> Seriously? As someone in a rural area who is [...] NO. You cannot say that.
Sure but you're just one person out of millions. We're trying to compare populations. And obviously the prior poster didn't mean that every rural person who moves to a city is more intelligent/ambitious than every person who stays, but you knew that already (note how you didn't object to more liberal, presumably because it doesn't carry a value judgment with it and also because it's clearly true in an important sense).
I haven't seen any studies, but it is very plausible to me that people who up and leave tend to be more intelligent and ambitious, if only because it's a costly thing to do and income/wealth correlates with everything good.
I think the definition of "intelligent" and "ambitious" will differ based on who you ask. A lot of folks in rural areas think taking out debt to go to school is not a very intelligent thing to do. Likewise a lot of urban dwellers would likely say that going to college is the intelligent and ambitious thing to do.
It really depends on your previously-held beliefs, which are only reinforced by the echo chambers we live in.
My argument that leaving your home town is costly stands regardless of what your definitions are. For a similar example, tall people tend to both be more intelligent and to come from richer families because malnutrition as a child negatively effects both height and intelligence.
You may ask if I'm not using a pedantic, irrelevant definition of correlation that captures even tiny correlations we don't care about, but when we're talking about politics (where swings of a few percent can reliably flip elections), and polarisation (which is pretty much defined to be the amplifying of small differences), I think this is very relevant.
Sure but you're just one person out of millions. We're trying to compare populations. And obviously the prior poster didn't mean that every rural person who moves to a city is more intelligent/ambitious than every person who stays, but you knew that already (note how you didn't object to more liberal, presumably because it doesn't carry a value judgment with it and also because it's clearly true in an important sense).
I haven't seen any studies, but it is very plausible to me that people who up and leave tend to be more intelligent and ambitious, if only because it's a costly thing to do and income/wealth correlates with everything good.