> we are all biased and reality is too complex to argue about without simplifications, so that's not a great argument.

However it's a good argument for distinguishing between simplifications introduced by feelings and the ones introduced by omission while trying impartial judgement, as these simplification premises would have different value to your listeners.

> Do you really think that a loss of that million is insignificant and that the roskosmos/rosatom/rostech/etc will accomplish more than all the people that have left? If so, could you explain why you think that?

We must first establish and agree on the dimension by which you're willing to evaluate that significance. What would be a unit of measurement of the significance that you're mentioning in your comments?

>However it's a good argument for distinguishing between simplifications introduced by feelings

It's not based on my feelings but on the personal experience and some research I did. All the smartest people I personally know and worked with have left the country. I also looked up the top 10 AI researchers at Yandex, and out of the ten I looked at only one was is still in Russia, that's a 90% loss for the top talent in the hottest industry at the (arguably) most innovative company in the country.

>We must first establish and agree on the dimension by which you're willing to evaluate that significance

Sure thing, let's take two, scientists and entrepreneurs as their accomplishments are the easiest to quantify. The unit of measurement would be the influential papers written for scientists (measured by the number of citations) and for the entrepreneurs the market cap of the companies they started, obviously both of those are not perfect metrics but they generally track with the value created.

Do you think the million people like the "MIPT, MSU and HSE graduates" that have left the country that the other guys are mentioning will do better on those dimensions versus the ones staying at rosatom/roskosmos/etc?

> It's not based on my feelings > All the smartest people I personally know > I also looked up the top 10 AI researchers at Yandex > in the hottest industry at the (arguably) most innovative company in the country.

All of that is actually based on your feelings that (1) the people you know are smart enough to be qualified and counted among the brightest, (2) the AI software research and the researchers you personally know are more relevant to the points you make, than other research and the researchers you haven't met in other industries that Russia is excelling in.

> Sure thing, let's take two, scientists and entrepreneurs as their accomplishments are the easiest to quantify. The unit of measurement would be the influential papers written for scientists (measured by the number of citations) and for the entrepreneurs the market cap of the companies they started.

I disagree with the market cap metric because it's useless to compare without other constraints on the kind of businesses we're allowed to compare directly. For starters, a hypothetical company involved in the derivatives market may easily be evaluated higher than a profitable energy-producing company purely because of a higher speculative capacity of the former, since the markets allow for derivatives to exist as assets in the books. I disagree with that premise purely on a basis of the 2008 crisis that showed that those had never been assets manifested in reality.

I disagree with the influential papers' citation count too, because that measure would be subject to interpretation of influence. Are AI papers influential? Are all AI papers influential? You could get thousands of meaningless citations for a parroting AI architecture for every single meaningful citation of Perelman's proof of the Poincare conjecture. Which one of those would you value as more influential? I assume no one could seriously suggest that citations for AI software papers would have the same nominal value as citations of the fundamental proofs in mathematics or physics.

> Do you think the million people like the "MIPT, MSU and HSE graduates" that have left the country that the other guys are mentioning will do better on those dimensions versus the ones staying at rosatom/roskosmos/etc?

You are conflating two groups again: the million people left aren't all the kind of "MIPT, MSU and HSE graduates". Not all of them are the Techies in the first place. The right question to ask would be if I think that those who left have better chances to excel at science and business (regardless of their qualifications) than those who stayed. My answer to that question is no, I don't think so, because there's no hard evidence for that. There only is a hint that they might be better off financially if they dedicate their lives to making money in the industries that are known for generating loads of cash, like finance and tech. That's about it. Switch the roles and try comparing artists and less technical folks in their respective places at home and abroad, and the odds are suddenly opposite.

Alright, if we're talking fundamental research, what about the number of the Fields medal recipients? I feel safe taking that bet, in the last 30 years for one Perelman there's 6 russian-born mathematicians that received it who are in the US or Europe.

I can disagree and question everything all day too, but you gotta nut up or shut up, pick an objective metric and I'll take a bet on it. Gdp, citations, number of patents, number of users of the product, number of Nobel prizes, anything measurable that would work for you? Literally anything measurable not based on your feelings.