Hmm. When I was about 5, my mom was told by a doctor or therapist that I would have a hard time in life socially, and that turned out to be true. (Compounded b

Hmm. When I was about 5, my mom was told by a doctor or therapist that I would have a hard time in life socially, and that turned out to be true. (Compounded by untreated ADHD-PI, depression, anxiety, and emotional issues from abuse at home.) At 8, my dad convinced my mom to pull me out of private school for public school to spend more money on his audio components, ostensibly for "real-world socializing," a ruse, of course. At 15, my parents didn't allow me to take a paid internship at IBM Almaden in the field of dark matter research after attending a colloquia. That really hit me hard. Went to an overachiever public high-school with numerous perfect SAT-I's and full-rides to Pac12/Ivy. About 17/18, I took the SAT-I (1600 at the time in the late '90s) without studying or prep, and made a dumb mistake that would've been perfect on the math section. It's a trivial exam from what I hear compared to IITians I worked with discussing the JEE. Getting good at taking standardized tests doesn't seem a valuable skill, accomplishment, or signal for anything other than taking tests. I eschewed CalTech, MIT, UCLA for the most interesting university I could find. Didn't do a PhD for the long-term economic disincentive. The best philosophy, in my view, is to get super-smart children acclimatized to the world and outside of their comfort zones continuously, socialized, humble, street smart, remember the Golden Rule, develop a sense of humor, patience, challenge them early and often, support them, encourage initiative, and let them do their own thing often. If it were legal, dropping them off randomly to LA's Skid Row, Baltimore, or Detroit without money or a phone would teach survival skills really fast. TBH, these days I don't give a shit about how I grew up because I'm doing fine and no doubt getting laid way more than anyone I went to high school with while they're all stuck with kids, a mortgage, and mediocrity.