Here is how I answered that question in Jamaica:
(Slightly higher quality video here.)
Edited to add: There were apparently some problems with the video stalling somewhere around the one-hour mark (during the post-talk question period.) I believe this is fixed now.
Landsburg starts his part after the 7 minute mark. Just FYI.
Are the slides available, or better, pointers to sources for the statistics?
Yeah but does this talk make people into grinches, and will that burden our grandkids?
I would like to be pointed to the sources too, and also the audio could have been better. Other than that, very nice and entertaining.
past min ~60, video is broke for me
also, why not use youtube? with this i have to wait for it to load to minute x before i can start watching at minute x. inconvenient :(
Martin: I’m aware that the video stops working after an hour or so (sometime during the question period after the main talk is finished). I aim to fix this but it could be a while. As far as using youtube, they don’t take videos over ten minutes long unless you make some sort of special arrangement I haven’t pursued.
The average housewife gets an e-mail from her laundry machine, and I can’t even watch the end of a video? Growth smowth.
thanks Steve.
youtube: it’s 15 min now I think, but i don’t think it’s hard to extend that, idk. and you’d probably get more views (more easily embeddable video, youtube more integrated with google searches etc..)
Jamaica:
interesting site comparing student performances around the world:
http://pisacountry.acer.edu.au/
(couldn’t find jamaica in the list)
I’m not sure exactly how this fits in with what Landsburg said in the talk or if it applies at all to Jamaica but…
Groups differ, sometimes along racial/religious lines, sometimes not.
They can differ because of external or internal factors.
external: persecution, discrimination
internal: nature and nurture
nowadays few take the nature factor too seriously (genetics affecting intelligence in different groups)
so nurture (culture) is the big one i think.
I think CULTURE, in particular how much education and academics are valued, how much parents push/encourage their kids to do well and do homework etc… matters a lot.
some examples:
in america, why are asian immigrants so ridiculously far ahead of blacks/hispanics (and even whites) ?
well they bring over a culture of hard work, respect for academic success etc..
The South Koreans push their kids to study very hard (to the point where it’s child abuse imo), the Egyptians do not. That’s reflected in GDP. Off the top of my head I remember this stat that Korea and Egypt had same GDP a couple of decades ago, now Korea leads by a large factor.
the small jewish population has been throughout history fantastically successful. so many nobel prizes go to jews. the very large muslim population has in recent times not contributed anything to science.
imo, if you want your country’s kids to score high on international math tests, yes get good teachers (fire the bad ones), but it helps if the parents tell their kids to pay attention in class.
How do you change culture? I have no clue. It seems to me that would be very hard to do.
I like Dinesh D’Souza’s “the end of racism” (book on USA, so not necessarily applicable to jamaica)
interview http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NvFG6jH_ocY
anything by thomas sowell on economics/race is good imo. just google (video) him.
It’s frustratingly difficult to skip through this video, especially the long introduction. Consider using a different player? (Vimeo?)