21 ms·
The Science Behind Making Your Child Smarter
- neonate 8y agohttps://outline.com/gd7JNw https://outline.com/gd7JNw
- conqrr 8y agoThanks. We should have a bot that automatically does this for all paywalled links.
- scarejunba 8y agoAnd also link to The Pirate Bay for torrents of software?
- monochromatic 8y agoWhen was there ever a post about non-FOSS here?
- scarejunba 8y agohttps://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3183323 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3183323 and all the releases https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14308754 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14308754 built on FOSS but not FOSS and obviously https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12967901 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12967901 There are loads more but I'm not about to perform an exhaustive search
- whatshisface 8y agoNormal software vendors are not normally so bad that it is justified to protect yourself in a way that hurts them. Granted, with the rise of built-in spyware we might eventually have to start doing that. (Or, more realistically, we could distribute patches.)
- scarejunba 8y agoI’m responding specifically to the paywall concerns here. Clearly the person I’m talking to is interested in not paying for content.
- tomcam 8y agoWhat if your publication is supported by the paywall?
- aaron695 8y agoFor a billion people it's micronutrients. And they are not succeeding. Screw improving education, cheap pills between 0 and 2 years can permantly increase IQ for millions. ( Or to put it another way stop millions having a retarded intelligence )
- james_s_tayler 8y agoDo you have more you can share on this?
- nwah1 8y agoThis is "The Biodeterminist's Guide to Parenting" by Scott Alexander (of Slate Star Codex fame) https://archive.fo/7RULL https://archive.fo/7RULL
- nwah1 8y agoHere's an article on nootropics for children https://www.topcognitiveenhancers.com/nootropics-for-children-3-great-solutions-for-a-happier-calmer-and-more-focused-child/ https://www.topcognitiveenhancers.com/nootropics-for-childre...
- analognoise 8y agoThat strikes me as "a short primer to chemical child abuse".
- bottled_poe 8y agoI agree, the whole website seems to have no medical grounding and is just selling snake oil.
- nwah1 8y agoIt references studies on human children subjects that I was able to look up, although did not provide easy links. Other than the graphic design and "eww chemicals" I'm not sure what the actual problem is with the content. And the three recommendations were actually all quite "natural" and commonplace.
- analognoise 8y agoNonprofessionals basing how to give chemicals to their children is distressing for the same reason the anti-vax movement is distressing: people think their Google search is a substitute for medical care, and make treatment decisions based on it. Remember: Arsenic is natural. So is polio. The "natural" label is meant to imply safe, and it is a rhetoric device used go convince others of the minimal harm of their snakeoil.
- madengr 8y agoLearning an instrument teaches perseverance, which is a large part of success. I make sure my daughter practices her cello scales every night, which is the part she does not like.
- afarrell 8y agoAs in, she likes the other bits about cello?
- madengr 8y agoYes.
- ThrowMeDown01 8y agoThat sounds like a great way to make her resent playing an instrument when she's grown up. I learned (soprano and alto) recorder when I was young, in evening classes at a music school (East Germany), and started learning to play violin a few years ago (which turned out to be _the_ instrument for me, I can't stop and after a few years I know it's not short term). I had always practiced a bit on the recorder on and off. Fortunately nobody had forced me to continue music school. When I was young I had sooo many other interests. Being told what to do can hardly be a recipe to create a person that acts on their own? Sounds more like a recipe of trying to educate somebody who follows orders well.
- adrianN 8y agoAs far as I know almost all of the top musicians were forced to practice for long hours starting from a very young age. If you want your child to become a good musician it seems almost necessary to do so. Most children of course eventually stop playing because they don't like it, but those who don't tend to be thankful for the forced practice.
- oh_sigh 8y agoAren't you just teaching her that she needs to do what you say? Her motivation isn't coming from herself so it doesn't seem like a good lesson in persevering - at some point you will not be there or not be able to tell her what to do - what then? And for an anecdote I know 3 people who learned cello as a kid, and none of them play any music any more and pretty much stopped immediately after they left their parents home. Maybe a piano or guitar player could keep it up, but cello isn't something you tote to a house party to jam on with friends.
- james_s_tayler 8y agoI think it should be renamed "The Dubious Science Behind Trying To Make Smarter Adults" I recently read Blueprint by Robert Plomin. Here is a pretty good summary: https://www.theguardian.com/books/2018/oct/24/blueprint-by-robert-plomin-review https://www.theguardian.com/books/2018/oct/24/blueprint-by-r... Plomin makes a pretty solid case in Blueprint that it's pretty much down to genetics and yes, there are environmental differences, but no you cannot manufacture them. They are random and unpredictable. After having read that book as I was reading through this article I was thinking back to a lot of the points laid out by Plomin. Namely the "Nature of Nurture" finding that we our genetic predisposition drive our choices over the long term which basically washes out the vast majority of things our parents and school try to do for us. We basically stabilize our own IQs over time.
- hugh4life 8y agoIQ is a significant measurement that should not be ignored but I think it's important to see intelligence as a social process. There are a lot of people that I know I would score much higher on an IQ test but they are way better in expressing their thoughts. That matters a lot. And often what makes people "smart" is being able to juggle different perspectives which takes time to expose yourself to those perspectives. You can get smarter by reading and people should be told that.
- mdesq 8y ago>You can get smarter by reading and people should be told that. I'm really interested in this because I have someone who keeps telling me this isn't possible. Do you have a source by any chance?
- candiodari 8y agoWhilst there is very little evidence on how to increase intelligence, we know a lot of things drastically reduce intelligence. Generally, once that happens, it cannot be undone: 1) malnutrition at a young age. Meaning under 3 years old or so. Malnutricion during breast feeding or pregnancy is the most damaging. After a few years it mostly stops mattering. 2) some chemical contaminants, most notably (and commonly) lead. There are others (and worse ones), like Cadmium, but they're not very common at all. 3) genetic predisposition. Most pronounced, but far from the only effect, is Down syndrome. Of course there are genetic problems, like epilepsy, that are bad enough to make you an idiot. 4) any contact whatsoever with child services has a strong negative effect. If the child is removed from their parents, the effect magnifies dramatically. But children treated do far worse than untreated children in the same situation (and if you look at what happens in practice in such treatment, such as removing the children from school for years, this cannot come as a great surprise) One almost-exception: voluntary treatment involving the mother (mostly by the mother) has only a slight negative effect. Father does not seem to matter if they're part of treatment. Still does not have a positive effect though. (Absense of a father has a strong negative effect though. I would love to see studies on if you see the same with mothers where the father is the primary caregiver) I would say that attempting to fix children, in whatever way, other than advising the mother without any other option, is the negative. Children do best when following through on whatever way they develop. Attempting to change things is really bad. 5) drugs, and psychoactive medication are a strong negative, if taken over longer periods (obviously for strong drugs, longer period can be months. For most psychiatric drugs the period is something like a year) 6) lack of attention is a strong negative. Less so than attention by youth services, but it is decisively not good. That can mean by parents, by peers, by teachers, by ... At this point though we're talking about things that will definitely leave your IQ at over 90. It won't be catastrophic, whereas child services sometimes produce from normal children that people that have problems like not being able to count at age 17. And then there are things that don't matter, but are widely perceived to matter. (All of these have the same caveat. Make them bad enough and of course it will matter. If abuse means you don't survive, of course it will affect you. It essentially never does) 1) getting abused does not influence intelligence (Concrete example: getting scolded daily from age 3 by your mother for not cleaning your room because she's drunk will not make you an idiot) 2) quality of life does not matter. If anything it has a slight negative correlation: worse living conditions will actually make you (a little bit) smarter. (again, there is a level where is most definitely does matter, but that level is very low)
- sytelus 8y agoTLDR; Learning to play musical instruments or playing chess does NOT improve IQ. Lively conversation with complex vocabulary, interactive reading with child, memory games and not ending school prematurely helps.
- LouisSayers 8y agoOn learning Music: > music training may hone self-control, including focused attention and memorization. And then later in the article: > Raising IQ may require the kind of sustained involvement that comes with attending school, with all the practice and challenges it entails. “It’s not like you just go in for an hour of treatment a week. It’s a real lifestyle change,” he says. Well... are the qualities you develop via learning an instrument not the same qualities that are going to help in other areas of life?! The other thing, is if you do a study on IQ and learning music, you shouldn’t look only at taking lessons... you should look into the type of practice people do, for how long they practice etc. Basically garbage in, garbage out. For all the fancy math equations and language people use to put into these studies, sometimes I think they sure are pretty dumb and short sighted.