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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

#211

Post by UlyssesSKrunk »

karma_vaccum123 wrote: post #99

I just knew these comments would fill up with humblebrags from HNers who wish to casually and inoffensively proclaim their genius.

Oh please, get off your high horse and pull your head out of your ass. He's making a perfectly valid point. Anybody who genuinely believes some people cannot by innately better at some subjects to the point that they can study several grades ahead of their peers without putting in more effort is an idiot. Not everybody can learn what everybody else can by simply putting in more hours, innate ability is most definitely a thing.

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

#212

Post by Jimmy »

antisthenes wrote: post #184
Jimmy wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Sorry to break it to you, but the most influential video game designers were born in the 70s. They've made Doom, Baldur's Gate, Fallout 1-2, Everquest, Master of Orion and all the other classics in the 90s and very early 2000s. Most games released today are either donationware (WoT) or completely derivative works (think long running series like CoD or sports games), or survival-game clones like No Man's Sky (and abou…

You have a very limited conception of what video games are capable of.

This is like going up to an aspiring writer in ancient Greece and saying "The Odyssey has already been written, there is nothing more to be done." Not realizing that 2,000 years later, authors like Joyce and Nabokov would still be breaking new ground.

Assuming the human race endures long enough, video games are at the very beginning of what is going to be a very long and interesting history.

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

#213

Post by saint_fiasco »

geocar wrote: post #136
saint_fiasco wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> must have some gift Or what? The rest of us are dumb? It could have been a good teacher, who found a way to make it make sense, or some other series of positive reinforcement that shaped them and prepared them, to be thinking about mathematics clearly. It doesn't have to be the luck of the draw. I don't want anyone to give up, thinking they just didn't get the gift, so they should be content with playing with the b…

It just means the rest of us have to work harder. It doesn't mean you have to be content with less intellectual pursuits.

Just because most people will never be Olympic medalists doesn't mean they shouldn't play sports and exercise. Lots of people do those things even when they don't have a particular gift.

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

#214

Post by bloaf »

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…

This is certainly true, but there is another way to think about it. If you suspect that some kid (including your own) will be likely to make some moderate-scale positive contribution to the world (e.g. invention of the telephone) do you have some moral obligation to ensure that the kid has the training, resources, and encouragement to do so?

Essentially, can you weigh the potential benefits to humanity against that child's preferences?

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

#215

Post by kohanz »

irrational wrote: post #196
pas wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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".

BS = Bulls---

MS = More s---

PhD = Piled higher and Deeper

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

#216

Post by HillaryBriss »

> “... these people really do control our society,” says Jonathan Wai, a psychologist at the Duke University Talent Identification Program ... "The kids who test in the top 1% tend to become our eminent scientists and academics, our Fortune 500 CEOs and federal judges, senators and billionaires”

The article assumes that promoting these super-bright people and geniuses is the way to solve the difficult problems the rest of us face. There's a faith in the generosity and altruism of these high-performers.

But, I see plenty of selfishness in their behavior too.

It seems plausible that the top layer of brilliant geniuses is creating as many problems for the rest of us as it is solving. Maybe the top layer of brilliant geniuses mostly focuses on work that is personally enriching (e.g. financial engineering, patent lawsuits, investing in 140-character-type startups, pharmaceuticals that don't actually cure diseases, etc)

Maybe what society needs is not "more geniuses" but a better system of regulations and incentives for existing geniuses.

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

#217

Post by MagnumOpus »

Silhouette wrote: post #200
iopq wrote: 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…

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…

That is exactly what he argued - that his achievements are due to being smart rather than "laser focused".

Not being a genius means that he is merely 2 standard deviations smarter than the mean (think "there's a few of those in every high school class") rather than 4 standard deviations smarter like the kids in the SMPY.

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

#218

Post by wavefunction »

spdionis wrote: 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…

One of the best things a "gifted" child can learn is the value of those different than themselves, and how to work with others to not only reach their own capabilities but encourage the capabilities of others who may not be "gifted."

I personally feel that a balance of 'normal' life as a child along with a rigorous and expansive set of opportunities for that child to explore their gifts would be healthiest and most productive for the gifted and the societies they inhabit.

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

#219

Post by AStellersSeaCow »

jmde wrote: post #120
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…

Depending on how you define it, you could say my research is in this general area. My sense of how to interpret these sorts of findings has changed greatly over time, and become much more moderate and humble. Discussions over these issues tend to be very heated and people oversimplify issues on both ends. These tests are predictive, and as you point out, it's disingenuous to claim otherwise. They're measuring somethi…

>What's frustrating to me is that there's this sort of all-or-nothing attitude about testing, where tests are seen as useless, or as a perfect indicator of skill or ability. The truth is in-between.

Yes. This is a major point people need to focus on.

I think, to bastardize a famous quote, that testing is the worst simple measure of aptitude, except all the others we've tried. In a perfect world, any admissions/hiring decision would be made after multiple independent in-depth examinations of a candidate's past work, plus extensive interviews. Since that level of vetting is unfeasible for all but a tiny sliver of the most desirable spots, we need ballpark estimates like testing that will be more predictive than coin flips.

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

#220

Post by blahblah3 »

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…

“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.

I have never understood the intention behind this type of statement (which I've seen many variants of commonly espoused). Let X be the event "got a high test score at a particular test at a certain point in time." Is Matthews saying X = X (an uninteresting tautology)? Or is he claiming that X is uncorrelated or not predictive of other variables of interest (career success, ability on other task) which is clearly empirically false.

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