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> he quant types (mathematics and science majors) thought genius was due to natural gifts; parents and teachers had told them that they’d been born with a speci

> he quant types (mathematics and science majors) thought genius was due to natural gifts; parents and teachers had told them that they’d been born with a special talent for quantitative reasoning. I don't think this is because people told them anything. To anyone who is good at maths it is painfully obvious that some people get it much easier than others. I started out thinking that people just did it wrongly, but the more I tried and the more I watched people do things the more I realized that they simply were bad at maths. There is nothing I can do for them. Some people just lack practice and motivation, true, but most lacks the brains to do it, since you need to have at least some level of intuition and some level of rational reasoning capacity to get anywhere in maths. For those who disagree, how do you explain the very large number of people who spends tons of time and energy trying to get good at maths but fails to even grasp simple concepts like calculus? Contrast that with the much smaller but still considerable number of people who aren't really passionate about maths, don't put in the work yet still aces the class? Many on the "nurture is everything" side simply believes that those differences doesn't exist, the "geniuses" must have learned this beforehand or something else silly. But if you are one of those who aced the classes without even trying and see others try really really hard and still don't even pass, how could you explain that without considering talent as a variable? That person doesn't need to be told that talent is important.

antegamisou 6y ago
Not that you're making bad points, but there's a big difference in acing a math exam vs actually assimilating the various underlying concepts, at least at a university level IME. I know plenty of people who would pass as 'geniuses' by your definition that just cram past problems and get high grades. And honestly if you've been to college you'd know that it's almost impossible for a novel problem you've never encountered before show up on an test. A lot of otherwise intelligent people fairly despise such practices so they adopt inefficient studying habits , failing to complete a set syllabus and achieving subpar results.
- username90 6y ago
  I didn't say people who ace math exams are geniuses, just that maths makes it very clear that talent is a huge factor for success in the field. So it isn't that STEM students were all told by their parents that they are intelligent and therefore believe that genius is about talent, it is that it is pretty hard to study STEM without noticing the huge difference in talent between people in the field.
  - antegamisou 6y ago
    > talent is a huge factor for success in the field. Success in the field as in research? Most certainly so. However I think you're overestimating the 'math IQ' of STEM (under)grads especially considering the large discrepancy among its different subfields. Engineering students (EE/ME/Civil) are systematically 'dumber' maths-wise compared to their science (Maths [duh] or Physics) counterparts. Still, it's quite likely that you do not have to be a genius to be successful at landing a highly-paid, mentally-challenging related job. About parenting, smart math kids may not have had their egos boosted however their parents almost certainly exposed them to science from an early age. This holds true especially for children coming from 'STEM families'.
    - username90 6y ago
      > Still, it's quite likely that you do not have to be a genius to be successful at landing a highly-paid, mentally-challenging related job. I never said otherwise. However you can't be dumb to land those jobs.
vector_spaces 6y ago
I disagree because math is too vast and ill defined a field for any claim that anyone can be good or bad at all of it to be taken seriously. In high school, I was one of those people who spent tons of time and energy on it, and failed miserably, barely graduating as a result. It wasn't until I was about 25 when I picked up a basic algebra and trigonometry book on a whim and started self-teaching, that it began making sense to me. I eventually went back to school for pure math. In my case, I think what helped me as an adult was the freedom to learn on my own terms without the pressure of deadlines, and also a strong support network of friends encouraging me (compare with my teachers in high school who would actively embarrass me in front of the class or joke about their low expectations of me). And of course, some years of life experience in the real world doing things that were actually hard compared to (elementary) math as someone of limited means helped a bit too. So, all of that is to say that people who struggle in math classes struggle for different reasons. I suspect that much of the time the dominating forces are psychosocial, cultural, or plain & simple lack of interest (which itself might be driven by traumatic experiences with shitty teachers or parents with weird expectations)
- username90 6y ago
  So you failed, then took your time and practiced more to succeed. I don't see how that contradicts anything I said. Circumstances matters, effort matters. Talent being a huge factor doesn't contradict that.
  - username91 6y ago
    Sorry for the lack of post history: I made an account to jump in. You asked.. > how do you explain the very large number of people who spends tons of time and energy trying to get good at maths but fails to even grasp simple concepts like calculus? One answer, as vector_spaces said, is that the learning environment can completely change the outcome of this effort. You agreed: > Circumstances matter It's true that talent being a factor doesn't contradict that, but given how homogenous early-life learning environments are, it's -extremely- difficult to tell whether a person "failed" because of lack of talent, vs. lack of the right environment to experiment and learn. Basically, because a "wrong environment" fail looks like a "lack of talent" fail, I believe a lot of talented people don't find out that they have the talent in the first place, as they believe that an attempt in the wrong environment is as good as any attempt, and never try again - particularly if they've been chastised and humiliated -during- that learning process, as vector_spaces was. In any case, the reason I wanted to jump in was because of your original statement: >I don't think this is because people told them anything I would just ask that you reconsider that position, based especially on your agreement that "circumstances matter." Thanks for reading. [edit: linebreaks]
konjin 6y ago
>For those who disagree, how do you explain the very large number of people who spends tons of time and energy trying to get good at maths but fails to even grasp simple concepts like calculus? Calculus isn't simple, calculus is an abuse of notation that works by anomalous cancellation in most of the cases you see in university. Even for something as simple as arithmetic our notation is terrible and misleading. The people who are 'good at maths' are actually good at making unwarranted assumptions and extrapolations from incomplete data. Drawing the actual parse tree for expressions let my 7 year old cousin work at the level of a 12 year old even though she was failing the maths class before I helped her.
- username90 6y ago
  It isn't simple to a computer, no. But humans have intuition to help guide us which is what makes maths simple. The more of it you have the simpler maths become, the less of it you have the more you have to approach it like a computer as you describe. Being able to approach something like a computer doesn't mean that you understand it though, otherwise you could argue that anyone being able to follow the instructions of a Turing engine understands basically all knowledge.
  - konjin 6y ago
    Were that the case we could use human brains in jars to solve np problems. We can't. Human intuition is a poor thing that got us through the middle ages. It should stay there.
    - username90 6y ago
      Human intuition is what lets humans solve problems we still can't solve using computers. It is therefore highly relevant until we have invented general purpose AI.
      - konjin 6y ago
        I'm old enough to remember that being said about chess and go. We do not need general purpose AI to solve either of those, and neither do we need it for solving mathematical problems.
lordnacho 6y ago
> For those who disagree, how do you explain the very large number of people who spends tons of time and energy trying to get good at maths but fails to even grasp simple concepts like calculus? Are there really a lot of these people? Everyone I know who is good at math likes it and spends a lot of time on it. In school I was one of those kids who got it pretty easily. I skipped a year in math, I did my exams a year early, I won a math contest, and I went to top uni. But then I also went out of my way to buy extra math texts (not cheap for me) and had extra lessons to learn more stuff. The kids who didn't do so well were the ones who just saw it as a bunch of riddles to be memorized. That works briefly for an exam or two, but if you don't pick up the ideas properly it gets pretty easy to run into a question that can't be answered. > Contrast that with the much smaller but still considerable number of people who aren't really passionate about maths, don't put in the work yet still aces the class? My brother told me he never saw me studying. This is true, why would I have him around when I was studying? I did a fair bit at night when he was asleep. Or I'd think about things on the train. Also at uni there was a culture of pretending you made no effort but did well anyway. It was childish. Clearly people were studying, because there are very simple things you won't know in any other way, such as the names of concepts or people associated with them.
strikelaserclaw 6y ago
There are two things at play here in my opinion. First is that math builds upon itself. You can't do algebra without understanding operators, you can't do calculus without understanding algebra etc... Second is that many feel math is boring, and they just zone out during the critical years. To get good at math, you need to assimilate concepts by playing around with them and doing the homework. Combine both these and you really have no way to tell if a person is lost because they are not good at math or because they've done #1 and #2 their whole lives.

antegamisou 6y ago

Not that you're making bad points, but there's a big difference in acing a math exam vs actually assimilating the various underlying concepts, at least at a university level IME. I know plenty of people who would pass as 'geniuses' by your definition that just cram past problems and get high grades. And honestly if you've been to college you'd know that it's almost impossible for a novel problem you've never encountered before show up on an test. A lot of otherwise intelligent people fairly despise such practices so they adopt inefficient studying habits , failing to complete a set syllabus and achieving subpar results.

username90 6y ago
I didn't say people who ace math exams are geniuses, just that maths makes it very clear that talent is a huge factor for success in the field. So it isn't that STEM students were all told by their parents that they are intelligent and therefore believe that genius is about talent, it is that it is pretty hard to study STEM without noticing the huge difference in talent between people in the field.
- antegamisou 6y ago
  > talent is a huge factor for success in the field. Success in the field as in research? Most certainly so. However I think you're overestimating the 'math IQ' of STEM (under)grads especially considering the large discrepancy among its different subfields. Engineering students (EE/ME/Civil) are systematically 'dumber' maths-wise compared to their science (Maths [duh] or Physics) counterparts. Still, it's quite likely that you do not have to be a genius to be successful at landing a highly-paid, mentally-challenging related job. About parenting, smart math kids may not have had their egos boosted however their parents almost certainly exposed them to science from an early age. This holds true especially for children coming from 'STEM families'.
  - username90 6y ago
    > Still, it's quite likely that you do not have to be a genius to be successful at landing a highly-paid, mentally-challenging related job. I never said otherwise. However you can't be dumb to land those jobs.

vector_spaces 6y ago

I disagree because math is too vast and ill defined a field for any claim that anyone can be good or bad at all of it to be taken seriously. In high school, I was one of those people who spent tons of time and energy on it, and failed miserably, barely graduating as a result. It wasn't until I was about 25 when I picked up a basic algebra and trigonometry book on a whim and started self-teaching, that it began making sense to me. I eventually went back to school for pure math. In my case, I think what helped me as an adult was the freedom to learn on my own terms without the pressure of deadlines, and also a strong support network of friends encouraging me (compare with my teachers in high school who would actively embarrass me in front of the class or joke about their low expectations of me). And of course, some years of life experience in the real world doing things that were actually hard compared to (elementary) math as someone of limited means helped a bit too. So, all of that is to say that people who struggle in math classes struggle for different reasons. I suspect that much of the time the dominating forces are psychosocial, cultural, or plain & simple lack of interest (which itself might be driven by traumatic experiences with shitty teachers or parents with weird expectations)

username90 6y ago
So you failed, then took your time and practiced more to succeed. I don't see how that contradicts anything I said. Circumstances matters, effort matters. Talent being a huge factor doesn't contradict that.
- username91 6y ago
  Sorry for the lack of post history: I made an account to jump in. You asked.. > how do you explain the very large number of people who spends tons of time and energy trying to get good at maths but fails to even grasp simple concepts like calculus? One answer, as vector_spaces said, is that the learning environment can completely change the outcome of this effort. You agreed: > Circumstances matter It's true that talent being a factor doesn't contradict that, but given how homogenous early-life learning environments are, it's -extremely- difficult to tell whether a person "failed" because of lack of talent, vs. lack of the right environment to experiment and learn. Basically, because a "wrong environment" fail looks like a "lack of talent" fail, I believe a lot of talented people don't find out that they have the talent in the first place, as they believe that an attempt in the wrong environment is as good as any attempt, and never try again - particularly if they've been chastised and humiliated -during- that learning process, as vector_spaces was. In any case, the reason I wanted to jump in was because of your original statement: >I don't think this is because people told them anything I would just ask that you reconsider that position, based especially on your agreement that "circumstances matter." Thanks for reading. [edit: linebreaks]

konjin 6y ago

>For those who disagree, how do you explain the very large number of people who spends tons of time and energy trying to get good at maths but fails to even grasp simple concepts like calculus? Calculus isn't simple, calculus is an abuse of notation that works by anomalous cancellation in most of the cases you see in university. Even for something as simple as arithmetic our notation is terrible and misleading. The people who are 'good at maths' are actually good at making unwarranted assumptions and extrapolations from incomplete data. Drawing the actual parse tree for expressions let my 7 year old cousin work at the level of a 12 year old even though she was failing the maths class before I helped her.

username90 6y ago
It isn't simple to a computer, no. But humans have intuition to help guide us which is what makes maths simple. The more of it you have the simpler maths become, the less of it you have the more you have to approach it like a computer as you describe. Being able to approach something like a computer doesn't mean that you understand it though, otherwise you could argue that anyone being able to follow the instructions of a Turing engine understands basically all knowledge.
- konjin 6y ago
  Were that the case we could use human brains in jars to solve np problems. We can't. Human intuition is a poor thing that got us through the middle ages. It should stay there.
  - username90 6y ago
    Human intuition is what lets humans solve problems we still can't solve using computers. It is therefore highly relevant until we have invented general purpose AI.
    - konjin 6y ago
      I'm old enough to remember that being said about chess and go. We do not need general purpose AI to solve either of those, and neither do we need it for solving mathematical problems.

lordnacho 6y ago

> For those who disagree, how do you explain the very large number of people who spends tons of time and energy trying to get good at maths but fails to even grasp simple concepts like calculus? Are there really a lot of these people? Everyone I know who is good at math likes it and spends a lot of time on it. In school I was one of those kids who got it pretty easily. I skipped a year in math, I did my exams a year early, I won a math contest, and I went to top uni. But then I also went out of my way to buy extra math texts (not cheap for me) and had extra lessons to learn more stuff. The kids who didn't do so well were the ones who just saw it as a bunch of riddles to be memorized. That works briefly for an exam or two, but if you don't pick up the ideas properly it gets pretty easy to run into a question that can't be answered. > Contrast that with the much smaller but still considerable number of people who aren't really passionate about maths, don't put in the work yet still aces the class? My brother told me he never saw me studying. This is true, why would I have him around when I was studying? I did a fair bit at night when he was asleep. Or I'd think about things on the train. Also at uni there was a culture of pretending you made no effort but did well anyway. It was childish. Clearly people were studying, because there are very simple things you won't know in any other way, such as the names of concepts or people associated with them.

strikelaserclaw 6y ago

There are two things at play here in my opinion. First is that math builds upon itself. You can't do algebra without understanding operators, you can't do calculus without understanding algebra etc... Second is that many feel math is boring, and they just zone out during the critical years. To get good at math, you need to assimilate concepts by playing around with them and doing the homework. Combine both these and you really have no way to tell if a person is lost because they are not good at math or because they've done #1 and #2 their whole lives.