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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

#401

Post by balabaster »

seizethecheese wrote: post #397
AStellersSeaCow wrote: post #382

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Haha, no way. I've worked with or met a half dozen MacArthur fellows, and none of them were shy about bringing up that fact. You could argue that MacArthur selects for self-promoting geniuses, but such creatures clearly do exist.

Exception that proves the rule. How do you know if someone you met went to Harvard? They already told you.

This I've found over the years is more a product of insecurity than of ego or genius. People quick to tout their alumnus or IQ... or indeed any other measure of intelligence in such a manner are looking for validation and acceptance of their superiority because it satisfies their insecurity.

Though, I would have given my right arm to go to MIT earlier in my life, just for access to MITs professors, forget the degree.

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

#402

Post by euyyn »

Coincoin wrote: post #317
TheSpiceIsLife wrote: post #298

Earlier quoted context omitted.

PhD stands for Piled Higher & Deeper. Is a path of learning more and more about less and less. (of course that isn't necessarily true, but I find it amusing)

> Is a path of learning more and more about less and less ...until you know absolutely everything about absolutely nothing.

Then you become Dirac's delta.

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

#403

Post by kajjffkk »

xyzzyz wrote: post #357
rb808 wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>A stable six-figure job is failure. If you look at the study, only a quarter of the gifted students made it to the 95% income percentile. Being a Genius doesn't make you rich or happy or give you a satisfaction. It makes it more likely you'll have a PhD & produce academic papers.

To get to 95% income percentile, you need to earn at least $190k a year. I'd be very interested in seeing how many gifted students don't reach, say, 75% percentile, which is around $90k a year, and why.

Smart people dont need to grind their life away to brag to their peers about their middle class income.

Hopefully for all of us, theyre doing something more innovative for society, no matter how long it takes.

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

#404

Post by yarvin9 »

sokoloff wrote: post #279
betenoire wrote: post #8

But are they happy?

I'm in the study and the long-term tracking surveys they send us periodically have many questions designed to ferret out different aspects and indicators of happiness and success in different dimensions of life. I can't imagine how I could be much happier in life. I have a great, healthy family, great career in a field that allows me to use my brain to create tons of business value for my company, take home an approp…

I was in the top cohort and I'm an Internet supervillain. Or something. You get what you select for, I guess!

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

#405

Post by balabaster »

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".

That something usually less genius and more a grain of inspiration followed by a love of the process, followed by a ton of hard work to get to a point that the instrument is an extension of the musician's soul.

I will concede that this may not always be the case. Of course, there are a thousand Salieris for every Mozart. But when you set out, you don't set out to become Salieri. When you play in an orchestra, you don't spend your life striving to play second fiddle and you certainly don't just get to sit down in the principal violin spot because you're a genius. You work for it, just like the guy who earned his right to be on that podium leading the orchestra.

For everything that's wrong with the movie Whiplash, there is a lot of nuance that it captures really well regarding the personalities in orchestras and what it really takes to get to the top of your game.

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

#406

Post by balabaster »

hinkley wrote: post #400
ZenoArrow wrote: post #363

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I think it's two sides of a coin here. When someone asks me how I fixed some obscure bug or crazy performance issue, I will say something like 'I was the last one to give up on it'. You could also say that many other people looked at the same thing and either didn't give a shit, or they weren't willing to continue suffering toward the payoff at some point. Is that tenacity? Curiosity? Some of each?

Usually this is a combination of thousands of hours learning to understand how things work and how they break under certain circumstances. Once you get to a certain point, your ability to make the mental leap from the symptom to the cause can just be a feeling in your gut that seems to lead you uncannily to the right place, but you discount what it took to get you there. Is it tenacity that mean you were the last one to give up on it or is that just stubbornness because "fuck this shit, I'm not going to be beaten by a fucking computer!" <- That's me.

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

#407

Post by cloverich »

truth_sentinell wrote: post #263
cloverich wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can validly support the genetic basis for cognitive advantage without understanding the precise functioning of the brain, because the brain is a physical structure. Being complex its unlikely a single genetic factor (nor is intelligence singular anyways) determines it. But there is a substantial amount of evidence that supports at least some genetic basis for traits that give some people a cognitive advantage ove…

Ok, so you are admitting your ideas are fact-less, mere assumptions that can easily be true or false, yet you're down voting my comment because it doesn't align with your evidence-less assumptions about the brain? Again, what's that evidence? Is it a genome? some sort of better brain capacity?

> so you are admitting your ideas are fact-less, mere assumptions that can easily be true or false

I'm saying that were there a dearth of evidence either way, the argument for a genetic basis would still be valid based on the premise that the brain is a physical structure (among other things). In actuality, there's a good bit of evidence that its at least partially, and perhaps mostly, genetic.

> Again, what's that evidence? Is it a genome? some sort of better brain capacity?

Its polygenetic and at least partially influenced by the environment. Its unlikely that higher brain capacity plays a large role (in the difference between humans). Identical twins separated at birth provide the best evidence

> yet you're down voting my comment

Wasn't me :)

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

#408

Post by michaelcampbell »

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".

> How many Salieris are there for each Mozart?

And if Mozart hadn't been there, at that time; would we not be speaking of Salieri as the genius? Perhaps.

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

#409

Post by balabaster »

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".

also, I've yet to see anyone spending thousands of hours on productive practice and not get anywhere. Conversely, you can spend thousands of hours practicing a shitty golf swing and you're not going to get anywhere but an over-practiced shitty golf swing. Without correction and enforcing good technique and good habits at every practice, you're not going to get anywhere fast if at all.

Music is a bit of a poor example for application to "genius" actually because just like a golf swing much of it is in the practice of your gross and fine motor skills and good technique, which as we all know, if you don't rigorously practice good habits, you may as well not bother practicing at all because you're actively going in the wrong direction.

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

#410

Post by dwaltrip »

aquiles wrote: post #19

I'm so glad I'm over my "being super-smart" phase and into my "being a well-rounded, functional human being" phase. People who fetishize things are the source of all things bad in the world.

Good points to consider, as long as we don't fetishize well-roundedness :)
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