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

scientificamerican.com

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

#191

Post by Fricken »

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…

With athletics there's not much debate that the Lance Armstrongs and Usain Bolts of the world have physiological advantages over others giving them an edge that extends well beyond just effort and smart training. Our brains are physiological things as well, with considerable developmental variation from one person to the next.

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

#192

Post by ikeyany »

gbog wrote: post #36

It seems weird to me that nobody seems to see the evidence: as a parent you just want your kids to be happy. Happy in the correct way, which means long-term happiness, built with good cultural background, reasonable social skills, constructive hobbies, ability to have some of those good friends, etc. Most of these are not achieved if you're kid is "super smart". Being the father of Einstein is probably very good for…

There are several kinds of happiness. You seem to be describing contentment. What about the happiness that comes from knowing that you are the very best? The ego is a very powerful motivator of human behavior...just look around you for proof that everyone wants fame or notoriety of some kind.

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

#193

Post by truth_sentinell »

ralusek wrote: post #185
truth_sentinell wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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?

I didn't say "only" genetics. I'm just saying that your genes are enormously responsible for what you can excel in. Are you really suggesting that genetics don't play a role in who can successfully play football? If I'm 6'5", is that because I practiced at my height for 10,000 hours? By the way, to act like genetics are "suddenly" king because of some pop-science trend is ridiculous. Genetics have always been king, i…

Physical advantage due to genetics is very different from cognitive advantage due to genetics. First and foremost because we don't even have an absolute way of assessing intelligence, nor we have an appropriate scale (I personally think IQ is BS).

That said, where exactly is the genetic factor that determines whether a person is more intelligent than other? Is it more neurons? More connections among them? the ability to process information quicker?

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

#194

Post by sokoloff »

trendia wrote: post #7

> “A high test score tells you only that a person has high ability and is a good match for that particular test at that point in time,” says Matthews. If Matthews is correct that scores are transient, then we'd expect test scores to have little to no predictive ability. In other words, we'd expect the rate of career achievement among high test takers to be approximately equal to the rate of achievement among low test…

I am part of the SMPY study cohort (from 1982) and have another close friend who is from the 1983 or 1984 study cohort. (The qualification at the time was 700 or greater on the SAT Math before age 13. This was, of course "SAT one" scoring system.)

I also spent some in summer camps with other students in the study and have remained casual friends with some of them over the years. I don't see any evidence to suggest that that level of demonstrated ability is transient.

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

#195

Post by pmoriarty »

rurban wrote: post #168
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…

I have to disagree a bit. I've been labeled a genius as a kid and e.g. loved to beat the best chess computers at that time, Mephisto III on the highest level in the 80ies. I loved to play blind also, but stopped that when I couldn't get to sleep or would not stop dreaming about tricky moves. But I never had a chance against humans on lower levels. The problem was the time constraint and nervousness. In tournaments an…

Speed chess (or blitz chess) has become popular in recent decades, but I think the standard tournament times are 2 to 2.5 hours, if I'm not mistaken. You might have gone to blitz tournaments, where yes, your inability to play quickly would have been a great handicap.

But blitz tournaments are not the only, or even the most popular type of tournament. When you see someone's chess rating (ie. 1700, 2000, etc), those are ratings at slow time controls. When someone is referred to as a "grandmaster", it refers to a title that is earned at slow time controls. The world chess championship is played at slow time controls. There are blitz tournaments, but they are not as popular. Blitz is very popular in clubs, though. You're right there.

My guess is that you couldn't leverage your superior slow chess skills to blitz because you just didn't practice much blitz (ie. short time controls or fast games) on your computer, or against human players. This is understandable, and is quite common. It takes some practice to get used to playing blitz. I'd bet you would have made a fine blitz player if you'd put in some time practicing it, and your slow chess skills would have helped you in blitz, as blitz and slow chess aren't different games, but blitz relies more on intuition as opposed to deep analysis. But both blitz and slow chess require good pattern recognition and memorization, so your aptitude in the slow chess would have helped you in blitz, once you got enough practice in playing more intuitively at faster speeds.

Finally, as far as chess computer these days go: just because the computer moves fast doesn't mean you have to move fast. You can set whatever time controls you want when you play against a computer -- hours, days, weeks, or even turn the clock off altogether. On the other hand, chess computers have gotten so good these days that unless you're a world class player, you're just not going to beat them at their highest difficulty settings, no matter how much time you have (unless you cheat). They're still good to practice with, and you can still play slow chess (even correspondence chess, where you mail or email moves to each other and take a long time to reply) against humans. I think if you look, you'll find plenty of slow chess fans around the world that you can play.

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

#196

Post by irrational »

pas wrote: post #157
squigs25 wrote: post #143

Interesting read, but I have one major qualm about this. There seems to be a confirmatory bias among the academic community that a measure of intellectual success can be found in the percentage of individuals who earn a PhD. Sure, it's true that you need to be reasonably smart to earn a PhD, but I think that someone can have a lot of intellectual success (potentially just as much or maybe more) if they don't earn a P…

Knowing a few friends and other acquaintances with PhDs, all they have common is endurance and focus. They were not exceptionally creative, or apparently breathtakingly genius. And I guess that's why Google et al. likes to hire PhDs. They can take all kinds of shit, and endure. Get to the bottom of those problems even in the face of internal politics/bureaucracy.

This reminds me of the old joke that PhD stands for "Pile it on Higher and Deeper".

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

#197

Post by clifanatic »

corysama wrote: post #23

I skimmed the article pretty quickly because I was looking for the answer posed by the title and rightly expecting 90% background and filler stories. I didn't find much in the way of answers... Let me know if I missed anything. Why some kids excel greatly beyond most others is still pretty mysterious. Don't call them gifted. High school is not a great social environment for introverts to learn in. Just give them acce…

The parts I skimmed all seemed to contradict each other, too.

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

#198

Post by icefox »

Jimmy wrote: post #118
csallen wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I'm 24. My goal is to be one of the most influential video game designers of this century. I may not be considered the absolute greatest (rankings like that are very fickle anyway, and never universally agreed upon, even in the sciences). But I do want my works to be considered necessary for any future survey of the major works of this period.

Got a link to your games?

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

#199

Post by [deleted] »

Jimmy wrote: post #118
csallen wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I'm 24. My goal is to be one of the most influential video game designers of this century. I may not be considered the absolute greatest (rankings like that are very fickle anyway, and never universally agreed upon, even in the sciences). But I do want my works to be considered necessary for any future survey of the major works of this period.

[deleted]

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

#200

Post by Silhouette »

iopq wrote: post #46
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…

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…

Now, I'm not a genius

And yet you also told us:

I was reading calculus textbooks when I was 10 years old.

I scored in the 99th percentile in math on the California high school exit exam.

I transferred to a university as a junior at 17.

Regardless of the nature/nurture debate, if you can achieve those things at those ages with any amount of work then you are clearly far smarter than most people, at least when it comes to mathematics.

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