing that came up
> was the difference in how celebrities behave in Europe versus the United
> States.

Differs quite a lot between cultures. Swedish celebrities and 
politicians mix directly with people. This can probably be more ascribed 
in differences in power distance than any American exceptionalism.


> Ths scale of things in the US is not well understood.  Her brother talked
> about flying to Miami and driving up to Missouri to see her that 
> afternoon.
>  
> I saw a similar reaction by Japanese engineers and a German friend years
> ago.  They don't seem to get the idea that some US states are as big
> as some countries they are used to.

Just as Americans often don't get the historical depth of many parts of 
the world. There is a pub not far from my office that is more than three 
times older than the US. Heck, my university is likely four times older 
[*]. And elements of its function are still affected by events in this 
history, events that are still remembered and referenced. There are very 
foreign cultures just a few centuries back, still very visible and 
sometimes relevant. And yet this is the barely civilized northwestern 
fringe of Europe, while the historical depth is several millennia larger 
in the southeast.


[*] Oxford University, to its embarassment, does not know how old it is.
http://www.ox.ac.uk/about_the_university/introducing_oxford/a_brief_history_of_the_university/index.html
Cambridge University got founded 1209 by scholars fleeing hostile 
townspeople in Oxford, so at least they have a clear founding date. But 
people here of course poke fun at how cowardly they were, while they 
bring up that they still feel unfairly persecuted by Prince John (yeah, 
of Robin Hood fame. He and his brother Richard Lionheart were locals - 
they were born in the same block I lived in for my first few years in 
town...).

-- 
Anders Sandberg,
Future of Humanity Institute 
Oxford Martin School 
Faculty of Philosophy 
Oxford University