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

scientificamerican.com

71–80 of 477 posts

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

#71
post #37
post #5

> Pioneering mathematicians Terence Tao and Lenhard Ng were one-percenters, as were Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg, Google co-founder Sergey Brin and musician Stefani Germanotta (Lady Gaga), who all passed through the Hopkins centre. Didn't expect Lady Gaga to be listed although it confirms one of my pet theories. It has long been my opinion that success in STEM fields correlates with general high intelligence which will…

> Meanwhile in East Europe (namely Romania, Moldova, Ukraine, Russia, probably other countries too but I don't know anything about them) competitiveness between children is crazy high in some circles and that's why a lot of the best engineers come from that area. Competitiveness is worth nothing, if you compete to just get the best grades for the exam. Most of the exams have close to no value in real life and do not…

I did not say competitiveness in school. I agree with you that competitiveness for grades is useless. I'm talking about general mentality.

EDIT: I notice that I did write "between children". I shouldnt have.

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

#72
post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm an introverted nerd and I enjoy socialization. This is a bad example.

What's the correct word for someone who doesn't enjoy socialization? What does introverted mean? Does it just mean "person who enjoys being alone" or "person who is not good at socializing, even though they may enjoy it"?

Introverted means you feel tired after socializing, while extroverted people feel excited and energized. Both need to socialize, but the introvert needs to recharge alone.

Only very weird people are asocial. This trait was very heavily selected against in tribal societies because surviving on your own is much less likely.

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

#73
post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't feel like that's true. I didn't expend any effort on my studies and it just came easily to me. Now, I'm not a genius, but there's a huge difference between my aptitude towards anything and the average person. I scored in the 99th percentile in math on the California high school exit exam. I went to community college at 15 (while still taking some high school courses at first, but upon taking the proficiency e…

>I didn't expend any effort on my studies >I was reading calculus textbooks when I was 10 years old. I suggest that you, indeed, spent effort on your studies.

Calculus textbooks are difficult but rewarding.

A 10 year old child who can enjoy them must have some gift that makes it easier for them to understand the difficult parts quickly and get straight to the rewarding part.

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

#74
post #28
post #5

> Pioneering mathematicians Terence Tao and Lenhard Ng were one-percenters, as were Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg, Google co-founder Sergey Brin and musician Stefani Germanotta (Lady Gaga), who all passed through the Hopkins centre. Didn't expect Lady Gaga to be listed although it confirms one of my pet theories. It has long been my opinion that success in STEM fields correlates with general high intelligence which will…

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 tale…

I believe that simply removing the "stigma" on this topic is already a good step in the right direction.

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

#75
As someone interested in education (of self and of others) and generally interested in the notion of talent itself, I have been trying to form my own personal understanding of what it means to be talented.

My fundamental belief is that almost anything can be learned under the right instruction. Talent determines two things:

1 - your upper ceiling of "achievement" in a particular dimension, and

2 - how far you can progress within a given dimension without instruction.

That is, a naturally gifted person is likely to get very good at something they were "destined to do" regardless of if they had any decent instruction. With the right instruction, they may well reach some stratospheric heights.

1 is important because at some point a talented individual reaches a place where there is no longer any one person who can teach them anything new in their dimension and so they have to rely on their instinct to progress further.

Schopenhauer had the quote:

    Talent is like the marksman who hits a target which others cannot reach; genius is like the marksman who hits a target … which others cannot even see.
There seems to be some conflict in how Schopenhauer interpret talent and genius, but that final sentiment is important to my point regarding a talented/gifted/genius individual not requiring instruction. No one can really teach you how to push a field to new unreached heights.

My personal favourite anecdote of genius is when Chopin's first musical teacher Zywny refrained from teaching him (aged 8 years old) any keyboard technique lest he interfere with his natural instinct. In his later teenage years and early twenties went on to write music quite unlike anything written for the piano at the time - thanks to his unorthodox technique.

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

#76
post #14

> Such results contradict long-established ideas suggesting that expert performance is built mainly through practice—that anyone can get to the top with enough focused effort of the right kind. Actually the claim is the other way around - that the people at the top got there through focused effort of the right kind. Finding "gifted" children does not contradict this. Nobody pops out of the womb a math genius. Gifted…

In certain areas, hours might be enough, but not always and everywhere.

Chess is a good example. I've seen a 12 year old kid at a chess competition wipe the floor with dozens of much older players (people in their 40's, 50's, and up), who've been playing chess -- obsessively -- their whole lives.

This 12 year old kid has been playing chess for maybe 6 years (let's say 8 years maximum), but he totally crushes others who've played 40 or 50 years or more. Chess can be very addictive, and a lot of people spend virtually all their waking time playing it, for decades on end, studying, competing, yet that's not enough, and they can be easily beaten by someone much, much younger than them, who's put in only a tiny fraction of the time and effort they have.

I've also seen a 10 year old kid, who was really hyperactive and distracted when he played, always looking around him at everything but the chessboard, apparently interested in anything but chess. His mother sat next to him, and had to struggle to get his attention back to the board whenever it was his move. Yet he played at a high level against people much older than him. Again, he really couldn't have put that much time in to it, no matter how interested he was in it.. and he clearly wasn't that interested.

Chess is one of those fields where prodigies are relatively common, especially compared to fields like poetry that really do require a lot of life experience to be effective. The kids I've described are not that rare. It happens even at the highest levels, with Bobby Fischer being the archetypical example (becoming the youngest grandmaster at 15 and winning the US championship at 14). These days chess prodigies are even more common than in Fisher's time, thanks to computers and the internet. Still, whatever happens with them is not explained by the hours they put in to the game alone, as many people put in many more hours and much more effort than they do and still fail miserably.

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

#77
post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I didn't expend any effort on my studies >I was reading calculus textbooks when I was 10 years old. I suggest that you, indeed, spent effort on your studies.

Those weren't my studies. Those were my hobbies. Give me homework and I'll run away screaming. I used to HATE the language subjects. Now that I'm not being forced to do it, I enjoy linguistics.

When you disagreed in your first comment you disagreed to this:

> But it boils down to the hours that kids put into their interests.

While you then go on to say that that is exactly what you yourself did. That you don't like being forced to learn is besides the point, but also sort of confirms it. You spend time (learning) on things you enjoy. That's how you become "gifted". The trick is having kids be engaged with something productive and not spending time on [insert subjective detrimental activity here]. Whether parents can influence that or it's down to luck is debatable, but I definitely lean towards the former.

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

#78
post #38
post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ma…

I dont want to detract from your story, but >has an IMDB page is a funny metric for success.

I thought that was kind of a weird evidence of success at art but I guess the person was in animation/special effects?

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

#80
post #62
post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the idea is that the 1-in-10,000 in this context is that it's not something you can "break into"; you're either born gifted or you're not. It's really hard for our generation to accept that some people really are born "better" -- which is exactly why the article mentions the education system now focuses on bringing up lower performers rather than identifying and accelerating gifted students.

I'm a strong believer in the idea that some people are born better, you don't have to convince me. The extent of my abilities is still unknown to me. I know what I want to achieve and I will continue trying to achieve it until I succeed or I am dead. To accept anything less is equivalent to death.

May I ask how old you are? And what you're trying to achieve?
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