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What Would You Recommend to a Bright 14 Year Old?

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Re: What Would You Recommend to a Bright 14 Year Old?

#191

Post by thret »

erbo wrote: post #75
bsenftner wrote: post #7

Hermann Hesse's "The Glass Bead Game" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Glass_Bead_Game is a physiological science fiction story about a future world where an economic simulation determines who will run the planet, and the book features the live of one individual that won the competition every year for decades via integrating math, music, eastern and western philosophies to create a harmonic economic view. The book is…

I had this book recommended to me by someone when I was in college; the person that recommended it to me thought I might very well go on to invent the Glass Bead Game... This summary kind of mischaracterizes the book, though. Far from "running the planet," Castalia, the society within which the Game thrives, rather pointedly does not concern itself with "worldly" matters, being singularly focused on the life of the m…

This book has major irritations for me:

1. It is set in a far future that is technologically identical to 1940. People who write about the future should not miss the mark so completely. The characters are still writing letters by hand and spending days travelling around a single continent.

2. It is hilariously sexist. The intellectual elite are simply assumed to be male and as they may not marry, women are privileged if they are able to take them as lovers for a short time. This is the only time women are mentioned in the book.

3. The main character takes the I-Ching seriously. He's supposed to be a genius, and yet he believes in horoscopes.

4. I found the story itself to be rather boring. I honestly don't know how the author could have won any awards. Perhaps it is much better in German and it is merely the translation that is bad.

Re: What Would You Recommend to a Bright 14 Year Old?

#192

Post by jotm »

sliverstorm wrote: post #182
karmacondon wrote: post #169

If I could talk to my 14 year old self, I wouldn't recommend any particular books. I would say, "Don't stress and worry so much about school or your grades, because absolutely none of that is going to matter in 10 years. Learn how to make things. Start now, and never stop. Learn how to use technology to the fullest, both software and hardware. Learn how to write, speak and communicate ideas as effectively as possible…

Most importantly, don't let anyone change who you are. Choose a path and follow it doggedly I've never really gotten this. It's a popular message- you, child, are completely perfect the way you are. Never change, not one iota. Personally I think it's ridiculous. Life is a journey of self-improvement, and you cannot, all by yourself, craft yourself into the best you can be. The man who views the world at 50 the same a…

Yeah, it should be "don't let others shape your personality and your life - do it yourself"...

Re: What Would You Recommend to a Bright 14 Year Old?

#195

Post by simplegeek »

karmacondon wrote: post #169

If I could talk to my 14 year old self, I wouldn't recommend any particular books. I would say, "Don't stress and worry so much about school or your grades, because absolutely none of that is going to matter in 10 years. Learn how to make things. Start now, and never stop. Learn how to use technology to the fullest, both software and hardware. Learn how to write, speak and communicate ideas as effectively as possible…

One of my teacher used to have this written on the final exam:

"Relax. Don't worry. Outcome of this paper will not matter at all 20--30 years from now. Impress me with your knowledge."

Re: What Would You Recommend to a Bright 14 Year Old?

#196

Post by Ntrails »

simplegeek wrote: post #195
karmacondon wrote: post #169

If I could talk to my 14 year old self, I wouldn't recommend any particular books. I would say, "Don't stress and worry so much about school or your grades, because absolutely none of that is going to matter in 10 years. Learn how to make things. Start now, and never stop. Learn how to use technology to the fullest, both software and hardware. Learn how to write, speak and communicate ideas as effectively as possible…

One of my teacher used to have this written on the final exam: "Relax. Don't worry. Outcome of this paper will not matter at all 20--30 years from now. Impress me with your knowledge."

_NB_ it could utterly shape the next 5-10 years of your life and in doing so drastically alter the path of of your life 70 years from now.

(Depending on the exam, but if the exam defines college entry it is not an unreasonable statement. Of course the trick is to realise that success doesn't mean a better life, and failure doesn't mean a worse one. It's like Rimmer getting held down a year at school and becoming Ace instead...)

Re: What Would You Recommend to a Bright 14 Year Old?

#197

Post by eli_gottlieb »

NhanH wrote: post #177
angersock wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's worked for tens of thousands of years, so I think it's a reasonable goal. If somebody's goal is to understand sexuality, they should be out interacting with other people instead of reading books.

Actually, unless I'm severely mistaken, most people managed the get laid over the last tens of thousands of years, but they're mostly terrible at understanding human and relationships. I've seen too many relatives, elders and generally people around me making one too many mistakes -- some even seems to do everything wrong. And I'm rather scared of that. "Getting laid" is definitely a skill by itself, but I disagree w…

You can avoid most major relationship mistakes if you actually care about your partner, as in, as an end-in-themselves rather than as a way to get laid. Unfortunately, this is the part most people miss.

I guess a lot of people don't realize how dumb their selfishness really is.

Oh well.

Re: What Would You Recommend to a Bright 14 Year Old?

#198

Post by ultrasandwich »

doctorpangloss wrote: post #53

I wish when I was 14 I was exposed to more contemporary literature, instead of great classics. And I have no regrets about missing out on math books—most of my friends went to math camp for that kind of knowledge. I'd recommend David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest; Junot Diaz's This is How You Lose Her; The Collected Stories of Lydia Davis; Haruki Murakami's Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage. I wis…

Yes, this. And if I had read DFW and Lydia Davis as a 14 year old, I shudder to think how far I'd be ahead at understanding the complexities of being alive and knowing what to pursue and when. Those two authors did more for my emotional growth than just about anything.

Re: What Would You Recommend to a Bright 14 Year Old?

#199

Post by tomsthumb »

bsder wrote: post #150
astrange wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He wrote himself into a corner within two sequels, so try not to read any of his other books afterward.

He didn't write himself into a corner; he was trying to shoehorn in his religion.

This is true and being downvoted. The shoehorning didn't really show up until Xenocide when he was softballing himself counterpoints and whiffing them mightily. It was sad seening as how Speaker for the Dead was so spectacular.

Re: What Would You Recommend to a Bright 14 Year Old?

#200

Post by WA »

karmacondon wrote: post #169

If I could talk to my 14 year old self, I wouldn't recommend any particular books. I would say, "Don't stress and worry so much about school or your grades, because absolutely none of that is going to matter in 10 years. Learn how to make things. Start now, and never stop. Learn how to use technology to the fullest, both software and hardware. Learn how to write, speak and communicate ideas as effectively as possible…

I started coding around 14. My father bought me a book called Now I Learn Visual Basic 4.0. I was pretty determined to make a game back then and somehow, I made it. It was a stupid game. The player basically had to click around randomly to "find" gold and it wasn't fun at all. But I enjoyed working on it, learning how to program, drawing little gold nuggets in MS Paint. And then, two other games followed.

One of them even made it into a German PC games magazine around 2000. I couldn't believe that my name was printed in that magazine along with 4 other people who submitted their "indie" games.

Back then, I didn't care about any "competition". I just made that damn thing, because I wanted to.

Now, I have a quite successful SaaS business that allows me to work as few as 2 hours per week and still earning twice as much as in the year I had a normal job. Again, this started as a hobby in 2006. I didn't look left and right, I just wanted to learn some PHP coding.

In 2015, I struggle to find a new idea, a new project to work on. Everything seems to exist already, many people are way better coders than me, which paralyzes me. If I have an idea, I go on GitHub and find 10 projects that implement my idea in a better way. Then, once in a while, I try something new only to find out that it gains no traction at all if I don't promote it.

Richard Feynman said that he struggled with physics at some point, and only when he re-discovered his playful attitude towards physics, he could enjoy it again. I know this feeling, because this is how I had the most fun with my projects and with a bit of luck, one of them turned my life upside down.

I guess, I followed the karmacondon's advice pretty closely without knowing about it (Learn how to make things. Start now, and never stop.) and it worked out.

Thank you karmacondon for writing it down in such a concise way and remind me how it all started for me. I need reminders like that to find back to a playful mindset.

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