8 ms·

Nurturing Genius

112 points by datashovel 10y ago

datashovel 10y ago
It is my (probably controversial) belief that humans can teach other humans how to become geniuses. We just haven't figured out how to yet. With one caveat: My guess is intervention probably has to start early.
- paulpauper 10y ago
  I think it's more controversial to suggest the opposite: that mental ability is innate
  - sAuronas 10y ago
    Mental ability is innate. I think his point was that is also plastic. Perhaps even low IQ individuals can develop genius level ability on a specific topic or function in life or even brought up to the IQ of someone capable of success in grad school.
  - nambit 10y ago
    His claim is controversial in scientific circles/studies that go against it but the science is controversial in general "anyone has the ability to be anyone" thinking. I highly suggest reading Stephen Pinker's A blank slate.
- jaxomlotus 10y ago
  I strongly agree. And I have seen it anecdotally a few times in how we have developed entry-level employees and interns who are now top of their field (e.g. One intern is now the VP of design at major tech company). I think the innate talent is in everyone and can be tapped simply by putting them into an environment where they are pushed beyond what might be considered a limit in other areas (even indirectly like through social pressure to keep up with other talented colleagues). Malcolm Gladwell pointed out how you will see clusters of geniuses emerge from the same time in the same neighborhoods and I think this supports the above as well. I don't think it's limited to young people either, though it certainly helps. An established reputation will prevent people from being pushed beyond their limits.
  - blackjack160 10y ago
    No shortage of challenging/stimulating environments out there for a variety of skills. Environments clearly matter too. It's more interesting to assess what conditions produce well-adjusted members of society who respond well to being pushed beyond their limits. Can we build uncommon resiliency in people without stunting other aspects?
- jacobolus 10y ago
  The basic principles are not a great mystery; actually implementing them is hard though. The best ways we know take a lot of time and dedication (e.g. hours per day of 1:1 or 1:few full-attention effort from an adult tutor who is both a subject expert and an expert teacher), more than we’re usually willing or able to spend on a child. Take a look at the Polgar sisters.
  - armitron 10y ago
    The Polgar sisters are not geniuses in any general sense of that word. Interesting enough as that "experiment" may have been, it only proved that certain persons of a certain background that includes genetic history unknown to us, can reach high degrees of competence in one __specialized__ field. Chess is also particularly well-coordinated with years of repetitive practice and dedication, but genius? I think not. You could replace chess with playing the piano even, and the outcome would be the same.
    - jacobolus 10y ago
      After having interacted with many people who were called “geniuses” in various settings (e.g. Nobel Prize winners, Fields medalists, best-selling novelists, at least a half dozen MacArthur “genius” grant recipients ...), I don’t consider “genius in any general sense” to be a real thing. YMMV.
      - armitron 10y ago
        Look at my previous post for a definition of genius that makes more sense and a possible explanation for its current debasement.
- armitron 10y ago
  That depends on your definition of genius, which seems to differ widely from mine but also if one takes "genius" to mean someone who does things a non-genius would not be able to do. There have been attempts in recent years to roll back and debase the definition of genius to be more compatible with egalitarianism (especially in parts of Europe) and the tenet of homogeneity but this is not what genius originally stood for. Fabian Tasano writes: "Regarding the version of “genius” that is currently in retreat but still occasionally used: many people seem to have a simplistic idea of what it takes to be one. According to one popular model, all that is required is an increase in the magnitude of certain qualities which everyone already possesses in some measure. Make the particular qualities pronounced enough, and you get to genius. But a better way to understand the concept — assuming we’re applying the word to (say) Gauss or Picasso, rather than John Cleese or Wayne Rooney — may be that a genius has a particular capacity, which on a certain level can seem obvious or unremarkable, but which no one else has. A genius, on this understanding, is a person uniquely capable of making a leap ‘off the path’. With hindsight the leap may seem simple or obvious, but at the time no one else was, apparently, capable of making it. A potential leap of this kind is made possible by preceding leaps. Nevertheless its actual occurrence may go on not happening for decades. During that time there may be clear pointers towards it. Yet it is not until a genius comes along that the leap actually happens." I could not agree more with this. Alan Kay also outlines an extremely similar point of view: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FvmTSpJU-Xc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FvmTSpJU-Xc Also see his blue/red world metaphor.
- WhitneyLand 10y ago
  I don't know any evidence to support that idea. My frustration is that too many people are labeled, pigeonholed and also don't have the resources to ever do their best. Do we underestimate our potential, sure, but we're not all in the 99th percentile. However my guess is real nootropics won't take another century to get here. We may all be smarter someday.
- facepalm 10y ago
  Laszlo Polgar figured out how to teach kids to become chess geniuses. Might be a start.
newswriter99 10y ago
The article buried in the middle what to do about the ones who fall through the cracks. Speaking from a Texas point of view, there's three big problems: 1) Focusing on athletics. 2)Lack-luster public schools and of course the be-all end-all: 3) Crappy parents. What are the people who were "gifted" but live a mediocre life supposed to do? Be bitter and drink for 40-60 years?
- tptacek 10y ago
  The notion that an identified aptitude for calculation, or written expression, or memorization, or abstract symbol manipulation entitles one to something more than a "mediocre" life is worth challenging, for several reasons.
  - goda90 10y ago
    I think they are saying that someone should be entitled to the same opportunity, despite their home school district and parents. If they don't excel despite those opportunities, nothing entitles them to one life or another. Protecting children from forces beyond their control has long been a goal of many societies and I'd say that's worth keeping.
  - adamnemecek 10y ago
    We as a society would be better off if those people are provided with growth opportunities.
    - tptacek 10y ago
      We'd generally be better off if everyone was given growth opportunities; that's just a restatement of the idea of human capital.
      - adamnemecek 10y ago
        We would. But given limited resource it might make sense to try to maximize the ROI.
coldtea 10y ago
Enough with the geniuses cargo cult. How about nurturing normal people collaborating, respecting the scientific process, loving to discover new things, be curious, etc?
- Jugurtha 10y ago
  I don't think it's cargo cult. We didn't have a program for skipping years in my country. My older siblings are much older and in STEM, which means I was informally schooled by them and spoke three languages before going to school. I used to read Science and Engineering magazines laying around as a child, then you get to school and you're put with kids who are just learning how to actually read the alphabet, and they're using pictures and scenes, and write big chunky letters. They're learning addition and multiplication while you at home write programs. Any idea how fucking miserable this could make anyone? I was excited about disassembling programs as a teenager and couldn't wait to get to college and study Engineering and meet teachers so I could avoid reinventing the wheel, only to be disappointed (if you teach programming and a kid who just turned 18 shows you programs he wrote in a bunch of languages including x86 assembly but you don't care: wake the fuck up and turn him to a colleague who does actually care about this stuff). I'm sure a smarter kid would have figured a way to end up at the right office at the right teacher, but I've sampled many professors to loose faith. I tried to go study abroad in a very respected college to save my soul because I knew I wouldn't last in my college, received a response, then financing fell through like a Damocles sword. I spent 9 years in college. I resented academia where stupidity and cheating were more acceptable than absenteeism. If you didn't show up and did well, you were a cheat; if you showed up and cheated, you were okay. I was so used to proving I didn't cheat because the work was "too good" to be of a student (and this started in 4th grade with my fucking handwriting on a homework not being a child's handwriting. The teacher had accused me and it was my idea to write in front of her to disculpate me). I resented incompetent fossilized professors with out of date knowledge who'd just crush you for not following exactly their (factually wrong) exact way, and you could do nothing about it because they've been friends for 30 years with the dean or know the Minister or something. A system that reproached you of doing a good job, where doing nice work had bad consequences and of course it wasn't your work, just tell the truth. A system where it'd be so much easier to be mediocre. I hated every fucking day of school from the day I got in, to the day I got out. I'm all for increasing the average level of education, but "non-average" kids shouldn't be "tied" to average kids. Many people talk about "osmosis" and what the smart kids could bring when they're in class and these people don't really get osmosis: It's not the average kids who end up smarter, it's the smart kids who end up withering away. This may work for adults, but for kids? I think it's hard. The system judges outliers with the same mindset it judges the average. They're just not the same. Special needs kids are not just on the left side of the Gaussian. EDIT - To put things in context: I grew up in the midst of a civil war that made 200,000+ victims; son of a father with a job that made him a target; belonging to an ethnicity that is the prime target, and survived a bunch of explosions. Great childhood. When I say education is the worst thing that's happened to me and that's left the bitterest of tastes in my mouth, I hope I'm able to fully convey to which extent it has traumatized me.
jessriedel 10y ago
As an aside, think we should all be impressed that Scientific American includes an "In Brief" summary of the article (aka an abstract aka tl;dr). Reading on the internet will be substantially better once these are widely adopted.
- Jugurtha 10y ago
  Indeed, I was agreeably surprised as well. I like the "Bottom Line Up Front" style. Speaking of abstracts ... https://arxiv.org/pdf/1110.2832.pdf https://arxiv.org/pdf/1110.2832.pdf
dmit 10y ago
Only tangentially related, but this article reminded me of Edward Kmett's presentation from YOW! 2014: https://yow.eventer.com/yow-2014-1222/stop-treading-water-learning-to-learn-by-edward-kmett-1750 https://yow.eventer.com/yow-2014-1222/stop-treading-water-le... (~40min) (slides: http://yowconference.com.au/slides/yow2014/Kmett-StopTreadingWater.pdf http://yowconference.com.au/slides/yow2014/Kmett-StopTreadin...) One of the topics he touched upon is Richard Feynman's approach to "being a genius": You have to keep a dozen of your favorite problems constantly present in your mind, although by and large they will lay in a dormant state. Every time you hear or read a new trick or a new result, test it against each of your twelve problems to see whether it helps. Every once in a while there will be a hit, and people will say, “How did he do it? He must be a genius!”
- marcosdumay 10y ago
  As time passes, free time gets rarer, problems get more complex, and it gets harder and harder to keep many open problems on my mind. What you quoted is probably a genius not aware what limitation is the bottleneck for most people.
  - closed 10y ago
    Something that may be related is that the further you get in an area, the less structured coaching available (through textbooks, academic advisors, etc..). In this sense, a new problem pops up, which is learning to decompose complex problems into simpler pieces. Something that is often done for people in the early stages of learning (and I find super difficult without collaborating with others).
  - eli_gottlieb 10y ago
    >What you quoted is probably a genius not aware what limitation is the bottleneck for most people. While Ed Kmett is in fact a Time Lord, that's largely because he doesn't seem to require sleep the way the rest of us do. (I know him IRL.)
gedy 10y ago
The idea that people are blank slates as children and of equal capabilities aside from their environment is so prominent in this country. Many people are very dogmatic about this, so I wonder where this belief comes from? Religious and/or Leftist political theory?
- wallflower 10y ago
  B.F. Skinner, the father of behavioral psychology “Give me a child and I'll shape him into anything.”
- dvanduzer 10y ago
  Aristotle[0] is credited with starting that conversation. But the belief that humans have "equal capabilities aside from their environment" is held by almost nobody. Most disagreements are about what we should do about both unequal capability and unequal environment. Dogmatism enters when we disagree over why anything should be done. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tabula_rasa https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tabula_rasa
- tptacek 10y ago
  Reluctance to accept the genetic mental superiority of specific "races" of people isn't a leftist principle. The left has no proprietary claim on egalitarianism.
  - kapitza 10y ago
    Wut? searches mental database for any trace of right-wing egalitarians... You must be thinking of... Nietzsche? Definitely not Nietzsche. Maistre? Mmm... no. Can't be Maistre. Bonald? Filmer? Okay, you win, I give up. In case you're wondering how this plays out in practice: http://www1.udel.edu/educ/gottfredson/reprints/2009academicfreedom.pdf http://www1.udel.edu/educ/gottfredson/reprints/2009academicf...
    - tptacek 10y ago
      "Right-wing" means something different from "rightward on the right-left spectrum". I too would have a hard time coming up with an example of a "right-wing" egalitarian. Reihan Salam might be a decent example of a right-leaning egalitarian.
mcguire 10y ago
"“Whether we like it or not, these people really do control our society,” says Jonathan Wai, a psychologist at the Duke Talent Identification Program, which collaborates with the Hopkins center. Wai combined data from 11 prospective and retrospective longitudinal studies, including SMPY, to demonstrate the correlation between early cognitive ability and adult achievement. “The kids who test in the top 1 percent tend to become our eminent scientists and academics, our Fortune 500 CEOs, and federal judges, senators and billionaires,” he says." I'm telling you, the Chinese were onto something with the imperial examinations. What we do is set up a test focusing on IQ and aptitude taken at, say 10 years. Based on that, we segregate everyone into castes; say, manual laborers, blue collar workers, white collar workers, and professionals. Then we focus subsequent instruction for the particular caste: professionals and white collars get pre-college material, blue collars get trade schools and the rest get baby-sat to keep them out of trouble. Further tests can provide finer gradations, particularly important for the higher castes, to identify that 1% that will become the leaders. Those are given all the advantages they need to reach their potential without having resources sapped by sheer wastage. Careers and such are determined properly, by aptitude and intelligence, and not by stupid crap like which class the hot girl is taking. The system has a number of other advantages: we can ditch the goofy democracy for everyone thing, since the majority aren't going to have valid opinions anyway. The result is less stress and more happiness for everyone. [Edit] It just occurred to me that Plato would probably think that this is his Republic. Except that we could make this actually work.
- nitrogen 10y ago
  Since there seems to be a lot of variation in the developmental pace of different individuals, it seems that a program such as this would need multiple tests, and a way to detect students who were put in the wrong track. Even then, you can expect significant opposition to such a program in any established society. Unfortunately, this kind of caste system already exists as a de facto result of socioeconomic background, and I think it would be better to acknowledge and counteract the effects of background, than to make an explicit division based on early age testing.
WhitneyLand 10y ago
The results are really impressive. It's also comforting to see them dealing with some of the subtleties that were intuitive but not always practiced. That labeling people high and low can both be damaging. That putting children in college could sometimes save them emotionally rather than cause problems. That IQ tests are bullshit when used improperly and even the best tests are still missing people who should be nurtured. Other factors seem very important anecdotally, have these been dismissed or just not fully studied yet? 1. Socioeconomic background - they mention it's not as predictive, but how sure are we Microsoft would exist if BG's/PA's parents were illiterate and couldn't afford to give them access to computers? 2. Mental health - Someone could be a 4th standard deviation genius yet be debilitated by anxiety, depression, or some other condition. 3. Occasionally mental "disability" can seemingly be related to success. So many great scientists have been on the Autistic spectrum, or suffered from severe OCD. Can the success of the person be separated from the disorder? Could "cures" for Autism and OCD actually negatively affect scientific progress? Or could their condition cause them to be incorrectly screened out? 4. How do curiosity, motivation, and ambition affect success? Do high scoring kids automatically have these traits or is it a separate variable?
- jacobolus 10y ago
  > how sure are we Microsoft would exist if BG's/PA's parents were illiterate and couldn't afford to give them access to computers? We can be entirely sure it would not exist. This is not a hard prediction.
  - WhitneyLand 10y ago
    I think you're right. But I don't understand why they implied its predictive ability is low.
- BN1978 10y ago
  > Someone could be a 4th standard deviation genius What does this mean? I am not familiar with that. Is that related with IQ or some other metrics? I googled 4th standard deviation, and it pointed me to Wikipedia article https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/68%E2%80%9395%E2%80%9399.7_rule https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/68%E2%80%9395%E2%80%9399.7_rul... Reading that article, I am still not sure what "4th standard deviation genius" means - does that mean "1 in 15787" of people based on some intelligence metrics?
marmaduke 10y ago
I attended CTY three times but I definitely wasn't one of those "genius"es. I was a goddamn stubborn nerd who wasnt smart enough not to give up. I remember the fundamentals of comp Sci course finished with a short section on C and I amused myself not implementing data structures as assigned but seeing what sorts of segfaults lead to what pop up messages... There were real smart people there. I mean they just took one look at a red black tree and just got it. Not me I sweat all the way through that stuff.
imranq 10y ago
Personally I think the goal isnt to be called a "genius". That seems like a trick for parties - like to show off ones intellect like a lion shows off his roar at a zoo. Sometimes I feel we worship at the altar of genius way too much. I'd rather take smarts and apply them to have better relationships, discover new and wonderful things, and build things i and other people find useful. Being labeled as a genius seems like a huge drag.

112 points by datashovel 10y ago

It is my (probably controversial) belief that humans can teach other humans how to become geniuses. We just haven't figured out how to yet. With one caveat: My guess is intervention probably has to start early.

paulpauper 10y ago
I think it's more controversial to suggest the opposite: that mental ability is innate
- sAuronas 10y ago
  Mental ability is innate. I think his point was that is also plastic. Perhaps even low IQ individuals can develop genius level ability on a specific topic or function in life or even brought up to the IQ of someone capable of success in grad school.
- nambit 10y ago
  His claim is controversial in scientific circles/studies that go against it but the science is controversial in general "anyone has the ability to be anyone" thinking. I highly suggest reading Stephen Pinker's A blank slate.
jaxomlotus 10y ago
I strongly agree. And I have seen it anecdotally a few times in how we have developed entry-level employees and interns who are now top of their field (e.g. One intern is now the VP of design at major tech company). I think the innate talent is in everyone and can be tapped simply by putting them into an environment where they are pushed beyond what might be considered a limit in other areas (even indirectly like through social pressure to keep up with other talented colleagues). Malcolm Gladwell pointed out how you will see clusters of geniuses emerge from the same time in the same neighborhoods and I think this supports the above as well. I don't think it's limited to young people either, though it certainly helps. An established reputation will prevent people from being pushed beyond their limits.
- blackjack160 10y ago
  No shortage of challenging/stimulating environments out there for a variety of skills. Environments clearly matter too. It's more interesting to assess what conditions produce well-adjusted members of society who respond well to being pushed beyond their limits. Can we build uncommon resiliency in people without stunting other aspects?
jacobolus 10y ago
The basic principles are not a great mystery; actually implementing them is hard though. The best ways we know take a lot of time and dedication (e.g. hours per day of 1:1 or 1:few full-attention effort from an adult tutor who is both a subject expert and an expert teacher), more than we’re usually willing or able to spend on a child. Take a look at the Polgar sisters.
- armitron 10y ago
  The Polgar sisters are not geniuses in any general sense of that word. Interesting enough as that "experiment" may have been, it only proved that certain persons of a certain background that includes genetic history unknown to us, can reach high degrees of competence in one __specialized__ field. Chess is also particularly well-coordinated with years of repetitive practice and dedication, but genius? I think not. You could replace chess with playing the piano even, and the outcome would be the same.
  - jacobolus 10y ago
    After having interacted with many people who were called “geniuses” in various settings (e.g. Nobel Prize winners, Fields medalists, best-selling novelists, at least a half dozen MacArthur “genius” grant recipients ...), I don’t consider “genius in any general sense” to be a real thing. YMMV.
    - armitron 10y ago
      Look at my previous post for a definition of genius that makes more sense and a possible explanation for its current debasement.
armitron 10y ago
That depends on your definition of genius, which seems to differ widely from mine but also if one takes "genius" to mean someone who does things a non-genius would not be able to do. There have been attempts in recent years to roll back and debase the definition of genius to be more compatible with egalitarianism (especially in parts of Europe) and the tenet of homogeneity but this is not what genius originally stood for. Fabian Tasano writes: "Regarding the version of “genius” that is currently in retreat but still occasionally used: many people seem to have a simplistic idea of what it takes to be one. According to one popular model, all that is required is an increase in the magnitude of certain qualities which everyone already possesses in some measure. Make the particular qualities pronounced enough, and you get to genius. But a better way to understand the concept — assuming we’re applying the word to (say) Gauss or Picasso, rather than John Cleese or Wayne Rooney — may be that a genius has a particular capacity, which on a certain level can seem obvious or unremarkable, but which no one else has. A genius, on this understanding, is a person uniquely capable of making a leap ‘off the path’. With hindsight the leap may seem simple or obvious, but at the time no one else was, apparently, capable of making it. A potential leap of this kind is made possible by preceding leaps. Nevertheless its actual occurrence may go on not happening for decades. During that time there may be clear pointers towards it. Yet it is not until a genius comes along that the leap actually happens." I could not agree more with this. Alan Kay also outlines an extremely similar point of view: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FvmTSpJU-Xc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FvmTSpJU-Xc Also see his blue/red world metaphor.
WhitneyLand 10y ago
I don't know any evidence to support that idea. My frustration is that too many people are labeled, pigeonholed and also don't have the resources to ever do their best. Do we underestimate our potential, sure, but we're not all in the 99th percentile. However my guess is real nootropics won't take another century to get here. We may all be smarter someday.
facepalm 10y ago
Laszlo Polgar figured out how to teach kids to become chess geniuses. Might be a start.

newswriter99 10y ago

The article buried in the middle what to do about the ones who fall through the cracks. Speaking from a Texas point of view, there's three big problems: 1) Focusing on athletics. 2)Lack-luster public schools and of course the be-all end-all: 3) Crappy parents. What are the people who were "gifted" but live a mediocre life supposed to do? Be bitter and drink for 40-60 years?

tptacek 10y ago
The notion that an identified aptitude for calculation, or written expression, or memorization, or abstract symbol manipulation entitles one to something more than a "mediocre" life is worth challenging, for several reasons.
- goda90 10y ago
  I think they are saying that someone should be entitled to the same opportunity, despite their home school district and parents. If they don't excel despite those opportunities, nothing entitles them to one life or another. Protecting children from forces beyond their control has long been a goal of many societies and I'd say that's worth keeping.
- adamnemecek 10y ago
  We as a society would be better off if those people are provided with growth opportunities.
  - tptacek 10y ago
    We'd generally be better off if everyone was given growth opportunities; that's just a restatement of the idea of human capital.
    - adamnemecek 10y ago
      We would. But given limited resource it might make sense to try to maximize the ROI.

coldtea 10y ago

Enough with the geniuses cargo cult. How about nurturing normal people collaborating, respecting the scientific process, loving to discover new things, be curious, etc?

Jugurtha 10y ago
I don't think it's cargo cult. We didn't have a program for skipping years in my country. My older siblings are much older and in STEM, which means I was informally schooled by them and spoke three languages before going to school. I used to read Science and Engineering magazines laying around as a child, then you get to school and you're put with kids who are just learning how to actually read the alphabet, and they're using pictures and scenes, and write big chunky letters. They're learning addition and multiplication while you at home write programs. Any idea how fucking miserable this could make anyone? I was excited about disassembling programs as a teenager and couldn't wait to get to college and study Engineering and meet teachers so I could avoid reinventing the wheel, only to be disappointed (if you teach programming and a kid who just turned 18 shows you programs he wrote in a bunch of languages including x86 assembly but you don't care: wake the fuck up and turn him to a colleague who does actually care about this stuff). I'm sure a smarter kid would have figured a way to end up at the right office at the right teacher, but I've sampled many professors to loose faith. I tried to go study abroad in a very respected college to save my soul because I knew I wouldn't last in my college, received a response, then financing fell through like a Damocles sword. I spent 9 years in college. I resented academia where stupidity and cheating were more acceptable than absenteeism. If you didn't show up and did well, you were a cheat; if you showed up and cheated, you were okay. I was so used to proving I didn't cheat because the work was "too good" to be of a student (and this started in 4th grade with my fucking handwriting on a homework not being a child's handwriting. The teacher had accused me and it was my idea to write in front of her to disculpate me). I resented incompetent fossilized professors with out of date knowledge who'd just crush you for not following exactly their (factually wrong) exact way, and you could do nothing about it because they've been friends for 30 years with the dean or know the Minister or something. A system that reproached you of doing a good job, where doing nice work had bad consequences and of course it wasn't your work, just tell the truth. A system where it'd be so much easier to be mediocre. I hated every fucking day of school from the day I got in, to the day I got out. I'm all for increasing the average level of education, but "non-average" kids shouldn't be "tied" to average kids. Many people talk about "osmosis" and what the smart kids could bring when they're in class and these people don't really get osmosis: It's not the average kids who end up smarter, it's the smart kids who end up withering away. This may work for adults, but for kids? I think it's hard. The system judges outliers with the same mindset it judges the average. They're just not the same. Special needs kids are not just on the left side of the Gaussian. EDIT - To put things in context: I grew up in the midst of a civil war that made 200,000+ victims; son of a father with a job that made him a target; belonging to an ethnicity that is the prime target, and survived a bunch of explosions. Great childhood. When I say education is the worst thing that's happened to me and that's left the bitterest of tastes in my mouth, I hope I'm able to fully convey to which extent it has traumatized me.

jessriedel 10y ago

As an aside, think we should all be impressed that Scientific American includes an "In Brief" summary of the article (aka an abstract aka tl;dr). Reading on the internet will be substantially better once these are widely adopted.

Jugurtha 10y ago
Indeed, I was agreeably surprised as well. I like the "Bottom Line Up Front" style. Speaking of abstracts ... https://arxiv.org/pdf/1110.2832.pdf https://arxiv.org/pdf/1110.2832.pdf

dmit 10y ago

Only tangentially related, but this article reminded me of Edward Kmett's presentation from YOW! 2014: https://yow.eventer.com/yow-2014-1222/stop-treading-water-learning-to-learn-by-edward-kmett-1750 https://yow.eventer.com/yow-2014-1222/stop-treading-water-le... (~40min) (slides: http://yowconference.com.au/slides/yow2014/Kmett-StopTreadingWater.pdf http://yowconference.com.au/slides/yow2014/Kmett-StopTreadin...) One of the topics he touched upon is Richard Feynman's approach to "being a genius": You have to keep a dozen of your favorite problems constantly present in your mind, although by and large they will lay in a dormant state. Every time you hear or read a new trick or a new result, test it against each of your twelve problems to see whether it helps. Every once in a while there will be a hit, and people will say, “How did he do it? He must be a genius!”

marcosdumay 10y ago
As time passes, free time gets rarer, problems get more complex, and it gets harder and harder to keep many open problems on my mind. What you quoted is probably a genius not aware what limitation is the bottleneck for most people.
- closed 10y ago
  Something that may be related is that the further you get in an area, the less structured coaching available (through textbooks, academic advisors, etc..). In this sense, a new problem pops up, which is learning to decompose complex problems into simpler pieces. Something that is often done for people in the early stages of learning (and I find super difficult without collaborating with others).
- eli_gottlieb 10y ago
  >What you quoted is probably a genius not aware what limitation is the bottleneck for most people. While Ed Kmett is in fact a Time Lord, that's largely because he doesn't seem to require sleep the way the rest of us do. (I know him IRL.)

gedy 10y ago

The idea that people are blank slates as children and of equal capabilities aside from their environment is so prominent in this country. Many people are very dogmatic about this, so I wonder where this belief comes from? Religious and/or Leftist political theory?

wallflower 10y ago
B.F. Skinner, the father of behavioral psychology “Give me a child and I'll shape him into anything.”
dvanduzer 10y ago
Aristotle[0] is credited with starting that conversation. But the belief that humans have "equal capabilities aside from their environment" is held by almost nobody. Most disagreements are about what we should do about both unequal capability and unequal environment. Dogmatism enters when we disagree over why anything should be done. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tabula_rasa https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tabula_rasa
tptacek 10y ago
Reluctance to accept the genetic mental superiority of specific "races" of people isn't a leftist principle. The left has no proprietary claim on egalitarianism.
- kapitza 10y ago
  Wut? searches mental database for any trace of right-wing egalitarians... You must be thinking of... Nietzsche? Definitely not Nietzsche. Maistre? Mmm... no. Can't be Maistre. Bonald? Filmer? Okay, you win, I give up. In case you're wondering how this plays out in practice: http://www1.udel.edu/educ/gottfredson/reprints/2009academicfreedom.pdf http://www1.udel.edu/educ/gottfredson/reprints/2009academicf...
  - tptacek 10y ago
    "Right-wing" means something different from "rightward on the right-left spectrum". I too would have a hard time coming up with an example of a "right-wing" egalitarian. Reihan Salam might be a decent example of a right-leaning egalitarian.

mcguire 10y ago

"“Whether we like it or not, these people really do control our society,” says Jonathan Wai, a psychologist at the Duke Talent Identification Program, which collaborates with the Hopkins center. Wai combined data from 11 prospective and retrospective longitudinal studies, including SMPY, to demonstrate the correlation between early cognitive ability and adult achievement. “The kids who test in the top 1 percent tend to become our eminent scientists and academics, our Fortune 500 CEOs, and federal judges, senators and billionaires,” he says." I'm telling you, the Chinese were onto something with the imperial examinations. What we do is set up a test focusing on IQ and aptitude taken at, say 10 years. Based on that, we segregate everyone into castes; say, manual laborers, blue collar workers, white collar workers, and professionals. Then we focus subsequent instruction for the particular caste: professionals and white collars get pre-college material, blue collars get trade schools and the rest get baby-sat to keep them out of trouble. Further tests can provide finer gradations, particularly important for the higher castes, to identify that 1% that will become the leaders. Those are given all the advantages they need to reach their potential without having resources sapped by sheer wastage. Careers and such are determined properly, by aptitude and intelligence, and not by stupid crap like which class the hot girl is taking. The system has a number of other advantages: we can ditch the goofy democracy for everyone thing, since the majority aren't going to have valid opinions anyway. The result is less stress and more happiness for everyone. [Edit] It just occurred to me that Plato would probably think that this is his Republic. Except that we could make this actually work.

nitrogen 10y ago
Since there seems to be a lot of variation in the developmental pace of different individuals, it seems that a program such as this would need multiple tests, and a way to detect students who were put in the wrong track. Even then, you can expect significant opposition to such a program in any established society. Unfortunately, this kind of caste system already exists as a de facto result of socioeconomic background, and I think it would be better to acknowledge and counteract the effects of background, than to make an explicit division based on early age testing.

WhitneyLand 10y ago

The results are really impressive. It's also comforting to see them dealing with some of the subtleties that were intuitive but not always practiced. That labeling people high and low can both be damaging. That putting children in college could sometimes save them emotionally rather than cause problems. That IQ tests are bullshit when used improperly and even the best tests are still missing people who should be nurtured. Other factors seem very important anecdotally, have these been dismissed or just not fully studied yet? 1. Socioeconomic background - they mention it's not as predictive, but how sure are we Microsoft would exist if BG's/PA's parents were illiterate and couldn't afford to give them access to computers? 2. Mental health - Someone could be a 4th standard deviation genius yet be debilitated by anxiety, depression, or some other condition. 3. Occasionally mental "disability" can seemingly be related to success. So many great scientists have been on the Autistic spectrum, or suffered from severe OCD. Can the success of the person be separated from the disorder? Could "cures" for Autism and OCD actually negatively affect scientific progress? Or could their condition cause them to be incorrectly screened out? 4. How do curiosity, motivation, and ambition affect success? Do high scoring kids automatically have these traits or is it a separate variable?

jacobolus 10y ago
> how sure are we Microsoft would exist if BG's/PA's parents were illiterate and couldn't afford to give them access to computers? We can be entirely sure it would not exist. This is not a hard prediction.
- WhitneyLand 10y ago
  I think you're right. But I don't understand why they implied its predictive ability is low.
BN1978 10y ago
> Someone could be a 4th standard deviation genius What does this mean? I am not familiar with that. Is that related with IQ or some other metrics? I googled 4th standard deviation, and it pointed me to Wikipedia article https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/68%E2%80%9395%E2%80%9399.7_rule https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/68%E2%80%9395%E2%80%9399.7_rul... Reading that article, I am still not sure what "4th standard deviation genius" means - does that mean "1 in 15787" of people based on some intelligence metrics?

marmaduke 10y ago

I attended CTY three times but I definitely wasn't one of those "genius"es. I was a goddamn stubborn nerd who wasnt smart enough not to give up. I remember the fundamentals of comp Sci course finished with a short section on C and I amused myself not implementing data structures as assigned but seeing what sorts of segfaults lead to what pop up messages... There were real smart people there. I mean they just took one look at a red black tree and just got it. Not me I sweat all the way through that stuff.

imranq 10y ago

Personally I think the goal isnt to be called a "genius". That seems like a trick for parties - like to show off ones intellect like a lion shows off his roar at a zoo. Sometimes I feel we worship at the altar of genius way too much. I'd rather take smarts and apply them to have better relationships, discover new and wonderful things, and build things i and other people find useful. Being labeled as a genius seems like a huge drag.