Wouldn't hurt to put chess in the title.
(www.chess.com)
8-Year-Old Refugee Wins New York State Championship
121–130 of 192 posts
Re: 8-Year-Old Refugee Wins New York State Championship
#122As someone who had the unfortunate label of “prodigy” applied to me in my youth (chess master at age 10), I’d like to offer a perspective. It almost goes without saying, but huge respect to the kid for being able to persevere through massive adversity and achieve such a result. What I want to suggest without hopefully ruining the “feel good” party is that the adversity and the success here aren’t just a striking coin…
I'm someone who didn't have a traditionally dysfunctional home life and wasn't driven enough to be labelled a "prodigy", but I was good enough at chess, piano and math as a child to meet plenty of prodigies at those subjects in various settings. What you've said rings true across all of those fields, and I've always suspected it generalizes much further. I've sat across children at chess tournaments and piano competi…
"I've always suspected it generalizes much further."
I think it does. At one point a light bulb went off when I realized that all of these scholastic talent competitions were basically the intellectual version of childhood beauty pageants. Ultimately I see the whole scene as a cycle - kids from overachiever/dysfunctional backgrounds who grow up, have kids of their own, and then (usually unwittingly) use their own kids as props to help them cope with their own unresolved issues and insecurities.
The closest thing I have to a general takeaway is: don't use your kids as props to deal with your issues. But of course the parents who have enough self awareness to acknowledge their issues aren't the ones who are pushing their kids to an unhealthy degree.
Re: 8-Year-Old Refugee Wins New York State Championship
#123Stephen Jay Gould was an ideologically driven liar ( https://quillette.com/2019/03/19/the-mismeasurements-of-step... ). He should not be regarded as someone worth quoting.
There is some beautiful irony in citing Quillette to say that Gould should never even be quoted , given Quillette's stated mission of protecting free expression and ideas, "even dangerous ones:" > Quillette is a platform for free thought. We respect ideas, even dangerous ones. We also believe that free expression and the free exchange of ideas help human societies flourish and progress.
'Not worth quoting' is obviously a judgement of quality, and no more opposed to freedom of expression than claiming a movie isn't worth seeing.
Re: 8-Year-Old Refugee Wins New York State Championship
#124Re: 8-Year-Old Refugee Wins New York State Championship
#125Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's supposed to be clever, I imagine. It just comes across as churlish, though. EDIT: Even the fact that the comment was edited from some stupid pseudocode, into something that cries "wrongthink" plays thusly...
I'm not sure how 'pseudocode' justifies "what the hell is this"..?
It wasn’t psuedocode as much as oddly racially charged drivel.
Re: 8-Year-Old Refugee Wins New York State Championship
#126Title is very misleading as it implies he was competing against adults. "8 year old refugee better than any other 8 year old" is a far less interesting story than the implied chess prodigy.
Re: 8-Year-Old Refugee Wins New York State Championship
#127Earlier quoted context omitted.
No offense, but it seems preposterous to suggest the talent distribution within any demographic category is uneven, but if you compare two demographic categories, they are the same. Take a look at the top marathon runners, and tell me that the long distance running talent is distributed equally in Bolivia and Kenya.
Well that's more of a question on what defines "talent" - and if such a thing exists. Genetic predisposition certainly is a thing in sports, and genetics and ethnicity are obviously closely related. The context we we're talking about was specifically taken in terms of intelligence. Or "potential". If you want to make the argument that intelligence potential is affected by your ethnicity, you are free to do so, though…
> But it's something I'd prefer to believe regardless and be wrong about.
This is fine so long as you are judicious about what actions follow from such beliefs. If it motivates you to seek opportunity and encouragement for all, that is wonderful. If it motivates others to run witch-hunts in against fairly meritocratic organisations whose makeup stubbornly refuses to conform to their beliefs, that is less than wonderful.
Re: 8-Year-Old Refugee Wins New York State Championship
#128Earlier quoted context omitted.
There’s efforts to correct the record on the Middle Ages too for this reason. The History Unplugged POD cast for example has a series on it. Intelligence is also a function of knowledge too however, it’s not purely a trait you’re born with. So the more correct knowledge you have on how to think and approach problems the smarter you are. You can easily see this today with the different decisions people make arround th…
I feel Jared Diamond illustrated this beautifully in his prologue to Guns, Germs, and Steel: From the very beginning of my work with New Guineans, they impressed me as being on the average more intelligent, more alert, more expressive, and more interested in things and people around them than the average European or American is. At some tasks that one might reasonably suppose to reflect aspects of brain function, suc…
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Re: 8-Year-Old Refugee Wins New York State Championship
#129Earlier quoted context omitted.
He's 27th in the country out of his age range and he's up against a lot of kids with every advantage in life. That's damn impressive any way you cut it, just under 1587USCF meaning he's playing at about the grade of an average active adult chess player (and far beyond an average player)...at 8 after a year living in pretty grim life circumstances. Little dude is inspiring.
At 9 years old most kids have not been playing long. It wouldn't surprise me if he studied more hours than everyone else in his class (homeless implies no other toys to play with) which begs the question why are the other 26 better than him with less study. Note that wouldn't surprise me doesn't mean much - I have no clue how much study he does.
Studying more then the other competitors is definitely to one's credit, arguably more so then any innate talent.
Re: 8-Year-Old Refugee Wins New York State Championship
#130Imagine the potential this kid has if he was able to achieve this while his family was homeless... I am both impressed and jealous!
Flipping it around, imagine he grew up in a stereotypical middle class suburb and, instead of pursuing chess, he spent his idle time watching YouTube videos of influencers unboxing toys on his iPhone.
Ah, apparently you have met my son and all his friends. Getting any of them to be passionate about anything but YouTube and PlayStations seems all but impossible.