These costs [of moving] discouraged enough folks from moving that every town had its intellectuals. They dreamed of moving to Manhattan, but they never did. You'd find them at the library, in the local theater company, running a Great Books club, etc.One question to ask is, why do the dumber people congregate into towns? I think it's because smarter people get more added value from being around other smart people, so they take the initiative to move, while the rest are left behind to form dumber towns.
Monday, April 03, 2006
The Town Intellectual
This is an interesting blog post: Dumb towns getting dumber; smart towns getting smarter?
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How about... smart people have smart kids, and dumb people have dumb kids? That would seem to work.
A more interesting variation - in a smart city, the smart people reproduce, and in a dumb city, the dumb people reproduce. Differential reproduction rates between opposite ends of the spectrum can have a huge impact in a couple of generations.
Another possibility - immigration. The average IQ of immigrants into a city might be different depending on why the immigrants come. If they come to provide cheap labor it would be different than if they come to attend a university.
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