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Laura Deming, founder of the Longevity Fund, on being homeschooled

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Re: Laura Deming, founder of the Longevity Fund, on being homeschooled

#61

Post by apsec112 »

nimbius wrote: post #35

>I grew up homeschooled in NZ with a hilariously small amount of context for what the real world was like. kind of a blunt take here but yeah, homeschooling will do that because its limited to what your parents know. Public schools work to immerse kids in a diverse environment with many people from many different walks of life. they work to build soft skills like empathy, listening, and conflict resolution. she says…

Isolating kids is bad, but modern schools are a very weird, artificial (and often unpleasant) social environment. Many of the social skills you learn in them are useless or even harmful:

http://www.paulgraham.com/nerds.html

Also, homeschooling doesn't mean you can only learn from your parents. You can use any other resource that's available to you.

Re: Laura Deming, founder of the Longevity Fund, on being homeschooled

#62

Post by MichaelAO »

nimbius wrote: post #35

>I grew up homeschooled in NZ with a hilariously small amount of context for what the real world was like. kind of a blunt take here but yeah, homeschooling will do that because its limited to what your parents know. Public schools work to immerse kids in a diverse environment with many people from many different walks of life. they work to build soft skills like empathy, listening, and conflict resolution. she says…

"The average homeschooled kid is much more likely to miss social cues, stumble through a difficult interaction with feckless ineptitude, or even parrot their parents own myopic stereotypes or falsehoods."

Curious if this is something you have direct experience with/referencing a study or if you're just repeating the commonly held trope. I work at a school that has welcomed a large number of former home schoolers and I find your comment contrary to my experience with dozen of home school kids.

Additionally, describing public schools as a place where empathy, listening, and conflict resolution happens is counter to my experience working with public school districts. Genuinely interested to learn where you're coming from with your comment.

Re: Laura Deming, founder of the Longevity Fund, on being homeschooled

#64

Post by giacaglia »

DLarsen wrote: post #3
giacaglia wrote: post #2

This is super interesting! I wonder what other homeschooled people think of their experiences!

I enjoyed reading this recent post from Nathan Barry, which tells some of his story: https://nathanbarry.com/homeschool/

Thanks for sharing! this is super cool!

Re: Laura Deming, founder of the Longevity Fund, on being homeschooled

#65

Post by talentedcoin »

JoshTriplett wrote: post #26
scandox wrote: post #9

> But with longevity and other deeply existential problems, the horror of what’s happening has been tragically normalized. I will never understand this attitude. Why don't we see how valuable aging and death are? How can we possibly reframe this as a "horror". The horror is this idea that personal identity can go on indefinitely. Aging is a process of coming to terms with death. None of this is being "tragically norm…

> Why don't we see how valuable aging and death are? Because they're horrific tragedies that we should be fighting tooth and nail until they're extinguished and nobody ever has to deal with them again. They should be consigned to the history books. > Aging is a process of coming to terms with death. Aging is a biological problem that we continue to debug. And nothing should make us "come to terms" with being oblitera…

I find this kind of outlook very confusing. Don't you think that assuming life to be an engineering problem is a very strong assumption? Seems a bit above my pay grade to me ...

Re: Laura Deming, founder of the Longevity Fund, on being homeschooled

#67

Post by Meekro »

TrackerFF wrote: post #33
swiley wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone who was homeschooled and socialized almost exclusively with other homeschoolers as a kid, I was on the fence about it. Then I grew up and met people who went to public school. Holy cow I can’t believe people think it’s ok to put their kids through that! I can’t believe we collectively accept children being exposed to the violence and other problems that are pervasive there! It’s not surprising so many peop…

> I can’t believe we collectively accept children being exposed to the violence and other problems that are pervasive there! It’s not surprising so many people become criminals now. But on the flip-side, would you want to go your entire life without facing any conflicts? FWIW, I was bullied in middle school, and pretty much had to fight my way through. As in fist fighting. As an adult, I don't tolerate any bullshit -…

Some kids will "toughen up," others will spend the rest of their lives with anxiety disorders that could have been prevented if they'd had a safe environment.

Many public schools straight-up don't care about violence in their halls, or are powerless to stop it. To say that a parent must send their kids there to be beaten is wrong.

Re: Laura Deming, founder of the Longevity Fund, on being homeschooled

#68

Post by DavidVoid »

mc32 wrote: post #19
nathanbarry wrote: post #6

Such a great interview. It's fascinating to see how different education styles can have such a big impact. While homeschooling isn't the right fit for everyone, I was homeschooled and it had a huge impact on me. My habits now for constant learning, working to complete tasks quickly, building projects with my hands (remodeling, woodworking, etc), and my desire to start companies all came from the time and energy that…

One of the biggest advantages as well as disadvantage of homeschooling I think would be limiting the amount of school induced brainwashing. I don’t mean they make kids into automatons, but there is a tendency to _tell_ kids this is right and that is wrong along ideological lines without allowing kids to discover those things for themselves. I’m talking about things like tax policy, education, religion, government, et…

I feel like this would be a strong argument against homeschooling (and private religious schools for that matter). Because if they're home-schooled then they'll get exposed to fewer people from different social backgrounds than themselves, and that would reasonably reduce the amount of "brainwashing".

Re: Laura Deming, founder of the Longevity Fund, on being homeschooled

#69

Post by earthscienceman »

morelisp wrote: post #36
1123581321 wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

She doesn’t describe anything expensive or exclusive. Homeschooling typically does not have a cost beyond materials. What struck you as exemplary?

Come off it, she had access to a research lab at age 12! Even she said it's extraordinary. > I really felt like I got a cheat code to life early on. It was like being Ben Franklin’s daughter or something... When I first met Cynthia Kenyon... I was 12. She very kindly offered for me to just work in her lab as a normal intern,

No wonder she's obsessed with longevity. If everything I ever wanted or was interested in was handed to me on a silver platter, I'd want to live forever too.

How can people like Peter Thiel et al not feel disgusting spending a fortune on personal longevity when there is still starvation and hunger killing children every day? I would love to see the wealthy/privileged hackernews crowd try to justify this.

I have less caustic words for Laura Deming. She's young and she's at least investigating the world.

Re: Laura Deming, founder of the Longevity Fund, on being homeschooled

#70

Post by ksdale »

dekhn wrote: post #32
JoshTriplett wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why don't we see how valuable aging and death are? Because they're horrific tragedies that we should be fighting tooth and nail until they're extinguished and nobody ever has to deal with them again. They should be consigned to the history books. > Aging is a process of coming to terms with death. Aging is a biological problem that we continue to debug. And nothing should make us "come to terms" with being oblitera…

This sort of leaves out the reality that decomposing bodies are a critical part of the ecosystem, and that eliminating death in humans would have huge ecological consequences beyond just the nutrients of decomposing bodies. If/when you have reasonable solutions for overpopulation, massive resource consumption by advanced societies, and pollution, then we can talk about longevity.

Quite some time ago, I remember scrolling Imgur and there was a short video of some people in jeeps watching a lion (or a couple lions?) chase a young hippo across the road. Several people in the comments remarked that they couldn't believe no one tried to help the hippo, and I thought it was interesting that they didn't consider that helping the hippo meant starving the lion.

I feel the same way about organizations that rescue injured wild animals that aren't endangered. It's certainly nice for the injured animal, but there's some creature out there that doesn't eat as a result.

I haven't thought much at all beyond the usual sci-fi tropes regarding human immortality, but I think it's very difficult to fully appreciate what circle of life means.

Edit: I also think it's perfectly plausible that technological advances could indefinitely offset the environmental impact of human immortality or greatly increased longevity, I just wanted to point out my observation that in most of nature, death is very important for continued life.

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