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Fuck Your Miracle Year

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Re: Fuck Your Miracle Year

#61

Post by peepop6 »

throwaway1777 wrote: post #34
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.

Sounds like a good way to create even more cults of personality and egotistical assholes who can't work in a team.

Breakthroughs aren't made by lone geniuses anymore. We just have that superhero fetish eg. picture of black hole where credit was practically given to that one woman in the picture.

Re: Fuck Your Miracle Year

#62

Post by throwaway1777 »

DubiousPusher wrote: post #56
throwaway1777 wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> 1% of the people make 99% of the real scientific breakthroughs That is maybe the single most dubious statistic I've seen thrown out so offhandedly in my entire time on HN.

I’m talking specifically about stuff like the discovery of gravity or electricity, not the very important and significant inventions that aren’t really a step change. The number of people who make these discoveries may even be hundreds or thousands but that is vanishingly small on a planet of billions of people.

Re: Fuck Your Miracle Year

#63

Post by pjbeam »

vostok wrote: post #52
nostrebored wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We send some of our worst thinkers to educate children. Trigonometry didn’t make sense to me as a kid because I was learning from someone who didn’t understand it. They could memorize a lot of rules, but they didn’t understand it. In the face of this, what makes the most sense is fostering curiosity. Your teachers not understanding material doesn’t matter if their role is prompting you to ask the right questions and…

> We send some of our worst thinkers to educate children. I wonder if this is the sort of thing that could be fixed by paying teachers more. Why would a smart person become a teacher if a professional industry job will pay $300-500k and a teaching job will pay $100k? Is paying teachers so much even palatable to the general public?

I don't think pay would necessarily solve the problem though either (edit: I do support paying teachers quite a bit more just don't think that is a magical solution). I'm not a teacher, don't pretend to understand the nuances but there seems to be a nasty conflagration of political barriers to holding some combination of children/teachers accountable for outcomes. Probably something related to withholding finding or other perverse incentives. I'm sure I'm not the only person on HN who has left a very high paying job for a different one because of bad culture factors.

Re: Fuck Your Miracle Year

#64

Post by ironmagma »

> Also, stop meditation and trying to optimize your mental and physical performance. Has anyone who’s ever had a miracle year cared about any of this shit?

I’d say Lex Fridman is in his equivalent of a miracle year, or was last year anyway. Keeping the body tuned is important for mental ability which is important if you’re trying to be productive at all, much more to achieve a miracle year.

Re: Fuck Your Miracle Year

#65

Post by DubiousPusher »

jriot wrote: post #17
DubiousPusher wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Republic for Which It Stands - The United States during Reconstruction and the Gilded Age, 1865-1896 by Richard White

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…

I have not but they're ceetainly going on my reading list after this one. Considering that this is yet another history book which is de-programming me from my own awful public school/hollywood led history educatiom I would think it would make a very good basis for a realistic and practical understanding of American history.

Re: Fuck Your Miracle Year

#66

Post by brtkdotse »

nsxwolf wrote: post #50
nerdponx wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have become convinced that inadequate public schooling is the reason why America has come to rely so much on college to make people "ready for society". Teachers are criminally underpaid, unsupported, and overworked, while parents are not engaged with their children's learning. It's a bad mix. Not to mention the politicization of teacher unions.

If they’re overworked, what is it they’re working so hard and so ineffectively at?

Don’t know about the US but in Sweden teachers are plagued by mandatory administrative task, as well as a myriad of small tasks all unrelated to teaching.

Re: Fuck Your Miracle Year

#67

Post by DubiousPusher »

throwaway1777 wrote: post #62
DubiousPusher wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 1% of the people make 99% of the real scientific breakthroughs That is maybe the single most dubious statistic I've seen thrown out so offhandedly in my entire time on HN.

I’m talking specifically about stuff like the discovery of gravity or electricity, not the very important and significant inventions that aren’t really a step change. The number of people who make these discoveries may even be hundreds or thousands but that is vanishingly small on a planet of billions of people.

Most academic discoveries come from the same kind of hand-me-down process as practical inventions. Newton's tutor was the one who encouraged him toward studying proto-calculus. He even wrote down the fundamental theorem of calculus himself once but not realizing its importance never publicized it.

Re: Fuck Your Miracle Year

#68

Post by ianbutler »

pjbeam wrote: post #51
javajosh wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

https://www.fcps.edu/academics/graduation-requirements-and-c... Here's the HS math sequence options from my local school district in VA. Can't speak to many other places but this is what my above comment is based on.

Only one of those options will even leave you remotely prepared for college level mathematics. The fact it stops at Algebra 2 or Part 2 for most of those options is criminal.

Re: Fuck Your Miracle Year

#69

Post by dylan604 »

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...

The thing that makes public schooling so frustrating is how they lump everyone together and then teach to the lowest common level. If you're in a school system that can afford to offer AP courses, some students have a chance of not being bored. The rest of the students have to deal with that fact that some of the students are only there because they haven't dropped out yet and the state requires their presence.

Re: Fuck Your Miracle Year

#70

Post by dylan604 »

brtkdotse wrote: post #66
nsxwolf wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If they’re overworked, what is it they’re working so hard and so ineffectively at?

Don’t know about the US but in Sweden teachers are plagued by mandatory administrative task, as well as a myriad of small tasks all unrelated to teaching.

I hear this a lot, but what exactly is administrative tasks they are being burdened with that is not part of being a teacher?
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