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Comment by KronisLV | Hacker News Reader

Lovely article, though honestly getting those prerequisites also takes a lot of time, effort and either motivation or discipline in ample amounts.

As someone who was the “smart kid” growing up, going to the university without good work ethic was pretty eye opening, no longer being able to coast on intuitively getting subjects, but rather either having to put in a bunch of effort while feeling both humbled and dumb at times, or just having to sink academically.

Even after getting through that more or less successfully and having an okay career so far, I still definitely struggle with both physical health and mental health, both of which make the process of learning new things harder and slower than just drinking a caffeinated beverage of choice and grokking a subject over a long weekend. Sometimes it feels like trying to push a rock up a muddy slope.

And if I’m struggling, as someone who’s not burdened by having children to take care of or even not having the most demanding job or hours to make ends meet, I have no idea how others manage to have a curious mind and succeed the way they do.

Admittedly, some people just feel like they’re built different. Even if I didn’t have those things slowing me down as much (working on it), I’d still be nowhere near as cool as people who dive headfirst into low level programming, electrical engineering, write their own simulations, rendering or even whole game engines and such. Maybe I’m just exposed to what some brilliant people can do thanks to the Internet, but some just manage to do amazing things.

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> As someone who was the “smart kid” growing up, going to the university without good work ethic was pretty eye opening, no longer being able to coast on intuitively getting subjects, but rather either having to put in a bunch of effort while feeling both humbled and dumb at times, or just having to sink academically.

Modern gifted education is very aware of this and is working on fixing that. How effectively, I dunno, probably not very, but at least it’s a hot topic in the field this century.

Damn near every person I’ve know who was “gifted” has a similar story, myself included. There’s a lot of lost potential because we badly mis-handle those kids for years and years on end.

I thought that I was gifted, but in retrospect, maybe I wasn't. I couldn't play any games well; not the physical ones, not computer games, not card or board games. The other kids would get them fast, while I was always dumbfounded and it took me a long time to grasp the rules. Once, it became popular to play Warcraft in my circle of friends and, try hard as I may, I was the rag they mopped the floor with :-) . But math, physics and computer sciences were another story, because growing up I didn't have anything more interesting to do than reading and solving exercises from old soviet textbooks. So, I think I wasn't gifted, or just gifted by serendipity.

Symbolic manipulation and intuitive understanding doesn't seem to be very correlated to me. I've met people who are very good at manipulating symbols, but they aren't very good at understanding less formal things like strategy games well, they tend to invent way too rigid rules for themselves and lose since they are bad at adapting.

So maybe you are very smart with symbols, but less so with intuitive understanding? There is nothing wrong with that, makes it easier to decide what to work on, focus on your strengths and let others cover for your weaknesses.

My memory is kinda shit.

So when I was in the gifted program, they got real concerned about how I didn't know my times tables and was super slow at a few of them. This was the 1970s, and before I knew binary, so 7s and 8s caused me issues. So I'd figure out 8x8 by going from 6x6=36 (real easy to memorize) and then adding +6+6 to mentally fill out the 8x6 block and then adding +8+8 to fill it out to a 8x8 block (I'm visual/geometrical).

I was the first kid in school to pass the AHSME to get invited to take the AIME though. Being before the internet, and being stuck on an island in Alaska, didn't get me enough exposure to higher math through my own self-direction to get anywhere on the AIME. If you don't live anywhere near a University library and/or don't know you can use it, that'll set you behind (at least back then, these days there's YouTube and sci-hub and friends).

I still think I would have hit a wall anyway with Math, even with perfect exposure, because I'm visual and higher Math seems to require being very good with symbols and memory as well.

I suspect lots of people still underestimate me because my memory is ass, and we associate memory with intelligence so much (e.g. Jeopardy).

I used to believe that I was good at math because my memory was shit. So I had to actually understand everything, because I couldn't rely on memorizing it.

But some random facts were easy to memorize, for example that the chessboard has 64 fields. I had problems with 6×9 and 7×8 though, always confused about which one was 54 and which one was 56.

Oh! So that’s why my teachers made us memorize row by row: For me 54 and 56 are in an entirely different category (resp the 6 and 8 categories), didn’t even realize they landed in the same dozen when learning my tables!

And I don’t have a good memory either.

I can't tell you what 6x9 is. But I can tell you what 9x6 is. I always turn that one around. My mind immediately jumps to a visual 60 coz 10x6 is super easy of course and subtracting 6 from it is easily 54.

Similarly 8x7 I can't tell you but 7x8=56 in my brain feels like a little "rhyme" I just need to repeat and I have the answer.

That's also how I remember (somewhat) arbitrary passwords. If it "flows" well almost like a rhyme and can be typed fluently I'll remember. Actual arbitrary ones don't work as well.

Yeah, after a while I also learned that 9x6 = 10x6 - 6 = 54.

And then I just remembered that 7x8 is "that other difficult number", because by that time I already remembered that 54 and 56 are the two most difficult numbers in the multiplication table. :)

Btw, same here, 9x6 and 7x8 feels much more natural than the other way round.

So, fun fact from calculus (though you can easily prove this with basic algebra as I do below):

- You want to compare two products: in this case 6x9 and 7x8.

- And in each product, if you add the two numbers together, you get the same result. In this case, 6+9 = 7+8.

Then the product will be larger for the pair of numbers that are closer together. So 7x8 > 6x9. That might help you remember which is 56 and which is 54.

You typically see this in a word problem where you are given a fixed amount of fence and you have to enclose the largest rectangular area. The answer is to use a square area (two sides being equal). If the problem has constraints that prevent the sides from being equal, then you pick the length and width to be as close to each other as possible.

In case you want to transfer the geometric intuition to an algebraic proof: If the sum of the two side lengths is 2m, then the two side lengths can be written as (m+n) and (m-n) for some positive n. If you multiply the two, you get (m+n)(m-n) = m²-n². To maximize the product, you need n to be as close to 0 as possible - i.e. for both sides to be as close to each other as possible.

You might have certain targeted deficiencies that make processing those things well difficult. Like I have a hard time finding things in visual space, so I'm not good at jigsaw puzzles. I have slower reaction times & processing speeds also which makes me not as good at video games as I should be combined with the visual space deficiencies. When a shit ton of stuff is happening on screen I lose my place, while others might be able to manage it.

But I also show an ability to think and learn deeply and score very well on symbolic and verbal intelligence, I also connect the dots very well and show a lot of skip thinking behavior. I call my brain a high torque, low RPM engine.

Also you might not like anything that is 'competitive', so your brain shuts down in avoidance / disinterest. Or you might think deeply about everything, so it always takes you a while at first, but once you grasp it you grasp it at a deep level unlike others.

Hmm, this rings some bells for some people I know. Did you learn about those deficiencies and proficiencies in a systematic way or through experience? Any resources you'd suggest for thinking more deeply about these things?

A neuropsychological assesment figured it out for me, helped me connect some dots also.

Things improve with practice though, at least they did for me. I largely sucked at action video games as a kid, I also didn’t have interest probably because I wasn’t good. I took to learning musical instruments and now in my 40s I accidentally found Im pretty good at videogames, much much better than when I was young. Coincidentally I got better at sports as well.

This reminds me of how a lot of top video game speedrunners (e.g. Portal) are professional musicians because they are very good with accurate timings lol

There's also some anecdata floating around in the -- what would you call it, the "competitive speed typing" community? Or "people who play TypeRacer a lot". Some seemingly significant correlation between skill in typing and piano. Or at least the appearance of skilled typists having some interest or experience in piano. This could probably be generalized to being good at fingering or timing, or maybe even further, to having effective mindsets or attitudes regarding performance of skills (like the need for a presumptive confidence of sorts), or being aware of good practice methods.

I accept your hypothesis, but allow me to suggest an alternative hypothesis for you to consider (and maybe reject after consideration).

I am in my late 40s. Modern videogames are a great deal easier than games I played as a child. I tried playing a few games from my mispent youth recently, and was absolutely amazed at just how much harder they were.

FWIW, I also play music, mostly guitar.

Gifted/high IQ/whatever is not a blanket pass to excel. We'll suck at a lot of things, we're subject to plenty of the same mental illnesses and struggles, etc.

Gifted education is intended to address the needs of the students beyond what can be provided in a standard classroom. That's not just more worksheets or harder textbooks; it should also cover students who are able to coast through the advanced classes and make sure they know that they, like every other human, won't have everything easy. A lot of school programs have missed the mark and a lot will, but education is a process of improvement. Many of the teachers today are doing better for the kids because of the lessons learned from our teachers.

Special education (including gifted education) isn't legally mandated in schools to make the students prove they're eligible for the label. If you got value out of the program, it was meant for you.

Why do you think that after “no child left behind” the situation is better for talented kids? IMO the situation is much much worse. Many gifted programs are being eliminated and all classes are being slowed down to accommodate the bottom 33%. Even slightly above average kids are going to feel like 2 standard deviation genius doing basic school work because compared to the curriculum they are.

> Even slightly above average kids are going to feel like 2 standard deviation genius doing basic school work because compared to the curriculum they are.

They'll be treated like geniuses too. I used to get treated like one because of my incredible ability to plug numbers into formulas and write down the answers that came out in a piece of paper. I simply did not understand how people could possibly have any problem with it. I found it so dull I ended up in a computers course where I learned to automate that kind of human computer nonsense away forever.

They treated me like a genius for working out some basic math, and the truth is I suck at math. I actually like math, but I suck at it. I used to get away with never needing to do homework as a kid. As a result I never developed the discipline necessary to hone math skills. Now I want to learn something interesting like queueing theory but I barely understand the papers and articles because I'm missing numerous prerequisites.

Your post seems contradictory in that you could plug numbers into formulas and get answers. Isn’t that a fundamental skill? Is there an implied value in understanding the formula and how to apply it via math to obtain a correct answer?

The question then is how did you develop the ability.

Roguelikes like Nethack/Slashem/Dungeon Crawl Stone Stoup and strategy/RPG games such as Liberal Crime Squad or Battle for Wesnoth would be easier for you.

As a gifted kid, when you get to university, you are supposed to learn work ethics practically overnight. Until then, between your 6 and 18 years, the school kept telling you that you should slow down and wait until the average kids also get it.

That's like failing at a sprinting competition, when your entire training consisted of walking really really slowly.

My wife has a nephew that is insanely smart. Like, aced the SATs at 15 smart.

His mother insisted that he have a fairly normal-paced education, and it seems to have paid off.

He’s a really decent chap, who teaches at a university, is married, and has a kid. His college career was at top schools, though. They pretty much threw scholarships at him.

I like the article. Very humble and encouraging.

There are gifted schools that don't force kids to slow down to the lowest common denominator. I went to one. In theory, they also enforce a work ethic. My problem was the reverse: I started working after school when I was 15, and when I got to university I found my peers had absolutely slovenly work ethics and no experience, and I was being taught things that were laughable in a real work environment, by professors who hadn't had a real job in decades (if ever). And I was supposed to be paying $30k a year for the privilege. I realized at 19 that I was better off at any pay rate in the private sector ;)

I had a similar experience perhaps in some ways. I graduated high school and initially started university at 14. (I was tall, which is probably good in this case, as it let me pass for a very young looking maaaaybe 18, in the setting).

My “work history”

Has been 8 ish, doing yard work around town with 2 other kids (nothing crazy, weeding, push mowing, leaves, clearing brush, etc), and then working at a stables for a bit when 12.

I ended up getting an hourly part time position at campus, at 16 ish I took a break for 2 years, worked in grocery, and then in pharmacy.

18, I ended up back at school. Embarrassingly it took me 3 more years to finish my undergrad. But I worked full time or nearly full time the entire time. (Floater pharmacy tech, part time backup event photographer, and then as a store manager at a hobby store).

I found it very hard to make friends with people my own age, but found it incredibly easy to make friends with returning students - either they had worked a career and came back to school, or had done some time in the military etc., I also made some great friends who had moved to the U.S., usually as late teens, from developing countries.

Knowledge, perspectives, etc I learned from these people … and from some people I ended up being very lucky to work with, honestly proved in hindsight to be much more impactful and valuable to my life and career then I could have ever imagined.

I will say, tongue in cheek, but also some truth:

You could probably apply the anna karenina principle to all of the people I can think of who were impactful in some way… either through the lens of trauma/ struggle / or dysfunctional family. (This would also apply to myself!)

I believe real world friends or colleagues are your alternative family. (Online friends, not so much). In any case, its so critical to have your eyes open to other traditions and creeds and ways people live their lives. Without that, we would just judge without knowing why people did things.

The person you need to show mercy to most is yourself. And to do that you have to understad how everyone else lives.

Which school did you go to, and are you aware if it's kept the same high standards? I believe there are interesting challenges for any mind, the hard part is the match-making customized for each person. It'd be cool if there was an equivalent Facebook/Netflix algorithm for learning.

I always thought the alternative to "gifted programs" is not having a program which is even worse. At some point optimizing teaching becomes unaffordable.

The elementary school I went to operated somewhat as a petri dish for psychiatric experiments, as I realized later, with class sizes around 15 students and extremely personalized teaching. My 8-12 grades were at a private prep school. Both could be scalable models, but it would require a moonshot level of public funding to go into hiring potential teachers away from more lucrative jobs. (Personally, I'd love it if my taxes went to that).

But I don't credit those schools for my success. Nor do I credit native intelligence. My two elder brothers are lawyers whose names you likely know; think of the largest case in recent history. One is severely dyslexic and the other I'd wager is mildly autistic. I'm a college dropout. Oddly, I earn more per hour designing databases than the famous one does taking down large companies. What we had in common was a pattern of learning how to think, how to be curious and ask questions, and how to separate wheat from chaff. All of which came from our grandfather, who was forced to leave a yeshiva at 12 years old, and his father, and his grandfather.

I truly believe that almost all formal education is bunk. It's a useless plaster on a gaping social wound, namely that parents don't have the toolset to teach children a love of learning throughout their lives, along with the methods and skills to do so for themselves. All the information taught in K-12 schools is readily available, yet most adults can't remember a thing about the most basic aspects of history, math or science. The reason being, they weren't interested when they learned it the first time, and they weren't raised to be curious enough to answer their own questions or (re)fill holes in their own knowledge. This is why most people can't utter the words, "I don't know, let's look it up." Moreover, most people don't believe it's their obligation as a person to be as well-rounded as they can make themselves, because no one ever told them that was important, even crucial to their survival.

Learning itself should be taught. And it can be taught at home. The major obstacle would be how to overcome, obliterate and shame the intellectual laziness of most people that's built into most cultures - including those of most who go to college. Everything else, all concepts and facts, can be learned later, and are ephemeral.

When I was at university, some of my classmates were admitted right after high school, others failed, waited for one year while having a job, and then applied again. The difference between those who had one year of work experience and those who had none was profound; the former were adults, and the latter were kids; it was as if they had five years of age difference, not only one.

I wouldn't underestimate the professors though. Doing research (that is their actual work; teaching is just a hobby) can be hard work.

My university experience was very much “submit! work!” - I was on “keeping of term” almost permanently and had the threat of rustication hanging over my head for the duration of my time there as I flat out refused to attend lectures, tutorials, or labs - I was having way too much fun running a bar and the debating society.

Anyway. What I learned was that people rarely make good on their threats, that charm and doing the absolute bare minimum to not “get fired” will get you through - and that I can cram a three year physics course into a month of intense study and still pass with a 2:1, which they demoted to a Desmond as they didn’t feel they could in good conscience reward me with a 2:1 - which also taught me that institutions can’t be trusted and are ultimately run by opinion.

This lead to a career path of opportunistic system-hacking and an early retirement to a cabin in the woods. I never had a work ethic, apart from in that which interests me. If something bores me, it’s for the birds.

I’m not quite sure what I’m trying to say here, other than that at no point in my education was I given any useful guidance or advice, just expectations of prodigy, and was left to figure things out for myself - which I did, but not as I think others would have hoped. I now, in my forties, know that I have raging ADHD - it wasn’t even a consideration as a kid - just that I was “brilliant but bone-idle”.

Do you think yours is a life well spent for anything or anyone other than your own enjoyment, even if you were clever enough to save yourself the stress suffered by many?

I would say that it has not provided as much utility value to mankind as it could have. Sure, I’ve created jobs, generated wealth, given to philanthropic causes - and in excess of the lives lived by most - but I would say with confidence that had I perhaps had some guidance other than the eternal threat of punishment, I would have developed something other than a frankly criminal instinct, and might have been more able to give more to society and fulfil my potential.

Instead, I learned to avoid the consequences, not to avoid the crime, and can’t deny that I have chosen a selfish path as a result.

You could have phrased that in a much less judgemental way.

School is easy, the point of it is more to learn social skills.

We must spend 30-50% of state budgets, monopolize children’s time, and expose them to violence and drugs so they can learn to socialize.

We don't spend 50% of state budgets on primary/secondary education.

It does if you consider the part going to your county:

“In 2022, the federal government spent … This is 13.6% of the total spent on elementary and secondary education in 2022. The remaining funding comes from state and local governments, which contribute 43.7% and 42.7%, respectively.”

You've misread that. It is not saying that 43.7% of the state budget goes to elementary and secondary education. It is saying that 43.7% of the funding for education comes from the state. Those are completely different.

No. If 20% of the state budget is then that amount is matched by an equal part local. So state + local education would be 40% of the state budget.

education (property tax) dominates local spend. So yes we do tax and spend extraordinary amounts on education.

20% of your money and 20% of my money is not 40% of our money.

The most recent number I could find is from 2021, and on average, states spent 21.5% of their budget on k-12 education.

The state and local pay about equal portions. But do you have anything to say about the argument in my comment?

Was there an argument? Lots of places in the world have state-backed top-notch free education, without the guns and violence.

What argument?

Believe it or not, it’s not easy for many people. Be careful about making such sweeping generalizations based on your personal experience.

Half of all the people in the world are below average. I know, it's crazy right? Confirmation bias makes us expect others to be like ourselves, but they are not, and you're going to have a bad time when you expect them to be like yourself. This is probably going to sound harsh, but it's true: Children and teenagers innately sneer at others that are not like themselves (so much bullying in schools). Part of maturing as a person is to learn that other people are different and have different needs. Many people don't learn this, and they seem immature as a result, and they are ineffective at dealing with other people.

And then you dive into the job market where the hidden rule is "work as few as possible while asking for the maximum"

It's funny, I was good at basketball as a kid. I played 'representative' and went to country championships.

Doing that made it clear to you that you might be good in your city but there were still kids who were way, way better than you were likely to be.

In contrast, smart kids often don't hit a 'bigger pool' until they get to university.

In some ways many places are better at handling kids who are good at a sport than they are kids who are good at school.

> In some ways many places are better at handling kids who are good at a sport than they are kids who are good at school.

An abrupt cynical thought: Could it be related to how sports are closer to being a revenue-source?

What high school makes money from their sports programs? Even in basketball or football-obsessed towns, I doubt the ticket sales and concessions revenue from home games would even cover the coaches' salaries, transportation to away games, and uniforms. Most schools near me have players sell candy or coupon books to pay for their teams' expenses.

Schools in some parts of Texas, Florida and Ohio

https://www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-stadium-arms-race-snap-...

Those are rare and usually heavily alumni donor subsidized.

The cost of these mega stadiums seems even less likely to be covered by revenue from the teams.

It’s not revenue, it’s prestige. Except in Texas, where it’s both.

It's not revenue. I wasn't in the US. People sink money into high performance athletes. They lose money. In Australia only the AFL and Rugby League make much money. That is also only at the high levels.

There are places in Australia, such as Sydney, that have a network of selective high schools for kids who do well. But outside of Sydney it's much weaker.

There is more effort put into kids who are not doing well at school to improve their performance than in getting the most from kids who can do well. Perhaps it makes sense.

Wait, professional cricket doesn't make money?

You can make a decent living playing cricket in Aus (or England) but for the big bucks you have to go to the Indian Premier League

Probably more that lots of kids will try super hard to be good at sports. Being good at school carries a certain level of stigma and lots of kids who could be “smart” choose to slack instead.

Nah. It's been painfully clear to nerds for a long time that sportsball players are much more highly respected and like than eggheads.

Sports only make money at the point of the most elite college programs, usually mainly its the football or basketball program that subsidizes the rest of the athletic program.

I think its more you become aware of where you stand fast. You go to meets or games of a bunch of different schools and see who is literally the best in the area. You go to state competitions and see who is best in the entire state. And then there are nationals where you see who is best in the entire nation. Throughout this your stats are posted online where you and college scouts can see them.

Academics have no comparison. We struggle to even compare grades because of grade inflation.

There's "gifted" and there's gifted. The truly gifted often think they _have_ learned how to work hard because their classmates in the "gifted" classes got praised for their hard work. There's a top echelon of kid who is both common enough that every school district has 1–10 in each cohort but notably more advanced than what district standard gifted education is designed to handle.

Same here.

I used to be one of the math/science wiz in grade school. I also got hammered on the work ethic part, multiple times. Unfortunately studying/working 12+ hours a day in the name of "work ethic" impacts my body beyond what I can handle, and mental health as well. That's not the way I operated growing up, and my body isn't going to handle it all of a sudden now.

Here I am, 3 cardiac arrests later, trying to figure out how to fit into a society where everyone seems to be hellbent on working every waking hour and eating UberEats while I'm trying to stay alive with immense amounts of self-care in my off-work hours (cooking healthy, hiking, actually disconnecting from the internet, etc.).

    > Unfortunately studying/working 12+ hours a day

I am confused. Why didn't you reduce your hours to find mental happiness?

Not the OP, but there’s another poster in this whole thread who says that he studied “16 hours per day” and that his former college mates, much gifted than him but who hadn’t studied as much, now live “mediocre” lives.

Which is to say that this is the competition that lots of people who study in a professional environment (i.e. not for fun) have to grapple with, I feel sorry for them because I don’t see an easy solution for all this madness (because it is definitely madness to study 12-16 hours per day).

In high school I could sleep well AND ace everything. I didn't have to study that much to ace honors and AP courses.

Partially because I aced everything, I got into one of the universities considered "top". Although I was excited about the research part, I quickly found out that many courses were hard af. I had to study 12+ hours a day to get good grades there. I did get good grades after the initial shock, but it was hard, I slept very little, and I fucked up my health doing it, without realizing it at first.

Tech companies I have worked at, including the one I just left, routinely don't give you the option to work 8 hours. It's either you work 12+ hours to meet performance expectations or they ask you to leave. My body, unfortunately, cannot tolerate that and "needing to work normal hours" isn't generally one of the available disability accommodations.

I was an inner city “gifted kid” - although I’m proud of what I have accomplished so far, I feel like my potential was stifled, as you said mis-handled. I’m very interested in helping inner city gifted kids today unlock their full potential. How could I start?

Hey, screw modern education. Particularly if you went to a "gifted school". I was stupid for going to college for a year. At least I dropped out and saved myself a lifetime of debt.

Think of the time you waste with that garbage versus how much you can "grok over a weekend" and the math is definitely in favor of the latter.

The major flaw in the educational system in the US is that it's run for profit and it wrongly informs people they need to stay in it, rather than gaining real world experience. Coding, in particular, but also design and web are trades. Like bartending, plumbing, or fixing cars. They're really only learned on the job, and every school that promises to place you in them is a racket. (I also wasted $500 on two weeks of "bartending school" when I was 21, just to see a roster of horrifically shitty bars that were supposedly hiring. All lessons in who's scamming you should be that cheap. What does higher ed cost these days?)

Yes those people who went to school for dentistry or medicine or law or engineering are all idiots who just should have spend a weekend reading a Wikipedia page.

Dentists and doctors in general is complicated because it's impossible to train "on your own", but law school...come on, you just need a good brain, patience and reading a lot.

You have some valid points like college won’t necessarily teach you what your job needs you to do. There have been some partnerships with companies where they have asked colleges to step in a build out degreed training programs.

People with degrees regardless of degree do tend to make more money in the long run.

>> People with degrees regardless of degree do tend to make more money in the long run.

In aggregate. But that's wildly skewed by people who end up with higher degrees. If you look at bachelors, for every 2 people with a degree who make $20/hr bartending or selling used cars, there may be one person with no degree earning $150/hr coding or plumbing or fixing machines.

I'm not sure being "gifted" has anything to do with it. High school is easy, and they keep dumbing it down over time. Little to zero effort is required to pass. This can fool people with a minimal amount of intelligence into thinking they're Very Smart. Especially since everybody keeps telling you that you're the smartest kid around and treating you like a nerd. I was able to get near max grades with little study in the subjects I cared about, and passable grades with zero effort in the ones I didn't. It can seriously warp one's perception of reality.

When I got into medical school I straight up failed a class for the first time in my life right in my first semester. I got my ass kicked so hard it's not even funny. I had to put in actual effort into learning stuff for the very first time in my life. I had to spend all of my waking hours in the laboratories to learn this stuff. I met people who had zero issues studying 5-10 times as much as I did. In the middle of it all I got diagnosed with ADHD by the neurologist I was shadowing.

This is when I finally understood the point of school. One of the most bitter complaints from students is the fact most people don't use the knowledge they learn. That's not really the point of school. The point is to just show that you can learn. The point is teaching you how to study and apply yourself so that you don't get your ass kicked later in life when the really difficult stuff starts. Perseverance and mental resillience.

I'm not really a "gifted" person but people treated me like one and in retrospect it was quite detrimental to me. If anything they probably need to identify the "smart" kids and kick their asses harder because the existing classes aren't getting the job done. But if teachers do that people accuse them of tracking...

I wonder how many of these "work ethic" stories are just undiagnosed ADHD stories in disguise...

I mean, this is the second time I see ADHD mentioned in this thread, and the story of somebody who just can't keep focus study for long hours kind of fits textbook symptoms.

To be clear, I'm not saying everyone commenting here with similar stories have ADHD, but uh... if it rings a bell, maybe think about it.

(FWIW, I suspect I'm also an undiagnosed case...)

Oh lots. Not all but lots. It's not like I have a study to point to but I still have no doubt about that. You'll see lots of ADHD types here and in similar forums. For some reason, ADHD people seem to be really attracted to technology. They have "attention deficit" and yet don't have any trouble at all concentrating for 10 hours straight on things they care about and I often find that technology in general is in that list. Remember that "bipolar lisp programmer" article? It's more like ADHD lisp programmer. Actual bipolar patients I've seen weren't like that.

When I talk to an ADHD patient, I end up getting this distinct feeling they're talking about me instead. I run them through the diagnostic criteria and they match. I still refer them to a trusted psychiatrist regardless so that a proper differential diagnosis can be made, which does include bipolar disorder. Psychiatry is hard and I'm not about to underestimate the difficulty of it, especially since I could kill the patient if I'm wrong. So far getting this feeling seems to be virtually pathognomonic though.

Maybe because tech is responsive. In most cases the time required to compile, run and test code is a couple minutes. A couple hours at worst. The immediate gratification is really attractive for ADHD people.

^ This was what I intended to comment, and then I thought I should look up the "bipolar lisp programmer" article since I haven't read it before.

And I'll just note that, while the article doesn't mention it, a major feature touted by Lisp enthusiasts is the REPL :) Talk about immediate gratification...

By the way, the story sounds like mine too. Except I went to law school (law is undergrad in where I live). Everyone assumed I did poorly because I wasn't interested in the subject (a reasonable assumption since I was clearly oriented towards programming), but I think the real problem was the "artifice" mentioned in the article. Today, I still read legal cases/materials with interest from time to time, but if I were put back in that artificial law school environment I don't think I'd survive.

It's strange, smart kids in my uni absolutely aced it.

Hate to be that guy but did you ever consider that you weren't much above average? It could be the weaksauce school curriculum issue.

Aced what? I’m missing context it seems.

The guys who did well at my uni (a very good one) in my experience really were consistent in putting the work in. It's not that they had to really struggle with the material and homework problems, but they consistently did a good shift every day, and seemed to quite enjoy doing past exam questions when exam season approached, and all the rest. There was of course the odd mathmo savant who could see the matrix, but they were the exception. This was a good university that you've heard of, it had the best of the best aswell as well as the people like me. There were correspondingly people who I thought were brilliant and had serious flare, and have gone on to have excellent careers, but they didn't really Do The Work and their exams results reflected that. Thankfully, it doesn't really matter in the long run provided you survive it all psychologically.

This rings so true to me. In fifth grade after being given an IQ test, I took Algebra I early, only to retake it when I moved to junior high the next year. Then I had to retake trig because I did no homework, but aced the tests. Luckily the teacher recognized my ability and allowed me to take pre-calc while I retook trig.

By the time I was in undergrad I had no motivation to study. I'd skip classes and cram the night before for any class that was memorization based. I didn't even buy the books, just went to the library and checked the book out for a couple hours.

Fast forward a bit and I ended up dropping some classes because I was paying so little attention, I didn't even know when the tests were supposed to be. Came in one day and the prof said, "You missed the test last week, I presume you want to retake it?"

That said, I've done well enough having gone back later in life to get a PhD, but I do wonder sometimes if I would have accomplished more if I was forced to push the boundaries of my ability, thus leading me to develop a work ethic earlier on.

This seems to be a story of a kind that shows up regularly at HN. People who are smart in several ways but because they cannot do what some other (1 out of 10000) people-with-or-without-children can, they don't feel smart and are a bit frustrated by it.

Those others make a 'tutorial for creating a raytracer from scratch in a weekend', invent a format for a binary that runs as-is on several processor architectures, or are maintaining parts of the linux kernel.

I easily recognize such stories, perhaps because that story might apply to myself as well. This unfulfillment treat applies to this post as well as the writer of the article (the writer indicated that before his 150 day submersion he felt a bit dumb at mathematics).

The thing I want to bring across is now... we should not strive for such capability. There are many things to learn and ways to grow as a person, why beat ourselves up for not being very good at this or that particular thing?

Well, we let kids believe they’re just not good at math, and tell them that’s ok I’m sure you’re good at other things, and they believe it, and wish we’d stop doing that.

While they are not studying maths, they can grow and improve themselves in other ways, not?

There’s a world of difference between that and beating yourself up for not being in the top 0.01% of performance.

To coast through a serious program (physics, engineering physics, pure math, etc…) at a major university while barely doing any work and also simultaneously getting high marks takes a lot more than 0.01% performance.

More like 0.001%, at the very least, with some extra luck needed too.

Worse still, we lead kids to believe that 'doing math' is performing computations. And so even many kids that can calculate passably grow up thinking that 'math' is boring and they hate it.

Pretty early after kids learn about numbers and computations, they learn about sets, units, lengths, surfaces, weights etc.

Where i live, mathematical formulas are already thought to 7-8 year olds. Also real world questions are asked for which they need to find a solution, and where they need to explain how they found it.

> grow up thinking that 'math' is boring

How can it be thought in a less boring way, i do not immediately see it.

> real world questions are asked for which they need to find a solution, and where they need to explain how they found it.

This could be fun if the questions are predictable enough, but typically in my own early education 'word problems' just ended up being computation problems with the single extra step of translating the question into one of a very small handful of known formulas.

> mathematical formulas are already taught to 7-8 year olds

That's great, but applying memorized formulas is still just computation.

> How can it be thought in a less boring way, i do not immediately see it.

Mathematics is the work mathematicians do. That work is fundamentally creative: it's about exploring, defining, and constructing abstract structures and conducted through writing. Mathematics as it's taught before college is typically presented almost exclusively as a mere instrument in service of engineering or the empirical sciences. This is like teaching physics purely as a parade of unexplained facts about past results and never giving students a chance to conduct experiments!

There should be way less emphasis on the notion of a single track of linear progress from arithmetic to calculus. Formulas should be derived by students rather than just presented to them for memorization. Formal logic should be introduced about as early as arithmetic; first-order logic certainly isn't any more complicated than addition and multiplication. Teachers should prove the principles they expect students to rely on. Mathematical topics which do not require great facility with engineering computations (e.g., calculus, linear algebra, trigonometry), like propositional logic, discrete math, and basic geometry, should be used as opportunities to get students reading and writing proofs for themselves in multiple mathematical contexts as early as possible.

The more students have a sense of the foundations of what they're learning, the more meaningful it can be to them. The more deeply they understand their formulae, the less memorization is required. And the sooner they engage with proofs, the sooner they have a chance to engage with mathematical as a creative and collaborative process.

We have not acknowledged an approach that teaches the majority math properly. Find approaches that do and also have some problems that resonate to children in an age appropriate way set for their environment.

> There are many things to learn and ways to grow as a person, why beat ourselves up for not being very good at this or that particular thing?

I'd say that this takes a lot of work to unlearn, be it social media or whatever else seems to teach us to compare ourselves against others. Even though there are people way more brilliant than me out there (maybe they're naturally gifted, maybe they have a better work ethic, or different circumstances), it is definitely possible to be happy for their success, rather than lean into being jealous or what have you.

Of course, they will often achieve more than I will and will lead better lives as a result of that, but that's also something to accept and take in stride, rather than for example believing that I'm some temporarily embarrassed soon-to-be millionaire who's one good idea away from a lavish lifestyle. Not that it should discourage me from being curious about new ideas, even if writing my own particle simulation quite quickly ran into the n-body problem and also the issues with floating point numbers when the particles get close and the forces between them great.

What made you believe you were in the 99.999th percentile when going into university? (As opposed to something more realistic like the 99th percentile)

Unless you were literally outsmarting your teachers every day at age 16, it seems difficult to successfully fool yourself in this way.

There are a lot of things that one can be in the absolute top of, and overall academic achievement need not be one of them.

Speaking personally, when these articles come out, there are always a lot of comments about "I didn't really try super hard in high school, but college was a huge wakeup call for me and I had to learn to learn."

That wasn't me at all. I somewhat lazily skated through high school, and got a mix of 4s and 5s on AP exams. I did the exact same thing in college, with no change to my work/learning ethic, and lazily skated my way to finishing my 4-year molecular bio degree in 3 years, with a GPA of like 3.5 or so. Then I went to grad school, did more of the same for two years, and won an award for having the 2nd best masters thesis produced by the university that year.

Then I got a great job in my field doing cancer research, did that for 5 years, then jumped careers entirely and now work in robotics.

But you know what? I feel like I'm constantly surrounded by people smarter than me. I'm not some brilliant person, I'm just some dude that when presented with some problem, things just seem to make sense for a path forwards, and maybe my special thing is that I just always go explore that path and learn that either I was right or why I was wrong and that just pays dividends. When I see people around me who work hard at things, who study and memorize and read papers, they impress the heck out of me, because I really struggle to do the same thing. And when I do, I really struggle to absorb any information; if something doesn't make sense to me, it's like it just passes out of my head. I have to do/build/try it to make it make sense a lot of the time, or at least have things framed in a way that just intuitively makes sense for me.

Anyway, my point is that maybe I was the top 99.99% of something, because, clearly I was/am pretty good at some things that apparently most "gifted" people struggle with. But I never got a 4.0, I never aced all my classes, and I never really cared to as long as I felt I was getting what I needed to out of the classes. I did the work I needed to do to gain the information and skills I felt I was there for, and as long as the number assigned to me by the professor for doing so was at least an 80, I was happy.

> What made you believe you were in the 99.999th percentile when going into university?

Oh, nothing at all. I'm just a case of suddenly discovering in university that you also need good work ethic and that showing up alone is no longer enough (as a sibling comment points out) and you can't always cram all of the topics for exams in your head in a single night before the exam. In my case, calculus introducing new concepts (for which I didn't have a practical use, so it was even more confusing) and probability theory get less intuitive was that wake-up call. Well, that alongside an ASM course with a toolchain that I couldn't easily get working on my computer, or working with Prolog in similar circumstances, or understanding that I've underestimated how long making a 2D simulation project in C++ for extra credit would take, if I need to have collision detection and some physics for a soccer example.

That said, in my Master's studies, once I got to specialize in the things that were of more interest to me, I ended up graduating with a 10/10 evaluation for the thesis and 9.87/10 weighted average grade across the subjects. That's not like a super big achievement from a small regional university, but definitely goes to show that learning some things was easier for me than others. I probably need to venture outside of my comfort zone occasionally though and not just do the things that are comfortable.

The difference is that math is the only field of study of things that are 100% true about the universe. It's the most pure knowledge that humanity has, so it's normal people recognize it. You can read 100 philosophy books and maybe you will learn a few things that are correct among all the rambling, but everything you learn from the basics of math proof by proof all the way "up", you can be assured everything is true. There's something special about this field of knowledge that nothing else has.

Math is not about the universe, it would be true even if the universe didn’t exist at all.

It is, however, about turtles.

There must be a word for everything, so just replace with whatever you want instead, if universe triggers you.

In a sense even this is not true, as in any sufficiently complex (which turns out to be quite simple) formal system you can create proofs that are true and untrue at the same time creating a contradiction. In other words, mathematics works by setting up useful axioms and following up on the logical consequences, but they usually can be used to create contradictory proofs even if useful in many problems.

I recommend learning about Gödel’s incompleteness theorem behind it all.

For a pop science book that explains it nicely I recommend ”I am a strange loop”. The wiki intro is also quite good

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%B6del%27s_incompletenes...

Wait a minute, the universe as we know it, is a model of a universe, the way we humans understand it today.

That model is flawed, this is in fact the basis of science.

The latest scientific finding is considered true until... a more advanced model proves that there are cases where it is not true. A thrown object on earth follows a parabole? ... no it follows a straight line, the space around it is bent by a force that is known as the gravitational field.

What about math itself, no universe considered?

Math itself follows axioms which cannot be proven. Since we found no contradictions in the maths built upon those axioms, we consider those axioms to be true. You can think however of axioms on which you can build equations that are true and untrue at the same time.

My point being, whether we like it or not, the Truth with a capital T does not exist or at least cannot be proven.

Cannot be proven, physically. Mathematical truths prove themselves with their application to physical motion, e.g. Fourier Transformation, such extension of logical principles unto physical body sensations in contact with an external world is great evidence for myself that mathematical reasoning self-reliance in its ordering is great.

Also gifted child here, but grew up with parents who drilled into me that "effort matters, you might not be the best, but with effort you can be better than who you were yesterday and that is a worthy endeavor" It's just a slight switch of mindset, but that small switch carried me through times when subjects got too hard and when I wanted to give up because I felt I wasn't talented enough.

I knew so many gifted kids who got perfect scores in college freshman year (engineering) but started giving up when things didn't come as easily to them. They all ended up leading mediocre lives after.

I wasn't as smart as them but I knew I could always do better if I tried harder (even though the ROI wasn't great at first). So I just kept grinding (16 hour days studying). My GPA rose very gradually until eventually I finished with a not-great but respectable 3.6 (the 3.4-3.7 range is typically attained by folks who maybe didn't have natural talent but worked hard). That GPA got me into grad school where I got to study what I loved (way fewer exams, more research).

Carol Dweck wrote a book on "growth mindset" that talks about this. You don't have to read the book, but the idea of growth mindset, though simple, has been really transformative in my life.

Sometimes the greatest gift you can give a gifted kid is failing early at something they want, so they learn the grit to achieve it.

Absolutely. No matter how gifted a person is, there is going to be some point in their lives or some domain where pure talent will be insufficient.

Even super geniuses like Terence Tao struggled (he nearly did not pass his generals).

https://terrytao.wordpress.com/2019/06/27/living-proof-stori...

https://web.math.princeton.edu/generals/tao_terence

The American Mathematical Society has a PDF of essays of brilliant mathematicians (including Terence Tao) who despite their abilities, faced obstacles and difficulties that their sheer talents were inadequate to overcome, and they had to persevere.

https://blogs.ams.org/inclusionexclusion/2019/06/26/living-p...

> Absolutely. No matter how gifted a person is, there is going to be some point in their lives or some domain where pure talent will be insufficient.

Unfortunately, for some this comes in university where we see peers with worse grades getting access to better graduate roles and work placements because of who they are related to, and you can't study your way to having the right surname.

> Also gifted child here, but grew up with parents who drilled into me that "effort matters, you might not be the best, but with effort you can be better than who you were yesterday and that is a worthy endeavor"

Can confirm that getting lauded for effort encouraged doing hard things and pushing the limits of my abilities, rather than focusing on things that came easily.

Being lauded for effort when you didn't put in any effort doesn't help though, just makes you think grownups are dumb.

Being lauded for effort you did put in can be quite effective, as confirmed both by numerous studies and by the personal experiences of myriad people.

>parents who drilled into me that "effort matters, you might not be the best, but with effort you can be better than who you were yesterday and that is a worthy endeavor"

This is also taught heavily in middle/high school sports; it's a great life lesson.

if you had to grind 16 hours a day studying to get a 3.6 GPA in undergrad you werent "gifted"

Somewhere sits a autistic gamedev, mulling over a beer: "everyone i know can easily dive headfirst into low level programming, electrical engineering, write their own simulations, rendering or even whole game engines, but talking to people or women ,some people are just built differently .Wish i was born on the side with the greener grass..

But it’s important to remember that everyone has their own set of challenges

> Lovely article, though honestly getting those prerequisites also takes a lot of time, effort and either motivation or discipline in ample amounts.

Exactly. It's like saying that winning a marathon is easy, you just need to run fast enough.

The entire problem is that many people won't be able to learn the prerequisites of advanced math. There are always exceptional cases, like someone really smart who just totally slacked off during school because they spent all their time building apps or websites or tinkering with games or electronics. Or someone who was never given the opportunity to learn certain subjects because they had to work as a teen because their parents died etc. But the vast majority of people are presented with the prereq material they just can't absorb it.

> And if I’m struggling, as someone who’s not burdened by having children to take care of or even not having the most demanding job or hours to make ends meet, I have no idea how others manage to have a curious mind and succeed the way they do.

Parent here. Raising children has a way of making you more efficient. In my pre-child years there were days where I could putter around and relax because I knew I could make up the work later in the evening or even a weekend. Or at least that’s the lie we tell ourselves in the moment.

Post-kid, things come into focus. You learn how to do the work now whether you feel like it or not, because the price for doing it later becomes much higher.

I also was misled by all of the internet comments about how parenting and raising kids is awful and everyone secretly hates it despite their fake happy social media posts. After having kids you realize you actually like your kids and want to spend more time playing with them. That alone is motivation to get work done now so you don’t have to sacrifice the valuable kid time later.

It’s hard to explain until you get there, but I’ve talked to many other parents who went through the same growth phase. I’ve also caught up with some (not all, some) of my old friends from high school who were academic superstars but who did not have kids, and it’s remarkable to observe how some (again, don’t flame me, not all) of them are stuck in the low motivation/low effort loop and cite that as one of their reasons for not having kids. To each their own, but I for one am glad I ignored the internet/Reddit rhetoric about how kids are an impossible burden that will only make your life worse.

Also, having a kid is great to get you to learn new things. I want my son to learn to play an instrument, so I've finally been taking piano classes because I know that very few children of completely non-musical parents actually succeed in learning to play instruments. Learning piano has been a lot of fun, I have a blast playing simple things with him (he's still young) and learning some of my favorite music.

Likewise, after reading "Math from Three to Seven: The Story of a Mathematical Circle for Preschoolers", I've been having a lot of fun getting back into Mathematics because it's fun doing things like this together.

I had the complete opposite experience, never gifted. Bullied by my teachers in middle school for my lack of intelligence. It was always an effort battle. The only way to get the pre-reqs was to literally drill 100s of problems. I remember I did for one math test in college and I studied consistently for hours for weeks only to get an 89. I earned that and my college roommate coasted in and got a 96. Work ethic wasn’t a choice it was the only way. My perspective on gifted students not utilizing their full potential is smallest violin. I wish I had what you had. But I don’t and all I had was motivation and discipline. I struggled all the time in school but work has been easy by comparison.

I’m emotional about this and don’t mean to attack anyone, but all my friends in the same state are all depressed and on SSRIs. It is sad for me to see them. For me the conflict was never being good enough, for them it’s the same but they seemingly chose not to do anything about it. That might be the difference simplistically but life isn’t that simple. There is no conclusion for this antidote or argument. Maybe just find a problem where you get pushed to your absolute limit, might be at academia or startup or something. You find some truths at the end of that.

I was that kid, now I have 3 sons and I am homeschooling my oldest because he is similar. The hack is essentially to praise the work, not the outcome. On some level you have to be unfair to your kid to be fair with him.

Although I'm not on the super sweaty side of trying to grok some of those items in your list, I have been going back to square one from the perspective of having started with and followed the whole dependency tree of frontend but never understanding the really low level.

Over time, I've learned to appreciate getting "reps" in whatever subject, and just sitting with it for ages and grinding your brain into dust trying. Something I've also been noticing now in my 30s, is that your and my ability to do that is something to be proud of—even if it won't come as fast as for someone innately faster or with more prereqs—because many people are truly not curious and don't push themselves. The amount of otherwise smart people even that won't or can't sit down to learn something for curiosity sake, and I'm not talking something very long-term like game engines, is... like next to zero people.

And it not just true for learning hard or impractical subjects, but the overwhelming majority of the surprisingly high number of decent friends I have, do not have the patience for pushing themselves and will bail on hard physical activities as quick as possible, even if they're pretty fit. It's quite eye opening. They tell me they want to go do __, but not if they can't squeeze it in to an afternoon, even if they definitely have the time, and it really detracts from trying to share the experience or curiosity.

Just accept that this is the case and meet people where they are. And collect some friends that share your curiosities and passions. People can be good and reliable friends even if they are content living a simple life in simple ways as it's always been, without pushing for abstract novelty and learning.

People try to blame school for killing the natural curiosity of kids, but I've come to be very skeptical about this. It's an idealized romantic notion. Most mammals lose their playfulness in adulthood and most humans are like this too, even if not to the same extent (some say humans retain more neoteny, similar to domesticated animals like dogs that also remain more playful than wolves as adults).

These two types of people often misunderstand each other. For you a job might become boring if it stays the same year upon year. But for most people the thought of having to keep up with ever changing knowledge requirements after school and even once they are settled in their jobs is utterly terrifying.

Ya, I'd actually agree with your whole comment, and for that reason I was somewhat hesitant to frame my last sentence as I did, because what you suggested is what I've come to learn to do anyway. Part of the reason I was hesitant is because it's not about me, so much as it is about reconciling that ambiguous difference in expectation when they express that they have an interest in something.

Unfortunately, there's some amount of skepticism and doubt I have to embrace, being careful what I express an interest in, and letting them be as serious about whatever commitment as they're authentically prepared for. I typically only do things for myself now, and extend an invitation to people I think might want to join, but I don't bet on it, and only rarely plan more involved activities with people who've clearly put in some organic initiative. On the extreme shallow end of this paradigm, I'm sure as hell not going to agree to go on a hike "sometime" with anyone who's hopped up on coke or drunk at a party, obviously. But sometimes it's just less clear, and I have to ask myself "how likely is it that this person would plan this themselves and take the initiative, and do they even have appropriate footwear or baseline level of fitness?", and I might ask that explicitly and go from there. I also do the same for the them, such as if I'm asked if I want to "get into Tennis" or something. I just say "nah, not really, I might join if you have a spare racket but right now I couldn't give it the investment it might deserve" and we can spend time doing other things we already enjoy together.

Otherwise though, I try to keep a small list of easy stuff in my back pocket to accommodate people with more rigid schedules and less innate drive for that specific outing; if after a few they want to take things further, I'll extend myself, and that's how good friendships last.

Sometimes people are just bad at predicting their own level of commitment or disentangling desires and reality. Or they know they are "supposed to" do something so they promise it or even believe that this time it will work... This is often the case with diet and exercise and studying hard. Then sweets, sitting on the couch and procrastination happen. Then the cycle repeats.

Also in some cultures it's rude to reject invitations so people always say yes but it's understood implicitly by both parties that it's just politeness. The US tends to be like this, always saying stuff like "you should come over for dinner sometime" etc and you must reply enthusiastically but both the invitation and the acceptance count only in reality if a date and time is attached. This is often baffling to continental Europeans for example who tend to be more direct and would follow up with a message next day, asking when they should come over. Which is awkward because it wasn't a real invitation.

The coasting until real work was required part sounds very familiar, and also the getting by in objective terms but being unhappy and struggling mentally part too.

After embarrassingly many years I've learned that there's a little voice inside that says "you can't", "that won't work", "that was shit". Succeeding at anything, for anybody, is stacking a whole lot of little failures and frustration, but crucially, being able to ignore that little voice. I, and I assume many of us, have burned half of my energy and mental health fighting that little voice. To me, it seems that most of those manage-anything people are not just generally gifted intelligence-wise or physically, but have learned to silence that inner voice and just do things until they succeed, while still avoiding to do "stupid" things.

As a distance runner, I've learned a bit of dopamine trickery, but managing that inner voice, and even being aware of it, is turning out to be a life-long project. It becomes a mission of figuring out what you're burning your energy on, and why. You can't strive for happiness or success, but it should be possible to get enough stuff done to find contentment and acceptance.

I have just recently learned that the little voice can be amplified by people around you. Being removed from those re-enforcing that little voice is an amazingly freeing mentally.

Paradoxically, I _feel_ like I have more time after I had kids than before. This is of course, after YOB (year of baby- first 12mo).

You see, I experienced such small slices of free time during YOB, that I became way more efficient at a ton of stuff, and dropped things that were time wasters.

Because I reproduced, I needed more dough. After working 3 jobs, 90 hrs a week for long enough, I decided to study programming.

Went to a code boot camp and walked out with a job. But the grinding didn’t stop there. What followed that was years and years of grinding, and studying as much as possible outside of programming at work.

Until finally, I got where I was going. I climbed up the ladder until I got tired of climbing, and avoided more stressful and time-demanding roles like management. I get senior dev compensation, don’t work more than 40hr/week, and I don’t commute. This is the life I built.

For everything I pursue, there are others who can run circles around me. But I can still look down from that ladder and see how far I came.

Wait, what am I talking about? Ok, the whole point is I became efficient and middle-class because I have mini-mes that deserve it.

Also, you never know what’s on the other side of that wizard level person you see. Everything I said sounds nice, but I wasn’t taking care of myself. Last year I had a mental breakdown, and am just now getting out of it.

So yeah, you’re not alone, etc etc, you know. There’s probably more people that can relate than you think.

It's wild how much kids teach you about yourself and your time on this earth, let alone your time available each day.

It's hard work but I can't think of a better motivation to improve one's self. And the best part is you don't even necessarily realize that it's happening.

I think one factor that people forget when they see someone else that dive headfirst into something like low level programming or electrical engineering and then wonder why they haven’t is because maybe you just don’t care.

I did personally get a degree in EE and have worked on low level programming (and funnily enough I do a lot of frontend these days), but there are things that still wow me like people writing game engines. I tried working on game engines briefly and I never got anywhere.

I eventually realized that I just don’t care about game engines or making games for that matter. I wasn’t willing to put in the effort. Watching other people build game engines is more of a spectator sport for me. And that’s fine.

But when I do find something that makes me really happy, it keeps me up thinking all day and night about it.

I feel the prerequisite for simulations, game engines, and rendering is also maths

In university the environment changes dramatically

Yes. This is mainly because of 2 reasons:

1. Things actually get more complicated

2. Most of your "teachers" know a lot less about teaching than your school teachers, because they never had formal training in teaching. However, there are some lecturers who are natural talents.

The second point is why you have to do more work to actually learn a topic. Your lecturer won't meet you halfway, but you have to get a lot closer to them to grasp their explanations.

Formal teaching training never made a bad teacher good.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Direct_instruction

From that article:

> however, when qualified by IQ and reading levels, Strategy Instruction (SI) had better effects for the high IQ group.

Which only goes to show that being a great teacher is an impossible mission, and it's wonderful how many succees at it despite the difficulty.

DI is rarely used to train teachers, unfortunately, and even if it were, the education-government complex designs school procedures and discipline rules that would make it very hard to implement.

I always thought the real reason was that the cadence of the lessons more closely matched what is possible for a person of average or above intelligence who was motivated to learn. The rate at which information is taught to children in school is kept at a low level because most of the students are not motivated to learn the subjects and instead need to be guided to learn those specific subjects.

The example I was always given for this was the rate at which those same "non-gifted" students would learn subjects they actually care about--like dinosaurs or sports facts. Kids will soak that information up and spend tons of time learning more, but it just isn't useful. Instead we force them to spend less times on those subjects they love and guide them into things society views as more important.

For me things got much better when I got to uni. In high school I didn’t care about most of the subjects, but at uni I was studying what I had chosen for myself.

who took your curious mind?

One way to get it back is to play with children.

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