Pavel Durov

They still think competition is a bad thing.

They try to eliminate competition from their economy as well, to an extent, saying, we're going to make sure the losers don't lose and the winners don't get too much.

But as a result, they make their entire systems less competitive, their entire economies.

Some of them in Europe,

are now struggling to keep up with China, with South Korea, with Singapore, with Japan and other places where the education system was based on ruthless competition.

So this is a hard choice any civilization has to make.

We support competition understanding that it eventually leads to progress in science and technology and abundance for the society at large.

Or we remove competition thinking that somehow we can shield the future generations from the stress

that competition inevitably causes.

think there is a lot of evidence proving that we are biologically wired to compete and establish our understanding of what our qualities are and talents are in relation to other people around us.

And this is one of the ways society self-regulates.

Well, first of all, I must say I learned pretty much everything from my brother.

Everything I know, because when we were used to be kids,

We slept in the same bedroom, like beds a few feet away from each other.

And I kept bugging him with questions.

I'd ask him about dinosaurs and galaxies and black holes and Neanderthals.

Everything I could think of.

And he was my Wikipedia back in the time when we didn't have internet access.

He's a unique prodigy kid, probably one of a billion.

He started reading at the age of three, I think.