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Lessons from a 45-year Study of Super-Smart Children

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Re: Lessons from a 45-year Study of Super-Smart Children

#311
post #24

But are they happy?

As someone who has been through the CTY program (I was a SET member, having scored above a 700 in math in 7th grade), I can say I've never been happier - I'm well off financially, have a career I greatly enjoy, and for the most part I can enjoy all the activities I have a desire for. On the flip side, my brother was also a SET member, and there are some contrasts with me - he got his PhD in chemistry at 25 (I never f…

You almost suggest your brother isn't as happy as you, but you don't come out and say that. You just mention financial costs.

Do you attribute your happiness do your intelligence? Just curious

Re: Lessons from a 45-year Study of Super-Smart Children

#312

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Godlike genius.. Godlike nothing! Sticking to it is the genius! I've failed my way to success." -- Thomas Edison "Let me tell you the secret that has led me to my goal. My strength lives solely in my tenacity." -- Louis Pasteur "Men give me credit for genius; but all the genius I have lies in this: When I have a subject on hand I study it profoundly." -- Alexander Hamilton

Sounds like an epic humblebrag by Hamilton. I don't think anyone, then or now, thinks he was a genius.

I am curious about how you come by your view. Have a look at this defense [0] of Hamilton on the $10. I can see from it how many could see him as a genius.

[0] http://www.financialsense.com/contributors/michael-pettis/pl...

Re: Lessons from a 45-year Study of Super-Smart Children

#313
post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Knowing a few friends and other acquaintances with PhDs, all they have common is endurance and focus. They were not exceptionally creative, or apparently breathtakingly genius. And I guess that's why Google et al. likes to hire PhDs. They can take all kinds of shit, and endure. Get to the bottom of those problems even in the face of internal politics/bureaucracy.

"Godlike genius.. Godlike nothing! Sticking to it is the genius! I've failed my way to success." -- Thomas Edison "Let me tell you the secret that has led me to my goal. My strength lives solely in my tenacity." -- Louis Pasteur "Men give me credit for genius; but all the genius I have lies in this: When I have a subject on hand I study it profoundly." -- Alexander Hamilton

Saying I worked hard is a more comforting story than saying I was lucky. I think people are likely to put more value on hard work than its due.

Re: Lessons from a 45-year Study of Super-Smart Children

#314

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The most recent data I can find on that is 20 years old so it's hard to say: http://sq.4mg.com/IQ-jobs.htm If you go by the "engineering" part of that, then average would be 125, if you go by "computer occupations" then average is a little over 110. Regarding entrepreneurs, there isn't much data. I found this quote "A more recent working paper by Simeon Djankov of the World Bank, Yingyi Qian of the University of Cali…

That intelligence can be distilled down to a single number is bullshit. IQ score is meaningless. http://www.cell.com/neuron/fulltext/S0896-6273(12)00584-3

That may or may not be true, but it's not what we were talking about. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moving_the_goalposts#Logical_f...

Re: Lessons from a 45-year Study of Super-Smart Children

#315

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> other metrics associated with intellectual accomplishment. Like say IQ. Feynman wouldn't have qualified for Mensa, and happily too[0]. Maybe that's a good metric. The metric is happy not to be in Mensa, but also has a PhD. Edit: Feynman's IQ was 126 and Mensa wants 132, at least according to Ericsson and Pool in their book Peak. [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AEUcmKDaklY

If Feynman's IQ was only 126 then IQ is a totally meaningless metric of intelligence.

the problem may have been the low ceiling of the test. For certain tests, getting a single question wrong may drop the IQ from 140 (possible maximum) to 135. Verbal questions can also be a challenge if you don't know obscure vocabulary words.

Re: Lessons from a 45-year Study of Super-Smart Children

#316
post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Now, I'm not a genius, but there's a huge difference between my aptitude towards anything and the average person. anything - I bet you just don't know how little aptitude you have at things you didn't happen to spend time with. > It took me longer to graduate at that point, but it was mostly because I was expected to do work and I never did before. Or - you're not that smart and good with excuses :) > I was reading…

> anything - I bet you just don't know how little aptitude you have at things you didn't happen to spend time with. As compared to other people trying things for the first time I'm usually a very quick learner. I think being a quick learner is innate. I've had the ability to learn things quickly since early childhood. > Reading is not understanding - maybe you just enjoyed the attention that you got from it. I didn't…

> I think I'm talented. I just don't actually do anything useful with my life.

mmh ... what a calm and measured response. and now I feel a bit bad for having responded so harsh - though honestly more tongue in cheek.

actually I can relate to what you said. also read calculus and algebra books as a teenager, wrote a book about JavaScript when I was fifteen, later studied math, most of my teachers in high school told me on a regular basis that I'm a genius and our gifted.

now, I wouldn't say that I didn't do anything useful with my life ... though nothing useful of the academic or technological kind. I rather lost respect for intelligence, the focus on IQ, status symbols and success in general. instead i try to become a happier and inspired person which brings something good to the world and into the life of the people surrounding me.

Re: Lessons from a 45-year Study of Super-Smart Children

#317
post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know a Chemistry professor whose favorite remark on this is, "A PhD is a badge of endurance, not intelligence."

PhD stands for Piled Higher & Deeper. Is a path of learning more and more about less and less. (of course that isn't necessarily true, but I find it amusing)

> Is a path of learning more and more about less and less

...until you know absolutely everything about absolutely nothing.

Re: Lessons from a 45-year Study of Super-Smart Children

#318
post #46
post #14

> Such results contradict long-established ideas suggesting that expert performance is built mainly through practice—that anyone can get to the top with enough focused effort of the right kind. Actually the claim is the other way around - that the people at the top got there through focused effort of the right kind. Finding "gifted" children does not contradict this. Nobody pops out of the womb a math genius. Gifted…

I don't feel like that's true. I didn't expend any effort on my studies and it just came easily to me. Now, I'm not a genius, but there's a huge difference between my aptitude towards anything and the average person. I scored in the 99th percentile in math on the California high school exit exam. I went to community college at 15 (while still taking some high school courses at first, but upon taking the proficiency e…

I agree with you. As a teenager, I seemed to have an intuitive ability to understand concepts that others struggled with. I tend to grok concepts very quickly and once I do, I don't forget them.

I would sit in class and play games (which I'd programmed) on my TI-83, or read books. I would drift my attention to the teacher's lecture occasionally, just enough to convince myself I understood what was being taught, then back to my game.

I never took notes, nor did I study for tests, even through my undergrad in computer science. I got an A+ in multivariable calculus just by listening to the prof talk, and piecing together my comprehension on the fly.

As far as focus goes, often my focus is laser guided but I'm not in control of the laser. When something catches my interest, it becomes all I can think about for weeks. I'll obsess over it and learn everything I can about it, until my interest wanes.

I'm left with really deep knowledge of really obscure topics, and shallow-to-nonexistent knowledge of many common topics, which makes me a surprising conversation partner.

Re: Lessons from a 45-year Study of Super-Smart Children

#319

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My read is that expertise carries with it specificity. If you happen to be very good at some X[3], but a test is only effectively measuring ability in X[5], where 3 & 5 are some arbitrary specialisations of a capability X, then your test score may not be particularly high. This depends on just how specific a skill is, whether or not the particular subject is a polymath or specialist, and much more. To take an example…

That's a great example and I don't disagree with you. The way I think about "intelligence" is not to mull over what it "really means" but to think about lots of common "intellectual" tasks (in which aptitude can be measured) that people are interested in: reading, writing, math, programming, solving puzzles, etc. Or ideally, theoretical "potential" in each of these tasks, since one person may put more or less effort…

Thanks.

There are different definitions of intelligence. One I like (though I don't quite find it comprehensive) is David Krakauer (of Santa Fe Institute), "Intelligence is Search". That is: it's a search across an n-dimensional space for a least-cost function.

There's the question of "function for what?", and I'm thinking here something which allows for useful prediction or outmaneuvering an adversary (as with chess).

This gives a set of related or subroutine functions which are required, including many on your list: information acquisitionprocessing, and output. An interesting concept I ran across in the past year or so is that of the medieval curriculum, comprised of the trivium and the quadrivium. The first is further broken down into grammar, logic, and rhetoric, or if you prefer, input (and framing), processing, and output. This tickles my brain.

Another element I'm familiar with is that there comes a point in any skill at which it's somewhat less the things you get right as what you avoid getting wrong that matters. A champion athlete has strength or stamina, but also optimised physiology (Michael Phelps's long arms and torso, short legs, and huge feet, for example, are swimming gold, QED), and not screwing anything up in the event. Nailing starts, turns, finishes, and technique, not getting in your own way.

Further pondering intelligence also brings into the fold what knowledge, wisdom, correctness, and quality are. Interesting questions.

Re: Lessons from a 45-year Study of Super-Smart Children

#320

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Calculus has a myth built up around it on how hard it is. A kindly professor once showed me how it worked in about a half hour, and I was like "is that all"? Of course that wasn't all, but that bit of help served me very well for years of more advanced math.

Would you have a reference to similar material I could spend a couple hours on?

The video series "The Mechanical Universe" has a very similar and simple explanation.
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