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How to Raise a Creative Child – Step One: Back Off (2016)

nytimes.com

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Re: How to Raise a Creative Child – Step One: Back Off (2016)

#131

Post by CuriouslyC »

Retric wrote: post #14
CuriouslyC wrote: post #3

My personal theory on this is twofold: 1.) High achievers are used to pushing at things to win. Creativity is like a garden - you have to do some tending, but then you have to back off and let the plants grow. Fiddling doesn't help, in fact you're liable to end up killing the plants. 2.) Smart people actually learn too fast. Creativity requires very broad neural connectivity, and I think fast learning tends to produc…

2) This falls into the just world fallacy. Intelligence does not seem to come with real drawbacks. Highly intelligent people often have upper end reflexes, are unusual attractive, highly creative, social, and or content. They are more often taller and live longer as well. The trappings of intelligence are different, but very high raw intelligence is seen across most walks of life including actors, athletes, and sales…

You might not believe intelligence comes with any drawbacks, but when those neurons are wired well to perform one task, they're by definition wired poorly to perform other tasks. There is no universal neuron wiring that does a great job at everything. Barring things like malnutrition or lack of environmental enrichment, being bad at IQ tests just means your neurons wired differently. There is almost certainly something lower IQ people are better at. Take autistic savants for instance - their abilities arise because their brains are wired very differently from normal. They're not functional in a lot of ways, but there are some things they are freakishly good at.

As for your uber race, maybe you want to use the word "talent" instead. The only thing that connect these highly talented peopled is that they seem to excel at pretty much everything they put their minds to. If you tested them you'd find that their IQs have a fairly broad range. The median would certainly be above average but that isn't what makes them different. It is more about learning to focus and apply yourself than having a knack for manipulating symbols in your head.

Re: How to Raise a Creative Child – Step One: Back Off (2016)

#132

Post by anigbrowl »

replicatorblog wrote: post #63

In adulthood, many prodigies become experts in their fields and leaders in their organizations. Yet only a fraction of gifted children eventually become revolutionary adult creators. My daughter is being treated for Leukemia by some amazing doctors at Boston Children's Hospital. To my knowledge, none of the health care professionals at this world-class institution have won Nobel Prizes in medicine. All the same, for…

Nobody suggested such a life was wasted. But creative people are constantly bombarded with signals that they're too weird or different and need to be more like obvious easy-to-understand role models of diligent behavior.

Re: How to Raise a Creative Child – Step One: Back Off (2016)

#133

Post by Spooky23 »

jacobolus wrote: post #18
padobson wrote: post #9

The parents of ordinary children had an average of six rules, like specific schedules for homework and bedtime. Parents of highly creative children had an average of fewer than one rule. I grew up in a household where compliance to parental authority was the prevailing rule. This made me fairly compliant as an adult (which opens you up for exploitation by peers and authority figures), but this wasn't too difficult to…

My son is only 8 months old, so we’ll see how it goes, but my intention is to give him lots of freedom to define what he wants to learn about and work on, but then help provide lots of structure and support for actually doing the work, and making sure it gets pushed all the way to a quasi-finished state. The thing I was most disappointed about in my own schooling was that I got very little support or time to do serio…

End of the day, do your best and don't sweat the advice that you'll get from anyone with a mouth.

Being there and giving a shit is 90% of the battle.

Re: How to Raise a Creative Child – Step One: Back Off (2016)

#134

Post by CuriouslyC »

nostrebored wrote: post #4
CuriouslyC wrote: post #3

My personal theory on this is twofold: 1.) High achievers are used to pushing at things to win. Creativity is like a garden - you have to do some tending, but then you have to back off and let the plants grow. Fiddling doesn't help, in fact you're liable to end up killing the plants. 2.) Smart people actually learn too fast. Creativity requires very broad neural connectivity, and I think fast learning tends to produc…

Using neural networks as a machine learning concept to explain actual concepts in Neuroscience is a huge overstep. People have always thought the most advanced technology can be analogous to cognition, see steam engines and clocks.

Artificial neural networks are much closer to neurons and brains than economic models are to markets, but we give economists a pass. Perhaps we should stop listening to them and revoke their publishing privileges?

Anyhow, the point wasn't to say Brains == ANN, rather it was to show how learning too quickly has consequences in other models of learning. This was mostly so people wouldn't just dismiss the idea out of hand as having no justification (which people seem to want to do regardless).

Re: How to Raise a Creative Child – Step One: Back Off (2016)

#135

Post by houst0n_ »

shouldbworking wrote: post #126
houst0n_ wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So it's their failure and not yours? I have a comparable story; dropped out of school at 15 and didn't touch education since (>15 years ago now), then spent a few years high and drunk: but I'd learnt perl from the camel even before then. What do you think you are owed? If i hadn't read k&r or learning perl by myself I should then blame my teachers who hadn't read them either? Most of the best folk I've worked with fo…

I knew I would draw some fire with that one :) . Telling people the system failed has them pointing the finger back at you. They've seen the system work plenty of times before so people that don't make it just suck. I ended up fine and I don't really have a grudge, but that doesn't stop me from thinking the system is broken. I definitely wasn't the best student in the world but I don't see anything wrong with pointin…

I've actually never seen "the system" 'work', in that I never willingly hire grads and almost none of my experienced staff have ever had a formal education. But then again I'm not doing hardcore algorithmic stuff in the valley.

My only point was that, at least in my experience and situation, school/'normal progression' means very little in reality. Aas such I don't think it can be used as any sort excuse for anyone's situation.

I was comprehensively failed by the education system in my country and it made no difference. Shit; having thay experience actually seems to be the trend that all the best people I've worked with share.

Smart people are smart people. Some keep going and end up as weird and twisted as us, and some don't.

The ones who kept going tend to be those who got to where they were in spite of their situation. Maybe your world is different to mine tho.

Re: How to Raise a Creative Child – Step One: Back Off (2016)

#136

Post by keldaris »

smackingly wrote: post #78
replicatorblog wrote: post #63

In adulthood, many prodigies become experts in their fields and leaders in their organizations. Yet only a fraction of gifted children eventually become revolutionary adult creators. My daughter is being treated for Leukemia by some amazing doctors at Boston Children's Hospital. To my knowledge, none of the health care professionals at this world-class institution have won Nobel Prizes in medicine. All the same, for…

Maybe I'm biased because I'm a no-name physician at a community hospital, but the "best doctors" in my eyes are the ones with the best outcomes, lowest utilization, highest efficiency and highest patient satisfaction. These measures don't correlate well with the physician's credentials. I learned this in residency, which I did just down the street from a "top" university hospital. We out-performed that place on every…

The problem for me as a reasonably educated patient (physics PhD, done some work in biological physics, amateur knowledge of medical literature which I enjoy reading) is that the "top" academically performing doctors leave a public track record of their expertise in the form of academic publications I can go through and evaluate. I fully realize that this doesn't necessarily (or even often) correlate with practical skills that determine patient outcomes, but at least it's a metric I can look at. With most doctors, there is no such metric, so I'm essentially playing the lottery. The salient question then becomes whether it's statistically better to play the lottery or go for the academically prominent doctors, and I'm not aware of any decent studies exploring that. Do you have a recommendation on how to approach that issue from the patient point of view?

Re: How to Raise a Creative Child – Step One: Back Off (2016)

#137

Post by geomark »

aliceyhg wrote: post #72

In cultures like Korea, hierarchy and unconditional respect for their elders is so deeply rooted that it is evident in the language itself (When addressing elders or someone more important, you have to speak a specific way). This gives a false sense of righteousness and superiority. In societies like these, could the culture itself be an obstacle to creative growth?

It is similar in many countries. In Thailand, where I live, it is also built into the language. There are many different pronouns for addressing others based on your relative social standing. There are pronouns not only for normal societal interactions, but special pronouns for when you are speaking to monks and another set when speaking to/about royal family members. In fact, there are even different verbs that are used when talking about common activities of monks and royalty. Makes for a very pretentious culture and it certainly does inhibit critical thinking in much of the population.

Re: How to Raise a Creative Child – Step One: Back Off (2016)

#138

Post by ilyaeck »

Spooky23 wrote: post #96
replicatorblog wrote: post #63

In adulthood, many prodigies become experts in their fields and leaders in their organizations. Yet only a fraction of gifted children eventually become revolutionary adult creators. My daughter is being treated for Leukemia by some amazing doctors at Boston Children's Hospital. To my knowledge, none of the health care professionals at this world-class institution have won Nobel Prizes in medicine. All the same, for…

That's a thing that always bothers me about these articles. If the standard of success for a gifted grade school kid is to be a Nobel laureate, that's a little warped. My grandfather was one of the smartest guys I ever met. Through the circumstances of fate, he couldn't get education beyond the 8th grade. Yet he tutored my mom in calculus and did all sorts of good things for people. By any standard of mine, he lived…

+1000

Re: How to Raise a Creative Child – Step One: Back Off (2016)

#139

Post by Spooky23 »

FussyZeus wrote: post #40
lacampbell wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seriously with the future of humans doing work so utterly in question right now I 100% don't buy this narrative at all. I don't know who started it, but something about it makes me reach for a tinfoil hat. The general historical trend has been towards automation but I still don't see any massive change in the horizon.

Robots do better work without breaks, rest, coffee and in many cases without even occupying physical space. We're on the edge of automating driving, one of the most complex and demanding tasks humans do on a regular basis. The benefits for the companies are infinite: a completely docile workforce of robots that don't need anything but a steady flow of power. There is no reason to suspect any jobs are safe any more. I…

The hype is infinite.

When you look at the burn rate and technology investments required of a company like Uber just to dispatch cabs, that should hint at the difficulty of the AI revolution.

Re: How to Raise a Creative Child – Step One: Back Off (2016)

#140

Post by inimino »

bane wrote: post #34
padobson wrote: post #9

The parents of ordinary children had an average of six rules, like specific schedules for homework and bedtime. Parents of highly creative children had an average of fewer than one rule. I grew up in a household where compliance to parental authority was the prevailing rule. This made me fairly compliant as an adult (which opens you up for exploitation by peers and authority figures), but this wasn't too difficult to…

There's a kind of debate forming on individuals deriving good behavior from core moral principals vs good behavior being externally supplied by some kind of punitive framework. It seems that in cases where the behavior parameters are externally supplied, a person may not have developed any ability to figure out what to do when circumstances change outside of the parameters that were set for them. Whereas when people…

"Principles", not "principals".
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