First we shape our social graph, then it shapes us (2022) | Hacker News Reader

First we shape our social graph, then it shapes us (2022)

henrikkarlsson.xyz

98 pointsCuriositry32 comments

> Most who grew up to become geniuses, pre-1900, were kept apart from same age peers and raised at home, by tutors or parents

Pretty much all kids are a lot smarter than we acknowledge

Lazlo Polgar believed geniuses are made, not born, and raised his daughters to become chess grandmasters https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/L%C3%A1szl%C3%B3_Polg%C3%A1r

The school system is more of an industrial childcare operation for working parents, than an actual education system for the kids

It’s also easy to criticize, and it is very hard for parents to provide good resources and enough attention for the kids to fully develop their potential

> The school system is more of an industrial childcare operation for working parents, than an actual education system for the kids

Bingo. And, as the spouse of a teacher, there's not a lot of hope of that changing any time soon. The pay would have to change... the people currently working would have to be dismissed or, for those introspective and motivated, retrained... never going to happen.

And generally focused on creating followers not thinkers. I really enjoyed "The Coddling of the American Mind"

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/09/the-cod...

https://www.thecoddling.com/

Easy evidence is how they enter school loving books and leave school dreading books most of the time. Another point is how school times start just before work hours for parents. Finally, they pump the kids full of high sugar substances which actually damage cognitive functions over time. Thankfully, minimally incentivized people are there to keep them inline.../s

I agree that the school system is in need of help. And, there's the saying that it was intended to train workers for the machine, which is at least a minor upgrade from "industrial childcare".

But, then is it really that bad? I mean, as a nation, we've managed to make it quite a way and lead the world in many categories.

And, here we are on HN, cogently observing the issues from the "outside". Yet, I'd wager most of us are products of the public school system. How did so many manage to reach escape velocity?

Part of this is touched on in "Coddling".

Each generation is getting a different (worse?) experience as they are maturing several years later than previous generations. It's not just "public school bad"... quiet a lot of factors in play, especially at the collegiate level.

But lots of people disagree with the article and the book. But I found it made compelling, accurate arguments.

I do agree about the maturation rate vs past times. But, I would chalk this up to a number of other factors which have changed and have had a more outsized impact than schools.

For one, parenting is far different, with parents now more integrally involved in their childrens' day to day lives. Kids are not encouraged to be independent, nor do they have as much opportunity to make decisions for themselves.

I would imagine "Coddling" speaks to that as well. But, that really has very little to do with schools.

Won't speak of others on HN, but for me, absolutely, 100%, succeeded _despite_ the public education system (as evidenced by ~99% of my peers not "making it" out from a dark place). And as someone self-medicating, and using their own money to seek psychologists, therapy, and help for the damage caused by it ~20 years later still, it is my value statement that it is absolutely 100% utterly, irredeemably horrible.

If people really cared about their children, the public education system, as a whole system, would be terminated.

They don't.

Or people had a different experience from yours. Is that really so unbelievable that it’s better to think everyone is as traumatized as you but they literally just don’t care about their children? Sorry but that’s completely absurd.

If a school has traumatized 99% of its students (or some co-hort within its student population), then there probably needs to be an investigation.

But, I don't think that's most people's experience.

Groups tend to see collective trauma as normal and (unsubconsciously) work to sustain it.

> is it really that bad?

You must have spent at least some time in school. You will have experienced exactly how bad it is - it's not a space for thinking, it is a space for shutting up and conforming.

You imply "many" manage to reach escape velocity. The GP's point is the opposite: Most do not, and this is the tragedy.

I largely agree that independent thinking isn't a priority, but there was TAG (which admittedly emphasized skills that all kids should've been taught), and the occasional outstanding teacher.

I do believe that critical-thinking is the single-most impactful untaught skill in public schools. It's a gateway to so much more, including an autodidactic lifestyle. It's honestly mind-boggling that logic and critical-thinking aren't a recurring theme.

Still, our schools produce a lot of amazing students who go on to make hugely impactful contributions.

Sure, it needs improvement. But I think the degree of dysfunction is overstated.

Yeah, it was clear they were training us for an industrial work ethic with 40 minute periods with bells moving us from place to place, regimented bathroom and recreational activity, and generally a complete disinterest in learning, just do the homework kid, we don't care and we wont call on you.

My early childhood is very similar to that of some Field medalists.. and then I went to school and the problems began.. between bullying, isolation, and a host of other issues, adult me feels the burden of "potential".

I don't blame my parents for it, they really didn't have much of a choice in the matter as we were too poor for private schools and homeschooling isn't a thing where I come from.

Norbert Weiner was explicitly raised by his father to be a prodigy as well:

https://www.amazon.com/Norbert-Wiener_A-Life-Cybernetics-Mat...

>"Most who grew up to become geniuses, pre-1900, were kept apart from same age peers and raised at home, by tutors or parents. Michel Montaigne’s father employed only servants who were fluent in Latin, curating a classical culture, so Montaigne would read the classics in his mother tongue. J.S. Mill spent his childhood at his father’s desk, helping his father write a treatise on economics"

I've noticed this as well, but took a different lesson from it: they were rich. They were all rich. Of course there's the odd rags to riches story here and there. But almost uniformly as a rule, anyone you've ever read about or heard of who was notable in any way as an intellectual in history was born and raised rich. There was nothing genetic or cultural about it. They were just afforded a thousand opportunities at every turn that the rest of us never were. That's really all there is to it.

And some form of autism. If you make a "normal" person rich they would spend their time and resources partying.

Yeah, generally for historical figures if there's no particular emphasis in the popular biography on their background they were part of the elite in some way from birth.

What you say is very true of course; Social Class, Economic Conditions, Environment are all huge factors in getting access to Opportunities and even more so, cultivating the ability to recognize and exploit them.

But i wouldn't say "There was nothing genetic or cultural about it."

It is Nature AND Nurture and while one can make up for deficiencies in either to a certain extent it is highly dependent on context and subject itself.

I was incessantly mobbed, physically and psychologically, throughout early school with no escape and all cries for rescue rendered impotent... and all I got was this lousy +4 z-score IQ!

I didn't choose the genius life, the genius life chose me. *sob*

Everyone wants to be a genius until it's time to do genius shit.

> I never sleep, I don't know why. I had a roommate and I drove her nuts, I mean really nuts, they had to take her away in an ambulance and everything. But she's okay now, but she had to transfer to an easier school, but I don't know if that had anything to do with being my fault. But listen, if you ever need to talk or you need help studying just let me know, 'cause I'm just a couple doors down from you guys and I never sleep, okay? —JC

That's why sincere aspirants always do some obviously dumb shit on the side?

I Understood That Reference. Once I got to ".. I mean really nuts" I had started reading it in her voice :)

Oops, accidentally paraphrased R (as pointed out to me, nothing to do with realizations)

>Qui vit sans folie n'est pas si sage qu'il croit.

> What you want to create is a distributed apprenticeship in the art of being you. You want to assemble a set of influences you can observe and imitate, and peers and mentors that can give you feedback on how well you converge with that model of yourself.

Not limited to the living, i.e. we have centuries of potential human influencers whose contributions have been tested by time.

> And after a handful of years of hanging about with people more skilled than themselves, our babies—these tiny, soft-skulled creatures—can out-compete chimpanzees in all but close combat.

I don't even want to ask

Also not accurate. Chimps have extremely powerful numerical working memories. https://www.cell.com/current-biology/fulltext/S0960-9822(07)...

Previous submission, no comments: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38776434

> The milieu around you—which shapes you, and which you shape in turn—we can model as a directed graph. The nodes are people and objects and ideas connected to each other. And the graph is directed because you have nodes that send you input and nodes you send output to.

Then shows a figure of a weirdly symmetric undirected graph that looks nothing like a social or complex network!

"Your culture shapes who you become". Agree. Culture molds individuals' identities, influences their values and behaviors in so many ways

the great merit of society is to make one appreciate solitude

It's yin and yang. We forever shape each other.

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