Thread by @shrikanth_krish

Much of economic growth depends on breakthroughs at the margin

Outlier achievers
Off-the-chart individuals in terms of drive and IQ

Yet when we measure human capital, we have a continuous scale

School completion %
Graduation %

No focus on producing more geniuses per-capita

You could increase the college graduation rates in society from 5% to 25% over half a century

Yet your production of "exceptional" individuals at the margin in different fields of endeavor may have hardly increased by a factor of 5

Just to give a rough example -

Sure...the average Indian's knowledge of math was abominable in 1910. Way better in 2020

But are we producing more world class mathematicians per capita?

1910 India had Ramanujan

Not sure if we have one in that class today

Another example -

A largely illiterate country with little to no awareness of political science, produced remarkable men like BN Rau, Krishnaswami Alladi, BR Ambedkar, who played a lead role in writing the Constitution

Today we have tens of thousands of people studying law and Political science in our universities

But do we have the same intellectual ferment around law and politics that existed in the 1940s?

Do we have as many great legal minds as in the 30s/40s?

No. At least I doubt v much

Same analogy extends to sport

Sure...the average standards of most first class cricket teams today is wayyy higher than in the 1930s

But the best players of today aren't necessarily better than the best players of an earlier era

Is Kohli better than Bradman?
Is James Anderson better than Ray Lindwall?

Not necessarily

In other words, we don't seem to be getting better at the margin....

There is a certain constancy there...we don't necessarily have more exceptional individuals amidst us in % terms

What we have succeeded at is in dragging large sections of low-brow ppl to middle-brow range

Public policy is focused on improving the mean. Not increasing the number of outliers

We focus on pushing more and more ppl to college
Encouraging more and more women to join workforce

Those things are OK

But how about giving v high quality childcare to kids aged 0 to 5?

Because early care is v v critical to producing outliers

We are worse at that in some ways, especially with the modern urban reliance on daycare and nannies

Another factor that can improve the outlier % is religion

Religion can channel the focus of v v high potential individuals, by shutting out distractions for them.

And focusing on their work to the hilt

Yet as a society we are worse off in that regard...

We look down on extreme personal austerity.
Extreme focus on certain disciplines to the exclusion of others...

E.g. We want even mathematically gifted teens to also focus on extra-curries, develop social skills, date girls, join debating clubs etc

Waste of time

Basically the focus of our education is to produce "well rounded" people

We want kids to work on their weaknesses

Instead of focusing on their strengths

This kind of a middle brow culture is v v unfavorable to the objective of producing outliers in society

It creates a middle brow society with middle brow gentility and political correctness

Not much more

Back in early 19th cen, the great historian James Mill home-tutored his child John Stuart Mill, who became one of the great figures of the 19th cen

John Stuart Mill was made to read Greek/Latin by age 3
He had read Xenophon and Heredotus's works by age 8
Euclid by age 9

Is there a John Stuart Mill in our times who will get the sort of education that he did from his father?

No.

Because fathers are busy working 70 hour weeks
And so are many mothers

The kid grows up with nannies

We are producing outliers by accident. Not by design

And that's a shame