Ah, the genius of being at the right time among the right people, and having an all-too-helpful assistant...
> By the age of eight, von Neumann was familiar with differential and integral calculus
> At the age of 15, he began to study advanced calculus under the renowned analyst Gábor Szegő. On their first meeting, Szegő was so astounded with the boy's mathematical talent that he was brought to tears.
> By the age of 19, von Neumann had published two major mathematical papers, the second of which gave the modern definition of ordinal numbers, which superseded Georg Cantor's definition.
Yeah right.
Sure his privilege helped. But a lot of people all through the world had that amount of privilege or more.
How many von Neumans are there?
In the real world 99% of parents don't have the time to teach their child anything beyond how to speak and walk and answer their questions. 90%+ of parent's don't even remember how to efficiently factor integers or any math beyond arithmetic.
Certainly very few people have this level of genius, but if Von Neumann were to be born to an average milieu it is impossible he would have been able to reach those milestones.
Does percentage make more sense here or absolute number? It depends on your context. I would say in this argument, it seems more certain that Von Neumann's success, which is always a function of both nature and nurture, can probably be attributed more to nature. Or, perhaps most likely, it's a rare event of talent meets incredible luck.
It's certainly a meeting of nature and nurture.
"if Von Neumann were to be born to an average milieu it is impossible he would have been able to reach those milestones."
Come on now. Ramanujan was still doing arithmetic by the age of 10.
Unarguably Ramanujan was held back as his mathematical progress very strongly, and was not too far above that of his peers until he attended High School.
And the worst is that Ramanujan himself was incredibly privileged compared to the Indian average, being able to live in an urban milieu. Were he in an average rural, peasant context he would have been held back even more. Not to mention, he was a Brahmin, the highest caste in India.
As far as Ramanujan, it's not arguable either that if he had been recognized early and given proper opportunities, he would have been even more prolific and have made even greater contributions. It took him 10 years for his genius to be recognized locally! And that was as a Brahmin to an urban family, imagine how hard it would have been if he was a Vaishiya born to farmers - he might have never been recognized, and we would have lost his contributions.
If you believe that without being 100% self-made you're crap, that's your point of view, not mine.
As for your edit, extreme intelligence is not really correlated to income. In fact, once you leave the median by a standard deviation, there is almost no impact anymore, and even less when you start controlling for social factors. What is moreso correlated is low intelligence and low income. Descendance is a much, much stronger impact.
"As for your edit, extreme intelligence is not really correlated to income."
A very poor person could rise up to the status of Neumann, they'd just need significantly more innate intelligence, which is a very tall order.
"they'd just need significantly more innate intelligence, which is a very tall order."
I think wealth helps but through a different mechanism to what you're thinking. Avoiding malnutrition is the big one. A secondary point is avoiding the need to work and being able to focus on intellectual passions, which many average-wealth people can do. Adding more money to the picture doesn't help beyond a baseline. Ramanujan was fairly poor but still had enough family wealth to be able to eat enough food and dedicate a lot of time to his passion.
Yeah, they’re too busy coaching their kids’ sports teams.
I have seen parents buying their kids Playstations and taking them to expensive vacations in 5/7 star hotels and are content about "doing a lot" for their kids.
I have also seen parents really investing time in their kids' future. Teaching them programming, foreign languages, advanced (for their age as per some regulatory bodies) math, etc.
Any wonder why the kids from the next group will turn out to be more successful statistically?
There is also nuance in this. Almost nobody (statistically) grows up to be geniuses from these families. But they certainly tend to have more accomplished lives.
I know a lot of parents, basically almost all parents that I know of, enroll their kids in all sorts of things.
They are admitted into schools where you speak only English, they are admitted into swimming school, karate, painting, singing, dance class, you name it.
My cousin's kid is enrolled into five extra-curricular classes. She is 7.
I have been seeing this for decades now. Despite being born into upper middle class homes, and having their parents shower money on stuff, most kids grow up to be vastly uninteresting individuals.
- Most of them speak grammatically incorrect, Indian-style English.
- Many struggle to find jobs even in the low-paying strata of the private sector.
- Most of them don't go to top schools since almost any college that matters takes admission through meritocratic channels (academic test scores and/or admission tests)
I have seen a lot of these rich babies fail in life.
Privilege never equals achievement.
There is always some element of genetics involved.
Hard work matters more than genetics, I believe so. But the influence of genes is not trivial.
Genes + extreme hard work + good environment provide a baseline for true genius.
Beyond that, yes he was incredibly accomplished, very prolific, and supremely intelligent, but it is important to remember that he was still human and not some kind of transcendant being outside of earthly considerations.
There are no shortages of people in these threads who genuinely believe that Neumann was supremely intelligent, beyond the conception of regular people. I'm sure you'll find them. It's not even unique to Neumann.
Nothing. They put effort into his education because of his brilliancy, and your standard Jewish-American household could do the same thing.
People can recall pages from books if they put the effort, and regular people routinely do - an average person can memorize thousands of pages. Again it's that he could do it faster that's exceptional.
And they would be right. This sort of genius is not only nurture and hard work, but nature as well. Like no matter what I do in my life, I will never even approach that level.
Of course he is still human, and someone will born (rarely though) that will achieve similar feats, but let’s be honest and just say that what he did is well beyond the reach of the average people.
I can follow a math example’s solution, but that doesn’t necessarily mean I could solve it alone.
No need to get all riled up about fairness.