381–390 of 477 posts
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They called it "radical acceleration", but they don't do it anymore. There were some mixed outcomes, like mine. These days it would be considered unethical experimentation on human subjects.
Did you run into social adjustment issues?
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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…
Perhaps true geniuses know the social value of humility.
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Saying I worked hard is a more comforting story than saying I was lucky. I think people are likely to put more value on hard work than its due.
I think that what successful people tell themselves is not that important of an issue. What's important is the narrative we give people who are not yet successful. I have a friend who's smart, and is a really good listener. We have really good philosophical conversations, and he kicks my ass at board games. I've been wanting him to get into programming, because right now he's working as an assistant manager at a sand…
> 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 the end, I had practiced more and have pretty much programmed everyday for 7 years, while they only did the minimum requirement to pass classes in CS>
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Actually, his example was very relevant in this regard. Chess has a limited set of rules, once learned all that remains is practicing and letting it to sink in ...for those who are slow at that. To develop poetry is not about the rules themselves as it is about the subjective appreciation of your readership. That skill is not that technical and may take years to hone it right.
>Chess has a limited set of rules, once learned all that remains is practicing and letting it to sink in // I learnt recently that Chess computers/programs are pre-seeded with standard moves and apparently do very badly if they're set to play without using the traditional openings. This seems to move against your analysis of what is needed to play chess well. Study of stock openings also appears to be required to per…
-- I was born in 1960.
-- I got my first algebra book when I was 4, and aced the subject immediately.
-- I had one IQ test score higher than the one that got Marilyn vos Savant into the Guinness Book of World Records.
-- The National Merit folks thought that I was the youngest winner of their scholarships until that day.
-- I got a math PhD from Harvard when I was 19.
-- At least up to a point, I check a lot of the usual boxes, like music and chess.
That said, I was not some kind of math genius. Ofer Gabber and Ran Donagi were at Harvard when I was, having started in grad school at 16 and 17 respectively (I started at 16), and both were clearly better at math than I was, even adjusted for age.
More particularly:
-- When I was young, I was really, really good at keeping a problem in my mind and worrying at it until I made progress. I could fall asleep doing that and keep going when I woke up. I understand that's quite unusual, and as I aged I lost the ability myself.
-- I'm not particularly good at spatial reasoning. I can power my way through some of it by raw inferencing, at which I am indeed very good, but that's about it.
-- I can learn a bit about any subject and appreciate key issues in it very, very quickly. That's reflected in my actual career, and also in the large number of subjects I dabbled in in school.
-- I probably COULD have been world-class somewhere in the vicinity of economics/public policy (as academic areas). But I was burned out on academia at age 21, after 9 years at universities, left for the business world, and never went back.
-- I don't know how good I'd have been as a computer scientist. I never tried.
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Perhaps true geniuses know the social value of humility.
> True geniuses know the social value of humility. Wouldn't you have to be a genius to be able to make such an evaluation?
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There are a lot of people for whom "math" means just the algorithmic computation drudgery they teach you to vomit out on exams by pouring it down a funnel into you in an ordinary American high school or UK A-levels math course. Doing a similar (or even the same) calculation a bunch of times to get the same result is, in short, boring, no matter how you dress it up. If prior to college everyone learned how to visualiz…
And I'm sure some homosexual men just haven't found the right woman yet. But clearly most homosexual men just don't like women no matter how attractive they are. Is it so hard to believe that some people see math in a similar way?
Preference outside of sexuality is attained through experimentation and learning. A lot of people are deeply suspicious to the point of hatred of cultures and ways of thought they don't understand well or have a misunderstanding of. I believe dislike of mathematics falls into the misunderstanding category. Being a gay man versus a straight man isn't a misunderstanding, it's part of who a person is. Obviously it took some self discovery for an individual to determine their sexual identity, but whether you like or dislike math isn't on the same level. Some people are more spatially inclined and have an easier time grasping higher math (I am not included in this group) but some people have to work their ass off for every shred of mathematical understanding (I am in this group). Some people don't understand why this work would or could be worth it. Some people never even get to the point where they have to do anything other than 'plug and chug' to get the right answer for the worksheet, and so see nothing valid or useful in the stuff we teach in most math classes before upper division college level.
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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.
>Hard work is overrated. What you really want is curiosity. This is BS, and the kind of BS that results in lazy entitled adults expecting the world to be their oyster because they have kept their dreamer curiosity intact. Out of the people I've know who are internationally-recognized academics and/or world-class engineers, many are both hard working and creative. Probably the majority of them, in fact. But many more…