Geniuses of the past were aristocratically tutored • Hacker News Board

Re: Geniuses of the past were aristocratically tutored

#501

Post by nvarsj » Fri, Mar 18, 2022, 10:10 PM UTC

Barrin92 wrote: post #433

fouc wrote: post #410

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a strong suspicion that aristocrat homeschooling would still beat out public education system in many ways.. For example, public education system doesn't particularly touch on social skills, etiquette, rulership/leadership, Machiavellianism, business, investing, property management, etc.

no because that's the skills of a political and economic oligarchy. If you want to see successful education systems look at the Soviet Union, India, China and also France. A boatload of testing, rigorous learning combined with high formal standards, that's to say an actual meritocracy is how you can quite literally churn out geniuses. Chess is a good example.

Took me a while to realize you are actually being serious. Those systems are terrible examples - just look at the state of those countries themselves. That kind of highly standardized, high pressure exam school culture drives all the creativity and joy out of learning. The ones who survive are the calculators who can't think for themselves. Great for communist dictatorships, yes.

Re: Geniuses of the past were aristocratically tutored

#502

Post by pas » Fri, Mar 18, 2022, 11:01 PM UTC

burntoutfire wrote: post #499

pas wrote: post #490

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think people misunderstand the skills needed for progress nowadays (or maybe ever). We have clear avenues forward where we are basically just waiting for data to trickle in, then prune the falsified hypotheses, and repeat. It takes smart and dedicated individuals relatively a lot of funding and time (see mRNA vaccines or the blue LED story), but it's not exactly the same as coming up with Maxwell's equation out of…

> It takes smart and dedicated individuals relatively a lot of funding and time (see mRNA vaccines or the blue LED story), but it's not exactly the same as coming up with Maxwell's equation out of thin air. Who says there are no more breakthrough to conjure out of the thin air?

There certainly are, but the later part of my comment tries to address this by illustrating how nothing is really "out of thin air" (still, the creative jumps from data/knowledge/premises/broken-models to a new hypothesis/better-models are invaluable, and almost always there's a prerequisite of years/decades of hard work to familiarize oneself with the data/old-models on such a level that the insight required for the jump basically comes intuitively "duh just try this, or that, or this helps to fit the data better" - which of course is intuitive to no one else, who did not put in those years).

Re: Geniuses of the past were aristocratically tutored

#503

Post by msrenee » Sat, Mar 19, 2022, 12:31 AM UTC

karaterobot wrote: post #91

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…

Is there a reason no one is talking about Hawking? If I had to pull a recently deceased genius off the top of my head, he would be it.

Re: Geniuses of the past were aristocratically tutored

#504

Post by Barrin92 » Sat, Mar 19, 2022, 2:53 AM UTC

nvarsj wrote: post #501

Barrin92 wrote: post #433

Earlier quoted context omitted.

no because that's the skills of a political and economic oligarchy. If you want to see successful education systems look at the Soviet Union, India, China and also France. A boatload of testing, rigorous learning combined with high formal standards, that's to say an actual meritocracy is how you can quite literally churn out geniuses. Chess is a good example.

Took me a while to realize you are actually being serious. Those systems are terrible examples - just look at the state of those countries themselves. That kind of highly standardized, high pressure exam school culture drives all the creativity and joy out of learning. The ones who survive are the calculators who can't think for themselves. Great for communist dictatorships, yes.

>just look at the state of those countries themselves

three out of four of them are doing alright, and the one that didn't failed because it endorsed an economic system that engaged exactly in the kind of cronyism and bizarre political machinations that the OP actually wants on a school curriculum.

>The ones who survive are the calculators who can't think for themselves

Well neither can your average Ivy league humanity's graduate at this point so at least they've got that in common. Thinking for yourself is overrated. if you manage to produce engineers at a rate ten times higher than everyone else and manage to not destroy your economy with central planning you'll surprised how far that can take you.

Re: Geniuses of the past were aristocratically tutored

#505

Post by wutbrodo » Sat, Mar 19, 2022, 11:14 PM UTC

kixiQu wrote: post #213

wutbrodo wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> A pop singer I'll not name performed on a late night show and was a target of internet ribbing for having brought only some semi-awkward samba-like side-stepping For anyone wondering, I believe this is referring to Lana Del Rey. Not sure what the purpose of redacting the name was... Maybe that's not who you were referring to though? Iirc, the criticisms weren't just about her swaying, but singing that was described…

It was not referring to Lana del Rey, that criticism would be the opposite of what we're discussing, and thus it's sort of funny you'd assumed that's whom I'd meant... The purpose of redacting the name is that I like the singer, her music is great, and I don't think there's a point to invoking her as "a bad dancer" in a discussion on HN of all places.

> The purpose of redacting the name is that I like the singer, her music is great, and I don't think there's a point to invoking her as "a bad dancer" in a discussion on HN of all places

It's kind of funny that you'd think this invocation would be harmful, given that the very premise is that how she chooses to move onstage is irrelevant to her musicianship.