Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Masterclass on mathematical thinking

terrytao.wordpress.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

71–80 of 137 posts

Re: Masterclass on mathematical thinking

#71

Post by BeetleB »

geodel wrote: post #64
BeetleB wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So in other words, the answer to your parent's question is "No, you don't have any evidence." You are providing questions as a substitute for actual evidence. Your questions are worthy of being asked, but they are still questions. Basically a variant of "I cannot explain ... therefore it must be Y! How could it not be Y?" Just because people don't have adequate explanations for nurture doesn't make it an automatic "g…

Really? Do you have proof of this is result of extraordinary nurture. Because nurture would be far more easy to see/document and match against against other examples.

> Really? Do you have proof of this is result of extraordinary nurture.

> Just because people don't have adequate explanations for nurture doesn't make it an automatic "genetics". All it means is that they don't have adequate explanations.

Your question is the equivalent of "Since you cannot provide evidence, I must be right." This is a fallacy. The other party's lack of evidence does not strengthen your position.

Re: Masterclass on mathematical thinking

#72

Post by pedrosorio »

somerando7 wrote: post #58
pedrosorio wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Very impressive no doubt, and again, they are brothers, so genetics plays a part. But their achievements aren't even close. His (younger) brother, Nigel achieved two bronze medals (placing 132nd and 114th overall) at the age of 15 and 16 [0]. Quite good, specially at a younger age than most participants. Terence [1] got a gold medal (13th place) right before completing 13 years of age. He achieved a similar feat (28t…

If I were to guess, his brothers and parents pushed him, and had more experience with teaching compared to their older son. They got him interested, and he went from there. He was probably lucky to be the younger brother growing up.

Terence Tao is the oldest brother.

But of course that doesn’t matter. One could equally hypothesize being the oldest allows for most attention from the parents, etc.

But then again, Judit Polgar, by far the strongest chess player among the famous 3 Polgar sisters, was the youngest…

In my opinion, this sort of “human peak” genius performance requires more than small differences in upbringing.

Re: Masterclass on mathematical thinking

#73

Post by nefitty »

geodel wrote: post #69
nefitty wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure why people feel so allergic to the idea of a genetic intelligence boost. Our genes encode the layout of physical race tracks on which marbles of matter and information travel. Some people's bodies have a bunch of muscle tracks, so as they grow, their body benefits from the activity on those. They grow up to find it easier to gain muscle than other people. For geniuses, I imagine that the brain is a perfe…

> I'm not sure why people feel so allergic to the idea of a genetic intelligence boost. Because it kinda puncture this feel good marketing bull that "you can be anything you want". It could also shut endless flowing money into extra-coaching classes outside normal schools which promise to "help child to reach their fullest potential".

That does make sense. I think the reality is somewhere in the middle. I personally plan on hiring professional tutors for my children when I have them. Hopefully they're born with a lot of moldable clay, but either way, there are additional evidence-based education methods to utilize that promote mastery.

Re: Masterclass on mathematical thinking

#74

Post by nefitty »

raphlinus wrote: post #55
nefitty wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I asked the people close to you what you do/think differently than others, what would they say?

I don't think I come across as an alien. For example, I'm very deeply involved in my local Quaker meeting, and I don't think any of that is particularly different than others. That said, I can nerd out extremely deeply into a problem, to a point where I've noticed other people's eyes glaze over. Case in point, I've become interested in memory models for GPUs, and while most people in the field would be content to lea…

Very cool. Thanks for the response. I may be reaching but maybe genius is a combination of curiosity, processing speed, mental RAM and focus. Maybe each of those can be improved in regular people...

Re: Masterclass on mathematical thinking

#75

Post by sooheon »

nefitty wrote: post #49
paulpauper wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Regarding his brothers, imagine if IQ is like a bunch of switches. TT was born with all his switches flipped 'on' out of some maximum. His brothers were born with most of them flipped on, as were his parents. Having high IQ parents increases the odds of more switches being flipped on, but having all of them flipped is still innate.

I've struggled to visually conceptualize this sort of occurrence. This helps a lot. Thank you! Now, to torture the metaphor, how do I flip on the rest of my switches...

You can't (your germ line mutations are fixed, and even if you could change your genes in place your brain has already developed according to the previous genetic code and environment). You can only choose where to direct the output of your already flipped switches.

Re: Masterclass on mathematical thinking

#76

Post by hackinthebochs »

klyrs wrote: post #5
paulpauper wrote: post #3

probably helps also to have a 1 in 100 million IQ too, but sounds like fun anyway. I am not sure how some of thee masterclasses are useful. Like the one by the astronaut . I don't plan on going into space anytime soon. Maybe Elon Musk would enjoy that one. No amount of videos will make even a typical PhD in math even as close to as good as him. It's 90% genes , 10% other factors.

> It's 90% genes , 10% other factors. Do you have evidence to support these numbers, or the more general claim of genetic supremacy?

The genetic model for the occurrence of supreme levels of ability more accurately matches reality than an environmental model. We know that polygentic traits in a population follow a normal distribution[1], which entails a regression to the mean for traits in offspring[2]. This means the occurrence of extreme ability is a function of the ability of the parents. While being rare, it becomes more likely if the parents themselves have some extreme traits.

This dynamic matches what we see in the case of Terrence Tao and his brothers, the Polgar sisters, and other cases of savants/virtuosos that come to mind. Usually one child has extraordinary ability while their siblings are much less remarkable. If the environmental model were accurate, we should see many cases where families produce more than one extreme talent of equal skill. But we don't see that in practice.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polygene#Trait_distribution

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regression_toward_the_mean#His...

Re: Masterclass on mathematical thinking

#77

Post by somerando7 »

pedrosorio wrote: post #72
somerando7 wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I were to guess, his brothers and parents pushed him, and had more experience with teaching compared to their older son. They got him interested, and he went from there. He was probably lucky to be the younger brother growing up.

Terence Tao is the oldest brother. But of course that doesn’t matter. One could equally hypothesize being the oldest allows for most attention from the parents, etc. But then again, Judit Polgar, by far the strongest chess player among the famous 3 Polgar sisters, was the youngest… In my opinion, this sort of “human peak” genius performance requires more than small differences in upbringing.

Oh, then I was completely wrong :D I would think the youngest kids are generally the more academically advanced. (But this is coming from someone who has 0 kids :D)

Re: Masterclass on mathematical thinking

#78

Post by sooheon »

uoaei wrote: post #8
paulpauper wrote: post #3

probably helps also to have a 1 in 100 million IQ too, but sounds like fun anyway. I am not sure how some of thee masterclasses are useful. Like the one by the astronaut . I don't plan on going into space anytime soon. Maybe Elon Musk would enjoy that one. No amount of videos will make even a typical PhD in math even as close to as good as him. It's 90% genes , 10% other factors.

Is it really common opinion that TT is smart because of his genes? I would think having a helpful and engaged math-fluent father and lots of encouragement from an early age has way more to do with it. You can't seriously believe that an introduction into mathematical thinking from an early age and close advision from math-fluent parents is only 10% of the reason that TT is where he is today.

> You can't seriously believe that an introduction into mathematical thinking from an early age and close advision from math-fluent parents is only 10% of the reason

I can't seriously believe the alternative.

Re: Masterclass on mathematical thinking

#79

Post by pdog »

uoaei wrote: post #8
paulpauper wrote: post #3

probably helps also to have a 1 in 100 million IQ too, but sounds like fun anyway. I am not sure how some of thee masterclasses are useful. Like the one by the astronaut . I don't plan on going into space anytime soon. Maybe Elon Musk would enjoy that one. No amount of videos will make even a typical PhD in math even as close to as good as him. It's 90% genes , 10% other factors.

Is it really common opinion that TT is smart because of his genes? I would think having a helpful and engaged math-fluent father and lots of encouragement from an early age has way more to do with it. You can't seriously believe that an introduction into mathematical thinking from an early age and close advision from math-fluent parents is only 10% of the reason that TT is where he is today.

His dad is a doctor and his mom is an astrophysicist and mathematician. Do you think that is a coincidence?

Re: Masterclass on mathematical thinking

#80

Post by lukas099 »

pdog wrote: post #79
uoaei wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it really common opinion that TT is smart because of his genes? I would think having a helpful and engaged math-fluent father and lots of encouragement from an early age has way more to do with it. You can't seriously believe that an introduction into mathematical thinking from an early age and close advision from math-fluent parents is only 10% of the reason that TT is where he is today.

His dad is a doctor and his mom is an astrophysicist and mathematician. Do you think that is a coincidence?

Are you implying that if there isn't a mostly-genetic basis for his intelligence, the career success of his family members must be a complete coincidence?
Post reply on HN