A remarkable kid has died in Newcastle, Utah • Hacker News Board

Re: A remarkable kid has died in Newcastle, Utah

#111

Post by vaidhy » Mon, Sep 19, 2022, 5:22 AM UTC

TrispusAttucks wrote: post #89

egypturnash wrote: post #88

I feel like there is a huge elephant in the room here of how shitty Utah’s support system evidently is. No money to assist his disabled parents and his autistic brother. This whole family was living in desperate, grinding poverty, and that gave this kid a super strong urge to try and get out of it instead of having a childhood.

I disagree with this sentiment. You wish to take away the very condition which made him uniquely special. He seems like he was enjoying his childhood. Adversity breeds character and this kid had more than character than some entire classrooms.

Yes.. When you are struggling to put food on the table, you are not enjoying childhood.. Adversity breaks more people than building character. Which is why, we insist that kids have good food, good environment to grow up in etc. It is not right that 1000 kids suffer for one to build a character (as you may call it). You can build character in better environments too.

Re: A remarkable kid has died in Newcastle, Utah

#112

Post by bigDinosaur » Mon, Sep 19, 2022, 5:25 AM UTC

CPLX wrote: post #67

rkuykendall-com wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

30 years ago in central Texas we visited northern Mexico many, many times a year. 20 years ago we thought it was funny other people were starting to be scared to do so. 15 years ago we stopped going. We haven't been back since. It's so weird that, from a central Texas perspective, we used to be a short drive from visiting another COUNTRY, which is now effectively a blank space on the map of the world around us. Ski w…

I mean it seems like the biggest change in this story is you. It’s true there’s more cartel stories than before I guess but if you wanted to go there you would go. I spent a week in Monterrey this year, it was lovely.

Mexico is of course full of some lovely places, but cartel violence has been increasing since around 1990 (so 30 years) and has spiked quite dramatically in the past 20 years.

Re: A remarkable kid has died in Newcastle, Utah

#113

Post by blobbers » Mon, Sep 19, 2022, 5:43 AM UTC

This is incredibly frustrating that such a remarkable kid died in such a stupid preventable way. Wear a life jacket. Learn to swim.

Reading this again and trying to find some way there was something not preventable and not finding it makes me angrier and angrier. Why the hell are you in a boat without a life preserver if you can't swim.

So angry.

Re: A remarkable kid has died in Newcastle, Utah

#114

Post by [deleted] » Mon, Sep 19, 2022, 5:44 AM UTC

[deleted]

Re: A remarkable kid has died in Newcastle, Utah

#115

Post by watwut » Mon, Sep 19, 2022, 5:44 AM UTC

crawfordcomeaux wrote: post #93

Firmwarrior wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think requiring standardized tests of homeschooled kids is a pretty good compromise… The standardized tests are ridiculously easy to ace if you're smart, and they'd catch kids who aren't learning reading or basic arithmetic

I've heard there's evidence that delaying literacy and numeracy has meaningful and potentially desirable effects on brain development. If a child and parents want to test that out, why not allow them to do so?

Yes if you mean starting to teach them read and write at 7 instead of at 5.

No if you mean cutting away majority of curriculum and teaching the rest by having kid doing sheets alone on kitchen table until isolated bored kid slows or gives up.

Re: A remarkable kid has died in Newcastle, Utah

#116

Post by blobbers » Mon, Sep 19, 2022, 5:47 AM UTC

rendall wrote: post #108

aerovistae wrote: post #99

Okay so, I have to say, at first this was a pretty feel-bad story for me. I then noticed a tidbit of information in another article about it that somehow made me feel different: Cole Summers didn't know how to swim. He was out on the water in a kayak, with no life jacket, with only an autistic child for company - and didn't know how to swim. Somehow it stopped feeling like a tragic accident and more like carelessness…

It's hard to hear about any 14 year old boy dying, particularly one with such promise. To salve our feelings, to make sense of it, it might feel important to grasp some detail that makes it not so tragic. Resist doing that. It was a tragic accident.

No, it was blatant stupidity of all the people surrounding him. Life jackets exist for a reason. They save people who can't swim! It's tragic that it is such a stupid preventable death, not an accident. It's like saying someone drove around their whole life without a seatbelt and then died in a car accident at 14. Angry at his stupid parents, or whoever gave him the kayak.

Re: A remarkable kid has died in Newcastle, Utah

#117

Post by watwut » Mon, Sep 19, 2022, 5:54 AM UTC

karaterobot wrote: post #103

fock wrote: post #15

So, as a European I read: mormon paper (Deseret...) hails parents who made their child work their farm. Because reading things like: > His spelling and grammar lagged behind grade level. He consistently misspelled the word “business,” and stumbled over the pronunciation of simple words. doesn't really spell hidden genius of the 21st century but probably describes millions of peasants in Europe during the middle-ages.…

Did you read on a couple sentences and see this part? > Later, when opportunities came to publish his thoughts, the written word became more important to him and he found mentors to help him polish his communication skills. Worthy of note is that he'd published a book by the age of 14, so was probably at least at grade level. Sounds like he just didn't learn things homogeneously, but rather focused on some things bef…

You can publish pretty much anything. The hard part is to get one of good publisher houses that can do promo etc.

But publishing on itself does not require anything.

Thins kid also supposedly bought 50000$ by himself at 11.

Re: A remarkable kid has died in Newcastle, Utah

#118

Post by thayne » Mon, Sep 19, 2022, 6:15 AM UTC

barry-cotter wrote: post #86

ceres wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> they end up an unremarkable partner at a law firm or something, not POTUS or Bezos or Musk This doesn’t make much sense because people inherit their parents’ wealth and businesses all the time. People also inherit their country’s political leadership e.g. political families and monarchs. To suggest that it requires a special breed of people to get these positions without proof is rather silly

This logic would work if competition didn’t exist and no one ever made huge unforced errors. In the world as is Buffet, Gates, Bezos and Musk are among the richest people ever. Their parents were wealthy but nothing remotely comparable. The Carnegies and Rockefeller families are still rich but even if you add all of them together they’re not a shadow the importance the founders of the fortunes had. Political dynastie…

Coming from wealthy, well connected families isn't the only reason those people are where they are today, but it certainly helped. They had the resources they needed to start their companies readily available.

Re: A remarkable kid has died in Newcastle, Utah

#119

Post by DoreenMichele » Mon, Sep 19, 2022, 6:16 AM UTC

I hate this story and I hate most of the comments here. I homeschooled. I know a lot about homeschooling and giftedness and yadda.

People who don't know anything about homeschooling and the myriad ways it differs from public school and private school -- it's a little like a bunch of Christians commenting on the life of a Muslim individual, having never studied their religion or culture or a bunch of Europeans in big cities commenting on the life of someone in a rural village in Africa.

I wrote a wall of text and deleted it. I just don't know where to begin to try to explain and have it not go sideways.

Re: A remarkable kid has died in Newcastle, Utah

#120

Post by didibus » Mon, Sep 19, 2022, 6:16 AM UTC

lkrubner wrote: post #2

This story is especially clear and dramatic (and well documented) but I've often thought this happens in every generation: the people who lead (businesses and nations) when they are in their 40s and 50s are often people who boldly go out and discover the world while they are in their teens and 20s, and so they take on a bit more risk than the average citizen, and this includes physical risk (whether in travel or info…

I know a lot of people who have traveled the world over, taken a lot of risks as a young adult/late teenager, and are just unremarkable adults now doing unremarkable things.

Maybe you're imagining correlation where there is none?