The school → university transition might be the most interesting one WRT tristanm’s question, because although it theoretically offers the best opportunity to select for rationality, in practice a lot of people can’t or won’t exploit the opportunity. I imagine even quite nerdy students, when deciding where to apply to university, didn’t spend long asking themselves, “how can I make sure I wind up at a campus with lots of rationalists?” (I sure didn’t!)
I don’t know about rationalists but one big advantage of going to what’s called a “highly selective college” is that your peers there are mostly smart. The same principle works for schools, except that the results are not as pronounced because the schools effectively use the wealth of the parents as a proxy.
Yep.
The school → university transition might be the most interesting one WRT tristanm’s question, because although it theoretically offers the best opportunity to select for rationality, in practice a lot of people can’t or won’t exploit the opportunity. I imagine even quite nerdy students, when deciding where to apply to university, didn’t spend long asking themselves, “how can I make sure I wind up at a campus with lots of rationalists?” (I sure didn’t!)
I don’t know about rationalists but one big advantage of going to what’s called a “highly selective college” is that your peers there are mostly smart. The same principle works for schools, except that the results are not as pronounced because the schools effectively use the wealth of the parents as a proxy.