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The title is less surprising if you consider that straight after dropping out to be a poet (in high school) he effectively started getting one to one tutoring f

The title is less surprising if you consider that straight after dropping out to be a poet (in high school) he effectively started getting one to one tutoring from a field medalist for three years in his late teens to early 20s, to practically living with the medalist.

ramblerman 3y ago
It’s still surprising, but I agree, worth mentioning. Although I don’t think a field medalist would waste his time with an untalented youth. He obviously saw something.
- arturkane7 3y ago
  I didn’t meant it in a way to diminish how clever he is. Just the bit about dropping out is overstated relative to what came straight after.
  - linhvn 3y ago
    Yes, it was lucky that he was tutored my a Fields medalist. But he did the hard work to get himself tutored: sitting in an algebraic geometry class (that saw attendances dropping from 200 to 5 within a few weeks), reaching out to the professor, traveling with him for 2 years, etc. And then he still needed to do all the work himself for his PhD, and so forth.
- user_named 3y ago
  He got paid
- moralestapia 3y ago
  >I don’t think a field medalist would waste his time with an untalented youth. Ugh. Do you think a Fields medalist would "waste" his time cleaning his bedroom? Folding his clothes? 1. The world is much more menial than you think it is. 2. Fields medalists are, unsurprisingly, human beings, and keep doing human stuff like making new friends just for fun. 3. Not everyone is living under the weird delusion/obsession where all outcomes have to be maximally favorable for "life to be worth it". Not all companies have to be billion dollar companies. Not all students have to go and win Fields medals. 4. The "untalented youth" is much more interesting than what you give them credit for.
twilight7k 3y ago
That makes sense because getting into top uni like SNU is hard enough as it is. I was wondering how a dropout was able to pull it off. Nautral talent plus hardwork and good mentoring was all in there.
- quacked 3y ago
  > I was wondering how a dropout was able to pull it off. Nautral talent plus hardwork and good mentoring was all in there. "Formal education" is just industrialized mentoring and compelled hard work. Dropouts and "uneducated" people built the world. If you work hard and have good mentors, you can do anything, whether it's in a school or not. (While I am vehemently opposed to the modern method of education, I don't think that formal education in a classroom setting is inherently bad, nor do I think most people today have the social support, intellect, or temperament necessary to drop out and still be successful.)
- ak_111 3y ago
  It probably helps a lot to grow in an academic household, seems his dad was a stats professor and his mom a linguistic one, his informal math education growing up and work discipline must have been way above average. I bet he was a straight A math student.
aidepast 3y ago
Perhaps unrelated, but I wonder who these mentors were in the case of people like da Vinci, Socrates, Archimedes, Newton et al. They must have had some adults who guided them toward what they're known for. It seems absurd to believe that they just happened to grow up like that. It's as if everybody today, once you skim the "Early Life" section, it turns out had something fantastic, like a mother who was a Fields medalist, or uncle who invented this or that. The more that I see, the more I'm of the opinion that "genius" is simply: 1. effort, usually from youth, that nobody knows about so it appears to be innate 2. the effort is motivated and guided by some mentor(s), usually people with serious qualifications, like your Fields medalist uncle deciding to take you under his wing, after you said "math is fun :D" one time at 7 years old when he told you his job was "to do math :)" upon you asking him as children like to do, and turn you into a Fields-winning adult This reminds me of those people who pretend they're a genius because they can guess the day of the week if you give them a date, when the reality is that anybody can learn to do that because it's just an algorithm[1] that you can calculate in your head and practice to the point that you come off as if you have a photographic memory or something. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doomsday_rule https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doomsday_rule
- petermcneeley 3y ago
  https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/contra-hoel-on-aristocratic-tutoring https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/contra-hoel-on-aristoc...
- lioeters 3y ago
  As well as mentors, we should consider the environment in which genius arose, their cultural context and influences, the zeitgeist, intellectual atmosphere, schools, parents, friends, colleagues, the books they read. I think we overvalue the uniqueness of the individual in this hero worship of the lonely genius, as if a flower is independent of the earth from which it grows. But then again, it's true that there are exceptional stars, singular phenomena that cannot be explained by the sum of its parts. I suppose that leap, the surprising distance between what was given and what the individual made of it, is what we call genius, talent, luck or hard work.
wwarner 3y ago
I took the point to be that the skill of making progress on open questions is very different from the skill of quickly mastering established facts.
tzs 3y ago
It was at least 6 years after dropping out in high school that he met Hironaka. From Huh's Fields medal interview with the International Mathematical Union [1]: > Soon after finishing college, I had the good fortune to meet Professor Heisuke Hironaka [1] https://www.mathunion.org/fileadmin/IMU/Prizes/Fields/2022/Huh%20_June_Interview.pdf https://www.mathunion.org/fileadmin/IMU/Prizes/Fields/2022/H...
atlantic 3y ago
From the description, I don't think the term "tutoring" covers it. It was more in the nature of a master-disciple relation, such as is found in Japanese traditional arts. That was the transformational moment in his life.
karaterobot 3y ago
Is it? Give me the full attention of a Fields medalist for any number of years and it will not make me a Fields medalist.
- AtlasBarfed 3y ago
  Well it was a poet and just decided to take introduction algebraic structures with a fields metal winner? There's a lot of liberties taken by the pseudo biographical articles, especially when they're dealing with the gee whiz genius trope in American media which is really annoying. It's really just anti-intellectualisn cloaked to something else.
- TechBro8615 3y ago
  I think OP is merely suggesting that the tutelage of a Fields medalist had more to do with the subsequent Fields medal than did the poetry. I didn't read the comment as diminishing the accomplishments or suggesting anyone could do the same if they just had the right tutor. It was clarifying the title that misleadingly implies a causal relationship between poetry and math, or that he somehow stopped studying yet succeeded anyway.

ramblerman 3y ago

It’s still surprising, but I agree, worth mentioning. Although I don’t think a field medalist would waste his time with an untalented youth. He obviously saw something.

arturkane7 3y ago
I didn’t meant it in a way to diminish how clever he is. Just the bit about dropping out is overstated relative to what came straight after.
- linhvn 3y ago
  Yes, it was lucky that he was tutored my a Fields medalist. But he did the hard work to get himself tutored: sitting in an algebraic geometry class (that saw attendances dropping from 200 to 5 within a few weeks), reaching out to the professor, traveling with him for 2 years, etc. And then he still needed to do all the work himself for his PhD, and so forth.
user_named 3y ago
He got paid
moralestapia 3y ago
>I don’t think a field medalist would waste his time with an untalented youth. Ugh. Do you think a Fields medalist would "waste" his time cleaning his bedroom? Folding his clothes? 1. The world is much more menial than you think it is. 2. Fields medalists are, unsurprisingly, human beings, and keep doing human stuff like making new friends just for fun. 3. Not everyone is living under the weird delusion/obsession where all outcomes have to be maximally favorable for "life to be worth it". Not all companies have to be billion dollar companies. Not all students have to go and win Fields medals. 4. The "untalented youth" is much more interesting than what you give them credit for.

twilight7k 3y ago

That makes sense because getting into top uni like SNU is hard enough as it is. I was wondering how a dropout was able to pull it off. Nautral talent plus hardwork and good mentoring was all in there.

quacked 3y ago
> I was wondering how a dropout was able to pull it off. Nautral talent plus hardwork and good mentoring was all in there. "Formal education" is just industrialized mentoring and compelled hard work. Dropouts and "uneducated" people built the world. If you work hard and have good mentors, you can do anything, whether it's in a school or not. (While I am vehemently opposed to the modern method of education, I don't think that formal education in a classroom setting is inherently bad, nor do I think most people today have the social support, intellect, or temperament necessary to drop out and still be successful.)
ak_111 3y ago
It probably helps a lot to grow in an academic household, seems his dad was a stats professor and his mom a linguistic one, his informal math education growing up and work discipline must have been way above average. I bet he was a straight A math student.

aidepast 3y ago

Perhaps unrelated, but I wonder who these mentors were in the case of people like da Vinci, Socrates, Archimedes, Newton et al. They must have had some adults who guided them toward what they're known for. It seems absurd to believe that they just happened to grow up like that. It's as if everybody today, once you skim the "Early Life" section, it turns out had something fantastic, like a mother who was a Fields medalist, or uncle who invented this or that. The more that I see, the more I'm of the opinion that "genius" is simply: 1. effort, usually from youth, that nobody knows about so it appears to be innate 2. the effort is motivated and guided by some mentor(s), usually people with serious qualifications, like your Fields medalist uncle deciding to take you under his wing, after you said "math is fun :D" one time at 7 years old when he told you his job was "to do math :)" upon you asking him as children like to do, and turn you into a Fields-winning adult This reminds me of those people who pretend they're a genius because they can guess the day of the week if you give them a date, when the reality is that anybody can learn to do that because it's just an algorithm[1] that you can calculate in your head and practice to the point that you come off as if you have a photographic memory or something. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doomsday_rule https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doomsday_rule

petermcneeley 3y ago
https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/contra-hoel-on-aristocratic-tutoring https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/contra-hoel-on-aristoc...
lioeters 3y ago
As well as mentors, we should consider the environment in which genius arose, their cultural context and influences, the zeitgeist, intellectual atmosphere, schools, parents, friends, colleagues, the books they read. I think we overvalue the uniqueness of the individual in this hero worship of the lonely genius, as if a flower is independent of the earth from which it grows. But then again, it's true that there are exceptional stars, singular phenomena that cannot be explained by the sum of its parts. I suppose that leap, the surprising distance between what was given and what the individual made of it, is what we call genius, talent, luck or hard work.

wwarner 3y ago

I took the point to be that the skill of making progress on open questions is very different from the skill of quickly mastering established facts.

tzs 3y ago

It was at least 6 years after dropping out in high school that he met Hironaka. From Huh's Fields medal interview with the International Mathematical Union [1]: > Soon after finishing college, I had the good fortune to meet Professor Heisuke Hironaka [1] https://www.mathunion.org/fileadmin/IMU/Prizes/Fields/2022/Huh%20_June_Interview.pdf https://www.mathunion.org/fileadmin/IMU/Prizes/Fields/2022/H...

atlantic 3y ago

From the description, I don't think the term "tutoring" covers it. It was more in the nature of a master-disciple relation, such as is found in Japanese traditional arts. That was the transformational moment in his life.

karaterobot 3y ago

Is it? Give me the full attention of a Fields medalist for any number of years and it will not make me a Fields medalist.

AtlasBarfed 3y ago
Well it was a poet and just decided to take introduction algebraic structures with a fields metal winner? There's a lot of liberties taken by the pseudo biographical articles, especially when they're dealing with the gee whiz genius trope in American media which is really annoying. It's really just anti-intellectualisn cloaked to something else.
TechBro8615 3y ago
I think OP is merely suggesting that the tutelage of a Fields medalist had more to do with the subsequent Fields medal than did the poetry. I didn't read the comment as diminishing the accomplishments or suggesting anyone could do the same if they just had the right tutor. It was clarifying the title that misleadingly implies a causal relationship between poetry and math, or that he somehow stopped studying yet succeeded anyway.