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Laura Deming, founder of the Longevity Fund, on being homeschooled

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Re: Laura Deming, founder of the Longevity Fund, on being homeschooled

#171

Post by tathougies »

TrackerFF wrote: post #154
tathougies wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But on the flip-side, would you want to go your entire life without facing any conflicts? This is a false dichotomy. It's not like you need to be exposed to drugs, violence, and sexual assault in order to 'face conflicts'. For 100% of children, simply disagreeing with a friend, fighting on the playground, etc is enough. Unfortunately, public school provides a lot of the former, and not exactly a lot of the latter.

I think the vast majority of public schools don't have any problems with drugs, violence, or sexual assaults. I went to a pretty low-tier HS, and we never had any of that. The same type of HS where only 5%-10% of students to to college. But with that said - my initial thought is that at schools, at least you're forced to interact with people you may not want to interact with. Good or bad, at least it preps you for th…

> But with that said - my initial thought is that at schools, at least you're forced to interact with people you may not want to interact with. Good or bad, at least it preps you for the professional work, where you can't choose the people you work with.

You're not wrong, but this is a misplaced worry, IMO. Homeschooled students are consistently shown to do just as well at work as non-homeschooled students. It is a myth that homeschooled students don't interact with others. Many take classes at the local college, many take part in homeschool 'co-ops', which are not fully schools, but give that kind of experience.

Re: Laura Deming, founder of the Longevity Fund, on being homeschooled

#172

Post by _7fvc »

I think the homeschool movement has become too extreme. You can do homeschool if you want. But you also need to learn from others. The school system does help. I went to a 4-year university. I got a degree in Computer Science. I think it's very valuable. It helped me build a good career. I would say half of the professors were solid.

At school, after lectures, we have to do homework. It's a practice to get a deeper understanding of the knowledge. Then we have to take test. It's a validation of our understanding. People certainly cheat their ways through college. But if you are into learning, you can learn a lot.

Laura Deming mentioned that she had a hard time with entropy. I think this is because of not having a formal education. Entropy is an overloaded term. It means different things in different fields. In physics, it means one thing. In information theory, it means another thing. If Laura had gone to a university to study the concepts in different classes, she would have grasped the concepts. Laura is likely a generalist thinker, polymath. That's why she has a hard time digging into deep concepts. To really understand them, you need to practice (homework) and validate (test).

I work in cryptocurrency space. Vitalik is another generalist, polymath thinker. He makes some wild claims like quantum computer can break Proof of Work. If you study Computer Science, you'd see how dubious this claim is.

You don't know what you don't know.

Schools are good for teaching you what you don't know. Both Vitalik and Laura come out of the Thiel Fellowship. When you are young and got chosen by a billionaire, it may have gotten you hype up about your intellect. You buy into your billionaire's view. You think professors are idiots. Nowadays, social media give people a microphone. So they get even more indulgence. They see themselves already successful.

I think the young generation, like Laura and Vitalik, is talented. But they live in the fame bubble too early. Albert Einstein had this problem. He was an early achiever. He made his important discoveries when he was young. Those achievements became burden. He had a hard time with quantum mechanics. He spent endless time with the theory of everything. He was miserable in his later life.

I teach my kids at home after their public school time. When they grow up, I hope there're still good universities for them to go. Go to school, take some test, you'd see how much you really understand.

Re: Laura Deming, founder of the Longevity Fund, on being homeschooled

#173

Post by Mirioron »

uticus wrote: post #129
throwawaysea wrote: post #115

Homeschooling is a very important freedom for parents to retain. Otherwise, parents are increasingly at risk of not being in control of how their children are raised. Schools and colleges are increasingly politicized and are being used by politicians and activists to instill certain values into children early on. Those values are derived from whomever has the most power in a given jurisdiction. For instance, in Seatt…

The focus of this comment struck me. Seems to me that education of children involves influence - even a "hands-off" approach influences, no? So, apart from questions about physical safety and measurable/occupational skills taught, these points seem to touch on the greater question of who or what should be an influencer, and to what degree? Western culture (my personal background) has seen shifts in answers to this qu…

This is an off-topic point, but perhaps this TED talk by James Flynn might give you a perspective to understand why your parents and grandparents tought: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9vpqilhW9uI

It posits the idea that the way of thinking back then was different, because they had to overcome different cognitive challenges from us today. This would shape how people back then viewed the world.

Re: Laura Deming, founder of the Longevity Fund, on being homeschooled

#174

Post by nmfisher »

earthscienceman wrote: post #69
morelisp wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Come off it, she had access to a research lab at age 12! Even she said it's extraordinary. > I really felt like I got a cheat code to life early on. It was like being Ben Franklin’s daughter or something... When I first met Cynthia Kenyon... I was 12. She very kindly offered for me to just work in her lab as a normal intern,

No wonder she's obsessed with longevity. If everything I ever wanted or was interested in was handed to me on a silver platter, I'd want to live forever too. How can people like Peter Thiel et al not feel disgusting spending a fortune on personal longevity when there is still starvation and hunger killing children every day? I would love to see the wealthy/privileged hackernews crowd try to justify this. I have less…

> How can people like Peter Thiel et al not feel disgusting spending a fortune on personal longevity when there is still starvation and hunger killing children every day?

Probably because starvation is almost never an economic problem solvable with money.

Re: Laura Deming, founder of the Longevity Fund, on being homeschooled

#176

Post by ykevinator »

I hate home schooling. It is an arrogant assertion that you are smarter than the highly trained system of educators and that their skills and training are not as good as what you can do for your precious and special child. Plus its usually a thinly veiled religious thing or a cover for a narcissistic male.

Re: Laura Deming, founder of the Longevity Fund, on being homeschooled

#178

Post by joshfraser »

Aperocky wrote: post #149
joshfraser wrote: post #131

I was homeschooled and it worked out well for me. You have to be intrinsically motivated and have a deep curiosity about the world. Actually, all kids are born curious but they lose it over time as adults get annoyed with all their questions! I appreciated the freedom to blow an entire day learning about something just because it was interesting. This turned out to be super valuable for my career. Being homeschooled…

Glad it worked out for you, did you eventually went to college or were you completely educated without institutions?

Yeah I gradated w/ a Computer Science degree from Clemson. My siblings all graduated college as well.

Re: Laura Deming, founder of the Longevity Fund, on being homeschooled

#179

Post by lisper »

JoshTriplett wrote: post #148
lisper wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be clear: I do think it's a bad idea (or at least fraught with all manner of peril), and I do want to stop people, but not by force, but rather by persuading them that it's a bad idea, which is what I'm trying to do here. But if I fail to persuade you, I'm not going to stand in your way.

And I would like to persuade you to stop that , because I believe that in doing so you're making it marginally more likely that more people will die. What would it take to convince you that whatever problems you're envisioning, they are not worse than 150,000 people dying every day, or 100 people ever minute ? Take whatever value you attach to an individual specific identified human's death, say someone you actually…

> What would it take to convince you that whatever problems you're envisioning, they are not worse than 150,000 people dying every day, or 100 people ever minute?

You'd have to start by convincing me that death is unconditionally bad.

If you could dramatically improve the quality of life for a million people by prematurely killing one, would you do it?

Re: Laura Deming, founder of the Longevity Fund, on being homeschooled

#180

Post by dang »

dx87 wrote: post #128
swiley wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone who was homeschooled and socialized almost exclusively with other homeschoolers as a kid, I was on the fence about it. Then I grew up and met people who went to public school. Holy cow I can’t believe people think it’s ok to put their kids through that! I can’t believe we collectively accept children being exposed to the violence and other problems that are pervasive there! It’s not surprising so many peop…

Crime rates have been dropping for a long time, and you're trying to say that schools are the reason people become criminals. This is honestly one of the most ignorant things I've read in a long time on this site. Maybe if you were allowed to socialize outside of your homeschooled bubble, you wouldn't have that opinion.

Personal attacks are not ok on HN. Please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and don't do this here.
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