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Comment by FuNe | Hacker News Reader

I understand why a parent would want to raise a super-smart children (which makes the title a click-bait) but from where I stand I'd wish to see more people being interested in raising socially responsible children. IMHO we are abundant in (technical) smarts but very low on social/emotional ones.

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> I understand why a parent would want to raise a super-smart children

I openly don't (and I can't stand the narcissism that is involved in the reason). If you look at the parenting most parents do, they do it as if the child should be like them, just smarter or achieve more - but otherwise similar (as I said: narcissism).

On the other, here is an article (that has been brought up on HN some times in the past) about the life of a super-smart - it is easy to imagine how the life of the parents would be:

> http://www.worlddreambank.org/O/OUTSIDRS.HTM

(BTW: If you look in the German Google News about "Höchstbegabung" (the German word meaning that your talent (in this case IQ) is at least 3 sigma above the average; FYI: "Hochbegabung" means 2 sigma above average) you will find more news about soccer than about "Höchstbegabung" in the sense of intelligence. This says a lot about the society, IMHO).

It doesn't have to be about narcissism. Parents want their children to be happy, and they believe being super-smart will help make that happen.

> I openly don't (and I can't stand the narcissism that is involved in the reason). If you look at the parenting most parents do, they do it as if the child should be like them, just smarter or achieve more - but otherwise similar (as I said: narcissism).

Evolution at work. Parents who tried to make their kids different than themselves did not raise parents.

Not quite, there are two forces at work. Competitive reproductive advantage and levelling drift. First requires experiment, the other counters it.

For what it's worth, the motive to have children at all is entirely selfish and that should be fine. There is nobody else in the world who cares if you have kids. If you do have kids it had better be for your own reasons, or you'll just give up (as many do). This can sound inhumane, and I certainly didn't have a good childhood, but if people keep kidding themselves they're going to keep realizing this after they've had kids.

> For what it's worth, the motive to have children at all is entirely selfish and that should be fine.

I don't think "that should be fine". In the third world people are poor and produce children. Simply stopping doing so would be a fast way to reduce poverty (in my opinion even a necessity).

Very accurate wrt the narcissism. So much of this attitude of "raising children to rule the world" (literally, the claim of the article, which I found ludicrous) is to flatter the parents and educators. Same for children who are good at sports. Does anyone stop to wonder what it does to a child to spend their whole lives training e.g. in a pool? How much pain does it cause to people who have to live up to such expectations, when all they can do, their entire lives, is fail?

I was one of those gifted children; both my parents are extraordinarily smart and I was years ahead of my peers in reading and maths. I'm happy no-one paid much attention and I was left to my own devices. Maybe I didn't become a billionaire, or go to Stanford at sixteen, yet I was mostly happy, most of my life, and every time I accomplished anything I was grateful and happily surprised. And I don't think it was a wasted life at all.

Leading society? What an arrogance. Let kids be, give them open access to knowledge and freedom to learn from others, and structure where they need it. Leave the "raising geniuses" to totalitarian regimes.

Leading society is best done by leaders, not by followers told to train to be good. A leader trains because he wants to or perceives a need.

The whole trick is in instilling such motivation in gifted children instead of the opposite message.

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