91–100 of 477 posts
I get quite depressed when I read articles like this. I'm resentful of the fact that my early academic performance was merely above average, rather than exceptional. Some days I feel confident in my abilities and my plans for the future; other days, I fear that it's already too late for me to accomplish anything of note.
It seems weird to me that nobody seems to see the evidence: as a parent you just want your kids to be happy. Happy in the correct way, which means long-term happiness, built with good cultural background, reasonable social skills, constructive hobbies, ability to have some of those good friends, etc. Most of these are not achieved if you're kid is "super smart". Being the father of Einstein is probably very good for…
Telling one of these kids to shut the book and watch tv isn't going to make them happier.
> 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…
Why is everybody so binary about this? Are we really suggesting that some individuals are not capable of intellectual tasks at a greater capacity, or a greater speed than others? If you understand that a human being has a higher cognitive function than a sea slug, a wasp, a mouse, a dog, a dolphin, an ape, by our genetics alone, then you have to accept that there is a degree of genetic variance between individual hum…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think the idea is that the 1-in-10,000 in this context is that it's not something you can "break into"; you're either born gifted or you're not. It's really hard for our generation to accept that some people really are born "better" -- which is exactly why the article mentions the education system now focuses on bringing up lower performers rather than identifying and accelerating gifted students.
I'm a strong believer in the idea that some people are born better, you don't have to convince me. The extent of my abilities is still unknown to me. I know what I want to achieve and I will continue trying to achieve it until I succeed or I am dead. To accept anything less is equivalent to death.
This is the kind of guy I want on my team.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
There were five different features that they plotted vs. SAT score [1]. All five rely heavily on intelligence: 1. any doctorate 2. STEM publications 3. STEM doctorates 4. Patents 5. Income in the 95th percentile A person in Q4 was 60% more likely than a person in Q3 to earn income in the 95th percentile. I'd say that's pretty significant. [1] https://www.scientificamerican.com/sciam/assets/Image/Child_...
Features #1-3 do not "rely heavily on intelligence". While intelligence certainly has a role, they rely much more heavily on training. All three also depend on knowing what is interesting , which is more a form of curiosity guided by knowing what other people know than a form of intelligence that can be measured by taking the SAT. (I don't know enough about #4 or #5 to make a comment.)
That is, intelligence is a necessary (but not sufficient) condition to get a graduate degree in STEM. The other necessary conditions you mention (training, interest, etc.) are also important, but still require a baseline ability.
Even looking at undergraduate degrees, IQ is a significant factor in what degree is obtained. Physics and astronomy majors have an average of IQ [1] of over 130 -- that's 2 standard deviations above the mean. If interest, training, and hard work alone were sufficient to get a physics degree, we'd see a much lower average IQ among physics students.
[1] http://www.randalolson.com/2014/06/25/average-iq-of-students...
I know of a kid who was responsible for a sheep herd at the age of 12. He'd live in the mountains and take care of sheep for weeks. Have some imagination.
> 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…
Finding "gifted" children does not contradict this. Nobody pops out of the womb a math genius.
Yes, technically no one pops out knowing trig or calculus, but some are born with the cognitive capacity, which later manifests in life, to readily master abstract and complicated stuff, and others aren't born with that ability so they struggle to understand concepts that smart people grasp easily. Although ability can be lopsided (some are better at math than verbal), the less intelligent tend to have no dominant strengths - they are just average. And that's fine. Most people are that way.
Gifted children are "gifted" with a laser focus on the unusual things that they find fun - math, music, what-have-you. They spend countless hours playing with numbers or with music, while little Johnny is playing with a ball.
Why don't adults play with paste, coloring books, and alphabet letters? Because they are too mentally mature for those activities. Likewise, high-IQ children have a higher mental age, hence they find these tasks tedious and boring, as adults do.
Anyway, point is, when people point to "gifted" talent, this is just another cop-out. They don't have an explanation. They are appealing to everybody's shared sense of magical outcomes. But it boils down to the hours that kids put into their interests.
Well, there's something called an IQ score, and it does a pretty good job at predicting all sorts of things, such as socioeconomic outcomes, job performance, educational attainment, welfare dependency, and learning ability. The IQ test is one of great achievements of human psychology, is much harder to manipulate than EQ tests, and scores tend to remain stable throughout life.
> 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…
Plenty of people spend hours drawing and still suck at it. My sister spent hours with a coloring book as a kid, and now has a growing IMDB page.* Sure, she went to a great art school, but not because of some single minded focus as she had ~10 AP classes and ended up High school Valedictorian. Even this did not take her full attention as she had a wide circle of friends, was very popular, and spent a lot of time on ma…
So you're saying she did have a single-minded focus on school?
> 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…
In certain areas, hours might be enough, but not always and everywhere. Chess is a good example. I've seen a 12 year old kid at a chess competition wipe the floor with dozens of much older players (people in their 40's, 50's, and up), who've been playing chess -- obsessively -- their whole lives. This 12 year old kid has been playing chess for maybe 6 years (let's say 8 years maximum), but he totally crushes others w…
>In certain areas, hours might be enough,