351–360 of 505 posts
I read the article. I disagree with the premise that there are fewer geniuses today. There are plenty of geniuses, if not more than ever. They just don't all have a deep, cultural impact on the zeitgeist. Take for example the resolution of Fermat's Last Theorem and Poincare's Conjecture. Or the work being done on the Twin Primes problem. This article is probably better situated as an examination of culture. You could…
The goal of the education system is to flatten society. Both of my kid have been homeschooled up until 5th grade. At home they used to do less than 20min per day of ’school’. After a few month at school they now find the pace incredibly slow and they can’t stand the waiting they have to endure. They both score 80-95% in all classes. My son is learning programming and video editing and piano by himself, my daughter is…
Your general grandiose advice should come with plenty of warning labels. A lot of people try to do homeschooling but they neither have expertise, patience or discipline. For successful homeschooling, you need to be able to design each class, have experience in what works, able to design good tests and consistently have time to do everything by yourself. Majority of people don't have these skills which is why there ex…
As a former homeschooled kid, I can testify that I had neither class nor test until I first went to school at 14yo. My parents did "force" me to do about half an hour of reading, writing and basic math. I ended up with a master in engineering.
They also bought lots of child-level science books and brought me pretty much everywhere they went.
It does take some dedication but children are hard wired to learn.
Most people here are interpreting "genius" as something like "really smart" or "able to make scientific progress". I don't believe that's the author's meaning: he's talking about individuals whose work single-handedly upends our understanding of the world and causes a revolutionary change in thinking. By that definition, making a faster CPU, or a very successful product is not sufficient. By that definition, who are…
Tutoring allows exploring and independence of thought which is really how you improve your thinking whereas standardized education mostly does not. Tutoring is bidirectional and standardized education is most unidirectional.
How much greek and latin would have been learned with a PS5 in the room? How much of Marcus Aurelius would have been read if young Russell had had a Instagram account and a magic glowing rectangle that streamed entertainment around the clock?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't see the author addressing most obvious criticism. There is no definition of genius. He mentions a lack of ideas, but doesn't talk about the effect that every field is much more specialized. You won't make advances in physics on the level of Newton or Kelvin. "The basics are covered" (with all the caveats that apply to this statement). He also ignores the pure genius that went into developing computing and the…
Interesting, the article does mention von Neumann who as I understand it created the CPU/bus/memory computer architecture. I was a bit surprised to see a computer scientist discussed as one of the people who received this kind of education. But yeah, my main response to the article is that "genius" and "the Western classics" are more social constructions than any sort of objectively defined term.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_things_named_after_J...
I got to wonder how 11 year old Einstein, Von Neuman, Russell or Dawin would have turned out if they had been subjected to all the extremely compelling distractions that modern day kids encounter, aristocratic tutors and all. How much greek and latin would have been learned with a PS5 in the room? How much of Marcus Aurelius would have been read if young Russell had had a Instagram account and a magic glowing rectang…
Some kids with use those new resources to create amazing things, and some without any true purpose at all. That was the case yesterday and will be the case tomorrow.
There is no reason to believe that humans have fundamentally changed in few hundreds years. So yesterdays kid - deep down - really are the same as todays kid, the environment changed but they didn't.
> “Children; they have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for elders and love chatter in place of exercise. They no longer rise when elders enter the room, they contradict their parents and tyrannize their teachers. Children are now tyrants.” Socrates - talking about Plato's generation
I got to wonder how 11 year old Einstein, Von Neuman, Russell or Dawin would have turned out if they had been subjected to all the extremely compelling distractions that modern day kids encounter, aristocratic tutors and all. How much greek and latin would have been learned with a PS5 in the room? How much of Marcus Aurelius would have been read if young Russell had had a Instagram account and a magic glowing rectang…
> László Polgár (born 11 May 1946) is a Hungarian chess teacher and educational psychologist. He is the father of the famous Polgár sisters: Zsuzsa, Zsófia, and Judit, whom he raised to be chess prodigies, with Judit and Zsuzsa becoming the best and second-best female chess players in the world, respectively. Judit is widely considered to be the greatest female chess player ever as she is the only woman to have been ranked in the top 10 worldwide, while Zsuzsa became the Women's World Chess Champion.
> Polgár ... recalled that "when I looked at the life stories of geniuses" during his student years, "I found the same thing...They all started at a very young age and studied intensively."[3] He prepared for fatherhood prior to marriage, reported People Magazine in 1987, by studying the biographies of 400 great intellectuals, from Socrates to Einstein. He concluded that if he took the right approach to child-rearing, he could turn "any healthy newborn" into "a genius."[4] In 1992, Polgár told the Washington Post: "A genius is not born but is educated and trained… When a child is born healthy, it is a potential genius."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L%C3%A1szl%C3%B3_Polg%C3%A1r
FWIW, I believe it's very much true: we are born geniuses (if healthy, normal) and converted into the "dangerous intellectuals" we see today through a careful and idiotic process of what-is-called education. To me the weirdest and saddest thing is the way that people will force their own children to endure what they did, just because society says it's the "done thing". People like Maria Montessori are some of the greatest heroes in all history, from this POV.
I can barely imagine what it would be like to have a modern educational program that did things like teaching mnemonic techniques to radically improve memory, or hypnotic practice sessions where you can e.g. play imaginary musical instruments for imaginary hours (that take only a few minutes of real time) and improve. I experimented with a lot of this stuff when I was younger, and I can tell you we are barely scratching the surface of human capability.
Most people here are interpreting "genius" as something like "really smart" or "able to make scientific progress". I don't believe that's the author's meaning: he's talking about individuals whose work single-handedly upends our understanding of the world and causes a revolutionary change in thinking. By that definition, making a faster CPU, or a very successful product is not sufficient. By that definition, who are…