General > General Technical Chat

Belgian boy Laurent Simons heads off to university aged 8.

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Alex Nikitin:

--- Quote from: Kjelt on July 02, 2018, 07:42:49 am ---We are discussing things here none of us are experts at, so we are talking out of our behind.
If some psychologists came on this forum discussing electronic circuits on this level we would be  :palm: all the time.

--- End quote ---

1) ~90% of psychology is BS anyway (and I did a full psychology course in the uni as a part of my degree) and the child development psychology even more so.

2) Skipping some school years if you can do it (speaking from a personal experience) can be very beneficial in some respects (personal development) and difficult in other respects (social interactions). I wouldn't exchange the first for the second though but it is me, for someone else it may be different.

3) IMHO, if you are not challenged enough in your school years it is not just a waste of valuable time, but it suppresses your future development very badly. If you are lucky, a good teacher can be a lot of help in this respect, but not many teachers can provide the necessary support.

4) I wish all the best to this Belgian boy, it won't be an easy life for him but it could be a lot of fun  ;) .

Cheers

Alex

P.S. - you can not force this kind of development, it is always the result of child's own intent, and adults (parents and teachers) can only support it or arrest it, the second is more common, unfortunately.

Marco:

--- Quote from: ataradov on July 01, 2018, 07:40:41 am ---Although there is a real-life example of such genius actually getting anywhere is life - Terence Tao.

--- End quote ---

I find it a pity that people like this so often find their happiness working on what is essentially advanced numerology. Sure there is a chance that one of those number theorems will be the basis of something useful, but it's not entirely likely. It would be nice if the brightest gravitated towards the fields which most contribute to human welfare. At this point prime number theory ain't it.

Could be worse though, he could have spend his time as an investment quant.

Zero999:

--- Quote from: Rick Law on July 02, 2018, 03:28:27 am ---Even assuming everything is good and he goes to college at 8...

Unabomber (Ted Kaczynski), a mathematics prodigy and a killer, went to Harvard at 16.  At 25, he became the youngest assistant professor at UC Berkeley.

He was not emotionally ready for college.  It is widely believe that it was his feeling out of place that he became an outcast.  A couple of years after Berkeley, he moved to live in the mountain like a hermit, make just enough to live on and to build bombs.  In his dozen or so attacks, 3 deaths (I think).

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

It takes more than just knowledge to go to college.  It takes emotional maturity as well.

--- End quote ---
Agreed and going from the Wikipedia, it's likely he has autism, hence why he found it so difficult to interact with older children. I suppose autism wasn't widely known about back then, so it's excusable.


--- Quote from: chris_leyson on July 01, 2018, 02:17:26 am ---
--- Quote ---I fear that this is his parents pushing him to do this stuff, and that scares me
--- End quote ---
"His father said his son had struggled when he was younger to play with other children, and had not been particularly interested in toys." and "If he decided tomorrow to become a carpenter, that would not be a problem for us, as long as he is happy," his father said." His parents aint pushing him he's a really gifted child he's not interested in day to day banality his "head" is and has always been somewhere else maybe mathematics.

--- End quote ---
Going from that, it seems likely he also has autism, which is more common in child geniuses. If that's the case, sending him to university will not fix this. I think more time should be spent on improving his social skills, rather than on academia.

Rick Law:

--- Quote from: Kjelt on July 02, 2018, 04:56:39 am ---As if one bad example would be significant for the whole group, I think there are more terrorists without extreme high iq that never made university before age 10  ;)

--- End quote ---

I agree one example does not describe the whole group.  But it would be foolish not to consider emotional aspects.  Even with grade-skipping, it could cause more emotional harm than it does academic good.

Just think about typical human behavior - who would be the class leader?  The person who is more mature/older or the one that is younger and acting like one?  So, in my estimation, the one entering a class a few years younger than his/her classmate will more likely become follower than leader, more likely to be timid than assertive...

I'd rather have a leader graduating on-time than a follower graduating a year sooner.

Yansi:

--- Quote from: NiHaoMike on June 30, 2018, 10:02:58 pm ---
--- Quote from: Mr. Scram on June 30, 2018, 08:50:05 pm ---I'd argue the reverse. There is a tendency to slow down sharp minds for the sake of the rest of the group, leading them to get bored, act up or even completely give up on academics. I think there's a focus on children lagging behind, but children ahead of the game are too often left to fend for themselves. Just because they're smart doesn't mean they understand how they tick or what their needs are yet and that can really bite.

--- End quote ---
I found many of the university classes "slow", especially the ones about power electronics.

--- Quote from: IanMacdonald on June 30, 2018, 09:57:50 pm ---Had a similar school experience, one teacher in particular made me keep repeating very basic arithmetic ad nauseam. Think it led to my general dislike of maths as a subject. Part of the problem is that many teachers don't actually understand the subject anyway, they just parrot the textbook at the students. Any student who asks awkward questions (that show up the teacher's own incompetence) is in for a world of pain.


--- End quote ---
I never really liked math for a long time, then cryptocurrency came along...

--- End quote ---

Power electronics education you say? That sounds very familiar to me. Came to the uni only to find out it won't give me anything new. Really nothing.  They teach only mainly stupid SCR stuff, then jump occasionally to IGBT, when clearly, the professor has little clue how these are used nowdays and how some of the DC/DC topologies look like.  The other interest I came for the uni was motor control. Not that much new to me either (some fundamentals of control theory help a lot) - however the rest is just teaching garbage, sometimes not even close to the field of study. Like stupid economics, ecology, history (but not that technical one really). Jeez, I am now pissed at the uni.

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