I think that the gist of the article is that you can be more creative (i.e. come up with ideas that hardly anyone thought of before), if you have more distance from culture. In other words, people that are deeply entrenched in culture, can only think of doing things in the way that the culture is doing it now.
Alan Kay tries to express this concept in his talk "Normal considered harmful", it may give a different perspective on the same concept.
I think it's very good to point this out in relation to immigration right now. However, it's just one of the reasons we should be open to immigration: humanness (brotherhood); a better outcome for both parties ("immigrants" and "natives") in the long run if we give immigrants a possibility to start a "normal" life as fast as possible; we can share the workload and may alleviate the problem of ageing western societies; etc.
> Freud is a classic case. As a little boy, he and his family joined a flood of immigrants from the fringes of the Austro-Hungarian empire to Vienna
Freud a classic case of immigration? Příbor the fringes of the Austrian Empire? He moved at the age of four 130 miles southwest to the capital. The Austrian Empire included at that point parts of Ukraine. That is hardly immigration, let alone a classic case.
> He wore lederhosen and played a local card game called tarock
Neither "lederhosen" nor "tarock" is local to Vienna.
Sorry Wall Street Journal, but please get your facts straight before writing rubbish. Also, as the article is drawing comparisons to the flow of migrants right now, it should be noted that the current events are not comparable to any of the given examples in the article.
> Vienna had its own tarock type that did not survive WW1
It is/was played there, but not exclusively.
> Lederhosen were once popular all over the Alpine Region, so I'm sure that they were popular in Vienna, too.
True, in the Alpine regions of Austria, Switzerland and Bavaria they are still somewhat common, mostly in the rural parts. Vienna has never been Alpine nor rural.
I don't think the author ever implied that tarock or Lederhosen were exclusive to Vienna, but that both were common there at the time, so Freud acquired both to fit in. I think you're reading too much into the text.
What I was referring to is that neither is Tarock a local game nor were lederhosen common in Vienna, both which is implied by the article. That can come to show how well the author did his research.
> Sorry Wall Street Journal, but please get your facts straight before writing rubbish.
The WSJ is a great publication and worth reading.
But you have to understand whose interests the WSJ represents: the global business elite. The global business elite loves immigration because, to them, it represents an inflow of cheaper workers who know and/or care less about their rights. (Even if you don't hire immigrants directly, increasing the labor supply helps slow wage growth.) There are probably also some other factors, like status signaling. They aren't worried about getting cultural details right, because they don't care about culture or civic engagement or anything like that. They care about cheap labor.
You can therefore expect the majority of WSJ articles about immigration to say whatever they think cheerleads immigration most, no matter how nonsensical it is (but since the WSJ is a "serious" publication, you'd think nonsense would be kept to a minimum.)
(There are, of course, many supporters of immigration who have nothing to do with the global business elite, many other arguments than can be made, for and against, but that's the WSJ demographic.)
Immigrant does not mean poor. Often immigrants are the most wealthy, connected, and educated people from their countries. Poor people are usually stuck wherever they are.
A more accurate title would be: "The Secret of Rich Genius"
But it's pretty obvious why the elite have such a huge share of success in all things.
"Poor people are usually stuck wherever they are."
Probably was true 100 years ago, but not anymore, when at least in my country, all you need is a valid passport and a cheap ~30 Eur one-way plane ticket. Millions of Eastern Europeans did just that after their countries joined EU.
I would say moving to another country itself takes lots of courage, and this can be one of the reasons why some of them can be successful and innovative.
I think it takes more inquisitiveness than courage to voluntarily move to another country. I'm specifically discounting those who move to another country as a refugee or asylum seeker.
I've lived in four different countries for periods of 12 months or longer (including the country of my birth), on three different continents. I don't think it took or takes specific courage to make such moves, more like an innate sense of inquisitiveness and lust for adventure. I wanted to experience different people, cultures and norms.
In someone much smarter than myself, this may help to encourage their genius. In my case, I mostly just had a good time, but also I believe became a much more tolerant person.
I am assuming you are from a developed country and probably white which is why you are saying that. Ask people who are from developing countries who have to put a major chunk of their life savings to get a resident visa move to a different country use their savings again till they get a job in their own domain.
People from developing countries also have to face the humiliation from their friends and families incase they dont get a job and have to move back.
Good points and agreed. I did specifically think of and note those refugees or asylum seekers who do for sure need courage. However, I didn't consider economic migrants from developing countries. I can see there is courage required for them too.
I have a different theory on why this happens, as a potential immigrant myself: it's a giant sorted hash-set.
My reason for immigrating is simple: in a developed country I'll make more of a difference with the same amount of effort. My "hash" inclines me to move to developed buckets (and also privileges me with the means to do so). Take Elon Musk as an example. If he attempted to start SpaceX in South Africa (his country of birth) he would have been hemorrhaging capital via the corrupt government tender process. There is also the added problem of a lacking employee pool due to the on-going brain-drain. His "hash" landed him in a developed country and is demonstrably an advantage because of many factors, including the support of the American government.
I really don't think that immigration changes people; it's merely a tool that the inspired use to achieve their goals. The anthropic principle could be invoked here in a contrived way.
> There is also the added problem of a lacking employee pool due to the on-going brain-drain.
Not to go off topic too much, but it should be noted that in South Africa there is also an extremely authoritarian form of affirmative action or black economic empowerment, etc. which effectively means you _have_ to employ people based on their skin colour when your business reaches a certain size or effectively you can't do business in the economy. It's a form of justified-racism directed at a minority group (< 10% of the population is white) that stifles the labour market and makes things like SpaceX impossible.
The "brain-drain" you speak of is skilled white workers who are leaving the country because they can't get work or can't advance in their careers, etc. A completely stupid problem created by the government's own ineptitude.
I've found that communicating the woes of that policy over the internet is somewhat impossible. If you live in an equality-developed country it's virtually impossible to believe what you are told about countries that have no racial equality. I've learned to only have conversations about South African racial inequality only in person.
Unless you can demonstrate that it's actually detrimental to the average South African, then it's not really a problem or ineptitude is it?
Notably, you didn't even try to make that argument, you were more concerned with the problems it causes for less than 10% of the population that used to benefit from an "extremely authoritarian form of affirmative action".
Are you telling me you actually hold to the belief that having a policy which contributes towards driving away skilled professionals because of their race is a benefit to the average South African?
Yes. A situation in which a large company can't find any roles for 90% of the population is clearly unsustainable and needs to be fixed. It's apartheid in all but name. Getting rid of that also had negative consequences for some individual people, but was clearly the right thing to do, and benefitted the average South African.
Yes because 90% of the population is clearly black engineers, doctors, scientists, etc. and the only reason they're not being hired is because they're black and there's some racist conspiracy going on and not because these people don't actually exist. You can't just "will" a skilled professional into existence.
If, as you claim, black doctors, engineers and scientists do not exist in South Africa and the country is > 90% black, then clearly that is a problem for the country as a whole, and fixing it will improve life for everyone.
One supply-side fix for that is to send more people to school to learn these skills. One demand-side fix for that is to make sure that the people who have those skills get jobs.
I can well imagine, that after decades of being systematically excluded from these positions, the transition will be hard. Unlike you, I'm not rushing to blame the current government for the impact of decisions that were made many years ago.
What you are describing is racism. You're dressing it up in a way that makes it justifiable. What you are suggesting is no better than the architects of apartheid. Good luck building a non-racist society based on selective-racism as the driving force to "fix it". You can try to rationalize it any way you want.
And requires companies to hire dead weight in the form of people who are not up to the job, instead only have the correct skin colour, and have to be paid sometimes significant salaries to spend their days playing solitaire.
they forgot to mention that sometimes an entire nation/city has their head up their ass and pretty much anyone from outside can see it... i'm not referring to anyone in particular, so please, no butthurt...
Fusion of different schools of thouht brings unexpected results. Nothing to do with immigration, but highlights how important it is for the academics to communicate outside of their tiny local environments.
The argument made is a corollary of "openness to experience" indicators for creativity - just, with immigration, once you make the big leap more of the new experiences automatically come to you during ordinary life.
If you're already seeing exciting new things happening around you(and they aren't the same exciting new things everyone else sees), you may be getting as much of the effect as needed.
'Today, foreign-born residents account for only 13% of the U.S. population but hold nearly a third of all patents and a quarter of all Nobel Prizes awarded to Americans.' Nearly a quarter is 15% - not much more than 13%. Sensational writing for a fact that could also be explained by, perhaps, the fact that a large number of people go to the US specifically for education. The 'one third of patents' is more interesting, but even then I have to wonder how much of that is simply people with a dream moving to America to patent their invention and start a business.
I am sure immigration can indeed spark creativity, or at least select for creative people, but the article reads as just a little too click-baity for my tastes.
I thought maybe at first GP meant the actual percentage of Nobel prizes awarded to immigrants was 15% and WSJ was rounding that up to a quarter but it seems they're actually rounding down. 30.7% of U.S. awarded prizes are given to immigrants [1].
> (Einstein's) “miracle year” (...) occurred after he had emigrated from Germany to Switzerland.
Does the author even know (or does he just want to hide) that Zurich is in a German-speaking part of Switzerland, and that Einstein surely didn't feel like an "immigrant" there?
Isn't it annoying reading how Einstein is used by a lot of writers as an attempt to prove any claim they make?
The claim that Freud's "immigrated" is equally absurd. Wikipedia has the name and the location of the place where he was born: "Freiberg in Mähren, Moravia, Austrian Empire." (Now it is in Czech Republic and called Příbor, but it's still the same place). He just grew up some 200 miles southwest from his birthplace, right in the capital of the Empire. His father actually brought him and the family to Vienna as Freud was only 4. He certainly never remembered any other place and went to all schools in Vienna.
> Does the author even know that Zurich is in a German-speaking part of Switzerland, and that Einstein surely didn't feel like an "immigrant" there?
That's not precisely true. Zurich speaks German, true, but it's Schweizerdeutsch --- it's a quite different dialect to the Hochdeutsch they speak in Germany. I live in Zurich; a German-born work colleague is actually taking formal lessons in it so he can understand what the locals say. It's that different.
Everyone here speaks Hochdeutsch too, or at least does now, so Einstein would probably have gotten along fine, but he most likely wouldn't be feeling like he was at home.
> That's not precisely true (...) Everyone here speaks Hochdeutsch too
Linguistically, Swiss speak Hochdeutsch even when they speak Swiss German(!) Which a lot of Germans of Germany don't when they speak their dialect.
So your argument is quite wrong and certainly not "precise."
The German speaking people all have local dialects and have to adapt when they move. But these are all "just" dialects. Ask Germans, they aren't surprised when they have to get accustomed. Look at the map here:
Note that all "upper" German regions are actually where "Hochdeutsch" (Upper German) comes from. Yes, "up" is on the South, down on the map. And the area includes Switzerland.
"Swiss German (German: Schweizerdeutsch, Alemannic German: Schwyzerdütsch, Schwiizertüütsch, Schwizertitsch[note 1]) refers to any of the Alemannic dialects spoken in Switzerland and in some Alpine communities in Northern Italy." OK, let's check Alemannic:
"Alemannic is a group of dialects of the Upper German branch of the Germanic language family."
Finally, it follows that Swiss German dialects are actually all branches of "Hochdeutsch" family(!) They are just not the same as today's "standard German." Which is what people you communicate to probably mean when they say "Hochdeutsch":
See also DominikR's post here. He being an Austrian, his dialect also from the same "Hochdeutsch" family of dialects, wouldn't feel as an "immigrant" in Switzerland.
> but he most likely wouldn't be feeling like he was at home.
I'm an Austrian and yes, the German variant in Switzerland is different but I would never consider Switzerland as a country or culture where I could possibly feel estranged.
It's not like you moved as a German to the Ottoman Empire, everybody can understand you if he/she wants to, the landscape and weather is similar (at least for Austrians), the culture is very similar and so is the food, sports (Skiing) and everything else.
What you said, plus non-native speakers often strongly exaggerated the difference between the Swiss dialect and German German (which people usually refered to as High German).
Yes, it is a strong dialect, but still a dialect. Tyrol, Styria, Salzburg, Bavaria - heck, even some parts in Germany (despite their tendencies to eradicate dialects) - have equally strong dialects
"70 million people in Germany don't speak Plattdeutsch" (Low German, which is on the North! More details in my other posts here). Here the bank robber doesn't, don't ask me which dialect is his.
Having lived in 4 countries for at least 9 months each over the last 5 years, I agree with the conclusion of the article but not necessarily with the underlying reasons. Yes, getting to know a new culture reveals new ways of thinking and behavior that one would otherwise have missed. But I think more critically, leaving another place also frees one from the constraints of that place (be it personally, socially or culturally) It provides opportunity to rethink ones priorities in life and to dare to do things differently
There is probably more difference between German and whatever languages they speak in Syria than between Schweizerdeutsch and Hochdeutch.
And this is in addition to the general cultural shock caused by moving from place where you can kill your daughter/sister for having unwanted sexual relationships to place where you aren't even expected to molest women for walking in public place without their husbands and face covers.
WTF? If you’re discussing Einstein, then how about comparing a war-torn Syria (caused by US invasion) to a Germany busy incinerating Jews, Roma, gays and whoever else? (And BTW why is it that racists are perversely obsessed with discussing sex, as if that's the only problem people face? Flagged.)
I tried to support accq's point that Einstein's "schema violation" was a joke compared to what's happening in case of Syrian refugees mentioned by the article.
Those people migrate between vastly different cultures and relating their experience to Einstein's doesn't make sense.
And I think you can't really compare Syria with Nazi Germany either. Nazi Germany was a government gone rogue, while in Muslim cultures, for some reason, the kind of stuff I mentioned is just the way things are and have always been.
The view of Jews really changed only after WW II, and only as Christian religion started to be taken less seriously. Hitler didn't invent antisemitic ideology.
What West today tries to ignore is that Islam as religion is actively antisemitic too and it bases it on its own "holy" books (quotes here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islam_and_antisemitism ). Hitler is surprisingly (at least for those who never tried to read Quran) popular in Muslim-majority countries.
And even if "all religions are fine and peaceful in essence" is repeated ad nauseam it doesn't make the claim true.
49 comments
[ 1.6 ms ] story [ 120 ms ] threadThose who are born in one place and keep doing the same things won't know about ways of doing it differently
The article seems that it's trying a bit too hard though.
Alan Kay tries to express this concept in his talk "Normal considered harmful", it may give a different perspective on the same concept.
I think it's very good to point this out in relation to immigration right now. However, it's just one of the reasons we should be open to immigration: humanness (brotherhood); a better outcome for both parties ("immigrants" and "natives") in the long run if we give immigrants a possibility to start a "normal" life as fast as possible; we can share the workload and may alleviate the problem of ageing western societies; etc.
Freud a classic case of immigration? Příbor the fringes of the Austrian Empire? He moved at the age of four 130 miles southwest to the capital. The Austrian Empire included at that point parts of Ukraine. That is hardly immigration, let alone a classic case.
> He wore lederhosen and played a local card game called tarock
Neither "lederhosen" nor "tarock" is local to Vienna.
Sorry Wall Street Journal, but please get your facts straight before writing rubbish. Also, as the article is drawing comparisons to the flow of migrants right now, it should be noted that the current events are not comparable to any of the given examples in the article.
Vienna had its own tarock type that did not survive WW1: http://i-p-c-s.org/pattern/ps-14.html
Lederhosen were once popular all over the Alpine Region, so I'm sure that they were popular in Vienna, too.
It is/was played there, but not exclusively.
> Lederhosen were once popular all over the Alpine Region, so I'm sure that they were popular in Vienna, too.
True, in the Alpine regions of Austria, Switzerland and Bavaria they are still somewhat common, mostly in the rural parts. Vienna has never been Alpine nor rural.
I don't think the author ever implied that tarock or Lederhosen were exclusive to Vienna, but that both were common there at the time, so Freud acquired both to fit in. I think you're reading too much into the text.
The WSJ is a great publication and worth reading.
But you have to understand whose interests the WSJ represents: the global business elite. The global business elite loves immigration because, to them, it represents an inflow of cheaper workers who know and/or care less about their rights. (Even if you don't hire immigrants directly, increasing the labor supply helps slow wage growth.) There are probably also some other factors, like status signaling. They aren't worried about getting cultural details right, because they don't care about culture or civic engagement or anything like that. They care about cheap labor.
You can therefore expect the majority of WSJ articles about immigration to say whatever they think cheerleads immigration most, no matter how nonsensical it is (but since the WSJ is a "serious" publication, you'd think nonsense would be kept to a minimum.)
(There are, of course, many supporters of immigration who have nothing to do with the global business elite, many other arguments than can be made, for and against, but that's the WSJ demographic.)
A more accurate title would be: "The Secret of Rich Genius"
But it's pretty obvious why the elite have such a huge share of success in all things.
Probably was true 100 years ago, but not anymore, when at least in my country, all you need is a valid passport and a cheap ~30 Eur one-way plane ticket. Millions of Eastern Europeans did just that after their countries joined EU.
I've lived in four different countries for periods of 12 months or longer (including the country of my birth), on three different continents. I don't think it took or takes specific courage to make such moves, more like an innate sense of inquisitiveness and lust for adventure. I wanted to experience different people, cultures and norms.
In someone much smarter than myself, this may help to encourage their genius. In my case, I mostly just had a good time, but also I believe became a much more tolerant person.
I am assuming you are from a developed country and probably white which is why you are saying that. Ask people who are from developing countries who have to put a major chunk of their life savings to get a resident visa move to a different country use their savings again till they get a job in their own domain.
People from developing countries also have to face the humiliation from their friends and families incase they dont get a job and have to move back.
I think courage is the right word.
My reason for immigrating is simple: in a developed country I'll make more of a difference with the same amount of effort. My "hash" inclines me to move to developed buckets (and also privileges me with the means to do so). Take Elon Musk as an example. If he attempted to start SpaceX in South Africa (his country of birth) he would have been hemorrhaging capital via the corrupt government tender process. There is also the added problem of a lacking employee pool due to the on-going brain-drain. His "hash" landed him in a developed country and is demonstrably an advantage because of many factors, including the support of the American government.
I really don't think that immigration changes people; it's merely a tool that the inspired use to achieve their goals. The anthropic principle could be invoked here in a contrived way.
Not to go off topic too much, but it should be noted that in South Africa there is also an extremely authoritarian form of affirmative action or black economic empowerment, etc. which effectively means you _have_ to employ people based on their skin colour when your business reaches a certain size or effectively you can't do business in the economy. It's a form of justified-racism directed at a minority group (< 10% of the population is white) that stifles the labour market and makes things like SpaceX impossible.
The "brain-drain" you speak of is skilled white workers who are leaving the country because they can't get work or can't advance in their careers, etc. A completely stupid problem created by the government's own ineptitude.
Notably, you didn't even try to make that argument, you were more concerned with the problems it causes for less than 10% of the population that used to benefit from an "extremely authoritarian form of affirmative action".
One supply-side fix for that is to send more people to school to learn these skills. One demand-side fix for that is to make sure that the people who have those skills get jobs.
I can well imagine, that after decades of being systematically excluded from these positions, the transition will be hard. Unlike you, I'm not rushing to blame the current government for the impact of decisions that were made many years ago.
Let's just leave it on that note of hyperbole.
If you're already seeing exciting new things happening around you(and they aren't the same exciting new things everyone else sees), you may be getting as much of the effect as needed.
[1] http://iir.gmu.edu/research/immigrant-nobel-prize-winners
Does the author even know (or does he just want to hide) that Zurich is in a German-speaking part of Switzerland, and that Einstein surely didn't feel like an "immigrant" there?
Isn't it annoying reading how Einstein is used by a lot of writers as an attempt to prove any claim they make?
The claim that Freud's "immigrated" is equally absurd. Wikipedia has the name and the location of the place where he was born: "Freiberg in Mähren, Moravia, Austrian Empire." (Now it is in Czech Republic and called Příbor, but it's still the same place). He just grew up some 200 miles southwest from his birthplace, right in the capital of the Empire. His father actually brought him and the family to Vienna as Freud was only 4. He certainly never remembered any other place and went to all schools in Vienna.
That's not precisely true. Zurich speaks German, true, but it's Schweizerdeutsch --- it's a quite different dialect to the Hochdeutsch they speak in Germany. I live in Zurich; a German-born work colleague is actually taking formal lessons in it so he can understand what the locals say. It's that different.
Everyone here speaks Hochdeutsch too, or at least does now, so Einstein would probably have gotten along fine, but he most likely wouldn't be feeling like he was at home.
Linguistically, Swiss speak Hochdeutsch even when they speak Swiss German(!) Which a lot of Germans of Germany don't when they speak their dialect.
So your argument is quite wrong and certainly not "precise."
The German speaking people all have local dialects and have to adapt when they move. But these are all "just" dialects. Ask Germans, they aren't surprised when they have to get accustomed. Look at the map here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_dialects
Note that all "upper" German regions are actually where "Hochdeutsch" (Upper German) comes from. Yes, "up" is on the South, down on the map. And the area includes Switzerland.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swiss_German
"Swiss German (German: Schweizerdeutsch, Alemannic German: Schwyzerdütsch, Schwiizertüütsch, Schwizertitsch[note 1]) refers to any of the Alemannic dialects spoken in Switzerland and in some Alpine communities in Northern Italy." OK, let's check Alemannic:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alemannic_German
"Alemannic is a group of dialects of the Upper German branch of the Germanic language family."
Finally, it follows that Swiss German dialects are actually all branches of "Hochdeutsch" family(!) They are just not the same as today's "standard German." Which is what people you communicate to probably mean when they say "Hochdeutsch":
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_German
See also DominikR's post here. He being an Austrian, his dialect also from the same "Hochdeutsch" family of dialects, wouldn't feel as an "immigrant" in Switzerland.
I'm an Austrian and yes, the German variant in Switzerland is different but I would never consider Switzerland as a country or culture where I could possibly feel estranged.
It's not like you moved as a German to the Ottoman Empire, everybody can understand you if he/she wants to, the landscape and weather is similar (at least for Austrians), the culture is very similar and so is the food, sports (Skiing) and everything else.
Yes, it is a strong dialect, but still a dialect. Tyrol, Styria, Salzburg, Bavaria - heck, even some parts in Germany (despite their tendencies to eradicate dialects) - have equally strong dialects
My favorite joke video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NJaXEYkKUuo
"70 million people in Germany don't speak Plattdeutsch" (Low German, which is on the North! More details in my other posts here). Here the bank robber doesn't, don't ask me which dialect is his.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Low_German
I wish some native speaker would transcribe these joke videos for us who aren't.
And this is in addition to the general cultural shock caused by moving from place where you can kill your daughter/sister for having unwanted sexual relationships to place where you aren't even expected to molest women for walking in public place without their husbands and face covers.
https://www.hrw.org/world-report/2009/country-chapters/syria
http://newobserveronline.com/mass-invader-sex-attacks-in-stu...
Those people migrate between vastly different cultures and relating their experience to Einstein's doesn't make sense.
And I think you can't really compare Syria with Nazi Germany either. Nazi Germany was a government gone rogue, while in Muslim cultures, for some reason, the kind of stuff I mentioned is just the way things are and have always been.
The West had its own problems long enough with antisemitism, almost for two thousand years, supported by the texts from the New Testament.
(Here some quotes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antisemitism_and_the_New_Testa... )
The view of Jews really changed only after WW II, and only as Christian religion started to be taken less seriously. Hitler didn't invent antisemitic ideology.
What West today tries to ignore is that Islam as religion is actively antisemitic too and it bases it on its own "holy" books (quotes here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islam_and_antisemitism ). Hitler is surprisingly (at least for those who never tried to read Quran) popular in Muslim-majority countries.
And even if "all religions are fine and peaceful in essence" is repeated ad nauseam it doesn't make the claim true.
We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10966432 and marked it off-topic.
Instead, people who are bold and creative are more likely to take the risk of packing up their lives for better opportunities.