
Bringing Up Genius - akbarnama
http://chronicle.com/article/Bringing-Up-Genius/234061
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ChuckMcM
I don't know if every child is a potential genius but I do know that not every
child reaches their full potential. Its interesting that Polgar felt Chess was
the ultimate expression of intelligence, why not mathematics? Or language?

As a parent when your children are young, I encourage you to encourage their
curiosity in a healthy way, which leads to a life of wondering just why things
are the way they are, and investing those questions in a productive way. Later
in life its hard to rekindle the spark of curiosity, and early in life its
easy to extinguish it.

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chdir
> Later in life its hard to rekindle the spark of curiosity, and _early in
> life its easy to extinguish it_

Can this be backed up statistically ? Can a born genius have their spark
extinguished by adverse circumstances or poor parenting ? I feel the
exceptional ones march on their way to genius despite family support.

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ChuckMcM
It would be challenging to design such an experiment for obvious reasons. I've
observed the cohort of children associated with my friends. Nearly all the
kids started out quite curious, but by middle school there was definite
segmentation, and by college it was very much a smaller subset who were still
out there asking questions and following up on the answers.

I will also add that it is the curse of parenting that you cannot re-do the
experiment. And so every choice you make, strict/lenient, forbid/allow,
debate/fiat, talk/not-talk is full of questions about whether or not it would
be better for your child if you acted in a different way. It is really
stressful on the parents.

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Zigurd
What I see here is a choice to bring up a child in an environment of an elite
pursuit, in this case grandmaster-level chess. If that brings them joy, fine.
But it is not much different from children raised to perform at elite levels
in sport, music, dance, etc. If they are happy that way, then good. But if
they are not happy it is an avoidable misery.

If you have given your child the gift of a life of the mind, you really do not
have to press them to be able to reach elite performance levels in the domains
where, if you haven't sacrificed a normal-ish childhood, you have missed the
boat.

If you avoid doing that, you give them the chance to excel in areas where one
can have lifelong participation and growth.

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rm445
If it were possible to create consistently world-class results in disparate
fields by early specialisation and intensive training, could the world afford
to ignore it? A decrease in total childhood happiness would be gladly accepted
by every nation if more top performers in every field could be created.

Perhaps one instead could hothouse a child in the life of the mind and produce
a world-class young generalist, with the capacity to become a world-class
specialist in a pursuit that makes them happy. I'm sure that happens a lot on
an individual level. And indeed that _could_ describe the goals of public
education systems. But that's not exactly encouraging.

We seem to have methods of intensive training that produce world-class
prodigies in the arts and in competitive arenas - musical performers, athletes
and chess. Academic hothousing seems a much more mixed bag.

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thewarrior
That some people became grandmasters in as little as 3000 hours is enough to
question the assertion that it's all about nurture.

There's a limit to perseverance. Some may be blessed with an extraordinary
amount of it but most aren't. So you're much more likely to keep at it if you
progress fast enough to achieve 1 % percentile performance in say 3000 hours
instead of 10,000.

3000 hours is 5 hours a day of practice for 3.5 years. We all have observed
how some just rocket ahead .

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hugh4
To the extent that chess players can really be considered geniuses, it seems
like a horrendous waste of genius.

~~~
dmfdmf
Perhaps... it is just an escape
[http://cassandra2004.blogspot.com/2008/01/bobby-fischer-
ayn-...](http://cassandra2004.blogspot.com/2008/01/bobby-fischer-ayn-rand-
open-letter-to.html)

~~~
SomeCallMeTim
Not sure why referencing Ayn Rand spouting strawmen is relevant here.

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dmfdmf
Because one of her points was that under Communism, Boris Spassky's talent was
"a horrendous waste of genius".

Don't fret, my comment was not meant for you.

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ausjke
In summary, a kid has IQ > 120 with hard working attitude(e.g. 10000 hour
rule) that guarantees he/she will be a genius. The keyword seems like the 120
of IQ which is a minimum requirement.

~~~
pcurve
120 is 90 percentile. Basically average pharmD IQ.

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bjwbell
I think it was Steve Sailer that first said preferences are important. In
climbing it's commonly thought most people could climb 5.12 with intense
training. But not many actually do because few enjoy training that hard.

I saw this first hand, I was naturally a much better climber than my friend
but I didn't enjoy training or climbing as much. After a couple years he's
putting up first ascents.

To give a shout out he's
[http://vividrea1ity.blogspot.com/](http://vividrea1ity.blogspot.com/)

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brador
Surround them with intelligent people who like talking.

Take a visit to a children's area in a hospital if you want to meet some hyper
intelligent children with less intelligent parents. They soak in an amazing
vocabulary from being around doctors all day.

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thewarrior
gwern is one of the most knowledgeable people on this subject as he keeps
abreast of all the latest research.

I'm wondering what his take on this article his.

