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A remarkable kid has died in Newcastle, Utah

deseret.com

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Re: A remarkable kid has died in Newcastle, Utah

#51

Post by yaomtc »

unsupp0rted wrote: post #4

> Outside, the sky over Escalante Valley, Utah, is blinding blue and cloudless, I don't enjoy articles that preamble about the lack of clouds in the sky. Here's the meat: > Kevin drowned in a kayaking accident at a friend’s birthday party. At 14, he had just published his autobiography. He was making plans to expand his 350-acre farm to buy up surrounding farms to convert to regenerative agriculture. He was saving mo…

The lack of clouds was relevant. The next few words you left out:

> promising no rain as it has for nearly a year

The area was experiencing a drought.

> And then, after 14 months without rain, the well that supplied their house went dry. For nine months the Coopers hauled water by the barrel for their household needs.

Re: A remarkable kid has died in Newcastle, Utah

#52

Post by contingencies »

chiefalchemist wrote: post #29
contingencies wrote: post #17

Cool kid. Imagine what he could have done with supportive teachers if not burdened by poverty.

I imagine he'd be cookie like all the other cookies; as in cut by a cookie cutter that limits the majority of all the other minds cranked out of the formal K - 12 mill.

"supportive teachers" != regular K12 teachers

Re: A remarkable kid has died in Newcastle, Utah

#53

Post by paulcole »

soared wrote: post #36

I mean, do we believe any of this? An 8 year old isn’t running a business and selling to restaurants in a different state. No business would purchase from an 8 year, no business would ship goods from an 8 year old, no bank gives a loan to a 9 year old. The list goes on and on. Incredibly sad that a child has died, but this reads as pure fantasy.

My brother was stealing property (boats, go-karts, ATVs) and selling it to (mostly) legitimate businesses (run by adults) by the time he was 12. By the time he was 15ish he had a landscaping business with residential and commercial customers.

Things are different when it’s real rural.

Sure you can’t get a bank loan without an adult involved, but cash is cash. And if you need something for your business and a kid brings it to you, who’s going to look a gift horse in the mouth?

Re: A remarkable kid has died in Newcastle, Utah

#54

Post by epolanski »

moffkalast wrote: post #33
epolanski wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He has nothing to do with Von Neumann, a sophisticated intelllectual and the last polymath who was all about vanity and avoiding physical work.

And was born to a very rich noble family as almost a polar opposite, which likely led him to pursue more abstract things and forget about the material. I would imagine this kid was on a similar level of genius, but seemingly more interested in making as much money as humanly possible instead.

Whether "genius" or not he has absolutely nothing in common with Von Neumann.

Re: A remarkable kid has died in Newcastle, Utah

#55

Post by NateEag »

Firmwarrior wrote: post #34
klyrs wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What a peculiar word to use. And, I actually disagree in this specific case. This kid is a statistical outlier to a degree I'm unwilling to even guess at. It's the kids around and below average who are hurt the most by a lack of structured education.

I think requiring standardized tests of homeschooled kids is a pretty good compromise… The standardized tests are ridiculously easy to ace if you're smart, and they'd catch kids who aren't learning reading or basic arithmetic

Pennsylvania does this in 3rd, 5th, and 8th grades.

Taking standardized tests in my youth was always a nice break - massively easier than the actual schoolwork I was doing.

Re: A remarkable kid has died in Newcastle, Utah

#56

Post by Barrin92 »

lkrubner wrote: post #2

This story is especially clear and dramatic (and well documented) but I've often thought this happens in every generation: the people who lead (businesses and nations) when they are in their 40s and 50s are often people who boldly go out and discover the world while they are in their teens and 20s, and so they take on a bit more risk than the average citizen, and this includes physical risk (whether in travel or info…

the overwhelming majority of leaders are careerists. If anything the one thing they have in common is that they tend to have the ability to progress through institutional positions quickly and tend to have uninterrupted biographies. If anything they're the opposite of bold risk takers, they tend to be methodical climbers.

That's why the overwhelming majority of representatives, both in the business sector as well as governments is lawyers, public servants, academics, engineers, long time party members, and so on. And of course inheritance is the other big factor. The most common form of business is the private family business.

Even in democratic politics inheritance is arguably one of the biggest factors. The Trudeaus and Bush's are your stereotypical leaders

Re: A remarkable kid has died in Newcastle, Utah

#57

Post by ryandrake »

fzeroracer wrote: post #8
moffkalast wrote: post #7

Kid sounded like an ultra capitalistic incarnation of Von Neumann. I suppose growing up dirt poor does that to a person.

The people celebrating this story seem weird to me because this looks more like a nightmare. It's having your entire childhood traded away in order to function in a system that's responsible for making your entire family poor. I know some people look at it as the whole 'self-made capitalist can do anything' sort of ideal but to me I see the failures of multiple systems.

Yea I got the same feeling. Like those “inspirational” stories like the kid running a lemonade stand to pay for his school lunches or a family getting enough GoFundMe donations to afford cancer treatment. There’s nothing inspirational or wholesome about these. They are macabre depictions of our unnecessarily cruel social systems.

Re: A remarkable kid has died in Newcastle, Utah

#58

Post by rkuykendall-com »

bombcar wrote: post #9
lkrubner wrote: post #2

This story is especially clear and dramatic (and well documented) but I've often thought this happens in every generation: the people who lead (businesses and nations) when they are in their 40s and 50s are often people who boldly go out and discover the world while they are in their teens and 20s, and so they take on a bit more risk than the average citizen, and this includes physical risk (whether in travel or info…

20 years ago Mexico was much different than it is now; 30 years even more so.

30 years ago in central Texas we visited northern Mexico many, many times a year. 20 years ago we thought it was funny other people were starting to be scared to do so. 15 years ago we stopped going. We haven't been back since.

It's so weird that, from a central Texas perspective, we used to be a short drive from visiting another COUNTRY, which is now effectively a blank space on the map of the world around us. Ski west in New Mexico, eat easy in New Orleans, Hike north in Colorado. South? Here be dragons.

Maybe the next 30 years will be the same story in the opposite direction, but I don't know. I haven't seen anything to give me hope of that.

Re: A remarkable kid has died in Newcastle, Utah

#59

Post by xwdv »

I'm willing to believe he did accomplish all these things, because the things he did aren't really intellectually complex. It is more of a matter of having social intelligence and patience, and perhaps arithmetic knowledge. A sufficiently motivated child with enough intelligence could accomplish them, especially if he had not much else to occupy his time.

Re: A remarkable kid has died in Newcastle, Utah

#60

Post by ribosometronome »

bequanna wrote: post #47
fock wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, to understand tax law, you need to understand language quite well (see another post these days on the frontpage...) - which usually comes with some skills in applying it. It smells a bit fishy, if you claim a person can do the first, but not the latter.

Wait, you’re claiming that someone needs to be able to diagram a sentence or spell perfectly to understand tax law? That’s ridiculous.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32889072

The number two post on HN, when you posted this, was how poor writing/reading skills are the biggest barrier to understanding legal language.

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