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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]

#131

Post by simsla »

ekjhgkejhgk wrote: post #121
hgomersall wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

And that's probably the opposite of being school-shaped. School is hellishly boring if you're ahead of the curve.

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

#132

Post by drysine »

jama211 wrote: post #60
aurareturn wrote: post #29

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, but what kid had that level of motivation? There is no way this is true. I've met and worked with enough people to know that not everyone has the same mental ability. There are some exceptionally sharp people and many dim witted ones too.

I don’t say everyone has the same mental ability. But I stand by my point. Those people you mentioned might be dimwitted in part _ because_ their lack of enthusiasm for learning is low, so they didn’t do it. I don’t care how smart you are, effort matters.

Yeah, Fermi was such an unmotivated slacker.

Relayed by Nick Metropolis: Fermi and von Neumann overlapped. They collaborated on problems of Taylor instabilities and they wrote a report. When Fermi went back to Chicago after that work he called in his very close collaborator, namely Herbert Anderson, a young Ph.D. student at Columbia, a collaboration that began from Fermi's very first days at Columbia and lasted up until the very last moment. Herb was an experimental physicist. (If you want to know about Fermi in great detail, you would do well to interview Herbert Anderson.) But, at any rate, when Fermi got back he called in Herb Anderson to his office and he said, "You know, Herb, how much faster I am in thinking than you are. That is how much faster von Neumann is compared to me." [0]

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39965802

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

#133

Post by Jolter »

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…

Strictly speaking, evolution selects for viable offspring, not simply surviving. But that’s a nitpick, quite beside your point.

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

#134

Post by Jolter »

arjie wrote: post #57

How interesting that it describes "meeting Terence's special needs". In isolation, that sentence today would mean the opposite of what that person intended it to mean. For a bit in my childhood "differently abled" was the one people went with, but it seems that "special needs" was contemporaneous and just seems to have won. Differently abled does seem awfully obviously euphemistic.

In a school context, it is (or should be) just as important to consider each child’s need for being appropriately challenged as it is to consider their need for support.

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

#135

Post by neosat »

abcd_f wrote: post #130
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.

I don't think Walter is implying anything about how common or uncommon this is. His core insight seems fairly objective and plausible to me: "...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". I.e. if you do end up being lucky and wise to do something as a profession closely related to what you *loved* doing when you were ~11 , because you end up spending time doing what you love (and equally importantly not spend that time doing something that sucks up energy) you increase your chances of being happier.

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

#136

Post by h33t-l4x0r »

riffraff wrote: post #118
jorl17 wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Had me in tears by the end. One of my favorite books. So glad a friend recommended it to me.

I read it decades ago, and from time to time I mention it to someone who has not read it and I end up telling them the story.. and I'm usually tearing up before getting to the end. Such a moving piece.

Next time think of it as a story of a nice guy, who turns into a jerk, and at the end he's a nice guy again.

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

#137

Post by hnfong »

SJC_Hacker wrote: post #43
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.

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.

Agreed. It's been decades, but personally being acquaintances with IMO and IOI gold medalists made me rethink a lot of things.

With our society being ostensibly meritocratic regarding intelligence, people generally don't like to listen to stories that suggest that nurture and hard work aren't as important as they presume.

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

#138

Post by masfuerte »

globular-toast wrote: post #38
jdthedisciple wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> A supermodel who is gifted with the gift of looks, beauty etc is also in the same category of “natural” talent but sure doesn’t get the same celebration as a prodigy in maths or science We living on the same planet? Pretty sure the supermodel gets infinitely more attention and certainly makes orders of magnitudes more money than some math prodigy, at least on mine.

There is an inequality between the sexes here. A female model does indeed get more attention and money based purely on the genes they didn't have to work for. It's not the case for men, though. Men also have to actually deliver something, whether it's being a performer like an actor, singer, footballer etc, or winning the Field's medal which you don't just get for being quite good at maths when you're 8. Trying to th…

David Gandy merely lolls in his pants.

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

#139

Post by fuzzfactor »

ekjhgkejhgk wrote: post #121
hgomersall wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

At that age I thought it was perfectly normal, just not universal.

What sticks in my mind from the pre-school Mad magazines was the mascot philosophy; "What, me worry?"

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