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how the fuck does someone finish high school at 8, and gets a PhD at 15?? boomers read super genius, i read rushed school, under constant stress and socially stunted.
It's usually all the things you mentioned, no interest in socializing the child with humans their own age, and parents that are also PhD havers. Most prodigies have some unusual access to a very learned person in the field they end up a prodigy.
no interest in socializing the child with humans their own age
If he's genuinely that intelligent, socializing him with humans his own age will just get him bullied or result in the other kids feeling inferior. He deserves to be able to engage with people who are on his level.
This might be a me problem but there is no way I would have been capable of interacting with a fifteen-year-old in my program like he was an adult like everyone else. I might talk to him about math in the same way I'd engage with a teenager on their favorite video game, but I'm not inviting a teenager to shoot the shit in my office and I'm not going to think of him as a friend.
result in the other kids feeling inferior
Also my imposter syndrome might have left the stratosphere.
He's a kid, he might be book smart but social development is strongly connected to age. No amout of "genius" changes that. Being able to relate to other people your own age is important.
No amout of "genius" changes that.
How could it not? You can't seriously expect that a kid who's capable of completing PhD-level research as a teenager is following the same cognitive and social development model as his peers. What's the advantage of putting him in a situation where he doesn't have sufficient cognitive outlets and force him to interact with people who most likely don't share his interests? It's a recipe for social isolation.
Lmao
Google 'William Sidis'.
Sidis's politics led to his participation in Boston's socialist May Day demonstration on May 1, 1919. The event, organized by socialist and anarchist groups, was intended as a peaceful protest against the Red Scare persecutions and in support of workers' rights.
Seems like he was a pretty cool dude.
I don't agree with your overall take on this matter of socialization, as we've established, but I concur that this Sidis guy seems like a pretty cool dude who had his life figured out and I have no goddamn clue what the person you're talking to thinks they're getting at lmao. Really wild to see someone get so heated about being asked to just state their opinion.
What a great analysis of his life story. Just like this picture.
Hey, I did what you asked me to do. If you had a specific point to make you were welcome to do so.
And clearly learned nothing.
I'm not really here to have both sides of a discussion myself.
Hoe is it a 'both sides' discussion, dumbass?
Google "how to have a discussion like a grownup"
Yeah, that isn't how a person learns to deal with the emotions of life. This child will never know how to interact normally with people that don't have a PhD and are at an academic conference.
Not saying he shouldn't get diversity of social experiences but the idea that a bunch of mutual misunderstandings with kids his own age is somehow going to result in better development doesn't really track, either.
It just means being a child prodigy is a curse. It's monkey paw shit. The kid is screwed either way. No matter what, he's going to grow up with a massive ego about how he's a god compared to the rest of us plebs only to crash out hard when he gets tripped up by something that he's not a prodigy in, which is literally everything outside of the one thing he's super competent in. Even a well-adjusted adult has to constantly fight against stans inflating their ego. A kid doesn't stand a fucking chance.
Learning how to navigate mutual misunderstanding productively and non violently is one of the most important aspects of socialization. Those misunderstandings are the development.
That assumes that the other party is also interested in navigation; some people are - and I'm sure you've reached this conclusion in your own experiences - just not worth the time and effort it takes to engage with. As it is all we can do is guess on the state of this kid's social life because the article doesn't talk about it. He could also have friends his own age; going through a PhD program would make it harder, but it's not like has to worry about feeding himself, taking care of his living situation, and paying off student loans like most PhD students.
Then he should get remedial intervention to improve his social skills.
I don't think that getting bullied is a skill issue.
If someone is being bullied because their parents have intentionally withheld age appropriate social opportunities I'm order to feed their own egos, leading them to have a deficit, then it is exactly a skill issue.
If, as hypothesized, the child was already behind in social aptitude, then completely exempting him from the world of children and fast tracking to adulthood is hardly the solution. It would only male the situation worse. Regardless of the behavior of other kids around him this is really setting up to fail down the road.
If, as hypothesized, the child was already behind in social aptitude, then completely exempting him from the world of children and fast tracking to adulthood is hardly the solution.
Why not? I don't think children really grow from getting bullied. If anything he is learning earlier how to deal with adults, a skill that is useful for your entire life. Having to deal with teenagers isn't really a problem that comes back later in life unless you decide to become a teacher or parent.
He might be, we don't know either way. Jumping immediately to the conclusion that he must be socially stunted just because he's doing an advanced degree at a young age smells like anti-intellectualism.
I was just replying to what you said which was further assumptions based on that assumption. I didn't introduce any of that stuff.
These stories almost never end well
if you're gonna get a group together to do 80+ people all at once, you should totally take the heads and make like some furniture or a trophy/altar with the skulls.
it's a timeless way to say, "we handle our shit around here, so don't start any."
tangential point, but these days i find myself astonished to see someone get a STEM PhD that isn’t AI related
…why? Most STEM research isn’t AI related, so why shouldn’t there be PhDs that aren’t?
Right after the defense, he returned to Munich to start a second doctorate in medical science with artificial intelligence.
Good news!
He says the degree is a means to a larger goal: building longer, healthier lives by enhancing human biology.
Simons research focuses on Bose polarons, mobile impurities dressed by surrounding particles, in superfluids and supersolids.
Maybe it's because I'm not a genius child prodigy but I'm not seeing the connection between these two ideas.
Also, I had to stop reading that article midway through because it's an incoherent jumble of sentences that reads like a game of journalistic beautiful corpse.
this post was submitted on 28 Dec 2025
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