Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

scientificamerican.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

121–130 of 477 posts

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

#121

Post by dorfsmay »

Isamu wrote: 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…

Paraphrasing Dweck's, but also matching my personal experience:

At the end to the day, hard work is what allows one to push the limits. A gift/talent is just a good kickstart that makes the owner's life easier, but people with talent are quickly limited if they don't work hard. the biggest issues are that people counting on their gift are afraid of exposing their limitation and become more and more shy of taking risk, they also often don't get into the habit of working.

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

#122

Post by sotojuan »

XparXnoiAx wrote: post #100
pmoriarty wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 w…

>In certain areas, hours might be enough, There is no area where hours are enough. How you apply the hours is extremely important.

Learned this the hard way. I spend a lot of hours learning stuff in a bad way—I end up not mastering anything!

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

#123

Post by matt-attack »

lintiness wrote: post #93
ralusek wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is everybody so binary about this? Are we really suggesting that some individuals are not capable of intellectual tasks at a greater capacity, or a greater speed than others? If you understand that a human being has a higher cognitive function than a sea slug, a wasp, a mouse, a dog, a dolphin, an ape, by our genetics alone, then you have to accept that there is a degree of genetic variance between individual hum…

apply the same to "sexes" and "races", and you offend our modern pc sensibilities.

God forbid either of those words imply there's a difference despite the very definitions of those words are to classify and distinguish plainly different groups.

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

#124

Post by ef4 »

iopq wrote: post #66
JacobJans wrote: post #65

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.

You're just describing one of the most well-established facts about learning: the dominant factor is intrinsic motivation.

Whether you call them hobbies or studies, the fact that you were intrinsically motivated to pour effort into them is why you got so good at them.

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

#125

Post by jdietrich »

pmoriarty wrote: post #76
Isamu wrote: 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 w…

I absolutely agree. Chess reveals in a very concrete way that you can just run out of talent. Every player seems to have an innate ceiling on their abilities that no amount of study will overcome. Spend long enough in a club and you'll see it over and over - the duffers in their forties who can never seem to break 1800 and the snotty kids who skyrocket to 2300 with no apparent effort.

Golf seems to be fairly similar. Lots of players spend every weekend at the range and take endless lessons and workshops, but never manage to get their handicap down to single figures.

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

#126

Post by vbezhenar »

Isamu wrote: 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…

Many children from my school spent a lot of time and additional classes to learn math. I never did that. I almost always skipped my homework. Yet I was the best in my class. Things, that other children found confusing and hard to understand, were very obvious to me and when I was asked to solve something from home work, I just did it immediately.

That said, I was talking about ordinary children without any selection. After school I went to math faculty in university with similar children. That was cruel, I sometimes felt so stupid.

There's definitely talent. And there's hard work. And sometimes it goes hand-to-hand, sometimes it's not. There are untalented people who's working hard and achieve a lot. There are talented people who doesn't give a damn and yet achieve a lot. And there are talented people who word hard and flying in the sky.

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

#127

Post by Retric »

eli_gottlieb wrote: post #98
Retric wrote: 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…

>not because of some single minded focus as she had ~10 AP classes and ended up High school Valedictorian. So you're saying she did have a single-minded focus on school?

School took a lot of time, but was not her main focus.

Considering she wanted to be an artist and mostly did that on the side, school was a net loss of time. It's one thing to scrape a C and doodle in all your classes, it's another to find time to draw on the side in the middle of a hectic schedule. Getting a 5 in AP calculus is hard for most people who want to use it, for someone who has little interest in math that's a huge time investment.

AKA if you do one thing well then you can argue it's a time investment, when you do everything well that takes something more.

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

#128

Post by smnplk »

truth_sentinell wrote: post #113
ralusek wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is everybody so binary about this? Are we really suggesting that some individuals are not capable of intellectual tasks at a greater capacity, or a greater speed than others? If you understand that a human being has a higher cognitive function than a sea slug, a wasp, a mouse, a dog, a dolphin, an ape, by our genetics alone, then you have to accept that there is a degree of genetic variance between individual hum…

"Genetics" is the new God. Apparently people assign whatever they don't know or understand to genetics. Can't play football? That's genetics!! Knows math? More genetics!! Are actually there studies that claim a special ability is due to genetics only?

It takes genetics to be interested in something too I believe.

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

#129

Post by paulpauper »

Jimmy wrote: post #11

I get quite depressed when I read articles like this. I'm resentful of the fact that my early academic performance was merely above average, rather than exceptional. Some days I feel confident in my abilities and my plans for the future; other days, I fear that it's already too late for me to accomplish anything of note.

That's why you need to invest in index funds (ideally the S&P 500 or Nasdaq 100), high-IQ companies - specifically Google Amazon and Facebook- or use the inverse ETF decay strategy that makes 20-40 percent a year.

Buying in-the-money call options using 3-1 leverage on Google, Amazon, and Facebook has returned 200% since 2013 vs. 30% for S&P 500.

The motivation behind this strategy is that average-IQ people can make good money piggybacking off the creative contributions of America's smartest .1%. Facebook, Amazon, and Google stock will keep rising, as part of this trend, allowing average people to profit by joining the ride.

But existential problems are harder to solve than money ones, and even the smartest are faced with them (hence philosophy as a subject).

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

#130

Post by Practicality »

mhurron wrote: post #117
Practicality wrote: post #105

This article is a bit of a mess regarding who it is talking about. It hops around and changes it's target constantly. Sometimes it is talking about people in the .01%, AKA, 1 in 10000, so actual geniuses. Sometimes discussing people in the above average range, IQ of 120+, which is about 10% of the population (depending on your test), as well as people in gifted programs, which again, depending on your test is the top…

> Most here on HN are in one of the other two groups What would make you say that? Since there is no actual filter and no one is actually forcing any requirement, it should be that most of any group are somewhat similar to the standard distribution of the population, so most on HN should be like most of any other group, bog standard average. I know I am.

The topics and the community are both a filter and forcing a requirement. From my own observation I would wager that a majority here are in that top 10% .

People are not just randomly assigned to reading and commenting on Hacker News. It's an intellectual community that would naturally attract those who have such skills.

Post reply on HN