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Comment by jedberg | Hacker News Reader

It's a simple matter of math. The USA has less than 5% of the world's population. It's statistically impossible for that 5% to be the smartest 5% in the world. Therefore, if we want the smartest people in the world, we have to allow immigrants.

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The smartest aren't uniformly distributed across the Earth.

That's true. It is possible that the smartest 5% are all here in the USA. But it is statistically unlikely that's true.

You put words in my mouth. I don't claim that the smartest are clustered in the USA.

So your original comment was somewhat of a tangent. the point jedberg made is that it is in the interest of a country with a strong economic and academic base to welcome the smartest people from across the world, since it is unlikely that all the smartest people in the world are in the US.

Yes, but Jedberg makes it sound as though -- given that only a small fraction of the world's population lives in the USA -- the country has little chance of succeeding if it is to go without immigrants. I disagree, and an extreme example I could offer as a counterpoint is Japan: tiny population (relatively), yet outsized performance.

Japan has struggled economically for decades. One of the fixes being put forth is to greatly increase immigration.

So we need leetcode for immigration now?

They almost certainly are, at least before we account for education. Education is, of course, not uniform.

But... the US also has not the best education, so.

> account for education

and nutrition, pollution, infectious diseases, etc

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