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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?

#201

Post by arethuza »

Tloewald wrote: post #148
arethuza wrote: post #10

Carl Sagan's "The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Demon-Haunted_World Also perhaps Bill Bryon's "A Short History of Nearly Everything" for an entertaining broad view of a variety of scientific areas: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Short_History_of_Nearly_Every...

I second "A Brief History" -- it's kind of like Cosmos (the book by Sagan) but more up-to-date and slightly broader. It seems to me that a lot of the suggestions are are people trying to impress each other with what they've read rather than books they think a bright 14 y.o. might really enjoy or get something out of.

I have a very worn copy of the book in Cosmos that I got in '83 - it's an excellent book and I love it, but I wonder if that's because I also loved the TV series.

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

#202

Post by vlan0 »

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…

I agree with the comments below. It is not about resisting change. It is about making that change based on your own thoughts and observations, and to not let the notions of others solely guide your path.

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

#203

Post by dreamweapon »

freehunter wrote: post #156
dreamweapon wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

drink beer before its legal My own advice would be: don't bother with alcohol until you're well beyond drinking age. And definitely don't bother with heavy drinking of any sort, in those years. A lot of this has to with the observation being a student really is a 24x7 game, in those years (if you've chosen to go the student route, that is). While I definitely wasn't a "grind", I have to say that the only reason I mad…

I disagree. You'll have plenty of time for learning, for thinking about the content of your studies, for the library, for dedicated focus later . You're only young once. Now I'll agree that getting wasted every weekend is a very bad idea. You will end up dying a painful death very early in your life. But it's a good idea to go to parties. It's a good idea to have fun, to live. Doing what everyone else is doing isn't…

But it's a good idea to go to parties.

It seems you're plainly misreading what I was saying. Not only did I not say you shouldn't go to parties, I specifically said you should go to parties, at that age. My only point was you should go there to socialize, and not for the alcohol.

And I attribute everything I have to the nights I spent not in front of the books, but in front of the crowd, dancing with a lampshade on my head.

That's fine for you, I guess. Something tells me what might have thought the other a bit "square", and hence avoided each other, in that life phase. Which is also fine.

But again, I never said you should trade parties and friend for books; only that you should definitely trade alcohol for books, by and large, during those years. And I for one am definitely very, very grateful for those nights spent in front of books, and not on someone's back porch getting wasted, when I was 14-21.

The only other point I'd like to clarify is that while I definitely do advocate becoming intimate with your local university library (and yes, spending more than the occasional Friday or Saturday night there), at one point or another -- the best time for that is probably when you're in high school, not college. During HS most parties suck anyway -- as do most of your so-called "friends" -- so you might as well be an outcast, and do something constructive with all of those precious hours (in front of a laptop, on a keyboard/drumkit -- or in the book stacks).

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

#204

Post by threatofrain »

I would recommend academic articles on cognition, psychology, or neuroscience. The reason is not to push a young person into a technical career, nor into the brain sciences, and nor is the reason to stimulate further reading in academic literature.

I would recommend it because I believe people in those fields write with a very interesting perspective, and also because they write about things which may be more broadly interesting to varied people, and with a narrative form that is more accessible than other fields, and they still write with less censorship than what a young person might be used to.

Such writing also affords a level of respect to the reader that a young person might not be used to. This is the important part. Young people are often exposed to worldly, societal, behavioral, moral, or philosophical matters through authors who yank around the story in any way they please, such as with "Fahrenheit 451", "Brave New World", or "Lord of the Flies".

In my opinion, these young people are being intellectually disrespected without knowing it. Always exposed to a kitsch view through a highly obscured lens with a penchant for melodrama. It's a world of non-seriousness where everything is just opinion, and what's important is to express how you think anything works. Some people grow into adult versions of this.

But when you read what adults think about the phenomena of bullying and predictors of victimhood, it's a little bit different. Or when you read about childhood predictors to different adult styles of drug use, you start viewing things a little different. Or when you read of how a team of adults performed brain surgery on a songbird to investigate human behavior, you start viewing things a little different. You also start seeing the severity of prediction.

Maybe it's a bit cold in doing nothing to shield the reader from the perspective of the writer, but almost never tactless. And it's very respectful to the reader. It might be the first time a young person isn't spoon-fed a highly obscured and Hollywood-ish discussion about the world.

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

#205

Post by sanderjd »

TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #162
sanderjd wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the other hand, don't neglect the classics because you think they're played out. I think someone influential made a snide comment to me when I was young about how overrated and irrelevant Dickens and Shakespeare are, so I didn't read them until after college, at which point I discovered how misguided I had been. But yes, definitely, there is great literature from the 90s, 00s, and 10s that young people are often n…

I think they're overrated - for teens. I know why we inflict them on kids, but they're hard to appreciate until you're an adult. I know a super-smart fourteen year old. He tells me The Hunger Games and Harry Potter are the best books he's read. When I was in my teens I was reading: Herman Hesse Thomas Mann John Barth (which shows how old I am...) John Irving John Updike Doris Lessing A lot of SF, classic/mainstream a…

I agree with your entire comment except the very first sentence. I think all the stuff you mention is fantastic for 14-year-olds – Harry Potter and (the first) Hunger Games are great and absolutely "new classics" – but so are some of the standard classics. It's true that most people will appreciate them more as adults, but that doesn't make them useless. Of course time is limited, and prioritizing is tough, so maybe some of the experiential stuff you mention is worth prioritizing above old crusty books, but I still think a good mix is a good goal.

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

#206

Post by amateurpolymath »

A biography of Nikola Tesla. He clashed with his professors, became addicted to gambling, had a nervous breakdown, got exploited by Edison, became a prolific inventor, died alone in deep debt. There are a lot of lessons to be taken from Tesla's successes and even more from his failures.

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

#207

Post by freehunter »

dreamweapon wrote: post #203
freehunter wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree. You'll have plenty of time for learning, for thinking about the content of your studies, for the library, for dedicated focus later . You're only young once. Now I'll agree that getting wasted every weekend is a very bad idea. You will end up dying a painful death very early in your life. But it's a good idea to go to parties. It's a good idea to have fun, to live. Doing what everyone else is doing isn't…

But it's a good idea to go to parties. It seems you're plainly misreading what I was saying. Not only did I not say you shouldn't go to parties, I specifically said you should go to parties, at that age. My only point was you should go there to socialize, and not for the alcohol. And I attribute everything I have to the nights I spent not in front of the books, but in front of the crowd, dancing with a lampshade on m…

I wouldn't say plainly misreading. If you actually originally meant what you just clarified, it would be a misunderstanding, but not a misreading, certainly not a plain misreading. What you wrote was:

I have to say that the only reason I made through the system as far as I did was that, aside from a healthy amount of distraction... I really was studying, or thinking about the content of my studies, pretty much all the time.

That's literally all you said. Think about that: I really was studying, or thinking about the content of my studies, pretty much all the time.. I'm saying that's the wrong answer in my opinion. In my view, there is a kind of socialization you can only get in college, and only if you participate. If college was about learning, we would have geniuses coming out of their undergrad and you could never get a skilled labor job without a diploma.

I'm not saying you're flatly wrong. You're wrong in my opinion, but your approach is a valid one to take for some people. I just wanted to offer a dissenting opinion to yours.

I do agree with you 100% that being an outcast in high school will likely have no long-term negative repercussions. High school doesn't matter once you've hit college. I don't regret a single night spent studying rather than partying in high school because I don't remember anyone from high school. But all my college friends are still my best friends, and I've gotten jobs solely because of who I went to college with.

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

#208

Post by bicubicmess »

I was 15 when I read Issac Asimov's book Understanding Physics. That one book caused a radical change in me. Even though I had always found math and science enjoyable, I was struggling at the time with the Physics 1 class I was taking in high school. I read the book half way through the first semester, and went from a state of struggling to a state of effortless understanding. That experience taught me that for me, the best way to learn was to teach myself. First read a well-written layman's overview of a topic, and then dive deep with well-written academic books.

Extrapolating a bit from that lesson, and with ~40 more years of hindsight, I'd highly recommend that a bright 14 year old read some books that give a broad overview of science & philosophy, and establish a thorough understanding of the scientific method. One that I happen to be reading right now that I feel is remarkable is David Deutsch's The Beginning of Infinity. Deutsch is a theoretical physicist at Oxford working on Quantum Computation. The Beginning of Infinity (despite the new-agey sounding name) is an incredible work.

Another book I highly recommend is Richard Dawkins' The Selfish Gene, not just for how it explains Neo-Darwinish, but because of the chapter on Memes. Deutsch also has a great treatment of Memes.

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

#210

Post by unimpressive »

seanlinehan wrote: post #33

I would definitely recommend How to Win Friends and Influence People as an addition to the list. I'd say that learning how to deal with people and communicate ideas effectively is at least as important as learning how to think. This is also a book I recommend reading, re-reading, and then re-reading again for people of all ages. Edit: I'd also probably recommend Innumeracy[0] which is a fun book about dealing with nu…

As a counterpoint to what nickysielicki wrote, I read this book when I was 13-14 and it helped me develop a sense of empathy. Thoroughly second this recommendation.

For anybody who reads this and think the advice sounds phony, the key with all of it is to be genuinely interested in the other person. This is hard to fake and even otherwise unassuming people might be more interesting than you'd think at first glance.

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