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Terence Tao, at 8 years old (1984) [pdf]

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Re: Terence Tao, at 8 years old (1984) [pdf]

#61

Post by jama211 »

mmooss wrote: post #53
jama211 wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure it works like that, I think his biggest superpower was intrinsic motivation. Any child who read maths textbooks with enthusiasm for 3-4 hours a day for years could in theory at least get close to doing what he did, but what kid had that level of motivation?

Another requirement is the emotional capacity at 8 years old to focus, feel confident, and feel safe. I think that is the main obstacle to most people doing highly effective work and putting in long hours. You hear some call people who don't 'work hard' lazy, but my impression is that it's emotional capacity, and a lot of that comes from family. I wonder if there is a correlation between prodigies and emotionally sta…

Very true! Lots of things had to go right for Terrance.

Re: Terence Tao, at 8 years old (1984) [pdf]

#62

Post by rkomorn »

weatherlite wrote: post #47
rkomorn wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are people wired like Tao (or superstar athletes, supermodels, or other remarkable people) that don't achieve the same results. Even among the people who have similar "luck" in that respect, some still stand out. The people we think of as elite performers aren't just elite relative to the 99% of us. They're also elite within the top 1% that makes up their field: they're dominant even among the people who should…

There are very very few people wired like Tao; how many child prodigies like that are there ? He seems to be one in a million but its pretty much impossible to assess IQ at those levels. Sure, it's not enough. YOu need the obsession for math, but lets not trivialize his intellectual ability - he's definitely not only top 1% that would just put him in the smartest 2-3 kids in his class. No, he was probably among the s…

I was speaking generally, and wrote that people like him (not him specifically) are elite within the top 1%. So basically 1% of the 1%.

Not that I mean the percentages factually, more like an order of magnitude.

But my point is, in terms of "natural ability", I don't believe there is that much of a gap among top performers, but that things like work ethic and determination, and also some luck in environments, is what ends up setting them apart.

That's why I think they're worth praising: it's not just a spin of genetic roulette (unless one believes every single attribute about us is genetic, I guess).

Re: Terence Tao, at 8 years old (1984) [pdf]

#63

Post by mmooss »

I wonder if Terence agreed to have this published. This is an intimate look into the private life of an eight year old, written up as something like a lab report; it's not research on bacteria or monkeys or anonymous study subjects. It's possible that he did give permission, of course.

Re: Terence Tao, at 8 years old (1984) [pdf]

#64

Post by petters »

jama211 wrote: post #58
jonahx wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Any child who read maths textbooks with enthusiasm for 3-4 hours a day for years could in theory at least get close to doing what he did No, they couldn't. And neither could most adults, for that matter. Innate ability is real.

I simply disagree. Yes, they could. Same with adults. Basically no one does. Also I didn’t say innate ability doesn’t exist. But in my opinion is a small multiplier on top of effort. That’s why I said close to.

As a TA, I've seen adults try to pass initial college calculus many times (and failing - you were allowed to try several times) with enormous effort. It's not a small multiplier

And this was still people selected from the small subset of the population choosing an engineering major. Human are much, much more different than you seem to think

Re: Terence Tao, at 8 years old (1984) [pdf]

#65

Post by _s_a_m_ »

chao- wrote: post #8

This brings to mind the childhood of John Stuart Mill: - Learned Greek starting age three. - Was studying Plato at age six. - Studied Latin starting at age eight. And more: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Stuart_Mill#Biography I guess it helps that he had Jeremy Bentham hanging around his house from an early age.

Didnt he went through a major burnout and depression because of that? I remember reading something like that.

Re: Terence Tao, at 8 years old (1984) [pdf]

#66

Post by fifilura »

MrOrelliOReilly wrote: post #50
SJC_Hacker wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can't find the reference but from an interview with his parents there apparently there wasn't much "nurturing" other than simply making available the necessary materials which he gobbled up. Its not like they put a made him practice for an hour a day. A boy in my high school class made IMO and got a gold medal (and later on won the Putnam one year). They interviewed his parents and it was a similar story.

I think you might be underrating the value of even that enabling work. Some parents would not have the financial resources to provide those learning materials. And some parents would take a normative stance on how an 8 year old ought to behave. More importantly, it's not as though individuals like Clements or Erdos was corresponding with Terrence directly to arrange a meeting. His parents clearly played an important…

Sure. But what about the parents who struggle every day with normally gifted children? They deserve even more credit. This seems like an easy child :)

Re: Terence Tao, at 8 years old (1984) [pdf]

#67

Post by indy »

aurareturn wrote: post #17

I know it must be obvious but this proves to me that biological intelligence hasn't nearly reached its peak. If we select for pure intelligence, biological brains can get much smarter. Imagine if we had 5 million geniuses as smart or smarter than Tao doing quantum physics. But life doesn't select for pure intelligence, it selects for survival. In the Dune books, they banned computers so they bred super mentally capab…

Careful, we live in a society which has taken a side in the nature vs. nurture debate and if you're deemed to be on the wrong side of that then you'll be accused of being a nazi

Re: Terence Tao, at 8 years old (1984) [pdf]

#68

Post by mmooss »

Jun8 wrote: post #30

I read this earlier today and was thinking: how many such mathematically gifted individuals exist I. The world at one time? Assuming there are probably 20-30 Tao-caliber people in the US and an adversarial multiplier of 0.1 (only 1 in 10 such kids are nurtured), we reach 300 for this generation, about 1 in a million. That means in a generation there are ~ 10k such people in the world. Think about connecting them or n…

How about nurturing them with human beings? We have no idea how nurturing children with a computer program would turn out but probably poorly.

The most important part of nurturing, as I understand it, is to be seen and loved by other humans, and to be made to feel safe and lovable.

Re: Terence Tao, at 8 years old (1984) [pdf]

#69

Post by jonahx »

jama211 wrote: post #58
jonahx wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Any child who read maths textbooks with enthusiasm for 3-4 hours a day for years could in theory at least get close to doing what he did No, they couldn't. And neither could most adults, for that matter. Innate ability is real.

I simply disagree. Yes, they could. Same with adults. Basically no one does. Also I didn’t say innate ability doesn’t exist. But in my opinion is a small multiplier on top of effort. That’s why I said close to.

There are many, many people (math majors, competitive programmers, chess players, etc) who devote incredible effort to becoming better, and simply cannot reach elite levels. And while in most cases elite players are also putting in a lot of effort, there are many cases where it is still relatively less than their peers who are trying harder but still lagging them.

Would you ever be tempted to make such a claim (that everyone is close to the same in ability and effort is the main determiner of success) about athletes? It's so obviously untrue that it's laughable. Why would you think that mental ability is magically distributed evenly?

Re: Terence Tao, at 8 years old (1984) [pdf]

#70

Post by FL33TW00D »

chao- wrote: post #8

This brings to mind the childhood of John Stuart Mill: - Learned Greek starting age three. - Was studying Plato at age six. - Studied Latin starting at age eight. And more: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Stuart_Mill#Biography I guess it helps that he had Jeremy Bentham hanging around his house from an early age.

This was mostly down to enormous pressure from his father, causing him to have a breakdown in his early twenties.

Not to say the results weren't incredible, but certainly required sacrifice.

https://www.gutenberg.org/files/10378/10378-h/10378-h.htm#li...

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