Lessons from a 45-year Study of Super-Smart Children

Plenty of people spend hours drawing and still suck at it. My sister spent hours with a coloring book as a kid, and now has a growing IMDB page.* Sure, she went to a great art school, but not because of some single minded focus as she had ~10 AP classes and ended up High school Valedictorian. Even this did not take her full attention as she had a wide circle of friends, was very popular, and spent a lot of time on makeup etc.

So yes she worked hard really really hard. But, those hours where simply worth more than other peoples.

In the end the nature vs. nurture debate is silly as it takes both to succeed. The minimums simply increase as you go up the scale. There are a few short people in the NBA, but nobody is below 5' tall. The top women are vastly better than the average man, but the classic men's vs women's sports has a core basis in biology.

*Shorthand for wanted to work for Disney as a kid, now has actual movie credits and words for Disney. That's about as concrete a form of success as you get for such a subjective field.

As someone who has been through the CTY program (I was a SET member, having scored above a 700 in math in 7th grade), I can say I've never been happier - I'm well off financially, have a career I greatly enjoy, and for the most part I can enjoy all the activities I have a desire for.

On the flip side, my brother was also a SET member, and there are some contrasts with me - he got his PhD in chemistry at 25 (I never finished my PhD in math) and was accelerated, having gone to college after 10th grade after cutting school for most of the year. He picked working with semiconductors, and that turned out to be a poor career choice. He accomplished much more in academic prestige than me, but his mistake cost him quite a bit financially - he is currently retooling to become a data scientist & is currently interviewing for entry level/junior positions.

Don't fret; everyone in our generation was raised to believe we were the 1 in 10,000. That simply can't be true 99.99% of the time.

We're a generation that needs therapy to realize that a stable, six-figure job as a mid-level engineer at 30 isn't failure. Our expectations (some might say entitlement) were set so unreasonably high that most of us have no chance of meeting them.

While I'm all for the logical/rational ideal of extracting the most amount of potential from people, but competition needs to be treated with care.

How do you propose competitiveness be constructively harnessed? If you are proposing selective schooling etc. there is a danger of creating social segregation which can reduce social mobility and as a result social cohesion. There is also a social benefit to both the talented and less-talented from interfacing - the talented can learn humility while the others can gain inspiration for example.

>Gifted children are "gifted" with a laser focus on the unusual things that they find fun - math, music, what-have-you.

This is my thinking as well. I was a kid like this. I suspect there's a connection between being asocial and being 'gifted.' If you're happy playing with compilers and such and don't feel the need to run out of the house to play ball, then you're just going to soak up a whole lot of stuff other kids aren't. The laser focus is probably optional as well. Although, I suspect there's a connection with being asocial and being easily and deeply focused on things other than socializing.

As an adult, I'm still asocial. I also am not introverted, which seems to be a common misconception about this personality type. I can be very loud, outgoing and demanding if need be and feel perfectly natural. I just don't like to socialize very often.