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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

#361

Post by jknoepfler »

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…

As someone who was measurably "gifted" as a child, I will say that the idea that I was more tenacious or laser-focused could not be farther from the truth. Instead, I just "got" things very quickly, such that it required very little effort to learn. I also read at a very high level through practice (I read fiction voraciously), which probably helped. I have since levelled off, and confess to struggling to learn through brute force things I don't readily apprehend. That said, I find the frequency of really good, creative ideas that I have is much higher than my peers, which has translated into a lot of success in the dev world (I dropped out of a phd program in philosophy and joined ama-google-softbook as a dev, as a bridge to starting a business).

I don't dispute that effort is a variable in long term performance, but it's more of a criterion for long term performance than a predictor of raw talent imo.

I will also say that being singled out for special treatment is pretty silly, I think a more constructive use of my time as a child would have been to help peers who were struggling.

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

#362

Post by jknoepfler »

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…

As someone who was measurably "gifted" as a child, I will say that the idea that I was more tenacious or laser-focused could not be farther from the truth. Instead, I just "got" things very quickly, such that it required very little effort to learn. I also read at a very high level through practice (I read fiction voraciously), which probably helped. I have since levelled off, and confess to struggling to learn through brute force things I don't readily apprehend. That said, I find the frequency of really good, creative ideas that I have is much higher than my peers, which has translated into a lot of success in the dev world (I dropped out of a phd program in philosophy and joined ama-google-softbook as a dev).

I don't dispute that effort is a variable in long term performance, but it's more of a criterion for long term performance than a predictor of raw talent imo.

I will also say that being singled out for special treatment is pretty silly, I think a more constructive use of my time as a child would have been to help peers who were struggling.

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

#363

Post by ZenoArrow »

imgabe wrote: post #343
balabaster wrote: post #293

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't believe that it's coincidence that every person I've ever come across that has been proclaimed a genius at whatever has had this very same sentiment to express. There was a grain of talent and a moment of inspiration that led to a dogged pursuit of their interest. People are quick to write it off as "oh, they had talent" or "oh they were a genius", but I'm reasonably confident given the number of amazing peop…

Nobody ever mentions the counterexample, assuming it exists - the person who spends thousands of hours practicing but never gets anywhere. How many Salieris are there for each Mozart? There's definitely a need for hard work in order to have success, but perhaps there's something necessary that has to be present for the hard work to build upon. Maybe that something is "genius".

Hard work is overrated. What you really want is curiosity. You can refine something with hard work, but broadening your horizons comes from a desire to see what can be done. Basically, do you want to create a refined version of what's already been done, or do you want to explore what's possible. You can alternate between them to push in both directions, but the mindset is different.

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

#364

Post by Practicality »

mhurron wrote: post #350
Practicality wrote: post #314

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That may or may not be true, but it's not what we were talking about. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moving_the_goalposts#Logical_f...

Except it is, you are trying to put forward that IQ among engineers is high as some proof that HN must be of a higher general intelligence than the rest of the population. I said IQ is bullshit, the implication being it can not be used to prove your position. For IQ to support your position, it must be a valid measurement of intelligence. I am attacking the validity of your data.

My original post was all about the distribution and rarity of people with different IQ results and how the article confuses the three different cohorts. Those three cohorts are defined by IQ. The terms "above average," "gifted" and "genius" all refer to IQ scores.

I agree with you that using these terms in the colloquial sense is undefined, and therefore useless to discuss. Hence, why I wasn't using that meaning of the word "intelligent."

If my argument was that HN commenters had higher intelligence and I was referring to an amorphous concept, then yes, my position would not be possible to defend.

However, my position was that the majority of commenters on here would be in the top 10%, as defined by IQ tests, since that is what the original article was talking about.

[Edit: I mean, what would I even be saying to say someone is in the top 10%, 1% or .01% of a subjective, poorly defined quality? It would be nonsense. I would have to be referring to something measurable to even try to divide people into cohorts by such measure.

Unless you actually think I am sitting there looking at people and saying hmm, I think, yes, you are better than 99 out of 100 people I know in terms of intelligence. And you, yes, you, you are better than 9,999 out of 10,000 people. You are just that smart. That's just silly.

And come to think of it, if I was referring to a subjective quality, then I could decide who is the best, and I could just declare that HN commentators are in the top 10%, because well, that's the the way I feel about it]

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

#365

Post by jack9 »

Moshe_Silnorin wrote: post #251
wrp wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know a Chemistry professor whose favorite remark on this is, "A PhD is a badge of endurance, not intelligence."

>A PhD is a badge of endurance, not intelligence It's very clearly both.

It is not. The purpose of a PHD is to advance the sphere of human knowledge as it applies to a subset of existing data in a unique way. Getting the PHD by proving something empirically is the point of a PHD. This does not require a great deal of intelligence. Not enough to warrant more than a participation badge, anyway. e.g. Computer Science, where there's tons of data and few people have done the grunt work of organizing it for a statistician.

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

#366

Post by Practicality »

SamReidHughes wrote: post #355
mhurron wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> People are not just randomly assigned to reading and commenting on Hacker News No they randomly show up being either directly or tangentially associated with either technology or startup culture. That's it. And while those people really do love to think of themselves as more intelligent than the general population, I don't see it.

Of the users of this site with top 100 karma there's at least two people that are unquestionably in the top 0.01% of math ability. (They'd both pass the 0.001% cutoff, too.) And there'd be a third if we went to the top 150 karma (basing this off how karma tails off on https://news.ycombinator.com/leaders ). That would be very unlikely if HN was a random assortment of the population, or a random assortment of the top…

"at least two people that are unquestionably in the top 0.01% of math ability."

To whom are you referring to, if I may ask, and what do they do? (I would just like to learn about them)

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

#367

Post by betenoire »

sokoloff wrote: post #339
betenoire wrote: post #310

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for the comment. I have a sincere question for you, if you didn't have a great healthy family, and you had a shitty career or whatever, would you still be happy?

I tend to be fairly optimistic and see the good in even bad situations, so I'd probably OK with even a worse set of circumstances (once that was the steady-state normal). IOW, if I suddenly lost my wife or we split up, I'd be unhappy as hell for a while. In a counterfactual where I never met her or even ended up single, I'd probably still be happy because I'd shape my world and interpret my world in a way that made m…

Thanks. I relate to what you said.

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

#368

Post by gbog »

michaelkeenan wrote: post #225
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…

> as a parent you just want your kids to be happy I think this isn't universal. "Tiger mother"-style parenting[1] doesn't seem optimized for happiness, and whatever impulse is behind punishing or occasionally murdering your children for premarital sex[2] doesn't seem happiness-focused either. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tiger_mother [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honor_killing

Sure honor killing is an exception, but tiger mothers will tell you that they work hard to make sure their kids will be happy in their adult life. Maybe I wouldn't agree with their definition of happiness, because to me bring the best is very far from it. Being able to ensure high pressure, however, is a condition of happiness in many places.

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

#369

Post by naasking »

truth_sentinell wrote: post #273
naasking wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Are actually there studies that claim a special ability is due to genetics only? Of course there are, like tetrachromacy [1]. Or even more mundane: XY chromosomes prevent men from having the ability to give birth. I also think you're vastly underappreciating the results from genetic studies. Twin studies have repeatedly shown that identical twins separated at birth and growing up in wildly differing conditions, sti…

Thanks, I didn't know about that. But I meant cognitive abilities, like Math.

Why would cognitive ability be different than any other characteristic, like height, athletic ability, and so on? Those same twin studies have shown that intelligence and academic performance are also highly heritable.

Certainly nurturing an ability will enhance performance, but there's an inherent upper limit to everything. Just like eating right and exercising won't make you grow taller than some max threshold, so studying and solving riddles won't make you more intelligent than some upper bound dictated by your genes. We don't know how to measure that yet, for either height or intelligence, but that bound is there.

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

#370

Post by gbog »

toast0 wrote: post #92
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…

It doesn't really matter if being "super smart" makes your kid happier or not; they are who they are. If they're "super smart, academic interests will likely have intrinsic rewards, and supporting that is going to increase happiness. Telling one of these kids to shut the book and watch tv isn't going to make them happier.

Shut the book and watch tv (and eat chocolate bars) is the sure way to low self esteem, you'd never go that way. Your kid being super smart doesn't matter here.

Also most parents will believe their kid is smarter than average, no need to encourage this illusion which can hurt a lot when you have to face reality.

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