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Fuck Your Miracle Year

rogersbacon.substack.com

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Re: Fuck Your Miracle Year

#31

Post by pjbeam »

spir wrote: post #10
spir wrote: post #6

> Because now people have to spend their 20s learning about the discoveries that others made during their miracle years (the so-called “burden of knowledge”). Maybe now people have to spend their 20s learning about the discoveries because our modern pre-post-secondary education has become so watered down and unambitious. Personally, I get the sense that could have learned 5x to 20x as much in my teenage years if I ha…

I remember how slowly high school math moved. How uninspired English class was. The poor curriculum and tools in programming class. imo, there is definitely a primary and secondary education problem vs. the early-life academic environments that helped to produce yesteryear's great thinkers. https://erikhoel.substack.com/p/why-we-stopped-making-einste...

I was shocked to (re)discover that high school algebra is a multiyear course. And trigonometry is a year long.

What?

Re: Fuck Your Miracle Year

#32

Post by low_tech_love »

I really like the article for its tone, because it feels authentic and raw and is not begging me to take it seriously. I think most if not all blog posts should be like this: you read it, you smile and think a bit, maybe write a quick comment, then you move on. I agree with the author that this whole thing about wanting to be the next Big Blogger Who Wrote That Article is probably bullshit.

Re: Fuck Your Miracle Year

#33

Post by jriot »

ianai wrote: post #25
jriot wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you read the entire Oxford US History series? I have the entire series up to 1945, minus 1896-1929 as that hasn't been published yet. we homeschool our children and my plan is to read those over the next two years to base my teaching of US History to our children when they enter high school. Yes, I'm aware that only provides a one author perspective; multiple authors as each book has a different one. Though at 1…

What years does it cover? Edit-looks like 1763 onward. Very much left out there.

Seven Years War (The Crucible of War, that is not actually an Oxford history book) - 1974. I don't have the volume from 1945-1974 yet. I have a few other history books covering that period to present. Penguin has a similar series on European history from the Romans to 2017; I currently have three volumes covering 1814-2017.

Re: Fuck Your Miracle Year

#34

Post by throwaway1777 »

DubiousPusher wrote: post #2

> I agree with Dwarkesh that we should be doing more to help young people have miracle years Optimizing any system for "geniuses" seems very silly to me. > Look, no one talked about how we can engineer miracle years when miracle years were actually still happening. This modern obsession with progress is just a sign of our decadence, of our creative exhaustion and inability to innovate in any meaningful way. I'm readi…

I actually disagree. It’s kind of a power law distribution thing where 1% of the people make 99% of the real scientific breakthroughs. We should absolutely optimize for geniuses.

Re: Fuck Your Miracle Year

#35

Post by javajosh »

pjbeam wrote: post #31
spir wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I remember how slowly high school math moved. How uninspired English class was. The poor curriculum and tools in programming class. imo, there is definitely a primary and secondary education problem vs. the early-life academic environments that helped to produce yesteryear's great thinkers. https://erikhoel.substack.com/p/why-we-stopped-making-einste...

I was shocked to (re)discover that high school algebra is a multiyear course. And trigonometry is a year long. What?

I learned algebra in middle school, in one year. What is this insanity of which you speak?

Re: Fuck Your Miracle Year

#37

Post by bitxbitxbitcoin »

throwaway1777 wrote: post #36
mkl95 wrote: post #30

My miracle year was when I was 18 or 19 and I wrote my first large piece of software by myself. I'm approaching my late 20s now and I haven't had as much sustained fun ever since. Being a wage slave sucks.

Sounds more like a gap year than a miracle year.

Maybe the two aren’t mutually exclusive.

Re: Fuck Your Miracle Year

#39

Post by mkl95 »

throwaway1777 wrote: post #36
mkl95 wrote: post #30

My miracle year was when I was 18 or 19 and I wrote my first large piece of software by myself. I'm approaching my late 20s now and I haven't had as much sustained fun ever since. Being a wage slave sucks.

Sounds more like a gap year than a miracle year.

I was able to do that while I was still studying, which mostly involved memorizing a bunch of stuff. The software industry and its endless meetings drain my energy way more

Re: Fuck Your Miracle Year

#40

Post by nightski »

spir wrote: post #6

> Because now people have to spend their 20s learning about the discoveries that others made during their miracle years (the so-called “burden of knowledge”). Maybe now people have to spend their 20s learning about the discoveries because our modern pre-post-secondary education has become so watered down and unambitious. Personally, I get the sense that could have learned 5x to 20x as much in my teenage years if I ha…

That's amusing, you are doing exactly what the article talks about. But really though, I've relied very little on education institutions for much of my learning. Saying they held you back is just an excuse, it's likely you held yourself back. I know that in my case any failings are definitely largely my own.
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