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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   32863 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 10, 2022

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Why are Americans falling behind in “brain-y” competitions? Or, if we haven’t fallen behind, why have we always been bad at them?

League of Legends is holding their Worlds competition, and most of the North American region teams did not make it past the first stage. The performance of NA teams has been poor compared to Chinese and Korean teams. The one NA team that has done okay is mainly comprised of non-Americans. The NA region actually has more players than the Korean region, and there are serious incentives to get a high-performing team together.

I have also noticed that in the chess world, most of the top grandmasters are first or second generation Americans. Despite only comprising 25% of Americans, they make up 19 of the top 20 players (only Sam Shankland afaik is the exception). It is not as if the immigrant competitors are all from the former Soviet Union or another chess-heavy region, either, but you find Italy, the Philippines, Japan, and China represented too. (Possibly, because Hispanics are so much of 1st/2nd gen but not represented in chess world, it could be more like 5% make up 95%.)

What explains the loss of American high achievers in intellectual competitions? Google Code has similar results, as does Overwatch. Could there be an environmental cause?

Because both Chess and LoL are far far down in popularity in the US?

I mean, does the US not doing well in Soccer mean that it isn't athletic?

The original comment suggests that the US playerbase for LoL is higher than other nations. I would imagine that Chess also has the largest number of players coming from the US compared to other nations. Both are different from football, in which the US playerbase is dwarfed by other nations

Chess, LOL, and Soccer are all examples of competitions the US is bad at for, IMO almost the exact same reason: They require very high investment from children and teens, and have almost no benefit to you if you don't make it.

Other countries have less high of an upside for a smart and talented people going a conventional direction (and obviously less of a downside of failure because of more generous welfare states and less college enrollment, which means white collar women can't turn their noses up at plumbers and truckers like they do in the US), like investment banking or tech. American football and Basketball are nowhere near the skill expression of soccer and tennis, demonstrated by the many many pros who picked up the sport at something like age 16, so they are much easier for the dumb, but athletic to get into at any age.

So yeah, I don't think these things matter much on the big stage.

American football and Basketball are nowhere near the skill expression of soccer and tennis, demonstrated by the many many pros who picked up the sport at something like age 16, so they are much easier for the dumb, but athletic to get into at any age.

Dexterity and coordination required to be skilled in these sports is not all that much related to intelligence iirc, but fast processing speed is a skill rewarded by team sports that is well correlated with intelligence.

True, but if you go by the Wunderlic which the NFL famously used to administer to all incoming rookies, the average NFL player is slightly above the American average, ~105 IQ. But there are several position groups like running back and cornerback where the average IQ is far below 100.

NA has a larger player pool than Korea in League, and it is the most popular American e-Sport. If popularity dictated chess GMs, I do not think we would see an Italian, Norwegian, Chinese, and Dutchman among top players.

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