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Are Asians/Indians considered more intelligent than whites? I know they list over there a supposed racial hierarchy on average intelligence (though they try to make the hierarchy sound like more), but I’ve always thought the Asians are smarter thing has too many other variables at play. Primarily that there are a lot of Asians on planet earth and the ones who make it to the west go thru a strong filter. Second reason is western civ is the current tech leader. This hasn’t always been true but has been for a few hundred years. In short we westerners see dumb whites at Wal-Mart but we only see smart Asians who made it thru Visa processes.
Japan, South Korea and Taiwan don’t come to your mind when thinking about rapid capitalist technological development? Even when they chose the civilisational path of building extreme commie hermit kingdom, East Asian North Koreans probably did better than any other nation in the history probably.
Also the claimed IQ diff between Europeans and East Asians is about 5 points. Pretty minuscule with limited consequences if true.
“Current tech leader” is not the same as successful rapid technological catch up. That’s just copying shit westerners did and technological transfer.
Seems these comments are similar to my thoughts - probably some truth to higher Asian IQ but it’s smaller and difficult to prove.
None of those countries (especially Japan) are playing catch up or copying stuff for decades at this point. They all lead in some pretty advanced tech fields.
What does China lead in? Japan?
But on net they are still behind the west.
Taiwan I guess you can give chips too.
For China: Manufacturing, supply chains, surveillance. Consumer payment infrastructure. Nuclear power maybe?
In AI, China is a good deal further ahead than the EU, though that's also kind of damning by faint praise.
I’d call manufacturing/supply chains as low tech. It’s stuff that’s outsourced because it’s not cutting-edge.
Maybe consumer payments.
AI I have no idea. I hear they publish a lot of papers but have they had any breakthroughs. Now the most profitable HFT firm (citadel) is ran by a Chinese citizen.
Consumer payments is a weird thing. Sub-Saharan Africa rapidly adopted mobile money tied to cellphone accounts for various reasons while the developed world is slowed by existing workable cash and card (magnetic is still not dead) payment systems lowering the value proposition of updating.
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Manufacturing, maybe. But as far as supply chain goes, China is extremely skilled in it, pulling off feats that no other country in history or the present day could realistically compete with. It's high tech in the same sense that American finance is high tech: a capability that requires decades of investment, that few or no one can replicate, and that leads to large economic gains.
AI-wise, there's a significant gap between China and the US. But there's a vast chasm between China and the non-US world. China catching up to the US is a bit more plausible than the EU/India/Russia catching up to China.
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