/sci/ - Science & Math

>>10196235
>>10196240
>>10196254
Just an interesting point for all of you to consider.
Chinese people did indeed invent a lot of important things before Europeans, and Indians had good ideas as well.
Still, Europe developed in the middle ages at a breakneck speed, compared to Asia, and I think the reason for this is fascinating, and it has nothing to do with either IQ, or colonialism.

Europe had such a good time because it was fragmented as hell. This meant that the dozens of little kings on the hills had to entice journeymen and traders and the like to go do business (and get taxed) on THEIR land.
This meant that entrepreneurs in Europe generally had more freedom of movement and freedom from intervention from the state.
India had, on the other hand, an incredibly rigid caste system. China was a huge, unified empire where neither local lords, nor the emperor had any reason to grant anyone any sort of freedom unless it was absolutely necessary.

The moral if the story is, if you want people to develop and innovate and sheit, you have to make them as free to pursue their interests as possible. This is perfectly in line with the graphs posted previously as well. China had a huge program beginning in the 90s, intended to open up markets and give people way more freedom than they had under Mao's communism. The result was literally hundreds of millions of people escaping crushing poverty, and China emerging as a superpower.

>tl;dr freedom good, authoritarianism bad

>>8709366
I work for a defense company. Still kind of an intern, only do three 8-hour days a week, other two days, I'm at the university.

At the moment, I develop software for a portable tablet-like device intended for nuclear power plant workers/swat-teams/soldiers.

Most of what I do is C, had to do C++ for qt the last few weeks, did not work out.