> but there is an obvious filter that the ones left behind are on average less risk taking
Where’s that clarity come from? The opposite could be argued as well: those who’ve left are seeking safety and safety isn’t associated with risk taking. There are fewer risks in leaving Russia than in staying in.
> breakthrough is much more likely to come out of the young risk taking ones now living in a functional country and not from the aging engineers living in a dictatorship and working at a bureaucratic rosatom making "up to $720 a month" (actual number, I looked up their open engineering vacancies).
Here, you did it again: “those who work at <this company> are less likely to make a breakthrough, because I don’t align with them, and therefore I assume that only aging engineers uncapable of breakthroughs would consider staying and working there. Look, even salaries prove that they are less likely to have it.”