I found this to be almost impossible to achieve when I moved from Norway to Australia. There I was outside hanging out with friends or just doing stuff on the beach or whatever. The deep focus was harder to achieve. Quality of life was insanely better there, yet somehow I missed the possibility to sit down and be productive in some narrow topic.

The history of chess is definitely very political, especially inside the Soviet Union. It was seen as the proxy for intelligence, and if Soviet players were better than Americans, it was their way of demonstrating superiority in yet another domain.

Wealth is one of the most important factors for someone to found a startup. You aren't going out and starting a company if you have to work 80 plus hours a week to live.

Just look at the clueless opinions of so many tech founders about how "you shouldn't pay yourself a salary at first after you take investment money". Oh really? So we should just buy groceries and pay rent from the trust fund mommy and daddy gave us?

The scenario is that (roughly) 90% of the hypergrowth-style startups which raise a first round will fail to achieve enough momentum to successfully raise a second. And due to the business model choices they've committed to, failing to raise at that point is equivalent to going out of business. A first raise is often too small to be able to do everything they'd like, so they suggest decide that it's in their best interest (long term) to forgo a salary where possible, in order to buy a few extra months of progress before you're forced to start shopping for investment again.

Of course, folks give advice based on their own experience, but it doesn't always generalise to folks in different situations, which is potentially why that would seem like silly advice in (what I assume is) your scenario.

(minor edits toward the end for clarification)

So if you don't have the personal finances to deal with that situation, then you make a different decision further upstream, in the past, by choosing to work on an idea which has either easier funding targets (allowing an early salary), or which can generate early profits (allowing an early salary), or which has lower development requirements (allowing you to work on it alongside another paying job).

The decision is about idea selection, where I agree with you. "If you need the money, then pick an idea which allows you to pay yourself quickly." But if you've chosen to play a different game (typical hypergrowth VC stuff), and you want to maximise your odds of winning at that particular game, then it's generally ideal to buy yourself more months business runway instead of more months of personal runway.

Perhaps still not clear, and I know it's an emotionally loaded topic, but hopefully that makes sense.

Wonder if that's also a factor in the prevalence of tech/programmers/hackers in Russia. Don't think there's a startup scene there, but there definitely seems to be more technology experts coming from the area in general.

Soft forms of isolation certainly seem to lead to solitary activities.

I’d say proficiency in English and quite wealthy populations is what matters.

I also recall Jared Diamond debunking this as a theory for why "the west" got ahead in his book Guns, Germs, and Steel.

1. Israelis basically have no choice. If you want to make a good income, working hard in a technology startup(we have very few big tech companies) is one of the very few good options.

2. The army: at a very young age,a decent percentage of Israelis who join the army lead, in high value, high risk situations. That creates a sense of responsibility and strong ambition at a relatively early age.

The army is also a place where a lot of new tech is being developed , so people get exposure, and often in roles of major responsibility.

3. The Jewish people have lived among other people, in very hostile conditions, often forced to do banking(loans) and commerce at times when most people did agriculture. That forces a certain entrepreneurial spirit, and possibly higher intelligence(also witnessed by the higher rate of genetic illnesses in Ashkenazi Jews). That, plus a culture that always focused on learning(religiously).

Summed up in one word - discipline. The glamorous myth of startups is just that, a myth. Some outliers go from zero to hero overnight, but most require slogging away day in and day out. Motivation can only last so long, and after it's gone all you have left is discipline. Military writings both current and historic routinely speak of discipline being the single most important aspect of achieving a goal.

Interesting what would happen if this is said about any other country

Of course this does not mean Dutch Iranians are smarter than Dutch Moroccans, but it could mean there might be more smart/entrepreneurial Iranians than Moroccans in The Netherlands.

These statistics might die out very quickly though, for example Turks are often already second or third generation, so many have been born in the privilege of The Netherlands.

Perhaps similarly, the second world war cost us a huge percentage of Jewish people, being privileged has meant having a larger chance of survival through moving to less dangerous countries (like the U.S.).

It doesn't mean Jewish people are smarter, it might mean though that you could find a bit more smart Jews in their population. Of course the second world war has already been a long time, so the effect might already be gone.

I'm probably average intelligence, but I've had it expressed to me by people who hardly know me that they expect that I'm brilliant or something because I'm an Ashkanazi Jew. Its one of those stigmas that get attached to any race, such as Russians drinking Vodka or Argentinians eating meat. I'm sure that there are sober Russians, vegetarians in Argentina, and there's me!

Some people would say that this is cultural. I doubt it -- I think it's genetic. Intelligence is a physical attribute determined by genes, just like every other physical attribute. It's really no different from the observation that Kenyans and Ethiopians win most marathons.

In general, we should expect different traits to be exhibited at different frequencies by different populations that were reproductively isolated in the past. This doesn't mean prejudice is okay. Not all Jews are smart, and not all Kenyans are going to win marathons. We can acknowledge these correlations without behaving in a prejudiced way toward individuals.

Most people would rather not talk about this. And that's certainly my rule of thumb for in-person conversations. But, hey, we're on the internet.

You're assuming that intelligence is the determining factor in winning a Nobel prize, which seems spurious at best. Work ethic and training, particularly early in life seem, to me, like they'd be better predictors. I'd posit that Jewish culture is better at nurturing intelligence before I'd conclude that there's some ethnic superiority going on.

While there isn't a bullet-proof case, there is quite a bit of evidence for an ethnicity-intelligence correlation.

The only value judgement I was making is that higher intelligence is superior to lower intelligence and that Nobel prizes is an extremely poor proxy for intelligence.

But don't most Kenyan and Ethiopian marathon winners also grow up in Kenya or Ethiopia? I.e. how do we discount at very least environmental factors (including, for instance, diet), even if you doubt cultural ones?

No. There is a hugely disproportionate number of Americans and British of Somali, Kenyan, and Ethiopian origin who excel in world class distance running (Adbirahman, Farah, and many more, including a big new wave of Somali American after).

Fwiw I don't think you're necessarily wrong about intelligence but from what I remember The Gene (Siddhartha Mukherjee) does have a few passages contradicting this theory. Also by questioning the validity of IQ tests.

Could it also not be that jews are just more motivated to get in to STEM fields and perform well, for cultural reasons or otherwise?

Similarly, Malcolm Gladwell mentions a theory about why "Asians are smarter" which according to him may be related to hard and smart work leading to bigger rice harvests, and other factors (see here https://www.cs.unh.edu/~sbhatia/outliers/outliers.pdf).

While I have zero interest in the cultural implications and all the moral panics surrounding these issues, I don't think intelligence being mostly down to genetics is a proven fact. I find it gets extremely complicated very quickly.

Genes are hugely influenced by their environmental (cultural) triggers and those should not be ignored.

This is the main reason for the ancient historical stereotypes linking Judaism and money/wealth/power/etc. And why names like Goldstein (gold stone) are considered Jewish names.

I heard that a lot of times from mostly uneducated people. All nations have equal level of intelligence. The difference might be access to education, environment, common wealth, and social inequality.

Edit: I would argue to the contrary, that there is a appreciable difference in average IQ between some countries which expresses itself among other things in GDP and quality of life. Perhaps the nature of this difference is based on things like nutrition, environment quality, pre-natal screening and care, so improvements in all these things will decrease the gap. If it happens that after all of that there is still a certain gap , who cares? As long as the citizens live in peace and relative prosperity.

How do you know this?

This is also true for the U.S. itself; Silicon Valley is largely a creation of Pentagon investment (see: DARPA).

[1] https://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/interactive/2018/03/unders...

In my experience, it's been the opposite. They like to play office politics, focus on keeping work off their plate, and they're not really team players.

I may just have a bad sample of Israel tech workers, though.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Start-up_Nation

Where I think Israeli tech startups get most of their mojo, is desperation. Their culture involves so much struggle and effort .. and I think the reaction to it at a personal level, results in the laziness, non-team-playing, political problems.

(disclaimer: I am an American and don't know what I'm talking about. I have visited Norway but it was summer.)

So I daresay there's more to this than just the Arctic Circle.

Just because of sun? Did you try UV?

> yet somehow I missed the possibility to sit down and be productive in some narrow topic.

Do you mean that you preferred the life you led in Australia to the one in Norway? If not, how do you mean that quality of life was insanely better?

> Do you mean that you preferred the life you led in Australia to the one in Denmark?

Calling a Norwegian a Dane is about as popular as saying a Canadian is from USA or calling an American British I guess ;-)

(Seems I've offended someone else though, but I have no idea why.)

Even then it's not ideal. The lowest brightness setting still isn't low enough.

In my twenties I could happily destroy my circadian rhythm and sit in front of a screen til 4-5 in the morning. At 35 that shit's gotten real old.

That's enough implying in my books.

(Besides, if we're to play this game, I never said that _you_ "implied they didn't prefer it". I just asked, "why wouldn't they prefer it").

Purely anecdotally, I am not part of a startup, but do a lot of hobby work in coffee shops around Stockholm. I'm always seeing/hearing people in local cafes discussing some new startup or project they are getting off the ground. I've also seen first hand many people get maybe a year or two of funding and start up their own game studios, for example. Of course not all of them end up being successful, but many people feel secure/comfortable enough to try. I think the volume of these attempts and people trying to do something new also helps drive up the number of "hits" overall, to be added to these kinds of lists.

A relatively egalitarian society with a lot of trust between people and towards the government has made progress relatively effortless. When people don't feel the need to guard their own position because they might end up getting screwed there often isn't any good reason to be against development.

A relatively large amount of excess time, security and knowledge that enable people to something else. Startups are ultimately about harnessing excess potential. If all the value are capture by some other industry or the housing market there won't be much left over for startups.

Various cultural factors enabled by those things. Like being able to be independent (with the help of the government). Not being afraid to leave value on the table. An overall sort of generous, or at least non-petty, society.

If you look at factors like these, you can actually draw a lot of parallels to somewhere like SV compared to the rest of the world. SV is to at least some degree a recreation of academic life at its best. Which is the area of US society that would be most similar to Sweden.

I’m not sure this is too applicable to SV, lol, nor academic life in the US.

Sweden's social safety net is among the strongest in the world. If the floor on failure is that you still have access to food, housing and healthcare then quitting a full-time job to start a company becomes much more possible.

More people starting companies, more attempts at big targets, more outlier successes.

Initially it was just non-commercial Internet for academic institutions, but lots of students were exposed to the technology and the infrastructure early on.

[1]. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Internet_in_Swe...

[2]. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet#History

From what I understand, both Holland and Sweden are culturally similar enough that I can't immediately think of other factors that make 'us' more hostile to startups.

Also, compensation. The Netherlands has a lot of good people, but they’ll leave for greener pastures.

That leaves the more interesting question: why is The Netherlands different from Sweden in this regard? My impression was that The Netherlands, if anything, is more internationally-focused.

> Also, compensation. The Netherlands has a lot of good people, but they’ll leave for greener pastures.

Does Sweden pay better, taking into account cost of living? And if so, why?

(not disagreeing, btw, just more questions)

Obviously, there is the business side in addition to the computer science side. I don't know much about that with respect to Holland.

But one possibility is that Dutch computer scientists tend to leave Holland to work. That explains why I know of so many as an American? (e.g. I worked with Guido van Rossum and Werner Vogels advised my master's project)

I don't think our electronic music scene is less commercial though.

Without disputing the technical correctness, Spotify's Göteborg office was literally a single desk at a shared office for the first three years of its existence.

The former hosts ABB and has tons of robotics related research, the latter has one of the major universities. The startup scene is smaller in Västerås than in Uppsala though.

Uppsala produced Klarna and Skype, Västerås produced Pingdom, to name some.

Here in Belgium, in the Flemish part of the country we don't dub movies but in the French part we do. The levels of English are massively different, not sure if this is the main reason.