
Lessons from a 45-year Study of Super-Smart Children - kungfudoi
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-to-raise-a-genius-lessons-from-a-45-year-study-of-super-smart-children/
======
squigs25
Interesting read, but I have one major qualm about this.

There seems to be a confirmatory bias among the academic community that a
measure of intellectual success can be found in the percentage of individuals
who earn a PhD. Sure, it's true that you need to be reasonably smart to earn a
PhD, but I think that someone can have a lot of intellectual success
(potentially just as much or maybe more) if they don't earn a PhD.

I think you could even argue that, depending on the field of study, a PhD is
the "easy" route for someone who is intellectually gifted - it's a simply a
continuation of what you have been doing. I would be more impressed by the
intellectual who not only realizes that they can conduct their own independent
research, but also has the creativity to come up with a use case that can
improve and contribute to the world (and presumably, make a living doing so).

My point here is that, given two gifted cohorts, one which has a 45% PhD
graduation rate and one which has a 50% PhD graduation rate, I don't know that
you can conclusively say that one is more gifted than the other without
looking at other metrics associated with intellectual accomplishment.

~~~
pas
Knowing a few friends and other acquaintances with PhDs, all they have common
is endurance and focus. They were not exceptionally creative, or apparently
breathtakingly genius.

And I guess that's why Google et al. likes to hire PhDs. They can take all
kinds of shit, and endure. Get to the bottom of those problems even in the
face of internal politics/bureaucracy.

~~~
pmoriarty
_" Godlike genius.. Godlike nothing! Sticking to it is the genius! I've failed
my way to success."_

    
    
      -- Thomas Edison
    

_" Let me tell you the secret that has led me to my goal. My strength lives
solely in my tenacity."_

    
    
      -- Louis Pasteur
    

_" Men give me credit for genius; but all the genius I have lies in this: When
I have a subject on hand I study it profoundly."_

    
    
      -- Alexander Hamilton

~~~
forgotmysn
Sounds like an epic humblebrag by Hamilton. I don't think anyone, then or now,
thinks he was a genius.

~~~
omginternets
I don't think he's using genius to mean "a genius". I think it's instead meant
as a term for "a bright idea". i.e.: "to have genius" vs "to be a genius".

------
Isamu
> Such results contradict long-established ideas suggesting that expert
> performance is built mainly through practice—that anyone can get to the top
> with enough focused effort of the right kind.

Actually the claim is the other way around - that the people at the top got
there through focused effort of the right kind.

Finding "gifted" children does not contradict this. Nobody pops out of the
womb a math genius.

Gifted children are "gifted" with a laser focus on the unusual things that
they find fun - math, music, what-have-you. They spend countless hours playing
with numbers or with music, while little Johnny is playing with a ball.

I was one of these kids, I played with geometric objects, with music, etc.
Sure I was weird sometimes. I didn't have anybody to share my interests with.

Anyway, point is, when people point to "gifted" talent, this is just another
cop-out. They don't have an explanation. They are appealing to everybody's
shared sense of magical outcomes.

But it boils down to the hours that kids put into their interests.

~~~
iopq
I don't feel like that's true. I didn't expend any effort on my studies and it
just came easily to me. Now, I'm not a genius, but there's a huge difference
between my aptitude towards anything and the average person. I scored in the
99th percentile in math on the California high school exit exam. I went to
community college at 15 (while still taking some high school courses at first,
but upon taking the proficiency exam I stopped taking high school courses), I
transferred to a university as a junior at 17.

It took me longer to graduate at that point, but it was mostly because I was
expected to do work and I never did before. I hated learning in a structured
manner and being forced to do things. In fact, my lack of focus is what led me
to learn about things on my own. I was reading calculus textbooks when I was
10 years old. I struggled with it, but it was fun. Then I'd read some physics
instead because I felt like it.

Maybe successful people have lazer focus. But not all talented people are
focused.

~~~
JacobJans
>I didn't expend any effort on my studies

>I was reading calculus textbooks when I was 10 years old.

I suggest that you, indeed, spent effort on your studies.

~~~
saint_fiasco
Calculus textbooks are difficult but rewarding.

A 10 year old child who can enjoy them must have some gift that makes it
easier for them to understand the difficult parts quickly and get straight to
the rewarding part.

~~~
geocar
> must have some gift

Or what?

The rest of us are dumb?

It could have been a good teacher, who found a way to make it make sense, or
some other series of positive reinforcement that shaped them and prepared
them, to be thinking about mathematics clearly. It doesn't have to be the luck
of the draw.

I don't want anyone to give up, thinking they just didn't get the gift, so
they should be content with playing with the ball. If you don't _get_
mathematics, you might just haven't had the right circumstances to get it
_yet_.

~~~
saint_fiasco
It just means the rest of us have to work harder. It doesn't mean you have to
be content with less intellectual pursuits.

Just because most people will never be Olympic medalists doesn't mean they
shouldn't play sports and exercise. Lots of people do those things even when
they don't have a particular gift.

~~~
geocar
I think that's exactly backwards.

If you want to be an olympic medalist, you need to work as hard as an olympic
medalist.

If you do not want to be an olympic medalist, you do not work _more_ hard than
an olympic medalist.

And indeed, if you actually did work as hard as an olympic medalist, you could
possibly receive an olympic medal.

------
spdionis
> Pioneering mathematicians Terence Tao and Lenhard Ng were one-percenters, as
> were Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg, Google co-founder Sergey Brin and musician
> Stefani Germanotta (Lady Gaga), who all passed through the Hopkins centre.

Didn't expect Lady Gaga to be listed although it confirms one of my pet
theories. It has long been my opinion that success in STEM fields correlates
with general high intelligence which will affect strongly with a person's
success in her field, be it maths or sculpture.

It's only anecdotal but I've noticed that people that have a good grasp of
maths when young also excel in their other favorite activities, even if it's
physical activities.

EDIT: more thoughts on the article

> In Europe, support for research and educational programmes for gifted
> children has ebbed, as the focus has moved more towards inclusion.

This is truly a pity, and it's not only about educational programmes, but the
general mentality in Europe is against competitiveness, and sometimes people
will even frown at you if you suggest that there truly are different
intelligence levels among the population.

Meanwhile in East Europe (namely Romania, Moldova, Ukraine, Russia, probably
other countries too but I don't know anything about them) competitiveness
between children is crazy high in some circles and that's why a lot of the
best engineers come from that area.

There was a comment here the other day on a post about interviewing saying
that russian candidates were much more likely to excel at technical interviews
than european candidates, and in my experience many more engineers in this
area are really dedicated to their work.

~~~
yomly
While I'm all for the logical/rational ideal of extracting the most amount of
potential from people, but competition needs to be treated with care.

How do you propose competitiveness be constructively harnessed? If you are
proposing selective schooling etc. there is a danger of creating social
segregation which can reduce social mobility and as a result social cohesion.
There is also a social benefit to both the talented and less-talented from
interfacing - the talented can learn humility while the others can gain
inspiration for example.

~~~
riskable
The trouble with competition is that it creates an order of magnitude more
losers than it does winners. Yet it is the foundational element of nearly all
school systems in the world. Students don't just get accepted to every school
they apply to; they have to _compete_ to "get in." The basis of that
competition is grades.

If you want to fix competition in education you must first do something about
grades and how they influence _outcomes_ rather than _learning_.

------
trendia
> “A high test score tells you only that a person has high ability and is a
> good match for that particular test at that point in time,” says Matthews.

If Matthews is correct that scores are transient, then we'd expect test scores
to have little to no predictive ability. In other words, we'd expect the rate
of career achievement among high test takers to be approximately equal to the
rate of achievement among low test takers.

But this claim is directly contradicted by actual evidence:

> Follow-up surveys—at ages 18, 23, 33 and 48—backed up his hunch. A 2013
> analysis found a correlation between the number of patents and peer-refereed
> publications that people had produced and their earlier scores on SATs and
> spatial-ability tests. The SAT tests jointly accounted for about 11% of the
> variance; spatial ability accounted for an additional 7.6%.

~~~
jmde
Depending on how you define it, you could say my research is in this general
area. My sense of how to interpret these sorts of findings has changed greatly
over time, and become much more moderate and humble. Discussions over these
issues tend to be very heated and people oversimplify issues on both ends.

These tests are predictive, and as you point out, it's disingenuous to claim
otherwise. They're measuring _something_ valid. However, they're doing so
relatively poorly, or rather, roughly. Even the quote you cite suggests that
the total amount of variance accounted for was about 19%, which isn't too
shabby by any means, but is also very crude when you think about implications
for real-world consequences. Interpreting that 19% also becomes very murky,
when you consider factors like teaching to tests, that tests like those are
used for academic and career selection, leading to self-fulfilling prophecies.
In rare circumstances where researchers have been able to remove some of these
effects (for example, due to unusual legal decisions about acceptable use of
test scores), the relationship between test scores and career performance has
been shown to be very weak in the short-term, and almost non-existent in the
long term.

Somewhere underlying the distribution of test scores is some distribution of
ability that makes it easier for some people to thrive in certain settings.
But ability is just one thing in a long list of things, along with practice,
resources and other environmental factors that contribute to success, and
sociological dynamics. Add to that test scores being very crude indices of
ability to begin with, and you're in a very messy situation.

What's frustrating to me is that there's this sort of all-or-nothing attitude
about testing, where tests are seen as useless, or as a perfect indicator of
skill or ability. The truth is in-between.

~~~
aab0
"Even the quote you cite suggests that the total amount of variance accounted
for was about 19%, which isn't too shabby by any means, but is also very crude
when you think about implications for real-world consequences."

This is 19% _after_ range restriction. They're making the same point that the
graph of quartiles does: even after you set an extremely high bar, differences
in the test score are _still_ predicting quite a bit of variance despite all
the other possible diluting factors like geography/family/test-
error/personality/interest/wealth/opportunity... If anything, it shows that
institutions aren't being 'crude' enough - if they were using the test scores
optimally and extracting all of the signal, the variance would be 0%.

------
acscott
Didn't see any answer on how to "raise a genius". The presumption is that we
want more geniuses and that Ph.D.s are precious resources to society. Is there
also a tacit belief here in the Great Man theory of history?

The message here is, well if you don't get a Ph.D., make a lot of money. If
you don't make a lot of money, get a patent. If you don't get a patent, at
least get published. There are other things that we also want to be able to
cultivate other than those I bet.

When a group of geniuses could build a nuclear weapon to take out a whole
country, I believe the interest in genius started to spark. Before then, what
was the icon of a a genius (I'm thinking before Einstein became iconic)?

The article is interesting, what were the lessons though?

There are other measures of value to society other than STEM publications,
income, patents, and Ph.D.s It's often the outliers that don't even fit the
Gaussian that are more interesting to me. (Feynman said he scored 120
something on an IQ test.)

~~~
paulpauper
the idea is that more resources are needed to nurture top talent, instead of
these smart people being neglected. Cognitive capital is like any resource,
and it should not go to waste.

------
dhd415
The article is short on actual lessons learned from the study. Two
representative paragraphs:

    
    
      SMPY researchers say that even modest interventions—for example, access to challenging material such as college-level Advanced Placement courses—have a demonstrable effect. Among students with high ability, those who were given a richer density of advanced precollegiate educational opportunities in STEM went on to publish more academic papers, earn more patents and pursue higher-level careers than their equally smart peers who didn't have these opportunities.
    
      Despite SMPY's many insights, researchers still have an incomplete picture of giftedness and achievement. “We don't know why, even at the high end, some people will do well and others won't,” says Douglas Detterman, a psychologist who studies cognitive ability at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio. “Intelligence won't account for all the differences between people; motivation, personality factors, how hard you work and other things are important.”

------
Practicality
This article is a bit of a mess regarding who it is talking about. It hops
around and changes it's target constantly.

Sometimes it is talking about people in the .01%, AKA, 1 in 10000, so actual
geniuses. Sometimes discussing people in the above average range, IQ of 120+,
which is about 10% of the population (depending on your test), as well as
people in gifted programs, which again, depending on your test is the top 1 or
2%.

These are three different cohorts with different needs. The top 10% need to be
continually challenged so they can find satisfying careers. These are your
class president types, people who really excel within the program, I think
society serves these types well.

The top 1% are your gifted people (again, I know definitions vary), and they
usually need something extra. Depends on the person, but it might be extra
math or extra latin studies, or the ability to do side projects, but they
generally flourish with something special.

The top .01% though? I have no idea. Most here on HN are in one of the other
two groups (sorry, me too). The article seems to say that they just need to
skip grades. But it's hard to tell if they are right since they are talking
about a moving target.

(Edit: Adjusted the % for IQ of 120 based on this chart:
[http://www.iqcomparisonsite.com/iqtable.aspx](http://www.iqcomparisonsite.com/iqtable.aspx))

~~~
mhurron
> Most here on HN are in one of the other two groups

What would make you say that? Since there is no actual filter and no one is
actually forcing any requirement, it should be that most of any group are
somewhat similar to the standard distribution of the population, so most on HN
should be like most of any other group, bog standard average.

I know I am.

~~~
Practicality
The topics and the community are both a filter and forcing a requirement. From
my own observation I would wager that a majority here are in that top 10% .

People are not just randomly assigned to reading and commenting on Hacker
News. It's an intellectual community that would naturally attract those who
have such skills.

~~~
mhurron
> People are not just randomly assigned to reading and commenting on Hacker
> News

No they randomly show up being either directly or tangentially associated with
either technology or startup culture. That's it.

And while those people really do love to think of themselves as more
intelligent than the general population, I don't see it.

~~~
SamReidHughes
Of the users of this site with top 100 karma there's at _least_ two people
that are unquestionably in the top 0.01% of math ability. (They'd both pass
the 0.001% cutoff, too.) And there'd be a third if we went to the top 150
karma (basing this off how karma tails off on
[https://news.ycombinator.com/leaders](https://news.ycombinator.com/leaders)).

That would be very unlikely if HN was a random assortment of the population,
or a random assortment of the top 25%.

~~~
Practicality
"at least two people that are unquestionably in the top 0.01% of math
ability."

To whom are you referring to, if I may ask, and what do they do? (I would just
like to learn about them)

~~~
SamReidHughes
cperciva and michaelochurch (not listed on /leaders because he hasn't posted
in a while), and it's easy enough to look up what they do.

~~~
cperciva
Don't forget lacker -- he won the Putnam twice (the year before me, and two
years after me).

~~~
SamReidHughes
I didn't! His karma's too low.

~~~
cperciva
Ah, I didn't notice that you were filtering to the top 100 karma scores.

------
Jimmy
I get quite depressed when I read articles like this. I'm resentful of the
fact that my early academic performance was merely above average, rather than
exceptional. Some days I feel confident in my abilities and my plans for the
future; other days, I fear that it's already too late for me to accomplish
anything of note.

~~~
exelius
Don't fret; everyone in our generation was raised to believe we were the 1 in
10,000. That simply can't be true 99.99% of the time.

We're a generation that needs therapy to realize that a stable, six-figure job
as a mid-level engineer at 30 isn't failure. Our expectations (some might say
entitlement) were set so unreasonably high that most of us have no chance of
meeting them.

~~~
Jimmy
Well, that's simply unacceptable to me. A stable six-figure job is failure. If
I'm fated to try and fail for the rest of my life to break into the 1 in
10,000, then so be it.

~~~
rb808
>A stable six-figure job is failure.

If you look at the study, only a quarter of the gifted students made it to the
95% income percentile.

Being a Genius doesn't make you rich or happy or give you a satisfaction. It
makes it more likely you'll have a PhD & produce academic papers.

~~~
xyzzyz
To get to 95% income percentile, you need to earn at least $190k a year. I'd
be very interested in seeing how many gifted students don't reach, say, 75%
percentile, which is around $90k a year, and why.

~~~
kajjffkk
Smart people dont need to grind their life away to brag to their peers about
their middle class income.

Hopefully for all of us, theyre doing something more innovative for society,
no matter how long it takes.

------
CurtMonash
I probably count as some kind of example.

\-- I was born in 1960.

\-- I got my first algebra book when I was 4, and aced the subject
immediately.

\-- I had one IQ test score higher than the one that got Marilyn vos Savant
into the Guinness Book of World Records.

\-- The National Merit folks thought that I was the youngest winner of their
scholarships until that day.

\-- I got a math PhD from Harvard when I was 19.

\-- At least up to a point, I check a lot of the usual boxes, like music and
chess.

That said, I was not some kind of math genius. Ofer Gabber and Ran Donagi were
at Harvard when I was, having started in grad school at 16 and 17 respectively
(I started at 16), and both were clearly better at math than I was, even
adjusted for age.

More particularly:

\-- When I was young, I was really, really good at keeping a problem in my
mind and worrying at it until I made progress. I could fall asleep doing that
and keep going when I woke up. I understand that's quite unusual, and as I
aged I lost the ability myself.

\-- I'm not particularly good at spatial reasoning. I can power my way through
some of it by raw inferencing, at which I am indeed very good, but that's
about it.

\-- I can learn a bit about any subject and appreciate key issues in it very,
very quickly. That's reflected in my actual career, and also in the large
number of subjects I dabbled in in school.

\-- I probably COULD have been world-class somewhere in the vicinity of
economics/public policy (as academic areas). But I was burned out on academia
at age 21, after 9 years at universities, left for the business world, and
never went back.

\-- I don't know how good I'd have been as a computer scientist. I never
tried.

~~~
micwo
What do you do now? Do you have children?

~~~
CurtMonash
You can google on my name to see what I do. I'm the only Curt Monash who ever
shows up on a web search.

I never raised a kid, and the one stepdaughter I have was old enough that she
never really regarded me as a parent.

She has a kid now, however, and I am indeed a grandfather. :)

------
sverige
I'm one of those gifted children (at least by the measure of standardized
tests) who were missed by the people looking for them, I reckon. I was always
in the .999 percentile on those (SAT, ACT, GRE, LSAT), was very good at math
and loved it at a young age.

Somewhere in my teens I lost the desire to achieve all this stuff discussed in
the article. Intellectually it would not have been difficult, but emotionally
I didn't give a shit. I didn't really mature until I was in my 30s or 40s (and
some would say, not yet!).

Sometimes I think, well, I wasted my life. Then again, although I haven't done
anything noteworthy, I have no regrets for the life I have lived so far, even
though many would say I "squandered" a lot of talent. The core values
instilled in me by my parents are intact and actually stronger, and those
values don't place much emphasis on reaching the pinnacle of success as
described in the article. Frankly, the responsibility for shaping the world
into what it has become would be almost too much to bear.

My advice would be that if you are one of those high achieving geniuses, it is
worth thinking about yet again whether what you value is the best it can be.
If you have a very gifted child, be extraordinarily careful about who you
allow to influence them for as long as you can. Teach them your values, and
make sure they're worthwhile.

I still recall a story about Thomas Aquinas in his old age. He realized that
his magnum opus, the _Summa Theologica_ , was worthless vanity and tried to
destroy it. The professor or author who told the story said, "Fortunately, he
was prevented from doing so." But was it fortunate? Who better to judge than
its author what its true value was? How many of these people will find small
comfort in their accomplishments when they reach a ripe old age?

But talking this way is very unpopular, I realize.

------
gbog
It seems weird to me that nobody seems to see the evidence: as a parent you
just want your kids to be happy. Happy in the correct way, which means long-
term happiness, built with good cultural background, reasonable social skills,
constructive hobbies, ability to have some of those good friends, etc.

Most of these are not achieved if you're kid is "super smart". Being the
father of Einstein is probably very good for the ego, but "being Einstein" is
a curse. (Same with pop or movie stars: people that get a lot of attention are
less happy.)

~~~
bloaf
This is certainly true, but there is another way to think about it. If you
suspect that some kid (including your own) will be likely to make some
moderate-scale positive contribution to the world (e.g. invention of the
telephone) do you have some moral obligation to ensure that the kid has the
training, resources, and encouragement to do so?

Essentially, can you weigh the potential benefits to humanity against that
child's preferences?

~~~
Bakary
In theory this is an interesting argument bit I feel that in practice it
relies on too much hypothetical thinking. There's no way to predict what such
a contribution might even look like in our era.

------
ebbv
I feel like we put too much weight on the idea of detecting intelligence in
children. I always did really well on all tests as a kid, getting 100% on
assessment tests and crap. But I'm a total dumbass. Just look at my comment
history.

Just raise your kid the best you can, if you are trying to purposely craft a
genius you'll probably just instead make someone with serious performance
anxiety and neurosis.

------
corysama
I skimmed the article pretty quickly because I was looking for the answer
posed by the title and rightly expecting 90% background and filler stories. I
didn't find much in the way of answers... Let me know if I missed anything.

Why some kids excel greatly beyond most others is still pretty mysterious.
Don't call them gifted. High school is not a great social environment for
introverts to learn in. Just give them access to more advanced material.
Spacial ability may play an important role and we aren't focusing on it much.

Anything else?

~~~
vehementi
> I skimmed the article pretty quickly because I was looking for the answer
> posed by the title and rightly expecting 90% background and filler stories

Me too, hate this type of article, couldn't find it either.

------
bsder
The problem with studies like these is that, in almost all fields, we find
that the average is much better than the average of 50-100 years ago while the
top is only slightly better.

This holds across things that even have physical components like athletics or
music. The virtuosos of yesteryear may be as good as the virtuosos of today
(and I dispute that) but the average orchestra player is _WAY_ better today
than even some of the best players of 100 years ago. Similarly, the average
athlete today is _WAY_ better than the average athlete of 50 years ago.

Training and education matter.

------
HillaryBriss
> _“... these people really do control our society,” says Jonathan Wai, a
> psychologist at the Duke University Talent Identification Program ... "The
> kids who test in the top 1% tend to become our eminent scientists and
> academics, our Fortune 500 CEOs and federal judges, senators and
> billionaires” _

The article assumes that promoting these super-bright people and geniuses is
the way to solve the difficult problems the rest of us face. There's a faith
in the generosity and altruism of these high-performers.

But, I see plenty of selfishness in their behavior too.

It seems plausible that the top layer of brilliant geniuses is creating as
many problems for the rest of us as it is solving. Maybe the top layer of
brilliant geniuses mostly focuses on work that is personally enriching (e.g.
financial engineering, patent lawsuits, investing in 140-character-type
startups, pharmaceuticals that don't actually cure diseases, etc)

Maybe what society needs is not "more geniuses" but a better system of
regulations and incentives for existing geniuses.

~~~
Bakary
Yep that is what I instantly thought of when reading this. I have no problem
accepting that plenty of people are just smarter and more competent than I
ever will be, but it will be difficult for me to swallow that they are
actually automatically helpful. If they were, we'd probably live in some sort
of utopia by now.

~~~
HillaryBriss
California seems like an interesting case. A disproportionate share of Nobel
prize winners and other exceedingly bright people live here.

At the same time California has a large number of impoverished residents, a
huge backlog of unfunded repair work on roads and bridges, huge unfunded
worker pension obligations, much of the nation's worst traffic, a housing
shortage for the middle and lower classes, severe water shortages in various
places (like East Porterville), a persistent diversity problem in tech
employment, a low credit rating, low per-capita spending on education, state
college and university funding shortfalls, mediocre educational results at the
elementary and secondary school levels, etc.

------
yomly
As someone interested in education (of self and of others) and generally
interested in the notion of talent itself, I have been trying to form my own
personal understanding of what it means to be talented.

My fundamental belief is that almost anything can be learned under the right
instruction. Talent determines two things:

1 - your upper ceiling of "achievement" in a particular dimension, and

2 - how far you can progress within a given dimension without instruction.

That is, a naturally gifted person is likely to get very good at something
they were "destined to do" regardless of if they had any decent instruction.
With the right instruction, they may well reach some stratospheric heights.

1 is important because at some point a talented individual reaches a place
where there is no longer any one person who can teach them anything new in
their dimension and so they have to rely on their instinct to progress
further.

Schopenhauer had the quote:

    
    
        Talent is like the marksman who hits a target which others cannot reach; genius is like the marksman who hits a target … which others cannot even see.
    

There seems to be some conflict in how Schopenhauer interpret talent and
genius, but that final sentiment is important to my point regarding a
talented/gifted/genius individual not requiring instruction. No one can really
teach you how to push a field to new unreached heights.

My personal favourite anecdote of genius is when Chopin's first musical
teacher Zywny refrained from teaching him (aged 8 years old) any keyboard
technique lest he interfere with his natural instinct. In his later teenage
years and early twenties went on to write music quite unlike anything written
for the piano at the time - thanks to his unorthodox technique.

~~~
6stringmerc
Related to your Chopin anecdote, numerous monster & legendary guitar players
and song writers (Chet Atkins, Willie Nelson, & tons more) cited Django
Reinhardt, the "two-fingered gypsy jazz guitarist" as opening their horizons
more than any other. It was from his technique that his creativity could flow.
As if the handicap was simply an augmentation - as you mention - and didn't
terribly interfere with what he was 'destined to do' by way of art.

As both a passionate study of both guitar and writing (fiction, essays, etc),
I do agree that reaching 'beyond' is part of achieving high personal success
in either field. Sort of like the phrase "knowing the rules before breaking
them" can acknowledge the role of both structure and rebellion. Both have
important facets in growth, and I think a lot of times lay-people can mistake
"broken rules" that accidentally work for "talent" and it is frustrating.

~~~
yomly
>I think a lot of times lay-people can mistake "broken rules" that
accidentally work for "talent" and it is frustrating.

Couldn't agree more. To quote Picasso:

    
    
        "It took me four years to paint like Raphael, but a lifetime to paint like a child"
    

Children break all the rules when painting and it literally took him his
life's work to understand how to effectively formalise the lack of formalism.
And thus there are millions/billions of children in the history of art, but
there was only one Picasso...

------
20years
"They're just developing different talents," says Lubinski, a former high-
school and college wrestler. "But our society has been much more encouraging
of athletic talents than we are of intellectual talents."

Bingo! Along with our society has been much more encouraging with the
extrovert personalities vs the introverts.

I encourage everyone to read the book Quiet by Susan Cain.

------
aquiles
I'm so glad I'm over my "being super-smart" phase and into my "being a well-
rounded, functional human being" phase.

People who fetishize things are the source of all things bad in the world.

~~~
Toine
Same here. The first phase can lead you to BIG psychological pain. Recovering
is hard.

------
toolslive
ask him:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L%C3%A1szl%C3%B3_Polg%C3%A1r](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L%C3%A1szl%C3%B3_Polg%C3%A1r)

~~~
koolba
Wow that's an awesome read!

------
inputcoffee
Consider this:

Their gift is the ability to work hard.

They are able to work hard because they find it fun.

Q: We have all felt the "fun" of learning math (for instance), so how do we
share that with others?

~~~
saint_fiasco
Maybe it's impossible. Just like you can't force a gay man to be more
interested in women and you can't force an asocial nerd to enjoy loud parties,
you just can't force most people to enjoy math.

EDIT: changed an example to be more specific and precise.

~~~
sporkenfang
There are a lot of people for whom "math" means just the algorithmic
computation drudgery they teach you to vomit out on exams by pouring it down a
funnel into you in an ordinary American high school or UK A-levels math
course. Doing a similar (or even the same) calculation a bunch of times to get
the same result is, in short, boring, no matter how you dress it up.

If prior to college everyone learned how to visualize math and some of the
cool things you can do with, say, something as fundamental yet "advanced" as
the FFT (the "why" to go along with the mechanics of the thing) I think the
story would be different.

~~~
saint_fiasco
And I'm sure some homosexual men just haven't found the right woman yet.

But clearly most homosexual men just don't like women no matter how attractive
they are. Is it so hard to believe that some people see math in a similar way?

~~~
sporkenfang
Yes. It is incredibly hard to believe, considering sexual orientation isn't a
matter of like (as in liking math, or strawberries, or the color blue) but as
far as I know is innate.

Preference outside of sexuality is attained through experimentation and
learning. A lot of people are deeply suspicious to the point of hatred of
cultures and ways of thought they don't understand well or have a
misunderstanding of. I believe dislike of mathematics falls into the
misunderstanding category. Being a gay man versus a straight man isn't a
misunderstanding, it's part of who a person is. Obviously it took some self
discovery for an individual to determine their sexual identity, but whether
you like or dislike math isn't on the same level. Some people are more
spatially inclined and have an easier time grasping higher math (I am not
included in this group) but some people have to work their ass off for every
shred of mathematical understanding (I am in this group). Some people don't
understand why this work would or could be worth it. Some people never even
get to the point where they have to do anything other than 'plug and chug' to
get the right answer for the worksheet, and so see nothing valid or useful in
the stuff we teach in most math classes before upper division college level.

------
ausjke
I probably had a gifted kid but never had enough bandwidth to lead him,
comparing to his siblings he just memorizes so well(e.g, mechanically
memorized PI to 600+ digits in two days until I asked him to stop), doing
high-school-level math at 4th grade, learn many things by himself and so on.
Meanwhile he is bored, hard to make peer friends due to lack of shared
interests, etc.

Everyday I have to work and care for other kids, I tried to home-school him
but then you get the financial pressure quickly.

I wish there are some programs that can help kids like him, i.e. group them
somewhere to study and learn from each other. We have quite some program
taking care of the disadvantaged kids, what about the gifted ones? After all,
they can potentially contribute to the society in some way that helps many
others. We probably need a state-level or federal-level or even college-
sponsored program for those really gifted kids.

No I'm not talking about the gifted class in the school district, those helps,
but far from enough for those really gifted, you probably only have about 5
who are really gifted in each school district.

~~~
abecedarius
You might try something like
[https://www.mathcircles.org/](https://www.mathcircles.org/)

(They weren't around when I was a kid, so I can't say from experience.)

------
sitkack
The gift is being interested in something and feeding ones own curiosity. It
is the difference between an organism that grows only when fed vs one that
feeds itself. I was "gifted", the biggest factor was an environment of
experimentation and exploration. Questions with answers beget more questions.
Feed that cycle.

------
brooklyndude
Hung out with a brilliant heart surgeon, genius. I asked him about what
cartoons he watched growing up.

He said "what's a cartoon?" He was dead serious. Parents would never let him
not study. Never.

100+ hour weeks. Zero time for anything else. He was happy, rich, had it all.
But wondering if he every found time to watch a cartoon.

~~~
wavefunction
He didn't know what a cartoon was? Or was it a bit of playful retort?

~~~
bcook
He said the surgeon was "dead serious"... but it must have been an act, right?

Sure, maybe he never saw one, but being unaware of at least the dictionary
definition of "cartoon" seems highly unlikely.

~~~
srtjstjsj
Child of immigrant parents who didn't let him watch TV, and who socialized
with likeminded families.

------
ckcortright
Naturally, when the result of a scientific study is entangled emotionally with
something so personal like intelligence, it is hard to look at the results
without bias. Lots of people are going to have a problem with this study,
because it literally makes 99.999% of the population feel inadequate.

------
vonnik
The popularity of comments about hard work on this thread make me think that
it's difficult for people to accept studies like this. And for two reasons: 1)
We _are_ born with very different innate abilities, which leads to great
inequalities in our lives together, and 2) That innate difference is not to
the credit of the gifted. They had nothing to do with it. It's like being born
rich or white or male or American or all of them at once. So it's an
undeserved privilege. An yet people born with such talents _should_ be treated
differently. We _should_ cultivate them, because they can do so much to
advance society. To those who have much, much is given...

------
pmoriarty
Anyone interested in the nature-nurture debate, and prodigies should take a
look at Stephen Wiltshire (the "human camera"):

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a8YXZTlwTAU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a8YXZTlwTAU)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen_Wiltshire](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen_Wiltshire)

------
timwaagh
why is it bad to label somebody ungifted? if i had known before i did not have
what it takes to become a good mathematician, i would perhaps not have pursued
that. maybe i would have saved myself a lot of trouble.

~~~
Jimmy
There are many ungifted people who make their livings as mathematicians. Have
you already abandoned math? If you haven't given up yet, there are likely
things you can do to improve your chances of success.

~~~
iopq
> There are many ungifted people who make their livings as mathematicians

They're still well above average IQ.

~~~
Jimmy
Sure. It depends on what definition we're using for "gifted". Practice may not
make you into von Neumann, but it may very well make you into a professional
mathematician with stable employment.

My intuition is that if someone is interested enough in a career in
mathematics that they begin putting regular practice into it, then they're
already likely (but not certainly) past the minimum IQ threshold.

------
jupiter90000
Interesting piece from one of the studies referred to by article: "...many
individuals who completed their degrees in non-math-science areas ultimately
chose math-science occupations, and vice versa. Among mathematically talented
populations,the leaking pipeline is not an appropriate metaphor. Upon
reflection, this fluidity is not surprising for mathematically precocious
females. In samples of males and females selected for mathematical talent,
females display higher levels of verbal ability than males, and also more
uniform levels of mathematical and verbal ability. Thus, mathematically
precocious females more often than mathematically talented males are endowed
with talents that enable them to excel with distinction in domains that
require highly developed verbal-linguistic skills (these skills and the
flexibility they lend could perhaps propel these individuals in varied
directions, in part because verbal-linguistic skills tend to co-occur with
social, or organic, interests and values)."

------
maus42
Interesting read. However, I wonder if for education purposes it would better
if _every_ student who is bored with their current schoolwork could just move
into more advanced materials until they are not bored, instead of trying to
spot the "super geniuses" early on and leaving the rest, the "not talented
enough", to continue with the normal course material.

Because if you have some kind of test for identifying the geniuses who can
enter your "special gifted genius program", the test is going to have a some
cut-off line or threshold, and that's going to be unfair. For example, assume
you're using an IQ test, and the kids who score above some arbitrary threshold
would be ushered into the special awesome program, but the kid who scores only
one point below the threshold _does_ not get in. Even if the difference is
just one point ... That would be a quite silly (and deeply unfair) policy,
because there's always going to be some random noise in the test taking.

------
intrasight
“Whether we like it or not, these people really do control our society,”

Personally, I like it. Clearly SMPY recruits have changed the world for the
better.

------
k2xl
So... the higher a students test score the more likely they are to be a
scientist - isn't that a truism? In order to become a scientist you have to
get accepted into universities ... that will look at your test scores as
judgement of whether you should be admitted.

Can anyone think of a notable scientist that didn't do well in school? We
don't really encourage people who perform poorly on tests to become scientists
- so none of these results are surprising.

How many students that score in the high .01% on tests end up becoming
professional athletes? Or a rapper? Probably just as unlikely as a student who
scores in the low .01% becoming a doctor.

Is it because smart people aren't interested in sports or don't like rap
music? Doubt it.

For better or worse, our society pushes archetypes. If you do well on biology
tests you are "supposed" to become a biologist. Good with computer? Become a
programmer.

~~~
sluggg
well lady gaga was listed she is sorta a rapper.

------
betenoire
But are they happy?

~~~
sokoloff
I'm in the study and the long-term tracking surveys they send us periodically
have many questions designed to ferret out different aspects and indicators of
happiness and success in different dimensions of life.

I can't imagine how I could be much happier in life.

I have a great, healthy family, great career in a field that allows me to use
my brain to create tons of business value for my company, take home an
appropriate fraction of that, all for doing things that I'd pretty much
happily do for free if I could afford to do so.

I seem to recall reading general summaries of the survey that suggest that we
are, on the whole, happier than the average for our respective age groups, but
I don't have any of those report summaries handy nor could I readily find them
online.

~~~
betenoire
Thanks for the comment. I have a sincere question for you, if you didn't have
a great healthy family, and you had a shitty career or whatever, would you
still be happy?

~~~
sokoloff
I tend to be fairly optimistic and see the good in even bad situations, so I'd
probably OK with even a worse set of circumstances (once that was the steady-
state normal).

IOW, if I suddenly lost my wife or we split up, I'd be unhappy as hell for a
while. In a counterfactual where I never met her or even ended up single, I'd
probably still be happy because I'd shape my world and interpret my world in a
way that made me happy. Likewise, a career that paid me the local median wage,
I'd probably find a way to be happy.

I don't claim this to be a super-human strength of mine, but just a choice. I
have friends and friends-of-friends who seem miserable despite no particularly
devastating circumstances. They just choose to focus on the bad rather than
the good. I have no idea if that's correlated with anything SMPY-related or
not, just one guy's life experience.

~~~
betenoire
Thanks. I relate to what you said.

------
bluetwo
I agree with the article that spacial ability is an untapped resource, key to
understanding and problem solving.

I think there is a pretty easy way of testing this, simply by finding out what
they find _funny_.

Different kinds of humor tap this skill, and those drawn to certain types of
humor, IMHO, likely have better spacial skills.

~~~
sluggg
interesting, do you know of any studies showing this?

------
sharemywin
My question is how many doors did this program open up which led to the
success they were trying to measure.

------
ck425
I've not went and read any of the actual studies, only the article, but it
seems that they start measuring kids around the age of 10 onwards, is this not
too late?

One of the themes seems to be that certain measurements of ability at this age
were accurate indicators of future success if the kids were not discouraged
(ie allowed to push themselves and learn more advanced stuff). But by age 10
surely most kids have already been discouraged? I was reading another article
earlier today that I can't find talking about pre-school being more important
for life chances than high school. Could it be far more kids than we think are
capable of being 'geniuses' and that the majority are discouraged at an early
age? I'm not read up on this so if anyone is please share!

------
joesmo
"Many educators and parents continue to believe that acceleration is bad for
children—that it will hurt them socially, push them out of childhood or create
knowledge gaps."

And we still wonder why in the US our children are so stupid? Clearly, they're
getting a lot of help in being the dumbest they can be. To hold a child back
from their full potential so they can be bullied and made fun of for another
year or few is an atrocity that should be criminalized. I can think of few
things worse than ruining a child's life in this way. Instead, these people
are our children's' teachers, teaching them to be mediocre, stupid, mindless,
lazy, underachieving idiots.

------
walterbell
Mailing lists, blogs and social media resources for gifted education:
[http://www.hoagiesgifted.org/on-
line_support.htm](http://www.hoagiesgifted.org/on-line_support.htm)

------
hackaflocka
Survivorship Bias (what Taleb calls Silent Evidence).

What's missing: all the children whose parents raised them the same way, and
who ended up committing suicide, or are in mental institutions, or fill the
ranks of the homeless today.

~~~
aab0
This is a longitudinal study, not a cross-sectional one; attrition can be
measured. You should also provide some evidence for the idea that hordes of
high-IQ people are going homeless and committing suicide, as opposed to
occasional ones with mental illness (especially schizophrenia), given that all
the existing evidence tends to imply the opposite, if you don't want to come
off as a Taleb-citing crank.

------
lutorm
I don't doubt that there's a wide range in people's aptitudes for various
subjects. However, when it comes to the study cited, it seems there's no
control sample so you can't tell what part of the outcome is really because
these people are special and what is because some study identified them as
special when they were children and they've gotten special opportunities ever
since.

------
andrewvijay
Hope indian parents don't read this article! I'm pretty sure that they will
start looking for signs immediately. :D pray for the kids!

------
RonanTheGrey
For those of you getting 500 or "Article not found", SA has blocked the
ycombinator.com referer url. Just open the link in a new tab.

------
jonathanedwards
I was "student one". AMA. I dislike that the title of this article conflates
intelligence and genius. Genius is impact, not talent. The one thing I've
learned is that intelligence is highly overrated. Especially in the thing I
know the most about: programming.

------
0xdeadbeefbabe
Instead of super-smart they ought to say good at something, because concepts
like super-smart got us into this mess.

I know of a kid who was responsible for a sheep herd at the age of 12. He'd
live in the mountains and take care of sheep for weeks. Have some imagination.

------
kazinator
Ask HN: I'm quite interested in this, but it's a long read; can someone who
has taken the plunge summarize these lessons? Though there are many comments
already, searching for terms like "TL" and "summary" yields nothing.

------
truth_sentinell
What do people actually mean when they say "genetics"?

Is it some physical aspect of the brain (like more neurons, more connections
among them, etc) or is it that somehow the ability to do Math or any other
thing is coded into their DNA?

I'm confused.

------
perseusprime11
This reminds me of a Bruce Lee quote. My opponent practiced 1000 kicks and I
practiced a kick 1000 times. I am paraphrasing that quote But he mentioned
this in the context of focus and priority to become great at something.

~~~
xarope
I think this is the one you are referring to: "I fear not the man who has
practiced 10,000 kicks once, but I fear the man who has practiced one kick
10,000 times."

This can be interpreted in a multitude of ways, but I like to have it in the
context of this other Bruce Lee quote: "Before I studied the art, a punch to
me was just like a punch, a kick just like a kick. After I learned the art, a
punch was no longer a punch, a kick no longer a kick. Now that I've understood
the art, a punch is just like a punch, a kick just like a kick"

My interpretation is that we've all gone through these three phases in one way
or another: 1) how do we do this stuff? ok use an editor... who cares if it's
emacs (boy is that tough to learn), vi (huh? what's this context thingy), nano
(cool, a menu!) etc

2) learn that there's a whole bunch of gee whiz stuff we can use (hey look, I
have this special screwdriver designed to fit around the corner). Proceed to
OCD over the pros and cons, figure out special cases etc.

3) realise (hopefully not too late), that actually all these specialised tools
are just a means to an end. Use the most appropriate one for the situation;
and appropriate here might mean that you use that one kick practised 10,000
times ("superfoot" Bill Wallace anybody?), in the right situation, rather than
try to remember than wushu butterfly kick that you practised once (it hits,
hero points to infinity! but if it misses, oh boy am I in trouble...).

I think step (2) is where we can start to distinguish those who will make it
to (3), and those who will not. In order to be really good, if not genius
level, it's not sufficient to just practise 10,000 hours (a Gladwell meme
which I'm not fond of, although I understand what Gladwell was trying to
imply), but to also understand and appreciate these "tools" (whether tangible
or not).

~~~
perseusprime11
Bravo

------
jasode
Despite the article's title which gives the impression of unlocking the
training secrets to "produce genius scientists", it is actually a "Nature vs
Nurture" report. This particular article is biased more towards "nature."

The opposing sides are mentioned in the middle of the article:

 _> Such results contradict long-established ideas suggesting that expert
performance is built mainly through practice—that anyone can get to the top
with enough focused effort of the right kind. SMPY, by contrast, suggests that
early cognitive ability has more effect on achievement than either deliberate
practice or environmental factors such as socio-economic status._

The sentences favoring either "nature" or "nurture" are interwoven and
alternate throughout the piece but the 2 sides can be seen more clearly by
grouping them together...

Excerpts about "nature":

 _> , what has become clear is how much the precociously gifted outweigh the
rest of society in their influence._

 _> Wai combined data from 11 prospective and retrospective longitudinal
studies, including SMPY, to demonstrate the correlation between early
cognitive ability and adult achievement. “The kids who test in the top 1% tend
to become our eminent scientists and academics,_

 _> But data from SMPY and the Duke talent programme dispute that hypothesis
[about practice time]. A study published this year compared the outcomes of
students in the top 1% of childhood intellectual ability with those in the top
0.01%. Whereas the first group gain advanced degrees at about 25 times the
rate of the general population, the more elite students earn PhDs at about 50
times the base rate._

Excerpts about "nurture":

 _> “For those children who are tested, it does them no favours to call them
'gifted' or 'ungifted'. Either way, it can really undermine a child's
motivation to learn.”_

 _> In Europe, support for research and educational programmes for gifted
children has ebbed, as the focus has moved more towards inclusion. _

_> Matthews contends that when children who are near the high and low extremes
of early achievement feel assessed in terms of future success, it can damage
their motivation to learn and can contribute to what Stanford University
psychologist Carol Dweck calls a fixed mindset. It's far better, Dweck says,
toencourage a growth mindset, in which children believe that brains and talent
are merely a starting point, and that abilities can be developed through hard
work and continued intellectual risk-taking._

 _> “There's a general belief that kids who have advantages, cognitive or
otherwise, shouldn't be given extra encouragement; that we should focus more
on lower-performing kids.”_

------
colordrops
My martial arts teacher told me a relevant proverb: people are like vessels,
some larger than others, and the vessel with less capacity can still hold more
water.

------
Kazamai
There is a characteristic not mentioned that can determine if someone will
reach a high level or not. Self gratification or the ability to delay self
gratification. The "marshmallow kid", even a gifted kid that cannot fight
their own human condition to seek a dopamine reward from eating,
entertainment, etc can't reach their potential. If you got a reward from
problem solving and knowledge acquisition then it wouldn't take much to focus.

Why can we focus for hours gaming, but when it comes to solving a math
problem, most of us will never start or stop shortly after.

------
ChuckMcM
I think the integration with the existing education system is, and will
continue to be, problematic. One thing that really brought that home for me
was how kids who were developmentally behind were given extra care and
attention and kids who were developmentally ahead were not. At the extreme
ends (very behind, very ahead) the contrast is startling both in programs that
are available and in how the school "celebrates" the achievements of the
students in those categories.

------
basicplus2
“Whether we like it or not, these people really do control our society,”

I'd be pretty disappointed if this is actually true..

------
ianai
I think there is so much more going on that our systems don't account for and
thus fall short.

------
spamcoat
I will not deign To now refrain From laying bear the nudity of scholars Who
think their robes Befitting clothes And prove it to themselves in words and
dollars The fittest minds In all mankind Regret now all they ever took for
granted Remove your blinds And see the signs; There's more to all than said
will be recanted.

------
zizzles
In to make a post before a bunch of narcissist HN'ers (subtly) brag about
their childhood accomplishments of being math wizards and programming assembly
at age 6 and a half.

Edit: Too late.

------
lordnacho
My 2 cents:

\- How do we control for self-fulfilling prophecy? I would imagine that having
"Member of gifted kids study" will be quite impressive to the gatekeepers at
elite universities. Did they add a few dummies to control?

\- How do we even measure ability? You'd think the smart kids are smart
because they try to learn the things that are tested. It's like testing people
for strength. People who've trained are stronger. And they want to be.

\- It makes sense that spatial ability is somehow predictive. Nobody ever
teaches it, so you're left with whatever nature gave you. Probably like
testing someone's toe strength as an indicator of overalll muscle quality (not
that I know anything about physiology, it's just that I've never seen anyone
at the gym training their toes).

\- From what I can tell, it helps an awful lot to have someone nearby who has
the skills you're after. Look at the people mentioned. Terence Tao's parents
were both highly educated in STEM. Lenhard Ng's dad is a Physics prof. That
kind of resource takes you an awfully long way along your path. I mean imagine
being able to ask the guy you eat dinner with every night anything from "what
is a prime number" to "what's the quantum hall effect". If you don't happen to
have a parent, it probably helps to go to a school that is well resourced.
There will be teachers around who find time for the kids who show aptitude. I
remember being put up a year in math and sent to math contests. I don't think
I'd have studied it as much if I hadn't been noticed by the teachers at a
young age.

\- There's an inherent conflict between society's goals and the gifted. It's a
lot more economical to pour money into the mediocre for society. You want to
teach everyone to read, write, and a little math. It's cheaper to produce that
resource, and it's at the margin you get the most bang for your buck. PhDs
cost a fair bit to fund, and like that famouns xkcd, you are only slightly
enlarging the world's knowledge. Putting a kid in front of a world authority
is expensive.

\- It may not be so bad that society doesn't spend money on the gifted (I'd
rather call them the more motivated, but...) than the marginals. It's possible
that the mass of money needs to be spent making sure everyone can be a little
educated, while a rather different effort is made to help the gifted. For
instance, what I really, really needed as a kid was other kids who cared.
These days that should be easy enough to arrange over the internet.

\- There will be a natural experiment occurring soon, right now, about whether
it's innate ability or exposure. The proliferation of materials on the
internet will create a bunch of kids who are able to learn huge amounts about
whatever they're interested in, before they even finish school. When I was a
kid, you had to lug your ass to a library to find out what a quaternion was.
And it wasn't a specialist library, and there'd be a chapter or something like
that. These days there's a flood of information, you just have to type into
google. There's so much that if one guy doesn't explain it well, another guy
will.

------
blowski
I'm getting a 500 error on this page... anyone else getting the same problem?

------
karma_vaccum123
I just knew these comments would fill up with humblebrags from HNers who wish
to casually and inoffensively proclaim their genius.

~~~
MagnumOpus
Having tested in the 99th percentile of scholastic tests despite being a lazy
git is not humblebrag, it is relevant to the discussion at hand.

Also, you might do well to assume that a large majority of the people here
that you are trying to put down also tested in top percentages in school
tests. The audience of YC and HN is self-selected nerds.

~~~
karma_vaccum123
> Also, you might do well to assume that a large majority of the people here
> that you are trying to put down also tested in top percentages in school
> tests. The audience of YC and HN is self-selected nerds.

Which is exactly why so much of the discussion here is predicated on
middlebrow intellectual checkboxes instead of legitimate insight.

But if you want to keep thinking this is some genius society, I can't stop
you.

~~~
digler999
> middlebrow intellectual checkboxes instead of legitimate insight.

Nice humblebrag about your superior judgement of whats "middlebrow" vs
"legitimate".

~~~
karma_vaccum123
The post to which I was responding made the absurd claim that technically-
minded/introverted individuals who score high on tests can approximate
themselves to being geniuses. I really don't think it was much of a reach to
ridicule that assertion...given that it is...well, ridiculous.

------
fragola
>Stanley convinced a dean at Johns Hopkins to let Bates, then 13, enrol[sic]
as an undergraduate.

>“I was shy and the social pressures of high school wouldn't have made it a
good fit for me,” says Bates, now 60. “But at college, with the other science
and math nerds, I fit right in, even though I was much younger. I could grow
up on the social side at my own rate and also on the intellectual side,
because the faster pace kept me interested in the content.”

OK, I might take a lot of heat for this, but I don't think it's a good idea to
put a 13-year-old with college students. In this case, he was a boy, but
imagine if he were a girl? One of the main causes of failure to achieve
educationally for bright girls is getting pregnant. 40% of the fathers who
impregnate girls under 15 are 20-29 years old [0]. So in the case of girls,
this is a super visible obvious problem, but what happens with a teenage boy?
I could see him getting in an abusive relationship or otherwise preyed upon in
a zillion ways.

This article takes a blasé attitude toward the social concerns and cites no
sources about the actual social outcomes for these kids. Let your kid study by
themselves, send them to a gifted child summer camp, etc.

[0][http://www.teenmomnyc.com/](http://www.teenmomnyc.com/)

~~~
jonathanedwards
They called it "radical acceleration", but they don't do it anymore. There
were some mixed outcomes, like mine. These days it would be considered
unethical experimentation on human subjects.

~~~
fragola
Did you run into social adjustment issues?

~~~
jonathanedwards
Yeah big time. Not that it's ever easy for smart asocial people, but being
four years younger than everyone else made it way worse for me. Some people
managed a lot better though, especially if they could pass for older.

