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Don't get hung up on "14 year old". Pay attention to "took up origami 6 years ago". That's 6 years of passionate learning, experimenting and improvement.
by givemeethekeys 8mo ago
Don't get hung up on "14 year old". Pay attention to "took up origami 6 years ago". That's 6 years of passionate learning, experimenting and improvement.
- uoaei 8mo agoAlso don't get hung up on "folded". He hasn't innovated a design (it was invented by a Japanese astrophysicist, Miura-Ori), merely measured sustainable load across different designs.
- nine_k 8mo ago"Miura" is the name of the astrophysicist. "Ori" (折り) just means "fold", as in "origami" = "fold+paper".
- uoaei 8mo agoThank you!
- adfm 8mo agoDon't get hug up on "invented". Ruth Asawa registered for (1956) and received US patent 185,504 on June 16, 1959 at the suggestion of her professor, Buckminster Fuller. https://theartian.com/ruth-asawa-patent-collaboration/ https://theartian.com/ruth-asawa-patent-collaboration/
- Centrino 8mo agoDon't get hung up on "patent". You can't patent an idea, you patent a specific implementation of an idea. The boy experimented to find the optimal parameters (height, width, angles) for load bearing of that earlier invention. So, the result of his work would warrant a new patent, of course with reference to all earlier patents of which his work is an improvement.
- adfm 8mo agoYou can even spend time and money to acquire a patent and it still doesn’t guarantee profit. It’s called the Miura-ori even though it was patented decades earlier. In this case, the patent acts as a record emphasizing that it’s all been done before.
- egiboy 8mo agoDon’t get hung up on “hung up”. Time goes by so slowly.
- bravetraveler 8mo agoDon't.
- Imustaskforhelp 8mo ago.
- deleted 8mo ago[deleted]
- ForHackernews 8mo agoHe literally did fold all the folds himself. He didn't even get an LLM to reskin VS Code for him and apply to Y Combinator.
- jacobolus 8mo ago"To reduce human errors in his experiments, Wu opted to use a scoring machine to accurately fold the origami patterns."
- avadodin 8mo agoBeing able to hold 10x the weight of paper doesn't sound so impressive that it would require an astrophysicist to invent it. I was more ready to accept the headline if it had been invented by the kid. Are you telling me you can't roll up 10 origami papers and stand them on a reasonably stable origami pattern?
- croisillon 8mo agoi hear he didn't even produce the paper himself
- nerdsniper 8mo agoAlso, ‘years’ tend to be a lot more hours for kids, and each hour yields more learning due to neuroplasticity. I learned so much faster at 15 than I do at 35. I know more now, which often more than makes up for slower learning, but I can’t learn difficult novel subjects in depth as fast as I once did. I’m glad I learned OS in depth during high school via Gentoo linux. And engineering/physics/math in college. It’s very easy to assimilate any new knowledge which can be understood through those areas of first principles. But learning more advanced math is quite a task now.
- sigmoid10 8mo agoCan you really say that unless you switched fields multiple times? Of course you'll pick up on math and physics faster in high school than in college or postgrad, but that's because the problems get way, way harder as you progress. I've found that even in my late 30s I can still easily pick up new skills outside my field of expertise as long as I start with the basics that could also be picked up by a high-schooler. I started learning a new language last year and thanks to modern study apps, I actually find it easier today. Of course it will still take a long time to become an expert, but I'm not sure it would need more total hours than if I had started 20 years ago. It just gets more difficult to allocate the necessary hours for learning.
- nerdsniper 8mo ago> Can you really say that unless you switched fields multiple times? I have ;-) far too many times! Even going back and taking undergrad math coursework that my engineering curriculum didn't have like Discrete Math or Statistics got a lot harder than calculus / differential equations was when I was younger. I felt like I got less out of each hour, and also couldn't put in as many hours - not just because I have more responsibilities, but also because my brain just gets tired after fewer hours.
- MITSardine 8mo agoHell even my young brain got tired on statistics and algebra. Could part of this also be field mismatch?
- dottjt 8mo ago[flagged]
- anonym29 8mo agoNot all autism presents with intense narrow interests, and not all expressions of intense narrow interest are autism. Would you say the same for a teenage sports prodigy?
- dottjt 8mo agoOf course. But obviously I wouldn't be referring to those other types of autism in this case. Why would I?
- renewiltord 8mo agoYeah that’s more AIDS. Sometimes I wonder if it’s my TB that makes me write these comments.
- dbacar 8mo agoAnd this is all you can come up with this story?
- JumpCrisscross 8mo ago> isn't this more a trait of autism than anything else? No. It’s a sign of drive and discipline. The latter, specifically the focus element, overlaps with autism. But more broadly it does not. (There are a lot of impressive teenagers applying themselves diligently to impressive ends. Most of them are not on the spectrum, though I suspect mild autism is slightly over-represented in that set.)
- deleted 8mo ago[deleted]
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- nephihaha 8mo ago
- _joel 8mo agoI'm sure nothing of significance was happening about 6 years ago that allowed for more free time either... :)
- ear7h 8mo agoI wonder what was happening 6 years ago that gave him a chance to develop and explore the hobby.
- Onavo 8mo agoYou should pay attention to the fact that his parents are rich and educated enough to figure out submarine marketing for him. Winning a major national level science fair plays a pretty big role in college admissions and having the press trumpet his achievements ensures that he will have an easier path to get future internships and other type of prestigious if-you-know-you-know type of positions (who knows, maybe he might apply to YC too in a few years).
- the_arun 8mo agoTo be fair, how many kids of rich parents spend time in doing experiments similar to this? Reading the article, I think he is naturally talented & motivated (& not targeting college admissions).
- kortex 8mo ago> I fear not the man who has practiced 10,000 origami folds once, but I fear the man who has practiced one fold 10,000 times
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- BobbyTables2 8mo agoPeople do tend to be pretty good at things they been doing for almost half their life!
- StopDisinfo910 8mo agoDon't get hung up on "14 years old". It's a classic journalist trop designed to get you to read their paper without putting too much weight on the actual content which is a paper thin, pun intended, PR fluff thing for The Society for Science. The prize is not even linked to the origami but on-site team challenges in a final event. The origami is Miura-ori fold by the way and they are already used in plenty of fields. Fairly interesting stuff from the 60s. Would have made for a great article. The kids tested some paper configurations and specific fold patterns. Really impressive stuff considering it was totally impossible to do with computer simulation and hasn't been studied to death in aerospace. Neat science fair project, awful headline.
- jb1991 8mo ago> it was totally impossible to do with computer simulation and hasn't been studied to death in aerospace I can’t tell if this is sarcasm.
- vntok 8mo agoIf you had to guess, which would you say it is?
- altmanaltman 8mo agoKoryo Miura, the man known for the Miura fold, is kind of a legend in astrophysics and this fold has indeed been studied to death in aerospace since the 60s. So yeah it was pretty hard sarcasm.
- InfinityByTen 8mo agoI was actually wondering why haven't the computational geometry and shape optimization people found these structures so far. I would expect us to at least know these shapes or category of shapes. Getting it via origami is art and a testimony to wonders of intuition and observational learning, but getting the shapes could be done by other methods.
- petterroea 8mo agoAs a kid you are plenty more free time as well. This boy has GRINDED origami. Very impressive.
- SwtCyber 8mo agoThe age makes for a catchy headline, but the real signal is the time investment and sustained curiosity
- YeGoblynQueenne 8mo agoCan't we just accept that some kids do cool stuff that many adults can't even think of? Note that this kid was distinguished in a competition for STEM projects by kids, so he's not unique, but that doesn't reduce the fact that he's uncommon to say the least. I'm trying to think of what I did when I was 14 that was as cool as that and I can't. I had an imagination and I created stuff all the time, but nothing I'd brag about today. The Space Pistol with Disintegrator Ray was only a prototype that I never managed to really put into production.