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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]

#121

Post by ekjhgkejhgk »

hgomersall wrote: post #92
Darkstryder wrote: post #35

As a father of an 8 years old, this is very moving. While Terence is -without a doubt- born with prodigious abilities, I think credit should also be given to his parents Billy and Grace who seem to have managed to simultaneously nurture these special abilities while still letting Terence have a happy (?) childhood. This is not easy to do.

In my house we discuss a macro feature of children as being "school-shaped". If Terence Tao wasn't school-shaped, would he have been as successful? The counter-point to that is to ponder how many children fail to achieve a similar level of success because they don't fit into the school system so are left by the wayside.

> If Terence Tao wasn't school-shaped, would he have been as successful?

He learned to read and write by himself. I'm pretty sure he would've been fine regardless of shape.

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

#123

Post by riffraff »

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…

it's been a while, but I think mentats in Dune are trained not bred. Also, they use mind enhancing drugs (sapho juice IIRC). Which I guess makes a interesting point too, though different from yours :D

(I do agree biological intelligence is not close to its peak)

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

#125

Post by vixen99 »

nephihaha wrote: post #110
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.

Unusual to study Latin before Greek. It's usually the other way round.

Tangential but am reminded of Churchill's comments" "And when in after years my school-fellows who had won prizes and distinction for writing such beautiful Latin poetry and pithy Greek epigrams had to come down again to common English, to earn their living or make their way, I did not feel myself at any disadvantage." and

"“However, by being so long in the lowest form I gained an immense advantage over the cleverer boys. They all went on to learn Latin and Greek and splendid things like that. But I was taught English. We were considered such dunces that we could learn only English. Mr. Somervell—a most delightful man, to whom my debt is great—was charged with the duty of teaching the stupidest boys the most disregarded thing—namely, to write mere English. He knew how to do it. He taught it as no one else has ever taught it. Not only did we learn English parsing thoroughly, but we also practised continually English analysis."

Even better if you can do both!

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

#126

Post by fragmede »

energy123 wrote: post #82
nananana9 wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At 8 years I recycled filesystem directories. I didn't know you can create new folders, so when I needed one I grabbed a random one from C:\Windows, moved it to my desktop and deleted its contents.

I deleted the files from there to free up disk space

I don't need autoexec.bat or config.sys! it's got some garbage in there that I don't understand, so it must not be important.

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

#127

Post by apt-apt-apt-apt »

jama211 wrote: post #19
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…

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?

The important factors seem to be intrinsic motivation and other good mental faculties like great memory for concepts and formulas, understanding.

It's hard to say whether the motivation came from the good skills (understanding, memory) e.g. "I'm good at this, I like it!", or that the good skills came from the motivation. I believe both are important though, and that they are intertwined.

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

#129

Post by Simon321 »

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…

> Imagine if we had 5 million geniuses as smart or smarter than Tao doing quantum physics.

This is a real possibility in our lifetimes due to AI.

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

#130

Post by abcd_f »

keiferski wrote: post #108

I just read this yesterday in Conversations with Walter Murch, a well-known film editor. Not exactly the same, but I do get the sense that Tao still feels the same way about math: As I've gone through life, I've found that your chances for happiness are increased if you wind up doing something that is a reflection of what you loved most when you were somewhere between nine and eleven years old. Interviewer: Yes—somet…

> when you were somewhere between nine and eleven years old.

As endearing as it sounds, that's pure selection bias on Walter's end rather than something even remotely common.

Clearly there are cases of this sort, like arts and other creative tangents, but on average it's a result of a discovery process much later in life.

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