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. This sentence, which the article hinges around, has no meaning. A tiny fraction will become revolutionary adult creators by definition - if their achievements were more commonplace then our understanding of what a revolutionary creator was would change to become more exclusive.
How to Raise a Creative Child – Step One: Back Off (2016)
241–250 of 263 posts
Re: How to Raise a Creative Child – Step One: Back Off (2016)
#242Earlier quoted context omitted.
From one of the comments on the article > Backing off will no more produce a creative genius than pushing your child. Neither strategy makes the slightest difference to what is essentially an autonomous process. Beethoven's father did not back off. And Lars von Trier's parents left him to his own devices. Both are geniuses and both hated their childhood. > My guess is that most parents who follow Adam Grant's spuriou…
> Feynman realized this when he tried to teach his children and discovered that what worked for his son did not work for his daughter. Feynman's son was his biological offspring, while the daughter was adopted. I think this is relevant information that was left out. Edit: Also, Feynman's son chose to pursuit philosophy, much to Feynman's dismay.
> Also, Feynman's son chose to pursuit philosophy, much to Feynman's dismay.
Wow really. Poor Feynman.
Re: How to Raise a Creative Child – Step One: Back Off (2016)
#243Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 somethi…
IQ tests are proxies for intelegence but not direct measurements. They are fairly good at that from around 60-140, and less useful at the top and bottom.
As to low IQ scores people with an IQ of 60 generally don't have anything that they preform very well. The problem is everything we think of as takes even something as simple as holding your hand steady is really complicated. Getting better at even simple motor functions takes feedback loops, effort, and optimization. Further, intelegence generally allows people to optimize more quickly even as an infant. Which means intelegent people not only get to optimize more quickly they have more time to optimize complex tasks or tasks they are worse at.
Specialization of course kicks in, but the sills a six year old has are fairly universal and things 98% of people can do. Intelegent people tend to be better at.
Re: How to Raise a Creative Child – Step One: Back Off (2016)
#244A dull article ridden with blatantly false claims and oversimplification of an otherwise complicated topic. >Gifted children who have a noticeable head start and whose skill development begins remarkably early _do not_ usually end up being game changing professionals in their respective fields. Really now? >Developing a skill set early on leads to competence in what is learned but stumps creativity and chances of inn…
>>Gifted children who have a noticeable head start and whose skill development begins remarkably early _do not_ usually end up being game changing professionals in their respective fields. >Really now? Um, yes? Are you challenging the article's claim here? Depending on how strictly we're defining "game changing", only a small handful of people, even those who were "gifted" as children, ever accomplish anything really…
10% is a shit load.
Re: How to Raise a Creative Child – Step One: Back Off (2016)
#245Earlier quoted context omitted.
By remaining in proximity and contact of other humans you're their responsibility and they are yours. I reject this completely. That's your reality, not mine.
Please respond to the rest of my post, not just the weakest line.
All of your post hinges on the premise that you feel responsibility for individual problems should be collectivised, by force presumably, and that I am required to morally feel obliged to help any and all strangers by virtue of being born or living in roughly the same area. I find that world view monstrous and can't really debate it objectively. We're on different planets here.
I'm an individual and I'm free to help or not help strangers as I see fit. Neither you nor anyone else has the right to tell me what problems of which people I'm responsible for.
Re: How to Raise a Creative Child – Step One: Back Off (2016)
#246Earlier quoted context omitted.
Please respond to the rest of my post, not just the weakest line.
I agree with lacampbell that we're not responsible for other people's kids. In western society the individual is sovereign and our only responsibility is to do no harm. It is equally important to note however that the individual is missing out if he foregoes the pleasure of friendly interactions with other people, and is free to be a good neighbour and to give where he chooses. He is also wise if he aligns his ambiti…
The foregoing interaction with lacampbell might be an analogy of how society fails creative types. They are often awkward, abrasive people who insist on doing things their own way. As a result they are denied jobs, ostracised socially (in the name of friendliness) and generally swept under the rug.
I'd like to think I'm not particularly awkward or abrasive. I'm not some cold hearted monster that has no empathy, or never helps or shows kindness to strangers. But you rightly point out that I reject being compelled to help all and sundry. A charitable act should be mine to perform freely.
Re: How to Raise a Creative Child – Step One: Back Off (2016)
#247Earlier quoted context omitted.
Please respond to the rest of my post, not just the weakest line.
I agree with lacampbell that we're not responsible for other people's kids. In western society the individual is sovereign and our only responsibility is to do no harm. It is equally important to note however that the individual is missing out if he foregoes the pleasure of friendly interactions with other people, and is free to be a good neighbour and to give where he chooses. He is also wise if he aligns his ambiti…
Hmm, I think I can see where we're failing to connect here. I'll reply to you by replying to lacampbell.
> All of your post hinges on the premise that you feel responsibility for individual problems should be collectivised, by force presumably, and that I am required to morally feel obliged to help any and all strangers by virtue of being born or living in roughly the same area.
I categorically reject that this is my position and am sorry I wasn't able to explain it better. Let me try further:
I'm not suggesting that you be required to do anything. At all. It is your choice to choose to do nothing.
However as a member of society, of which the only way of really escaping is to escape the proximity and influence of those who comprise 'society' you do have a collectivized stake in the outcome of society. If you for example choose to do nothing about drug addicts, and the rest of society does the same... society is then responsible for what happens as a result of untreated drug addiction. You, as a member of society, have some small part ownership over what happens.
Does that make sense? I'm talking in a very abstract sense, not a direct "here is a kid -> take care of it" sense.
Re: How to Raise a Creative Child – Step One: Back Off (2016)
#248Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 s…
You're right that there's no easy way to pick a physician. But when I or one of my loved ones is in the hospital, my only requirement for the hospital staff is that they communicate well with me. If they don't, I politely ask that they be removed from me/our care. I make this requirement clear up front (in a non-demanding kind of way; you don't want to piss people off or make it look like you're a difficult patient/family member).
Also, for every patient and family that I meet, I explain right away that the only promise I make is that I will be honest, upfront, and clear when I'm talking to them; that I will give them my best effort. This has served me very well and I've won numerous local accolades because of it. It also softens the blow when something goes wrong, even when it's my fault. When I was a resident, I frequently had patient's demanding to speak with me instead of the attending because they trusted me more.
Keep in mind that I'm a hospitalist/intensivist, so I don't know if things will necessarily generalize to the primary care/office setting.
Re: How to Raise a Creative Child – Step One: Back Off (2016)
#249Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 somethi…
IQ tests are proxies for intelegence but not direct measurements. They are fairly good at that from around 60-140, and less useful at the top and bottom. As to low IQ scores people with an IQ of 60 generally don't have anything that they preform very well. The problem is everything we think of as takes even something as simple as holding your hand steady is really complicated. Getting better at even simple motor func…
An IQ of 60 isn't difference, it's indicative of either malnutrition, severe neglect, or some form of developmental disorder. In fact, I'd be surprised if there are many people of below average intelligence that don't suffer from one of those things. I'd even wager that if you took any random infant that didn't have a developmental problem and raised them in a loving affluent western family with good food and an enriched environment odds are good their IQ would measure >110 after a few years.
Re: How to Raise a Creative Child – Step One: Back Off (2016)
#250Earlier quoted context omitted.
You'd have to be pretty ignorant to assume they are exactly analogous, but to assume that there is no transfer is equally ignorant. Artificial neural networks are much closer to neurons and brains than economic models are to markets, yet we bet the farm on forecasting (with pretty bad results, I might add). The repeat after me meme is really condescending by the way, might want to avoid using that.
What are the analogous components? Backpropagation is biologically implausible.
Dopamine released from task success primes long term potentiation, effectively acting as the analog of the cost function's gradient. The larger the dopamine hit (generally) the bigger the learning step.
You are correct that neurons can't do backprop. Keep in mind that the networks of the brain aren't straight feedforward, they're recurrent. In order to provide temporal control of activation propagation throughout the network, inhibitory neurons are needed. Thus, instead of "tweaking weights" backwards in the network, the brain learns to activate inhibitory neurons to provide forward feedback against activation.The mechanism is different but the learning effect is pretty similar.