15 ms·

A tale of two teenagers (2023)

97 points by jseliger 3y ago

anonreeeeplor 3y ago
Before this comment section fills with people self diagnosing themselves as geniuses: I feel this. This post is going to sound pedantic and annoying because … that is what Aspergers does to you. I can write dozens of pages of highly analytical and technical text without making mistakes in real time. I can speed read complex texts and memorize them with a high degree of precision. From the “language” perspective I feel highly gifted and unusual. Not so much on the mathematical side. I almost have a disability with mathematics. I have taught myself advanced skills and switched careers multiple times without the required degrees. Worked at the top companies in the world with PhDs and others. However. I feel constantly discriminated against and treated like I am stupider than I am. And when people listen to me talk, they get incredibly threatened. It has taken me years to understand that being around me and listening to me talk, reason and analyze is THREATENING to people. I have had situations where, even after a few meetings where I felt I was just “talking about how things are” the other person left HATING me. The way I express myself is perceived almost like being hit with a physical object. I believe I have Aspergers (have tested very highly for it). I will tell you - it is INCREDIBLY CAREER LIMITING. I have given up trying to work in the normal world. It just doesn’t work for me. The pattern always repeats - I join a company, I get targeted and singled out and ganged up on. If you are like me it is like being incredibly advantaged while being incredibly disadvantaged at the same time. It’s like being Usain Bolt except your sprinting lane has an obstacle course in it while everyone else gets to run in a normal lane. The obstacle course is DELIBERATELY put there. It is human nature to instantly identify existential threats: People who are unusually more talented than them and take them out. I have learned, and am adapting. Unfortunately, if you want to succeed in this world you have to play a set of games, these are games that I really don’t want to play. If I have to play them, I am going to try to play outside the system. I have realized that all the advice which most people follow that works for them does not work for me. I do things completely differently and have to come up with my own strategies about how to operate. Here is the other reality: If you are very talented and gifted, NO ONE WILL NOTICE AND TELL YOU. That sounds completely weird but it is true. No one in my entire life, aside from a few offhand comments, took me aside and went: “uhhh…you are in a completely other category than these people and do not belong here. Do this instead.” Instead it is the isolation - I do not understand why no one wants to interact or include me, and it happens very fast. Most people get a whiff and go “I have no idea what to do with this and don’t want to be around it.”
- iandanforth 3y ago
  So what do you do now? Also have you connected with others with Asperger's?
  - anonreeeeplor 3y ago
    Right now I am starting my own. I generally gravitate towards the most autistic market niches imaginable. Usually areas which combine multiple autistic topics together that attract the weirdest people imaginable.
- mcherm 3y ago
  Yeah? Well I, for one, would like to spend more time engaging with people like you. Some of the obvious steps are helpful (eg: "read Less Wrong" was an excellent step some years ago). But I would just like to point out that there ARE some people who would like to interact with those who are very bright and a little bit focused.
  - IggleSniggle 3y ago
    Yeah, totally. In fact, when I encounter someone who speaks and behaves like they are on the spectrum, it's a positive signal to me that: they probably aren't going to like me because I'm ADD and careless, but I'm going to love working with them because they are likely to complement my weaknesses.
  - anonreeeeplor 3y ago
    Word
- lupusreal 3y ago
  > I can write dozens of pages of highly analytical and technical text without making mistakes in real time. I can speed read complex texts and memorize them with a high degree of precision. From the “language” perspective I feel highly gifted and unusual. [...] And when people listen to me talk, they get incredibly threatened If your language skills are as advanced and analytical as you claim, then you should apply that innate skill to the problem of finding ways to communicate without making people feel threatened. For instance, tailor (limit) your vocabulary for your audience and don't correct other people's inconsequential errors. And of course refrain from telling people about how brilliant you are. If you can't manage the above, then maybe you should recognize that you're not actually as brilliant as you think. This realization could give you a bit more humility and that in turn could help you interact with other people.
doctorpangloss 3y ago
> Most gifted children are, in fact, gifted in only one or two areas, often underperforming in others, though not necessarily because they’re unable. It’s orthodox in education research, widely accepted, widely observed that kids who are REALLY good at one or two things wind up, when you measure them, good at everything.
- khzw8yyy 3y ago
  Like many things that are orthodox in education research, this is likely wrong.
  - somewhereoutth 3y ago
    It would be nice for us (the masses) to believe that it is likely wrong, so we can sleep easier knowing that 'everything balances out'. However perhaps this is an uncomfortable truth, that we may or may not choose to face.
  - luqtas 3y ago
    yes! take a sip at what educators are trying to push nowadays (not the [majority of] business paraphernalia from the ed. tech world)... it's usually about teaching kids types of skills not found at the grade; like emotional intelligence, resilience and even meta-analysis of their way of studying!
    - jrgoff 3y ago
      I'm not sure if I'm understanding you correctly - do you feel like emotional intelligence and resilience are not appropriate to teach kids? There are a number of fairly simple social and emotional tools/approaches I have learned in adulthood that I really wish would have been taught to me and those around me growing up.
      - luqtas 3y ago
        [dead]
opportune 3y ago
Serving students like Georgios is one of the things the Soviet Union did very well (of course, there was still discrimination against eg Jews). In the US, it’s not only disrupted by the activists briefly mentioned in the article, but by the mediocre part of the elite that would rather have such a system not exist or be easily gamed/rigged than to have it exist and their child not in it. Given the more classist nature of life in the UK I’m sure this is even moreso a factor there.
- lapcat 3y ago
  > Serving students like Georgios is one of the things the Soviet Union did very well Philosophers? I think not: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophy_in_the_Soviet_Union https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophy_in_the_Soviet_Union
  - opportune 3y ago
    By that I meant the gifted and advanced (Georgios surely had very advanced language skills), not philosophers specifically. I doubt he’d have been restricted from learning about the philosophical material he was interested in either, though depending on the year, definitely restricted from officially espousing some of that personally.
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
    - lapcat 3y ago
      Ok, but Georgios himself would have been repressed in the Soviet Union. Likewise, anyone who had original, creative thoughts. You could only "excel" within the ruthless confines of ideological conformance. It's not clear that the Soviet system "served" anyone except the party leaders.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
gnicholas 3y ago
> I discovered Georgios had an IQ of 145, a score in the top 1.33% for the test he took. Put simply, that meant that he was several “mental years” ahead of his peers. If a teacher taught fifty students a year for forty years, they would only meet two or three children with his raw ability. Unless I'm mistaken, this appears to be off by an order of magnitude.
- kazinator 3y ago
  Not to mention that such an IQ is not simply several "mental years" ahead of people who are at 100, it's a qualitative difference to which the 100 cannot catch up.
- riwsky 3y ago
  It is. The percentage is wrong; the “only two or three every forty years” is right (by construction, IQ has a mean of 100 and stddev of 15).
- pdonis 3y ago
  AFAIK 145 IQ is three standard deviations above the mean in a normal distribution, and only 0.3% will have that score or higher, so I think the article is off by a factor of about 4.
  - gnicholas 3y ago
    Looks like the 1.3 percent was the part that was off. It’s .13 percent: https://www.davidsonacademy.unr.edu/blog/what-does-profoundly-gifted-mean/#:~:text=What%20IQ%20is%20Considered%20Profoundly%20Gifted%3F,and%20are%20considered%20profoundly%20gifted https://www.davidsonacademy.unr.edu/blog/what-does-profoundl.... So the end result is accurate, it would be 2-3 students with that ability level.
  - HALtheWise 3y ago
    Nitpick: 0.3% will be outside three standard deviations to either side, with 0.13% above and 0.13% below.
somewhereoutth 3y ago
I am again reminded of Huxley's 'Brave New World'. There was of course the Alphas and the Betas - and the Gammas, Deltas and Epsilons beneath them. However the very gifted were lifted from this caste system, and placed on the islands, where they might direct the future (or at least that is my somewhat dim recollection/interpretation).
kazinator 3y ago
I suspect these educators would probably also be impressed by the intellect of a LLM trained on philosophy books and classic literatures. Wow, its answers are of a high level quality! When people read books on certain topics, they start talking the talk. E.g. “The fatal flaw, as I understand it, in Kant’s deontological ethical system is his disregard of consequentialism.” Did the kid come up with that himself, or is he just regurgitating, verbatim, a judgment penned by some author he read somewhere? How much of it does he understand? Might it not be that Georgios is just playing with philosophy and literature in the way, in Billy Joel's "Piano Man", the "waitress is practicing politics"? I.e. picking up talking the talk to sound intelligent and informed. E.g. memorizing some political opinion overheard from one group of customers of the bar, and repeating that later within earshot of another group.
- medler 3y ago
  > E.g. “The fatal flaw, as I understand it, in Kant’s deontological ethical system is his disregard of consequentialism.” Did the kid come up with that himself, or is he just regurgitating, verbatim, a judgment penned by some author he read somewhere? How much of it does he understand? This is a weak analysis of Kant. If a sixth grader read some Kant and came up with this themselves I would think they were probably of average intelligence.
  - SoftTalker 3y ago
    I would guess very very few sixth-graders have ever used the word "deontological" or know what it means. I'm nearly 60 and I had to look it up. No I've never read Kant.
    - kazinator 3y ago
      But you're not any smarter now; you just know a fancy word that basically refers to rule-based morality. The kid used philosophical jargon to accuse Kant of favoring a rigid rule-based moral behavior, without the flexiblity of allowing rules to be bent or flouted when they wouldn't lead to a good outcome. Any parrot can learn to articulate an idea like this using "deontological" and "consequentialism". It just comes across as pretentious; no wonder teachers found that irritating.
light_hue_1 3y ago
My kids are approaching school age and I worry about them for this reason. Our state is getting school districts to remove all advanced classes and gifted programs. All in the name of equity. Last year they got rid of all of the advanced math classes in our district because the number of minority students was too low. Thankfully when I grew up we had enough money for me to go to a private school where they had all of these advanced programs. I would have gone crazy without them. I'm a hardcore liberal. But... It feels like there's a brand of liberal out there now that has a totally different idea of what equity is and how we should get there to the point where I find I need to sometimes fight on the side of the more conservative parents in our school district. I don't understand how educating smart people became something that my own side hates and fights against.
- nradov 3y ago
  You will understand it once you realize that the modern progressive movement has abandoned the liberal principles that we grew up with. They have now adopted a Maoist political philosophy.
- wait_a_minute 3y ago
  > Our state is getting school districts to remove all advanced classes and gifted programs. All in the name of equity. Last year they got rid of all of the advanced math classes in our district because the number of minority students was too low. wtf
  - csa 3y ago
    California things.
    - mrexroad 3y ago
      Where in California, specifically?
      - csa 3y ago
        It’s a statewide effort, but I think SF (or some place in the Bay Area) has already done away with middle school algebra, which is a common first step in the path to high school calculus. Plenty of articles on this on the interwebs. For example: https://reason.com/2023/10/04/california-state-guidelines-discourage-schools-from-offering-advanced-middle-school-math/ https://reason.com/2023/10/04/california-state-guidelines-di... Note that I am not the OP, so I don’t know where they are specifically, or even if they are in CA. That said, K-12 is moving this direction in CA, and I think the administrators will end up getting their way one way or another.
growingkittens 3y ago
When I was in school, there wasn't a framework for what is more recently referred to as "twice exceptional." This means that a student is gifted and disabled. ADHD and autism fall into this category. Gifted students have different needs, and the school environment does not force them to develop the skills they need to succeed as an adult. Twice exceptional students tend to use a lot of energy just trying to exist, which also prevents skill development. They look like smart students who "don't apply themselves", even if they are putting on their best effort.
- xyzzy_plugh 3y ago
  I've never heard this term before, thanks for the pointer.
- hypertele-Xii 3y ago
  This is me. I have an IQ of 163. All I heard my entire childhood was "you're so smart, you don't need help, you just have an attitude problem". Was placed in the only special class in school, where all the kids from the other side of the normal distribution were placed - retards, bullies, etc. Got beaten every day until I learned to fight back. At what point was I supposed to have the time and energy to learn? There were no role models. My parents are horrible. Just skipped school as much as I could to play with tech/computers. Still unproven if all my experience amounts to anything. A genius quietly suffering in poverty and loneliness, fallen off every bandwagon, used and abused, desperately trying to achieve literally anything. The worst part is the chronic thinking that I could've/should've/would've done something amazing, if a single shit had been given at any point along the way. Such a waste of human potential. Even if it wasn't my fault as a child, it's my responsibility to fix as a developmentally disabled adult. To this day nobody gives a shit. So I work out, do what little work I can, cry myself to sleep, and pray for God to use me as an instrument for good. The next 10 years will make or break me.
  - defrost 3y ago
    > I have an IQ of 163. That's remarkable given the current world population of 8 billion. Given a normal IQ distribution centred about 100 and a standard deviation of 10 that puts you in the upper half of the six sigma range ... along with (approx) only 7 other people on the planet.
somewhereoutth 3y ago
It would be nice to see something about gifted people that didn't conflate that with, or allude to, or even mention, ADHD, autism, or other 'neural deficiency'. Some people are just super bright, not just analytically but emotionally/empathically too - get over it.
- KittenInABox 3y ago
  Ironically, this doesn't strike me as a particularly super emotionally/empathetically bright comment.
- iteria 3y ago
  Unfortunately, just having done that track, it's hard because _a lot_ of the gifted kids I was in class with had some kind of issue. Maybe not being neurodivergent, but there was a lot of mental health issues and obsessive behavior. Being just a standard human who smart was a minority position. It's interesting to me, because at my university those kids didn't have a high presence at all and I'm not sure if college was just biased against them a la gifted burn out stereotype or if I lived in a bubble
  - randomdata 3y ago
    The only unique thing that university provides is access to a unique social network. Meanwhile, those with such issues tend to not want such social experiences, either as a direct result of their issue or as their condition leaves them to feel that they are (and maybe actually are) social outcasts. Why would you, in the general case (there are always exceptions), find them in a university? That would be much like finding vegetarians at a steakhouse.
  - aaplok 3y ago
    Maybe the gifted kids that are not neurodivergent are better at avoiding to stand out, and so are more likely to escape notice?
    - lapcat 3y ago
      This. I spent a lot of my childhood trying very hard to look "normal", to not stand out. There was a significant amount of playing dumb.
luqtas 3y ago
we could also start developing other frame-works for identifying anomalies on intelligence... and treat them accordingly! a high intelligent logic-oriented-nerd trying to create a big deal isn't much without a high intelligent designer and so on; to the heck this obsession with STEM at the pedagogic world
tkgally 3y ago
> At his last school, the philosophy teacher had become irritated. Deciding Georgios was a show-off, he shouted at this meek boy. After that, Georgios never raised his hand again. > Several teachers told me, “I don’t know how you do it!” By which they meant tolerating Georgios’ odd behaviour. The truth though is that I didn’t always do it. Much of the time, Georgios' clinginess was as irritating to me as it was to them. As it happens, just before I read this article I had an exchange with GPT-4 about combinatorial mathematics [1]. I wanted to see how feasible it would be to learn about the subject by interacting with it. While I haven’t double-checked everything it told me, I was struck once again by its infinite patience with my questions. It is an amazing resource for students of all kinds—not just gifted ones. Addendum: Some conversations I had with it about philosophy—the area of interest of the student in the linked article—are at [2]. Again, GPT-4 showed no irritation whatsoever with my questions. [1] https://gally.net/temp/20240107combinatorialmathematics/index.html https://gally.net/temp/20240107combinatorialmathematics/inde... [2] https://youtube.com/@Tom_Gally_UTokyo?si=qDZzPkPcFAC4Tvfc https://youtube.com/@Tom_Gally_UTokyo?si=qDZzPkPcFAC4Tvfc
dzink 3y ago
Imagine if people saw only a few different colors, and few saw the whole rainbow. Those who saw red would point to the trees and discuss the fine aspects of apples there, while the rest would have no clue or wonder why they care. Empathy is a color some see more than others. Timeliness is a color. Indexing life tasks and items to where they should be or how efficiently that can be organized is a color. Math and problem solving are colors that some find a lot more compelling than others. You are extremely fortunate if the colors you see brightly are commonly seen by others or a part of a self-training loop like math, Montessori games, programming, and language. You have it harder if your favorite subject requires funding to practice, such as chemistry/advanced physics, etc. And you’d better learn how to make millions or billions if you like space stuff or care for gatekeeper-protected disciplines like some niche academia, medicine, regulated stuff, etc. That said, the world changed recently. GPT4 came out those who have deep interests have a sparring partner they’ve never had before. I doubt it’s anywhere in their priority list, but OpenAI can probably run a fantastic networking mesh for people with niche interests. They’d have to keep the spam /obscenities out, but a group chat for anyone in a topic would be fun and a voice group lounge would be even more amazing. ChatGPT would beat facebook and much other social media for the gifted audience. It’s already the best teacher available (if you discount errors and hallucinations, which are on the decline).
- saagarjha 3y ago
  For those who are truly experts in something, ChatGPT is not really anywhere close to being an interesting conversation partner on that topic.
  - mnky9800n 3y ago
    Who needs hacker news when you have chatgpt!
Perenti 3y ago
School is a very strange place for the exceptionally gifted student, even moreso if neurodiverse. The student can get 100% on tests and essays with ease, yet cannot understand basic human interactions. From the perspective of an autistic, ex-teacher who had his IQ measured as "somewhere over 170". I probably have ADHD as well, but a psychiatrist friend says diagnosis fails with people with ridiculously high IQs. BTW, high IQ = good at solving certain kinds of problem, not a measure of the quality of a person.
zubairq 3y ago
A tale of two Teenagers was an interesting read for me
CharlesGELUK 3y ago
[dead]

97 points by jseliger 3y ago

Before this comment section fills with people self diagnosing themselves as geniuses: I feel this. This post is going to sound pedantic and annoying because … that is what Aspergers does to you. I can write dozens of pages of highly analytical and technical text without making mistakes in real time. I can speed read complex texts and memorize them with a high degree of precision. From the “language” perspective I feel highly gifted and unusual. Not so much on the mathematical side. I almost have a disability with mathematics. I have taught myself advanced skills and switched careers multiple times without the required degrees. Worked at the top companies in the world with PhDs and others. However. I feel constantly discriminated against and treated like I am stupider than I am. And when people listen to me talk, they get incredibly threatened. It has taken me years to understand that being around me and listening to me talk, reason and analyze is THREATENING to people. I have had situations where, even after a few meetings where I felt I was just “talking about how things are” the other person left HATING me. The way I express myself is perceived almost like being hit with a physical object. I believe I have Aspergers (have tested very highly for it). I will tell you - it is INCREDIBLY CAREER LIMITING. I have given up trying to work in the normal world. It just doesn’t work for me. The pattern always repeats - I join a company, I get targeted and singled out and ganged up on. If you are like me it is like being incredibly advantaged while being incredibly disadvantaged at the same time. It’s like being Usain Bolt except your sprinting lane has an obstacle course in it while everyone else gets to run in a normal lane. The obstacle course is DELIBERATELY put there. It is human nature to instantly identify existential threats: People who are unusually more talented than them and take them out. I have learned, and am adapting. Unfortunately, if you want to succeed in this world you have to play a set of games, these are games that I really don’t want to play. If I have to play them, I am going to try to play outside the system. I have realized that all the advice which most people follow that works for them does not work for me. I do things completely differently and have to come up with my own strategies about how to operate. Here is the other reality: If you are very talented and gifted, NO ONE WILL NOTICE AND TELL YOU. That sounds completely weird but it is true. No one in my entire life, aside from a few offhand comments, took me aside and went: “uhhh…you are in a completely other category than these people and do not belong here. Do this instead.” Instead it is the isolation - I do not understand why no one wants to interact or include me, and it happens very fast. Most people get a whiff and go “I have no idea what to do with this and don’t want to be around it.”

iandanforth 3y ago
So what do you do now? Also have you connected with others with Asperger's?
- anonreeeeplor 3y ago
  Right now I am starting my own. I generally gravitate towards the most autistic market niches imaginable. Usually areas which combine multiple autistic topics together that attract the weirdest people imaginable.
mcherm 3y ago
Yeah? Well I, for one, would like to spend more time engaging with people like you. Some of the obvious steps are helpful (eg: "read Less Wrong" was an excellent step some years ago). But I would just like to point out that there ARE some people who would like to interact with those who are very bright and a little bit focused.
- IggleSniggle 3y ago
  Yeah, totally. In fact, when I encounter someone who speaks and behaves like they are on the spectrum, it's a positive signal to me that: they probably aren't going to like me because I'm ADD and careless, but I'm going to love working with them because they are likely to complement my weaknesses.
- anonreeeeplor 3y ago
  Word
lupusreal 3y ago
> I can write dozens of pages of highly analytical and technical text without making mistakes in real time. I can speed read complex texts and memorize them with a high degree of precision. From the “language” perspective I feel highly gifted and unusual. [...] And when people listen to me talk, they get incredibly threatened If your language skills are as advanced and analytical as you claim, then you should apply that innate skill to the problem of finding ways to communicate without making people feel threatened. For instance, tailor (limit) your vocabulary for your audience and don't correct other people's inconsequential errors. And of course refrain from telling people about how brilliant you are. If you can't manage the above, then maybe you should recognize that you're not actually as brilliant as you think. This realization could give you a bit more humility and that in turn could help you interact with other people.

doctorpangloss 3y ago

> Most gifted children are, in fact, gifted in only one or two areas, often underperforming in others, though not necessarily because they’re unable. It’s orthodox in education research, widely accepted, widely observed that kids who are REALLY good at one or two things wind up, when you measure them, good at everything.

khzw8yyy 3y ago
Like many things that are orthodox in education research, this is likely wrong.
- somewhereoutth 3y ago
  It would be nice for us (the masses) to believe that it is likely wrong, so we can sleep easier knowing that 'everything balances out'. However perhaps this is an uncomfortable truth, that we may or may not choose to face.
- luqtas 3y ago
  yes! take a sip at what educators are trying to push nowadays (not the [majority of] business paraphernalia from the ed. tech world)... it's usually about teaching kids types of skills not found at the grade; like emotional intelligence, resilience and even meta-analysis of their way of studying!
  - jrgoff 3y ago
    I'm not sure if I'm understanding you correctly - do you feel like emotional intelligence and resilience are not appropriate to teach kids? There are a number of fairly simple social and emotional tools/approaches I have learned in adulthood that I really wish would have been taught to me and those around me growing up.
    - luqtas 3y ago
      [dead]

opportune 3y ago

Serving students like Georgios is one of the things the Soviet Union did very well (of course, there was still discrimination against eg Jews). In the US, it’s not only disrupted by the activists briefly mentioned in the article, but by the mediocre part of the elite that would rather have such a system not exist or be easily gamed/rigged than to have it exist and their child not in it. Given the more classist nature of life in the UK I’m sure this is even moreso a factor there.

lapcat 3y ago
> Serving students like Georgios is one of the things the Soviet Union did very well Philosophers? I think not: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophy_in_the_Soviet_Union https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophy_in_the_Soviet_Union
- opportune 3y ago
  By that I meant the gifted and advanced (Georgios surely had very advanced language skills), not philosophers specifically. I doubt he’d have been restricted from learning about the philosophical material he was interested in either, though depending on the year, definitely restricted from officially espousing some of that personally.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - lapcat 3y ago
    Ok, but Georgios himself would have been repressed in the Soviet Union. Likewise, anyone who had original, creative thoughts. You could only "excel" within the ruthless confines of ideological conformance. It's not clear that the Soviet system "served" anyone except the party leaders.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

gnicholas 3y ago

> I discovered Georgios had an IQ of 145, a score in the top 1.33% for the test he took. Put simply, that meant that he was several “mental years” ahead of his peers. If a teacher taught fifty students a year for forty years, they would only meet two or three children with his raw ability. Unless I'm mistaken, this appears to be off by an order of magnitude.

kazinator 3y ago
Not to mention that such an IQ is not simply several "mental years" ahead of people who are at 100, it's a qualitative difference to which the 100 cannot catch up.
riwsky 3y ago
It is. The percentage is wrong; the “only two or three every forty years” is right (by construction, IQ has a mean of 100 and stddev of 15).
pdonis 3y ago
AFAIK 145 IQ is three standard deviations above the mean in a normal distribution, and only 0.3% will have that score or higher, so I think the article is off by a factor of about 4.
- gnicholas 3y ago
  Looks like the 1.3 percent was the part that was off. It’s .13 percent: https://www.davidsonacademy.unr.edu/blog/what-does-profoundly-gifted-mean/#:~:text=What%20IQ%20is%20Considered%20Profoundly%20Gifted%3F,and%20are%20considered%20profoundly%20gifted https://www.davidsonacademy.unr.edu/blog/what-does-profoundl.... So the end result is accurate, it would be 2-3 students with that ability level.
- HALtheWise 3y ago
  Nitpick: 0.3% will be outside three standard deviations to either side, with 0.13% above and 0.13% below.

somewhereoutth 3y ago

I am again reminded of Huxley's 'Brave New World'. There was of course the Alphas and the Betas - and the Gammas, Deltas and Epsilons beneath them. However the very gifted were lifted from this caste system, and placed on the islands, where they might direct the future (or at least that is my somewhat dim recollection/interpretation).

kazinator 3y ago

I suspect these educators would probably also be impressed by the intellect of a LLM trained on philosophy books and classic literatures. Wow, its answers are of a high level quality! When people read books on certain topics, they start talking the talk. E.g. “The fatal flaw, as I understand it, in Kant’s deontological ethical system is his disregard of consequentialism.” Did the kid come up with that himself, or is he just regurgitating, verbatim, a judgment penned by some author he read somewhere? How much of it does he understand? Might it not be that Georgios is just playing with philosophy and literature in the way, in Billy Joel's "Piano Man", the "waitress is practicing politics"? I.e. picking up talking the talk to sound intelligent and informed. E.g. memorizing some political opinion overheard from one group of customers of the bar, and repeating that later within earshot of another group.

medler 3y ago
> E.g. “The fatal flaw, as I understand it, in Kant’s deontological ethical system is his disregard of consequentialism.” Did the kid come up with that himself, or is he just regurgitating, verbatim, a judgment penned by some author he read somewhere? How much of it does he understand? This is a weak analysis of Kant. If a sixth grader read some Kant and came up with this themselves I would think they were probably of average intelligence.
- SoftTalker 3y ago
  I would guess very very few sixth-graders have ever used the word "deontological" or know what it means. I'm nearly 60 and I had to look it up. No I've never read Kant.
  - kazinator 3y ago
    But you're not any smarter now; you just know a fancy word that basically refers to rule-based morality. The kid used philosophical jargon to accuse Kant of favoring a rigid rule-based moral behavior, without the flexiblity of allowing rules to be bent or flouted when they wouldn't lead to a good outcome. Any parrot can learn to articulate an idea like this using "deontological" and "consequentialism". It just comes across as pretentious; no wonder teachers found that irritating.

light_hue_1 3y ago

My kids are approaching school age and I worry about them for this reason. Our state is getting school districts to remove all advanced classes and gifted programs. All in the name of equity. Last year they got rid of all of the advanced math classes in our district because the number of minority students was too low. Thankfully when I grew up we had enough money for me to go to a private school where they had all of these advanced programs. I would have gone crazy without them. I'm a hardcore liberal. But... It feels like there's a brand of liberal out there now that has a totally different idea of what equity is and how we should get there to the point where I find I need to sometimes fight on the side of the more conservative parents in our school district. I don't understand how educating smart people became something that my own side hates and fights against.

nradov 3y ago
You will understand it once you realize that the modern progressive movement has abandoned the liberal principles that we grew up with. They have now adopted a Maoist political philosophy.
wait_a_minute 3y ago
> Our state is getting school districts to remove all advanced classes and gifted programs. All in the name of equity. Last year they got rid of all of the advanced math classes in our district because the number of minority students was too low. wtf
- csa 3y ago
  California things.
  - mrexroad 3y ago
    Where in California, specifically?
    - csa 3y ago
      It’s a statewide effort, but I think SF (or some place in the Bay Area) has already done away with middle school algebra, which is a common first step in the path to high school calculus. Plenty of articles on this on the interwebs. For example: https://reason.com/2023/10/04/california-state-guidelines-discourage-schools-from-offering-advanced-middle-school-math/ https://reason.com/2023/10/04/california-state-guidelines-di... Note that I am not the OP, so I don’t know where they are specifically, or even if they are in CA. That said, K-12 is moving this direction in CA, and I think the administrators will end up getting their way one way or another.

growingkittens 3y ago

When I was in school, there wasn't a framework for what is more recently referred to as "twice exceptional." This means that a student is gifted and disabled. ADHD and autism fall into this category. Gifted students have different needs, and the school environment does not force them to develop the skills they need to succeed as an adult. Twice exceptional students tend to use a lot of energy just trying to exist, which also prevents skill development. They look like smart students who "don't apply themselves", even if they are putting on their best effort.

xyzzy_plugh 3y ago
I've never heard this term before, thanks for the pointer.
hypertele-Xii 3y ago
This is me. I have an IQ of 163. All I heard my entire childhood was "you're so smart, you don't need help, you just have an attitude problem". Was placed in the only special class in school, where all the kids from the other side of the normal distribution were placed - retards, bullies, etc. Got beaten every day until I learned to fight back. At what point was I supposed to have the time and energy to learn? There were no role models. My parents are horrible. Just skipped school as much as I could to play with tech/computers. Still unproven if all my experience amounts to anything. A genius quietly suffering in poverty and loneliness, fallen off every bandwagon, used and abused, desperately trying to achieve literally anything. The worst part is the chronic thinking that I could've/should've/would've done something amazing, if a single shit had been given at any point along the way. Such a waste of human potential. Even if it wasn't my fault as a child, it's my responsibility to fix as a developmentally disabled adult. To this day nobody gives a shit. So I work out, do what little work I can, cry myself to sleep, and pray for God to use me as an instrument for good. The next 10 years will make or break me.
- defrost 3y ago
  > I have an IQ of 163. That's remarkable given the current world population of 8 billion. Given a normal IQ distribution centred about 100 and a standard deviation of 10 that puts you in the upper half of the six sigma range ... along with (approx) only 7 other people on the planet.

somewhereoutth 3y ago

It would be nice to see something about gifted people that didn't conflate that with, or allude to, or even mention, ADHD, autism, or other 'neural deficiency'. Some people are just super bright, not just analytically but emotionally/empathically too - get over it.

KittenInABox 3y ago
Ironically, this doesn't strike me as a particularly super emotionally/empathetically bright comment.
iteria 3y ago
Unfortunately, just having done that track, it's hard because _a lot_ of the gifted kids I was in class with had some kind of issue. Maybe not being neurodivergent, but there was a lot of mental health issues and obsessive behavior. Being just a standard human who smart was a minority position. It's interesting to me, because at my university those kids didn't have a high presence at all and I'm not sure if college was just biased against them a la gifted burn out stereotype or if I lived in a bubble
- randomdata 3y ago
  The only unique thing that university provides is access to a unique social network. Meanwhile, those with such issues tend to not want such social experiences, either as a direct result of their issue or as their condition leaves them to feel that they are (and maybe actually are) social outcasts. Why would you, in the general case (there are always exceptions), find them in a university? That would be much like finding vegetarians at a steakhouse.
- aaplok 3y ago
  Maybe the gifted kids that are not neurodivergent are better at avoiding to stand out, and so are more likely to escape notice?
  - lapcat 3y ago
    This. I spent a lot of my childhood trying very hard to look "normal", to not stand out. There was a significant amount of playing dumb.

luqtas 3y ago

we could also start developing other frame-works for identifying anomalies on intelligence... and treat them accordingly! a high intelligent logic-oriented-nerd trying to create a big deal isn't much without a high intelligent designer and so on; to the heck this obsession with STEM at the pedagogic world

tkgally 3y ago

> At his last school, the philosophy teacher had become irritated. Deciding Georgios was a show-off, he shouted at this meek boy. After that, Georgios never raised his hand again. > Several teachers told me, “I don’t know how you do it!” By which they meant tolerating Georgios’ odd behaviour. The truth though is that I didn’t always do it. Much of the time, Georgios' clinginess was as irritating to me as it was to them. As it happens, just before I read this article I had an exchange with GPT-4 about combinatorial mathematics [1]. I wanted to see how feasible it would be to learn about the subject by interacting with it. While I haven’t double-checked everything it told me, I was struck once again by its infinite patience with my questions. It is an amazing resource for students of all kinds—not just gifted ones. Addendum: Some conversations I had with it about philosophy—the area of interest of the student in the linked article—are at [2]. Again, GPT-4 showed no irritation whatsoever with my questions. [1] https://gally.net/temp/20240107combinatorialmathematics/index.html https://gally.net/temp/20240107combinatorialmathematics/inde... [2] https://youtube.com/@Tom_Gally_UTokyo?si=qDZzPkPcFAC4Tvfc https://youtube.com/@Tom_Gally_UTokyo?si=qDZzPkPcFAC4Tvfc

dzink 3y ago

Imagine if people saw only a few different colors, and few saw the whole rainbow. Those who saw red would point to the trees and discuss the fine aspects of apples there, while the rest would have no clue or wonder why they care. Empathy is a color some see more than others. Timeliness is a color. Indexing life tasks and items to where they should be or how efficiently that can be organized is a color. Math and problem solving are colors that some find a lot more compelling than others. You are extremely fortunate if the colors you see brightly are commonly seen by others or a part of a self-training loop like math, Montessori games, programming, and language. You have it harder if your favorite subject requires funding to practice, such as chemistry/advanced physics, etc. And you’d better learn how to make millions or billions if you like space stuff or care for gatekeeper-protected disciplines like some niche academia, medicine, regulated stuff, etc. That said, the world changed recently. GPT4 came out those who have deep interests have a sparring partner they’ve never had before. I doubt it’s anywhere in their priority list, but OpenAI can probably run a fantastic networking mesh for people with niche interests. They’d have to keep the spam /obscenities out, but a group chat for anyone in a topic would be fun and a voice group lounge would be even more amazing. ChatGPT would beat facebook and much other social media for the gifted audience. It’s already the best teacher available (if you discount errors and hallucinations, which are on the decline).

saagarjha 3y ago
For those who are truly experts in something, ChatGPT is not really anywhere close to being an interesting conversation partner on that topic.
- mnky9800n 3y ago
  Who needs hacker news when you have chatgpt!

Perenti 3y ago

School is a very strange place for the exceptionally gifted student, even moreso if neurodiverse. The student can get 100% on tests and essays with ease, yet cannot understand basic human interactions. From the perspective of an autistic, ex-teacher who had his IQ measured as "somewhere over 170". I probably have ADHD as well, but a psychiatrist friend says diagnosis fails with people with ridiculously high IQs. BTW, high IQ = good at solving certain kinds of problem, not a measure of the quality of a person.

zubairq 3y ago

A tale of two Teenagers was an interesting read for me

CharlesGELUK 3y ago

[dead]