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Lessons from a 45-year Study of Super-Smart Children
- sitkack 10y agoThe gift is being interested in something and feeding ones own curiosity. It is the difference between an organism that grows only when fed vs one that feeds itself. I was "gifted", the biggest factor was an environment of experimentation and exploration. Questions with answers beget more questions. Feed that cycle.
- shinta42 10y agocliffnotes?
- sabujp 10y agohttps://www.tools4noobs.com/summarize/ https://www.tools4noobs.com/summarize/
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- spdionis 10y ago> Pioneering mathematicians Terence Tao and Lenhard Ng were one-percenters, as were Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg, Google co-founder Sergey Brin and musician Stefani Germanotta (Lady Gaga), who all passed through the Hopkins centre. Didn't expect Lady Gaga to be listed although it confirms one of my pet theories. It has long been my opinion that success in STEM fields correlates with general high intelligence which will affect strongly with a person's success in her field, be it maths or sculpture. It's only anecdotal but I've noticed that people that have a good grasp of maths when young also excel in their other favorite activities, even if it's physical activities. EDIT: more thoughts on the article > In Europe, support for research and educational programmes for gifted children has ebbed, as the focus has moved more towards inclusion. This is truly a pity, and it's not only about educational programmes, but the general mentality in Europe is against competitiveness, and sometimes people will even frown at you if you suggest that there truly are different intelligence levels among the population. Meanwhile in East Europe (namely Romania, Moldova, Ukraine, Russia, probably other countries too but I don't know anything about them) competitiveness between children is crazy high in some circles and that's why a lot of the best engineers come from that area. There was a comment here the other day on a post about interviewing saying that russian candidates were much more likely to excel at technical interviews than european candidates, and in my experience many more engineers in this area are really dedicated to their work.
- wormseed 10y agohttps://www.gwern.net/iq https://www.gwern.net/iq
- ckluis 10y agoI once had a manager who said he played football with a Proat one point. He said this of the game, "he wasn't the strongest on the field, he wasn't the fastest or the tallest, but man - he knew exactly where to be when the rest of us looked like we were just guessing."
- rurban 10y agoThat's why in my theory (and experience) mathematicians and afghans are by far the best football players. Ha! In all our university football tournaments mathematicians beat the hell out of all other faculties. Not on the big field, but in the hall, with 3-5 players. They expected where the ball would flow, and how it should flow best. Afghans? This happened with street ball, a super small field like basketball, with 2 players + goal keeper. The Afghan teams I know in the homeless soccer worldchampionships became top 3 of the world a couple of times already. They are small, not athletic. They have athletically no chance against Nigeria or Ghana, who just push them around. Or the traditional European teams. Or technically against Brazil, who are masters to play alone, but together with a partner they struggle. But they are fast, and they play like mathematicians, they know exactly how his partner would react, and vice versa. They love to play, even if on the big field they would have no chance, athletically. Chile, Mexico and Afghans are the best actually. Maybe because they are small, but mostly I think because they train a lot on the streets, for fun by themselves and know how to play together.
- m_mueller 10y agoI see the arts as an intersect of science (explaining our own world) and engineering (building new worlds). It's building a world with the goal to touch humans emotionally by referencing our own one. Being good at both is what makes a good artist - see also Renaissance artists like Da Vinci or the best filmmakers like Kubrick and Kurosawa.
- yomly 10y ago
- toolslive 10y agoask him: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L%C3%A1szl%C3%B3_Polg%C3%A1r https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L%C3%A1szl%C3%B3_Polg%C3%A1r
- koolba 10y agoWow that's an awesome read!
- trendia 10y ago> “A high test score tells you only that a person has high ability and is a good match for that particular test at that point in time,” says Matthews. If Matthews is correct that scores are transient, then we'd expect test scores to have little to no predictive ability. In other words, we'd expect the rate of career achievement among high test takers to be approximately equal to the rate of achievement among low test takers. But this claim is directly contradicted by actual evidence: > Follow-up surveys—at ages 18, 23, 33 and 48—backed up his hunch. A 2013 analysis found a correlation between the number of patents and peer-refereed publications that people had produced and their earlier scores on SATs and spatial-ability tests. The SAT tests jointly accounted for about 11% of the variance; spatial ability accounted for an additional 7.6%.
- jsprogrammer 10y agoIt's a huge stretch to consider patents and peer-refereed publications "actual evidence". Others have taken other approaches and found no correlations.
- trendia 10y agoThere 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_genius_chart_newsfeature_web.jpg https://www.scientificamerican.com/sciam/assets/Image/Child_...
- jsprogrammer 10y agoI believe that is only evidence of bias towards high score holders, which we already know exists. Minor issue: why does that figures' caption lead with a quip about the top 1%, but only present data for quartiles?
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- betenoire 10y agoBut are they happy?
- Bahamut 10y agoAs someone who has been through the CTY program (I was a SET member, having scored above a 700 in math in 7th grade), I can say I've never been happier - I'm well off financially, have a career I greatly enjoy, and for the most part I can enjoy all the activities I have a desire for. On the flip side, my brother was also a SET member, and there are some contrasts with me - he got his PhD in chemistry at 25 (I never finished my PhD in math) and was accelerated, having gone to college after 10th grade after cutting school for most of the year. He picked working with semiconductors, and that turned out to be a poor career choice. He accomplished much more in academic prestige than me, but his mistake cost him quite a bit financially - he is currently retooling to become a data scientist & is currently interviewing for entry level/junior positions.
- betenoire 10y agoYou almost suggest your brother isn't as happy as you, but you don't come out and say that. You just mention financial costs. Do you attribute your happiness do your intelligence? Just curious
- Bahamut 10y agoI think he's not happy at the moment, especially after working a stint at Samsung as a senior chemical engineer after his post-doc - he is much happier than when he was working there though. I attribute my happiness a lot to luck that I was able to get a foot in the door into software engineering, then made the most of it with a combination of my intelligence and work ethic. I was in total despair after leaving grad school without a PhD.
- Jimmy 10y agoUndoubtedly.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- Jimmy 10y agoI 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.
- exelius 10y agoDon't fret; everyone in our generation was raised to believe we were the 1 in 10,000. That simply can't be true 99.99% of the time. We're a generation that needs therapy to realize that a stable, six-figure job as a mid-level engineer at 30 isn't failure. Our expectations (some might say entitlement) were set so unreasonably high that most of us have no chance of meeting them.
- Jimmy 10y agoWell, that's simply unacceptable to me. A stable six-figure job is failure. If I'm fated to try and fail for the rest of my life to break into the 1 in 10,000, then so be it.
- exelius 10y agoI 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.
- Jimmy 10y agoI'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.
- dhd415 10y agoThe article is short on actual lessons learned from the study. Two representative paragraphs: SMPY researchers say that even modest interventions—for example, access to challenging material such as college-level Advanced Placement courses—have a demonstrable effect. Among students with high ability, those who were given a richer density of advanced precollegiate educational opportunities in STEM went on to publish more academic papers, earn more patents and pursue higher-level careers than their equally smart peers who didn't have these opportunities. Despite SMPY's many insights, researchers still have an incomplete picture of giftedness and achievement. “We don't know why, even at the high end, some people will do well and others won't,” says Douglas Detterman, a psychologist who studies cognitive ability at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio. “Intelligence won't account for all the differences between people; motivation, personality factors, how hard you work and other things are important.”
- Isamu 10y ago> 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 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. I was one of these kids, I played with geometric objects, with music, etc. Sure I was weird sometimes. I didn't have anybody to share my interests with. 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.
- saint_fiasco 10y agoGifted children are "gifted" with a laser focus on the unusual things that they find fun - math, music, what-have-you Gifted children have the gift of being interested in things that are useful, that can give them money or high status like art, math, chess, technology... A child who has an obsessive interest with candy or playing tag or watching TV (or just normal stuff that normal children do) will have to work harder to resist more temptations and focus on schoolwork and useful things. http://slatestarcodex.com/2013/06/30/the-lottery-of-fascinations/ http://slatestarcodex.com/2013/06/30/the-lottery-of-fascinat...
- ekianjo 10y ago> But it boils down to the hours that kids put into their interests. So you believe in the 10 000 hours empirical rule based on "outliers" with very little evidence to support it?
- goshx 10y agoGladwell used someone else's studies and came up with the 10k hours. I recommend you read the original authors' book: Peak: Secrets from the New Science of Expertise, from Anders Ericsson and Robert Pool. They say the 10k rule doesn't exist and explain what they meant, but it does indeed boil down to "deliberate practice".
- intrasight 10y ago“Whether we like it or not, these people really do control our society,” Personally, I like it. Clearly SMPY recruits have changed the world for the better.
- walterbell 10y agoMailing lists, blogs and social media resources for gifted education: http://www.hoagiesgifted.org/on-line_support.htm http://www.hoagiesgifted.org/on-line_support.htm
- aquiles 10y agoI'm so glad I'm over my "being super-smart" phase and into my "being a well-rounded, functional human being" phase. People who fetishize things are the source of all things bad in the world.
- timwaagh 10y agowhy is it bad to label somebody ungifted? if i had known before i did not have what it takes to become a good mathematician, i would perhaps not have pursued that. maybe i would have saved myself a lot of trouble.
- Jimmy 10y agoThere are many ungifted people who make their livings as mathematicians. Have you already abandoned math? If you haven't given up yet, there are likely things you can do to improve your chances of success.
- iopq 10y ago> There are many ungifted people who make their livings as mathematicians They're still well above average IQ.
- Jimmy 10y agoSure. It depends on what definition we're using for "gifted". Practice may not make you into von Neumann, but it may very well make you into a professional mathematician with stable employment. My intuition is that if someone is interested enough in a career in mathematics that they begin putting regular practice into it, then they're already likely (but not certainly) past the minimum IQ threshold.
- timwaagh 10y agoyeah i did. i finally got my Bsc after five years and then made the switch to programming.
- toast0 10y agoThe problem with labels is "gifted" vs "ungifted" is very often interpreted as "smart" vs "stupid" Another problem is that there's a spectrum of ability/interest being turned into a binary. For those near the threshold of the criteria, this is especially problematic.
- inputcoffee 10y agoConsider this: Their gift is the ability to work hard. They are able to work hard because they find it fun. Q: We have all felt the "fun" of learning math (for instance), so how do we share that with others?
- saint_fiasco 10y agoMaybe it's impossible. Just like you can't force a gay man to be more interested in women and you can't force an asocial nerd to enjoy loud parties, you just can't force most people to enjoy math. EDIT: changed an example to be more specific and precise.
- iopq 10y agoI'm an introverted nerd and I enjoy socialization. This is a bad example.
- saint_fiasco 10y agoWhat's the correct word for someone who doesn't enjoy socialization? What does introverted mean? Does it just mean "person who enjoys being alone" or "person who is not good at socializing, even though they may enjoy it"?
- iopq 10y agoIntroverted means you feel tired after socializing, while extroverted people feel excited and energized. Both need to socialize, but the introvert needs to recharge alone. Only very weird people are asocial. This trait was very heavily selected against in tribal societies because surviving on your own is much less likely.
- saint_fiasco 10y agoI feel tired after studying calculus but I can still do it if I try really hard. When I study discrete math or lineal algebra I don't feel as tired and can study for longer. Naturally, I'm much better at discrete math than I am at calculus. I expect extroverted people are better at socializing than introverted people for similar reasons. Are there many introverted politicians?
- corysama 10y agoI skimmed the article pretty quickly because I was looking for the answer posed by the title and rightly expecting 90% background and filler stories. I didn't find much in the way of answers... Let me know if I missed anything. Why some kids excel greatly beyond most others is still pretty mysterious. Don't call them gifted. High school is not a great social environment for introverts to learn in. Just give them access to more advanced material. Spacial ability may play an important role and we aren't focusing on it much. Anything else?
- vehementi 10y ago> I skimmed the article pretty quickly because I was looking for the answer posed by the title and rightly expecting 90% background and filler stories Me too, hate this type of article, couldn't find it either.
- clifanatic 10y agoThe parts I skimmed all seemed to contradict each other, too.
- ebbv 10y agoI feel like we put too much weight on the idea of detecting intelligence in children. I always did really well on all tests as a kid, getting 100% on assessment tests and crap. But I'm a total dumbass. Just look at my comment history. Just raise your kid the best you can, if you are trying to purposely craft a genius you'll probably just instead make someone with serious performance anxiety and neurosis.
- gbog 10y agoIt 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 the ego, but "being Einstein" is a curse. (Same with pop or movie stars: people that get a lot of attention are less happy.)
- toast0 10y agoIt doesn't really matter if being "super smart" makes your kid happier or not; they are who they are. If they're "super smart, academic interests will likely have intrinsic rewards, and supporting that is going to increase happiness. Telling one of these kids to shut the book and watch tv isn't going to make them happier.
- gbog 10y agoShut the book and watch tv (and eat chocolate bars) is the sure way to low self esteem, you'd never go that way. Your kid being super smart doesn't matter here. Also most parents will believe their kid is smarter than average, no need to encourage this illusion which can hurt a lot when you have to face reality.
- ikeyany 10y agoThere are several kinds of happiness. You seem to be describing contentment. What about the happiness that comes from knowing that you are the very best? The ego is a very powerful motivator of human behavior...just look around you for proof that everyone wants fame or notoriety of some kind.
- cloverich 10y agoI don't think contentment is equatable to happiness. Specifically there's a misconception that people that are extremely happy resign themselves to contently doing nothing. But the opposite is the case -- happy people achieve the best of their potential, make the best decisions, and feel more motivated to seek out new (perhaps creative, challenging) tasks. > just look around you for proof that everyone wants fame or notoriety of some kind I think another way to look at that is -- everyone wants to be socially accepted, respected, and loved.
- jasode 10y agoDespite the article's title which gives the impression of unlocking the training secrets to "produce genius scientists", it is actually a "Nature vs Nurture" report. This particular article is biased more towards "nature." The opposing sides are mentioned in the middle of the article: >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. SMPY, by contrast, suggests that early cognitive ability has more effect on achievement than either deliberate practice or environmental factors such as socio-economic status. The sentences favoring either "nature" or "nurture" are interwoven and alternate throughout the piece but the 2 sides can be seen more clearly by grouping them together... Excerpts about "nature": >, what has become clear is how much the precociously gifted outweigh the rest of society in their influence. >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% tend to become our eminent scientists and academics, >But data from SMPY and the Duke talent programme dispute that hypothesis [about practice time]. A study published this year compared the outcomes of students in the top 1% of childhood intellectual ability with those in the top 0.01%. Whereas the first group gain advanced degrees at about 25 times the rate of the general population, the more elite students earn PhDs at about 50 times the base rate. Excerpts about "nurture": >“For those children who are tested, it does them no favours to call them 'gifted' or 'ungifted'. Either way, it can really undermine a child's motivation to learn.” >In Europe, support for research and educational programmes for gifted children has ebbed, as the focus has moved more towards inclusion. >Matthews contends that when children who are near the high and low extremes of early achievement feel assessed in terms of future success, it can damage their motivation to learn and can contribute to what Stanford University psychologist Carol Dweck calls a fixed mindset. It's far better, Dweck says, toencourage a growth mindset, in which children believe that brains and talent are merely a starting point, and that abilities can be developed through hard work and continued intellectual risk-taking. >“There's a general belief that kids who have advantages, cognitive or otherwise, shouldn't be given extra encouragement; that we should focus more on lower-performing kids.”
- hackaflocka 10y agoSurvivorship Bias (what Taleb calls Silent Evidence). What's missing: all the children whose parents raised them the same way, and who ended up committing suicide, or are in mental institutions, or fill the ranks of the homeless today.
- aab0 10y agoThis is a longitudinal study, not a cross-sectional one; attrition can be measured. You should also provide some evidence for the idea that hordes of high-IQ people are going homeless and committing suicide, as opposed to occasional ones with mental illness (especially schizophrenia), given that all the existing evidence tends to imply the opposite, if you don't want to come off as a Taleb-citing crank.
- bluetwo 10y agoI agree with the article that spacial ability is an untapped resource, key to understanding and problem solving. I think there is a pretty easy way of testing this, simply by finding out what they find funny. Different kinds of humor tap this skill, and those drawn to certain types of humor, IMHO, likely have better spacial skills.
- sluggg 10y agointeresting, do you know of any studies showing this?
- andrewvijay 10y agoHope indian parents don't read this article! I'm pretty sure that they will start looking for signs immediately. :D pray for the kids!
- yomly 10y agoAs someone interested in education (of self and of others) and generally interested in the notion of talent itself, I have been trying to form my own personal understanding of what it means to be talented. My fundamental belief is that almost anything can be learned under the right instruction. Talent determines two things: 1 - your upper ceiling of "achievement" in a particular dimension, and 2 - how far you can progress within a given dimension without instruction. That is, a naturally gifted person is likely to get very good at something they were "destined to do" regardless of if they had any decent instruction. With the right instruction, they may well reach some stratospheric heights. 1 is important because at some point a talented individual reaches a place where there is no longer any one person who can teach them anything new in their dimension and so they have to rely on their instinct to progress further. Schopenhauer had the quote: Talent is like the marksman who hits a target which others cannot reach; genius is like the marksman who hits a target … which others cannot even see. There seems to be some conflict in how Schopenhauer interpret talent and genius, but that final sentiment is important to my point regarding a talented/gifted/genius individual not requiring instruction. No one can really teach you how to push a field to new unreached heights. My personal favourite anecdote of genius is when Chopin's first musical teacher Zywny refrained from teaching him (aged 8 years old) any keyboard technique lest he interfere with his natural instinct. In his later teenage years and early twenties went on to write music quite unlike anything written for the piano at the time - thanks to his unorthodox technique.
- 6stringmerc 10y agoRelated to your Chopin anecdote, numerous monster & legendary guitar players and song writers (Chet Atkins, Willie Nelson, & tons more) cited Django Reinhardt, the "two-fingered gypsy jazz guitarist" as opening their horizons more than any other. It was from his technique that his creativity could flow. As if the handicap was simply an augmentation - as you mention - and didn't terribly interfere with what he was 'destined to do' by way of art. As both a passionate study of both guitar and writing (fiction, essays, etc), I do agree that reaching 'beyond' is part of achieving high personal success in either field. Sort of like the phrase "knowing the rules before breaking them" can acknowledge the role of both structure and rebellion. Both have important facets in growth, and I think a lot of times lay-people can mistake "broken rules" that accidentally work for "talent" and it is frustrating.
- blowski 10y agoI'm getting a 500 error on this page... anyone else getting the same problem?
- lordnacho 10y agoMy 2 cents: - How do we control for self-fulfilling prophecy? I would imagine that having "Member of gifted kids study" will be quite impressive to the gatekeepers at elite universities. Did they add a few dummies to control? - How do we even measure ability? You'd think the smart kids are smart because they try to learn the things that are tested. It's like testing people for strength. People who've trained are stronger. And they want to be. - It makes sense that spatial ability is somehow predictive. Nobody ever teaches it, so you're left with whatever nature gave you. Probably like testing someone's toe strength as an indicator of overalll muscle quality (not that I know anything about physiology, it's just that I've never seen anyone at the gym training their toes). - From what I can tell, it helps an awful lot to have someone nearby who has the skills you're after. Look at the people mentioned. Terence Tao's parents were both highly educated in STEM. Lenhard Ng's dad is a Physics prof. That kind of resource takes you an awfully long way along your path. I mean imagine being able to ask the guy you eat dinner with every night anything from "what is a prime number" to "what's the quantum hall effect". If you don't happen to have a parent, it probably helps to go to a school that is well resourced. There will be teachers around who find time for the kids who show aptitude. I remember being put up a year in math and sent to math contests. I don't think I'd have studied it as much if I hadn't been noticed by the teachers at a young age. - There's an inherent conflict between society's goals and the gifted. It's a lot more economical to pour money into the mediocre for society. You want to teach everyone to read, write, and a little math. It's cheaper to produce that resource, and it's at the margin you get the most bang for your buck. PhDs cost a fair bit to fund, and like that famouns xkcd, you are only slightly enlarging the world's knowledge. Putting a kid in front of a world authority is expensive. - It may not be so bad that society doesn't spend money on the gifted (I'd rather call them the more motivated, but...) than the marginals. It's possible that the mass of money needs to be spent making sure everyone can be a little educated, while a rather different effort is made to help the gifted. For instance, what I really, really needed as a kid was other kids who cared. These days that should be easy enough to arrange over the internet. - There will be a natural experiment occurring soon, right now, about whether it's innate ability or exposure. The proliferation of materials on the internet will create a bunch of kids who are able to learn huge amounts about whatever they're interested in, before they even finish school. When I was a kid, you had to lug your ass to a library to find out what a quaternion was. And it wasn't a specialist library, and there'd be a chapter or something like that. These days there's a flood of information, you just have to type into google. There's so much that if one guy doesn't explain it well, another guy will.
- ObeyTheGuts 10y agoWhen i read top talent examples - zukerberger and lady gaga, wow just wow... Another onion article.
- fragola 10y ago>Stanley convinced a dean at Johns Hopkins to let Bates, then 13, enrol[sic] as an undergraduate. >“I was shy and the social pressures of high school wouldn't have made it a good fit for me,” says Bates, now 60. “But at college, with the other science and math nerds, I fit right in, even though I was much younger. I could grow up on the social side at my own rate and also on the intellectual side, because the faster pace kept me interested in the content.” OK, I might take a lot of heat for this, but I don't think it's a good idea to put a 13-year-old with college students. In this case, he was a boy, but imagine if he were a girl? One of the main causes of failure to achieve educationally for bright girls is getting pregnant. 40% of the fathers who impregnate girls under 15 are 20-29 years old [0]. So in the case of girls, this is a super visible obvious problem, but what happens with a teenage boy? I could see him getting in an abusive relationship or otherwise preyed upon in a zillion ways. This article takes a blasé attitude toward the social concerns and cites no sources about the actual social outcomes for these kids. Let your kid study by themselves, send them to a gifted child summer camp, etc. [0]http://www.teenmomnyc.com/ http://www.teenmomnyc.com/
- aab0 10y agoI don't think the students at Johns Hopkins are the usual sort of 20-29yos who would knock up a teen girl. And inasmuch as SMPY has been running for so many decades and has thousands of participants, if 10 or 20% of the participants were becoming teen moms, someone probably would've noticed by now.
- dragonwriter 10y ago> OK, I might take a lot of heat for this, but I don't think it's a good idea to put a 13-year-old with college students. These kinds of things are rare enough that they tend to get a lot of attention, and I've yet to hear of a horror story of the kind that people tend to raise in the abstract, so I think that between parents, school administrators, and the particular students involved when this actually occurs in practice, things are generally handled fairly well. That's not to say that there isn't legitimate reason to consider carefully, but I think the idea that this is somehow universally an unacceptable risk in every case is simply unsupportable from the factual experience. I'm interested in seeing any concrete evidence that would suggest otherwise, but generalization from what is typical of age groups to cases that are clearly atypical for their age group is, I think, insufficient to make that case.
- 0xdeadbeefbabe 10y agoInstead of super-smart they ought to say good at something, because concepts like super-smart got us into this mess. 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.
- brooklyndude 10y agoHung out with a brilliant heart surgeon, genius. I asked him about what cartoons he watched growing up. He said "what's a cartoon?" He was dead serious. Parents would never let him not study. Never. 100+ hour weeks. Zero time for anything else. He was happy, rich, had it all. But wondering if he every found time to watch a cartoon.
- clifanatic 10y agoAsian parents, right? Don't ask how I know...
- wavefunction 10y agoHe didn't know what a cartoon was? Or was it a bit of playful retort?
- bcook 10y agoHe said the surgeon was "dead serious"... but it must have been an act, right? Sure, maybe he never saw one, but being unaware of at least the dictionary definition of "cartoon" seems highly unlikely.
- karma_vaccum123 10y agoI just knew these comments would fill up with humblebrags from HNers who wish to casually and inoffensively proclaim their genius.
- Pica_soO 10y agoBut if everyone is a genius, then no one is. Les time spend comparing, more time spend focused on the one thing you love => genius status, but you wont notice, or wont give a thing about it.
- comex 10y agoI don't think that's fair. It's pretty hard to talk about one's personal experience with the scenarios described in the article without it coming across as a brag, humble or otherwise.
- MagnumOpus 10y agoHaving tested in the 99th percentile of scholastic tests despite being a lazy git is not humblebrag, it is relevant to the discussion at hand. Also, you might do well to assume that a large majority of the people here that you are trying to put down also tested in top percentages in school tests. The audience of YC and HN is self-selected nerds.
- karma_vaccum123 10y ago> Also, you might do well to assume that a large majority of the people here that you are trying to put down also tested in top percentages in school tests. The audience of YC and HN is self-selected nerds. Which is exactly why so much of the discussion here is predicated on middlebrow intellectual checkboxes instead of legitimate insight. But if you want to keep thinking this is some genius society, I can't stop you.
- digler999 10y ago> middlebrow intellectual checkboxes instead of legitimate insight. Nice humblebrag about your superior judgement of whats "middlebrow" vs "legitimate".
- Practicality 10y agoThis article is a bit of a mess regarding who it is talking about. It hops around and changes it's target constantly. Sometimes it is talking about people in the .01%, AKA, 1 in 10000, so actual geniuses. Sometimes discussing people in the above average range, IQ of 120+, which is about 10% of the population (depending on your test), as well as people in gifted programs, which again, depending on your test is the top 1 or 2%. These are three different cohorts with different needs. The top 10% need to be continually challenged so they can find satisfying careers. These are your class president types, people who really excel within the program, I think society serves these types well. The top 1% are your gifted people (again, I know definitions vary), and they usually need something extra. Depends on the person, but it might be extra math or extra latin studies, or the ability to do side projects, but they generally flourish with something special. The top .01% though? I have no idea. Most here on HN are in one of the other two groups (sorry, me too). The article seems to say that they just need to skip grades. But it's hard to tell if they are right since they are talking about a moving target. (Edit: Adjusted the % for IQ of 120 based on this chart: http://www.iqcomparisonsite.com/iqtable.aspx http://www.iqcomparisonsite.com/iqtable.aspx)
- mhurron 10y ago> Most here on HN are in one of the other two groups What would make you say that? Since there is no actual filter and no one is actually forcing any requirement, it should be that most of any group are somewhat similar to the standard distribution of the population, so most on HN should be like most of any other group, bog standard average. I know I am.
- Practicality 10y agoThe topics and the community are both a filter and forcing a requirement. From my own observation I would wager that a majority here are in that top 10% . People are not just randomly assigned to reading and commenting on Hacker News. It's an intellectual community that would naturally attract those who have such skills.
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- RonanTheGrey 10y agoFor those of you getting 500 or "Article not found", SA has blocked the ycombinator.com referer url. Just open the link in a new tab.
- acscott 10y agoDidn't see any answer on how to "raise a genius". The presumption is that we want more geniuses and that Ph.D.s are precious resources to society. Is there also a tacit belief here in the Great Man theory of history? The message here is, well if you don't get a Ph.D., make a lot of money. If you don't make a lot of money, get a patent. If you don't get a patent, at least get published. There are other things that we also want to be able to cultivate other than those I bet. When a group of geniuses could build a nuclear weapon to take out a whole country, I believe the interest in genius started to spark. Before then, what was the icon of a a genius (I'm thinking before Einstein became iconic)? The article is interesting, what were the lessons though? There are other measures of value to society other than STEM publications, income, patents, and Ph.D.s It's often the outliers that don't even fit the Gaussian that are more interesting to me. (Feynman said he scored 120 something on an IQ test.)
- paulpauper 10y agothe idea is that more resources are needed to nurture top talent, instead of these smart people being neglected. Cognitive capital is like any resource, and it should not go to waste.
- squigs25 10y agoInteresting read, but I have one major qualm about this. There seems to be a confirmatory bias among the academic community that a measure of intellectual success can be found in the percentage of individuals who earn a PhD. Sure, it's true that you need to be reasonably smart to earn a PhD, but I think that someone can have a lot of intellectual success (potentially just as much or maybe more) if they don't earn a PhD. I think you could even argue that, depending on the field of study, a PhD is the "easy" route for someone who is intellectually gifted - it's a simply a continuation of what you have been doing. I would be more impressed by the intellectual who not only realizes that they can conduct their own independent research, but also has the creativity to come up with a use case that can improve and contribute to the world (and presumably, make a living doing so). My point here is that, given two gifted cohorts, one which has a 45% PhD graduation rate and one which has a 50% PhD graduation rate, I don't know that you can conclusively say that one is more gifted than the other without looking at other metrics associated with intellectual accomplishment.
- pas 10y agoKnowing a few friends and other acquaintances with PhDs, all they have common is endurance and focus. They were not exceptionally creative, or apparently breathtakingly genius. And I guess that's why Google et al. likes to hire PhDs. They can take all kinds of shit, and endure. Get to the bottom of those problems even in the face of internal politics/bureaucracy.
- jsprogrammer 10y agoA PhD doesn't show that you get to the bottom of problems, but rather that you can influence, and be influenced by, group-think. Edit: Looks like it is still a while before my speech ban is up, so I'm pasting my response to kevingwang's response (below) here: >To a particular degree, anyway. Convincing a University, or being published in peer-journal, for example. >I think some are more or less ignored, though I guess I can't say that has no influence whatsoever and I'm also not sure that you can entirely avoid the influence of others.
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- jupiter90000 10y agoInteresting piece from one of the studies referred to by article: "...many individuals who completed their degrees in non-math-science areas ultimately chose math-science occupations, and vice versa. Among mathematically talented populations,the leaking pipeline is not an appropriate metaphor. Upon reflection, this fluidity is not surprising for mathematically precocious females. In samples of males and females selected for mathematical talent, females display higher levels of verbal ability than males, and also more uniform levels of mathematical and verbal ability. Thus, mathematically precocious females more often than mathematically talented males are endowed with talents that enable them to excel with distinction in domains that require highly developed verbal-linguistic skills (these skills and the flexibility they lend could perhaps propel these individuals in varied directions, in part because verbal-linguistic skills tend to co-occur with social, or organic, interests and values)."
- colordrops 10y agoMy martial arts teacher told me a relevant proverb: people are like vessels, some larger than others, and the vessel with less capacity can still hold more water.
- ausjke 10y agoI probably had a gifted kid but never had enough bandwidth to lead him, comparing to his siblings he just memorizes so well(e.g, mechanically memorized PI to 600+ digits in two days until I asked him to stop), doing high-school-level math at 4th grade, learn many things by himself and so on. Meanwhile he is bored, hard to make peer friends due to lack of shared interests, etc. Everyday I have to work and care for other kids, I tried to home-school him but then you get the financial pressure quickly. I wish there are some programs that can help kids like him, i.e. group them somewhere to study and learn from each other. We have quite some program taking care of the disadvantaged kids, what about the gifted ones? After all, they can potentially contribute to the society in some way that helps many others. We probably need a state-level or federal-level or even college-sponsored program for those really gifted kids. No I'm not talking about the gifted class in the school district, those helps, but far from enough for those really gifted, you probably only have about 5 who are really gifted in each school district.
- abecedarius 10y agoYou might try something like https://www.mathcircles.org/ https://www.mathcircles.org/ (They weren't around when I was a kid, so I can't say from experience.)
- stalcottsmith 10y agoThis might help. http://www.davidsongifted.org http://www.davidsongifted.org I have no experience with them yet.
- ck425 10y agoI've not went and read any of the actual studies, only the article, but it seems that they start measuring kids around the age of 10 onwards, is this not too late? One of the themes seems to be that certain measurements of ability at this age were accurate indicators of future success if the kids were not discouraged (ie allowed to push themselves and learn more advanced stuff). But by age 10 surely most kids have already been discouraged? I was reading another article earlier today that I can't find talking about pre-school being more important for life chances than high school. Could it be far more kids than we think are capable of being 'geniuses' and that the majority are discouraged at an early age? I'm not read up on this so if anyone is please share!
- truth_sentinell 10y agoWhat do people actually mean when they say "genetics"? Is it some physical aspect of the brain (like more neurons, more connections among them, etc) or is it that somehow the ability to do Math or any other thing is coded into their DNA? I'm confused.
- 20years 10y ago"They're just developing different talents," says Lubinski, a former high-school and college wrestler. "But our society has been much more encouraging of athletic talents than we are of intellectual talents." Bingo! Along with our society has been much more encouraging with the extrovert personalities vs the introverts. I encourage everyone to read the book Quiet by Susan Cain.
- Kazamai 10y agoThere is a characteristic not mentioned that can determine if someone will reach a high level or not. Self gratification or the ability to delay self gratification. The "marshmallow kid", even a gifted kid that cannot fight their own human condition to seek a dopamine reward from eating, entertainment, etc can't reach their potential. If you got a reward from problem solving and knowledge acquisition then it wouldn't take much to focus. Why can we focus for hours gaming, but when it comes to solving a math problem, most of us will never start or stop shortly after.
- HillaryBriss 10y ago> “... these people really do control our society,” says Jonathan Wai, a psychologist at the Duke University Talent Identification Program ... "The kids who test in the top 1% tend to become our eminent scientists and academics, our Fortune 500 CEOs and federal judges, senators and billionaires” The article assumes that promoting these super-bright people and geniuses is the way to solve the difficult problems the rest of us face. There's a faith in the generosity and altruism of these high-performers. But, I see plenty of selfishness in their behavior too. It seems plausible that the top layer of brilliant geniuses is creating as many problems for the rest of us as it is solving. Maybe the top layer of brilliant geniuses mostly focuses on work that is personally enriching (e.g. financial engineering, patent lawsuits, investing in 140-character-type startups, pharmaceuticals that don't actually cure diseases, etc) Maybe what society needs is not "more geniuses" but a better system of regulations and incentives for existing geniuses.
- Bakary 10y agoYep that is what I instantly thought of when reading this. I have no problem accepting that plenty of people are just smarter and more competent than I ever will be, but it will be difficult for me to swallow that they are actually automatically helpful. If they were, we'd probably live in some sort of utopia by now.
- HillaryBriss 10y agoCalifornia seems like an interesting case. A disproportionate share of Nobel prize winners and other exceedingly bright people live here. At the same time California has a large number of impoverished residents, a huge backlog of unfunded repair work on roads and bridges, huge unfunded worker pension obligations, much of the nation's worst traffic, a housing shortage for the middle and lower classes, severe water shortages in various places (like East Porterville), a persistent diversity problem in tech employment, a low credit rating, low per-capita spending on education, state college and university funding shortfalls, mediocre educational results at the elementary and secondary school levels, etc.
- pmoriarty 10y agoAnyone interested in the nature-nurture debate, and prodigies should take a look at Stephen Wiltshire (the "human camera"): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a8YXZTlwTAU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a8YXZTlwTAU https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen_Wiltshire https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen_Wiltshire
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- ChuckMcM 10y agoI think the integration with the existing education system is, and will continue to be, problematic. One thing that really brought that home for me was how kids who were developmentally behind were given extra care and attention and kids who were developmentally ahead were not. At the extreme ends (very behind, very ahead) the contrast is startling both in programs that are available and in how the school "celebrates" the achievements of the students in those categories.
- ckcortright 10y agoNaturally, when the result of a scientific study is entangled emotionally with something so personal like intelligence, it is hard to look at the results without bias. Lots of people are going to have a problem with this study, because it literally makes 99.999% of the population feel inadequate.
- maus42 10y agoInteresting read. However, I wonder if for education purposes it would better if every student who is bored with their current schoolwork could just move into more advanced materials until they are not bored, instead of trying to spot the "super geniuses" early on and leaving the rest, the "not talented enough", to continue with the normal course material. Because if you have some kind of test for identifying the geniuses who can enter your "special gifted genius program", the test is going to have a some cut-off line or threshold, and that's going to be unfair. For example, assume you're using an IQ test, and the kids who score above some arbitrary threshold would be ushered into the special awesome program, but the kid who scores only one point below the threshold does not get in. Even if the difference is just one point ... That would be a quite silly (and deeply unfair) policy, because there's always going to be some random noise in the test taking.
- k2xl 10y agoSo... the higher a students test score the more likely they are to be a scientist - isn't that a truism? In order to become a scientist you have to get accepted into universities ... that will look at your test scores as judgement of whether you should be admitted. Can anyone think of a notable scientist that didn't do well in school? We don't really encourage people who perform poorly on tests to become scientists - so none of these results are surprising. How many students that score in the high .01% on tests end up becoming professional athletes? Or a rapper? Probably just as unlikely as a student who scores in the low .01% becoming a doctor. Is it because smart people aren't interested in sports or don't like rap music? Doubt it. For better or worse, our society pushes archetypes. If you do well on biology tests you are "supposed" to become a biologist. Good with computer? Become a programmer.
- sluggg 10y agowell lady gaga was listed she is sorta a rapper.
- sharemywin 10y agoMy question is how many doors did this program open up which led to the success they were trying to measure.
- ianai 10y agoI think there is so much more going on that our systems don't account for and thus fall short.
- joesmo 10y ago"Many educators and parents continue to believe that acceleration is bad for children—that it will hurt them socially, push them out of childhood or create knowledge gaps." And we still wonder why in the US our children are so stupid? Clearly, they're getting a lot of help in being the dumbest they can be. To hold a child back from their full potential so they can be bullied and made fun of for another year or few is an atrocity that should be criminalized. I can think of few things worse than ruining a child's life in this way. Instead, these people are our children's' teachers, teaching them to be mediocre, stupid, mindless, lazy, underachieving idiots.
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- lutorm 10y agoI don't doubt that there's a wide range in people's aptitudes for various subjects. However, when it comes to the study cited, it seems there's no control sample so you can't tell what part of the outcome is really because these people are special and what is because some study identified them as special when they were children and they've gotten special opportunities ever since.
- zizzles 10y agoIn to make a post before a bunch of narcissist HN'ers (subtly) brag about their childhood accomplishments of being math wizards and programming assembly at age 6 and a half. Edit: Too late.
- kazinator 10y agoAsk HN: I'm quite interested in this, but it's a long read; can someone who has taken the plunge summarize these lessons? Though there are many comments already, searching for terms like "TL" and "summary" yields nothing.
- bsder 10y agoThe problem with studies like these is that, in almost all fields, we find that the average is much better than the average of 50-100 years ago while the top is only slightly better. This holds across things that even have physical components like athletics or music. The virtuosos of yesteryear may be as good as the virtuosos of today (and I dispute that) but the average orchestra player is WAY better today than even some of the best players of 100 years ago. Similarly, the average athlete today is WAY better than the average athlete of 50 years ago. Training and education matter.
- jonathanedwards 10y agoI was "student one". AMA. I dislike that the title of this article conflates intelligence and genius. Genius is impact, not talent. The one thing I've learned is that intelligence is highly overrated. Especially in the thing I know the most about: programming.
- basicplus2 10y ago“Whether we like it or not, these people really do control our society,” I'd be pretty disappointed if this is actually true..
- perseusprime11 10y agoThis reminds me of a Bruce Lee quote. My opponent practiced 1000 kicks and I practiced a kick 1000 times. I am paraphrasing that quote But he mentioned this in the context of focus and priority to become great at something.
- xarope 10y agoI think this is the one you are referring to: "I fear not the man who has practiced 10,000 kicks once, but I fear the man who has practiced one kick 10,000 times." This can be interpreted in a multitude of ways, but I like to have it in the context of this other Bruce Lee quote: "Before I studied the art, a punch to me was just like a punch, a kick just like a kick. After I learned the art, a punch was no longer a punch, a kick no longer a kick. Now that I've understood the art, a punch is just like a punch, a kick just like a kick" My interpretation is that we've all gone through these three phases in one way or another: 1) how do we do this stuff? ok use an editor... who cares if it's emacs (boy is that tough to learn), vi (huh? what's this context thingy), nano (cool, a menu!) etc 2) learn that there's a whole bunch of gee whiz stuff we can use (hey look, I have this special screwdriver designed to fit around the corner). Proceed to OCD over the pros and cons, figure out special cases etc. 3) realise (hopefully not too late), that actually all these specialised tools are just a means to an end. Use the most appropriate one for the situation; and appropriate here might mean that you use that one kick practised 10,000 times ("superfoot" Bill Wallace anybody?), in the right situation, rather than try to remember than wushu butterfly kick that you practised once (it hits, hero points to infinity! but if it misses, oh boy am I in trouble...). I think step (2) is where we can start to distinguish those who will make it to (3), and those who will not. In order to be really good, if not genius level, it's not sufficient to just practise 10,000 hours (a Gladwell meme which I'm not fond of, although I understand what Gladwell was trying to imply), but to also understand and appreciate these "tools" (whether tangible or not).
- perseusprime11 10y agoBravo
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- CurtMonash 10y agoI probably count as some kind of example. -- I was born in 1960. -- I got my first algebra book when I was 4, and aced the subject immediately. -- I had one IQ test score higher than the one that got Marilyn vos Savant into the Guinness Book of World Records. -- The National Merit folks thought that I was the youngest winner of their scholarships until that day. -- I got a math PhD from Harvard when I was 19. -- At least up to a point, I check a lot of the usual boxes, like music and chess. That said, I was not some kind of math genius. Ofer Gabber and Ran Donagi were at Harvard when I was, having started in grad school at 16 and 17 respectively (I started at 16), and both were clearly better at math than I was, even adjusted for age. More particularly: -- When I was young, I was really, really good at keeping a problem in my mind and worrying at it until I made progress. I could fall asleep doing that and keep going when I woke up. I understand that's quite unusual, and as I aged I lost the ability myself. -- I'm not particularly good at spatial reasoning. I can power my way through some of it by raw inferencing, at which I am indeed very good, but that's about it. -- I can learn a bit about any subject and appreciate key issues in it very, very quickly. That's reflected in my actual career, and also in the large number of subjects I dabbled in in school. -- I probably COULD have been world-class somewhere in the vicinity of economics/public policy (as academic areas). But I was burned out on academia at age 21, after 9 years at universities, left for the business world, and never went back. -- I don't know how good I'd have been as a computer scientist. I never tried.
- micwo 10y agoWhat do you do now? Do you have children?
- CurtMonash 10y agoYou can google on my name to see what I do. I'm the only Curt Monash who ever shows up on a web search. I never raised a kid, and the one stepdaughter I have was old enough that she never really regarded me as a parent. She has a kid now, however, and I am indeed a grandfather. :)
- spamcoat 10y agoI will not deign To now refrain From laying bear the nudity of scholars Who think their robes Befitting clothes And prove it to themselves in words and dollars The fittest minds In all mankind Regret now all they ever took for granted Remove your blinds And see the signs; There's more to all than said will be recanted.
- vonnik 10y agoThe popularity of comments about hard work on this thread make me think that it's difficult for people to accept studies like this. And for two reasons: 1) We are born with very different innate abilities, which leads to great inequalities in our lives together, and 2) That innate difference is not to the credit of the gifted. They had nothing to do with it. It's like being born rich or white or male or American or all of them at once. So it's an undeserved privilege. An yet people born with such talents should be treated differently. We should cultivate them, because they can do so much to advance society. To those who have much, much is given...
- sverige 10y agoI'm one of those gifted children (at least by the measure of standardized tests) who were missed by the people looking for them, I reckon. I was always in the .999 percentile on those (SAT, ACT, GRE, LSAT), was very good at math and loved it at a young age. Somewhere in my teens I lost the desire to achieve all this stuff discussed in the article. Intellectually it would not have been difficult, but emotionally I didn't give a shit. I didn't really mature until I was in my 30s or 40s (and some would say, not yet!). Sometimes I think, well, I wasted my life. Then again, although I haven't done anything noteworthy, I have no regrets for the life I have lived so far, even though many would say I "squandered" a lot of talent. The core values instilled in me by my parents are intact and actually stronger, and those values don't place much emphasis on reaching the pinnacle of success as described in the article. Frankly, the responsibility for shaping the world into what it has become would be almost too much to bear. My advice would be that if you are one of those high achieving geniuses, it is worth thinking about yet again whether what you value is the best it can be. If you have a very gifted child, be extraordinarily careful about who you allow to influence them for as long as you can. Teach them your values, and make sure they're worthwhile. I still recall a story about Thomas Aquinas in his old age. He realized that his magnum opus, the Summa Theologica, was worthless vanity and tried to destroy it. The professor or author who told the story said, "Fortunately, he was prevented from doing so." But was it fortunate? Who better to judge than its author what its true value was? How many of these people will find small comfort in their accomplishments when they reach a ripe old age? But talking this way is very unpopular, I realize.