5 ms·

The quality of this thread is really disappointing. Conservatively, about 80% of the replies, criticisms, suggestions, re-framings, here are addressed in the ar

The quality of this thread is really disappointing. Conservatively, about 80% of the replies, criticisms, suggestions, re-framings, here are addressed in the article by the author. About 20% of the replies here are responding to the title alone (and therefore focused on Einstein/progress in hard science). The piece is about the kind of education the children of the aristocracy received and how it has disappeared entirely.

AnimalMuppet 5y ago
Has it disappeared entirely? "The children of the aristocracy" were very few. Do a few people receive that kind of education today? Elon Musk's children? Bill Gates' children? Some Saudi prince's children? Note also that some of the people were "tutored" by their parents; homeschooling today could fill the same role. And, > So, where are all the Einsteins? > The answer must lie in education somewhere. That's a really glib dismissal of all other possible reasons, with almost no factual reason (or even argument) behind it.
- gwern 5y ago
  Musk's kids don't. There's been some reporting on it. They go to 'Synthesis School'/'Ad Astra School'/'Astra Nova'. It seems vaguely like STEM Montessori in attitude from what I've read. Relatively small student:staff ratio, but doesn't appear to be anywhere close to a 1:1 ratio which is what tutoring is. I haven't seen any mentions of supplementary tutoring either. (I can't think of any tech titans whose kids do receive exclusively tutoring either, instead of being sent to the local Palo Alto schools or private schools or something relatively middle-class.)
  - ilrwbwrkhv 5y ago
    Musk started that school. They go to the school made by their father. I am sure they are getting quite an "aristocratic" education.
    - gwern 5y ago
      Musk can start the school all he wants, doesn't mean it's tutoring. Don't round off the question "are Musk's kids being tutored" to "is a lot of money being spent on it". They are not the same.
mcguire 5y ago
I'm not particularly impressed with the quality of the article. The first question that comes to my mind that the article doesn't address is, how many geniuses did humanity miss because education was very, very limited. Second thought: history shows that the vast majority of aristocratically tutored students were very much not geniuses; this article is full of cherry-picking. Third, there's the "Where's Todays Beethoven" chart, "Below, we can see the number of acclaimed scientists (in blue) and artists (in red), divided by the effective population (total human population with the education and access to contribute to these fields)." Note: "with the education and access to contribute to these fields". If you increase the denominator by many orders of magnitude, no matter what the numerator is the result will probably go down. "Tutoring, one-on-one instruction, dramatically improves student’s abilities and scores. In education research this effect is sometimes called “Bloom’s 2-sigma problem” because in the 1980s the researcher Benjamin Bloom found that tutored students '. . performed two standard deviations better than students who learn via conventional instructional methods—that is, "the average tutored student was above 98% of the students in the control class.”'" The 2-sigma problem points to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bloom%27s_2_sigma_problem https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bloom%27s_2_sigma_problem which has, "Bloom found that the average student tutored one-to-one using mastery learning techniques performed two standard deviations better than students who learn via conventional instructional methods—that is, "the average tutored student was above 98% of the students in the control class"." The "mastery learning" method "is an instructional strategy and educational philosophy, first formally proposed by Benjamin Bloom in 1968." (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mastery_learning https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mastery_learning), so there's that. (I'm a cynic; "my way produces much better results" with no further data tends to inspire distrust.) "Consider the easy nature by which Darwin, at the age of only 16 and already in university,..." And what proportion of university students were younger than 17 in the 1820s? "Indeed, it’s remarkable how common aristocratic tutors were. Essentially universal." One might suspect that where and when there is no more modern educational system that tutors would, in fact, be the only way to get any education. One further note: the US pays roughly $15,000 per student per year as it is. Are you willing to work a full-time job for less than $30,000 per year? How's your Greek and Latin? Math? Science? Literature? (Assumptions: 2 half-time students per tutor. Some overhead will be necessary for the tutors.)
- 5y ago
ascar 5y ago
I don't see the author addressing most obvious criticism. There is no definition of genius. He mentions a lack of ideas, but doesn't talk about the effect that every field is much more specialized. You won't make advances in physics on the level of Newton or Kelvin. "The basics are covered" (with all the caveats that apply to this statement). He also ignores the pure genius that went into developing computing and the internet. Or the breakthrough that made our flat screens today possible that display digital information to us in the first place, like the invention of blue LEDs as a major scientific/engineering breakthrough. There are countless examples with an immense global impact, but the names of the inventors are barely known outside of their field. The more specialized we get the less likely everyone will learn about it in general education and thus the inventor/genius will be less renowned. That doesn't make it less of a breakthrough or less genius. The article doesn't address this at all. Further, there are many counter examples of genius that wasn't privately/aristocraticly tutored like Richard Feynman. For his point to stand there must be more privately tutored geniuses than non-privately tutored geniuses and today less intensive private tutoring. He doesn't have data for either of these prerequisites. I found the whole article and reasoning quite lacking right from the premise.
- hoseja 5y ago
  Or maybe we are so intellectually impoverished that there are a lot of orthogonal advances that we just do not see and do not try to pursue. Like, most of modern chipmaking is just glorified analog photography, who knows what sort of microprocessors we could make through wildly different processes.
- morpheuskafka 5y ago
  Interesting, the article does mention von Neumann who as I understand it created the CPU/bus/memory computer architecture. I was a bit surprised to see a computer scientist discussed as one of the people who received this kind of education. But yeah, my main response to the article is that "genius" and "the Western classics" are more social constructions than any sort of objectively defined term.
  - bagrow 5y ago
aaron695 5y ago
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

AnimalMuppet 5y ago

Has it disappeared entirely? "The children of the aristocracy" were very few. Do a few people receive that kind of education today? Elon Musk's children? Bill Gates' children? Some Saudi prince's children? Note also that some of the people were "tutored" by their parents; homeschooling today could fill the same role. And, > So, where are all the Einsteins? > The answer must lie in education somewhere. That's a really glib dismissal of all other possible reasons, with almost no factual reason (or even argument) behind it.

gwern 5y ago
Musk's kids don't. There's been some reporting on it. They go to 'Synthesis School'/'Ad Astra School'/'Astra Nova'. It seems vaguely like STEM Montessori in attitude from what I've read. Relatively small student:staff ratio, but doesn't appear to be anywhere close to a 1:1 ratio which is what tutoring is. I haven't seen any mentions of supplementary tutoring either. (I can't think of any tech titans whose kids do receive exclusively tutoring either, instead of being sent to the local Palo Alto schools or private schools or something relatively middle-class.)
- ilrwbwrkhv 5y ago
  Musk started that school. They go to the school made by their father. I am sure they are getting quite an "aristocratic" education.
  - gwern 5y ago
    Musk can start the school all he wants, doesn't mean it's tutoring. Don't round off the question "are Musk's kids being tutored" to "is a lot of money being spent on it". They are not the same.

mcguire 5y ago

I'm not particularly impressed with the quality of the article. The first question that comes to my mind that the article doesn't address is, how many geniuses did humanity miss because education was very, very limited. Second thought: history shows that the vast majority of aristocratically tutored students were very much not geniuses; this article is full of cherry-picking. Third, there's the "Where's Todays Beethoven" chart, "Below, we can see the number of acclaimed scientists (in blue) and artists (in red), divided by the effective population (total human population with the education and access to contribute to these fields)." Note: "with the education and access to contribute to these fields". If you increase the denominator by many orders of magnitude, no matter what the numerator is the result will probably go down. "Tutoring, one-on-one instruction, dramatically improves student’s abilities and scores. In education research this effect is sometimes called “Bloom’s 2-sigma problem” because in the 1980s the researcher Benjamin Bloom found that tutored students '. . performed two standard deviations better than students who learn via conventional instructional methods—that is, "the average tutored student was above 98% of the students in the control class.”'" The 2-sigma problem points to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bloom%27s_2_sigma_problem https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bloom%27s_2_sigma_problem which has, "Bloom found that the average student tutored one-to-one using mastery learning techniques performed two standard deviations better than students who learn via conventional instructional methods—that is, "the average tutored student was above 98% of the students in the control class"." The "mastery learning" method "is an instructional strategy and educational philosophy, first formally proposed by Benjamin Bloom in 1968." (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mastery_learning https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mastery_learning), so there's that. (I'm a cynic; "my way produces much better results" with no further data tends to inspire distrust.) "Consider the easy nature by which Darwin, at the age of only 16 and already in university,..." And what proportion of university students were younger than 17 in the 1820s? "Indeed, it’s remarkable how common aristocratic tutors were. Essentially universal." One might suspect that where and when there is no more modern educational system that tutors would, in fact, be the only way to get any education. One further note: the US pays roughly $15,000 per student per year as it is. Are you willing to work a full-time job for less than $30,000 per year? How's your Greek and Latin? Math? Science? Literature? (Assumptions: 2 half-time students per tutor. Some overhead will be necessary for the tutors.)

5y ago

ascar 5y ago

I don't see the author addressing most obvious criticism. There is no definition of genius. He mentions a lack of ideas, but doesn't talk about the effect that every field is much more specialized. You won't make advances in physics on the level of Newton or Kelvin. "The basics are covered" (with all the caveats that apply to this statement). He also ignores the pure genius that went into developing computing and the internet. Or the breakthrough that made our flat screens today possible that display digital information to us in the first place, like the invention of blue LEDs as a major scientific/engineering breakthrough. There are countless examples with an immense global impact, but the names of the inventors are barely known outside of their field. The more specialized we get the less likely everyone will learn about it in general education and thus the inventor/genius will be less renowned. That doesn't make it less of a breakthrough or less genius. The article doesn't address this at all. Further, there are many counter examples of genius that wasn't privately/aristocraticly tutored like Richard Feynman. For his point to stand there must be more privately tutored geniuses than non-privately tutored geniuses and today less intensive private tutoring. He doesn't have data for either of these prerequisites. I found the whole article and reasoning quite lacking right from the premise.

hoseja 5y ago
Or maybe we are so intellectually impoverished that there are a lot of orthogonal advances that we just do not see and do not try to pursue. Like, most of modern chipmaking is just glorified analog photography, who knows what sort of microprocessors we could make through wildly different processes.
morpheuskafka 5y ago
Interesting, the article does mention von Neumann who as I understand it created the CPU/bus/memory computer architecture. I was a bit surprised to see a computer scientist discussed as one of the people who received this kind of education. But yeah, my main response to the article is that "genius" and "the Western classics" are more social constructions than any sort of objectively defined term.
- bagrow 5y ago

aaron695 5y ago

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]