The comment it's replying to stated that 1937 quote as if they had checked it. That deception seems ruder to me the language in the comment you're talking about. But I do agree the last sentence could've been omitted while getting the core point across (but we're all only human).
Agree that the post comes across as rude in tone, but it’s never explicitly disparaging. Might just be an overly direct tone (non-native English speaker, or maybe on the spectrum?)
Nah just sounds like people can't handle what they say being questioned as per usual. We should never take offense to being asked to clarify or explain when someone thinks we're wrong.
I'd only be vaguely offended if they had no grounded reason to think that I'm wrong (and they'd be calling me out for the sake of calling me out).
Communicating ideas is a part of tribalism too. Good brain chemicals when the tribe agrees and bad brain chemicals when they disagree.
Laszlo Polgar would disagree [1]. He contends that raising a genius is something you can actually target intentionally (whether or not you should). His proof being 3 daughters who became GMs and one that was a generational talent. As far as audibles go, that’s quite a flex. Yes, the daughters are not all equally talented and chess isn’t quite the same as math, but we’re talking about gradiation within an achievement only reached by much less than 1% of all active players. To me that’s genius level. Also, it’s not necessarily an accident that the youngest is the one to have attained the best result. Evidence is quite clear that older siblings can help their younger ones achieve more faster because the younger ones see it as a path to follow/if they can I can.
Even if you disregard the anecdote (n=1) thing, it's quite obvious that genius has a genetic component to it, and the father being a good chess player tilts the odds in his favor quite a bit.
Also, the idea that chess is a good proxy for genius is a bit out of date.
Laszlo was casual amateur at chess, and it's an n=3 sample at least. Though one sister 'only' made it to IM, but that was likely more due to social reasons. She decided to get married, have a family, etc rather than continue on with chess as actively as the other sisters.
> Also, the idea that chess is a good proxy for genius is a bit out of date.
He wrote that the reason he chose chess was because it was objectively measurable. You play the game, you either win or you lose; there is no way to dispute the outcome.
Imagine that you have dozen children, each of them genius at something different, and that you are surrounded by people who want to prove you wrong. Whatever the artistic genius does, the people who hate you can simply say "yeah, he did something technically impressive, but it's lacking the... nebulous artistic qualities that only we can judge... therefore, not a true genius". Now the chess genius comes and wins every tournament against the adults, there is no way to argue that "yeah, he won all the chess tournaments, but... for some reason we still don't consider him to be a chess grandmaster".
That's just utilizing potential already present there and nurturing it far, the father was an established chess player and university professor and their mother is probably in similar range. Sure, it works, why would anybody argue against or find this shocking or relevatory?
Try the same with babies who are already visibly not the brightest (say in kindergarden group), their parents are also average or worse regarding intelligence. There is a ceiling, it may be high or not but its there. If you haven't experienced it in your life you are one of lucky few (and certainly didn't push yourself hard enough to sense it).
Same goes with memory - you can train it far, use various techniques. Then comes somebody natural (yet still far from what we would call genius) who didn't bother with any of that and immediately surpasses whatever was achieved. We are not created equal and all have hard boundaries, be it health, cognition, body regeneration and so on.
Data point: my comment prompted different reasons for why Polgar was successful: it’s genetic, he had time to spend with his kids, he was a professor, his kids all happened to be gifted, if you go to a kindergarten class you’ll already see kids that aren’t bright. Clearly more comfortable for explaining away because it forces us to look at why maybe we aren’t geniuses or our kids aren’t.
> Same goes with memory - you can train it far, use various techniques. Then comes somebody natural (yet still far from what we would call genius) who didn't bother with any of that and immediately surpasses whatever was achieved.
It’s always hard to compare how much effort and for how long they’ve been applying it between people. Someone starting earlier can make them seem like a genius. Someone who spent time developing their memory through various games may feel like they spent no time on it and “it’s natural” while someone else had to explicitly work at it instead because they never were encouraged to play memory strengthening games.
> We are not created equal and all have hard boundaries, be it health, cognition, body regeneration and so on.
Thats true, but the same was said of height but height only became 90% genetic once we fixed nutrition. I see no indication that our systems of parenting and child rearing are robust enough to make intelligence and academic outcomes purely genetic. It’s far too chaotic and you need to apply consistent effort daily almost from birth before the intentional learning stuff even happens. Making sure the mother is in good physical shape before birth, taking all the supplements before and after birth, limiting exposure to toxic stuff, making sure the baby is getting a good mix of engaged play, time to be chill, and exercise, making sure both parents are able to keep the child engaged and studying and understanding of expectations, adjusting the environment appropriately as they develop so they’re constantly challenged and enjoy and seek out challenges, that’s it’s emotionally and psychologically safe for the child, riding the balance of a little bit of frustration and recovering from that vs no frustration or frustration without a break, etc etc etc. a bunch of that happens before you start academic play to teach verbal and math skills and each of these is an add on (eg we know physical education is important for brain development).
Data point: I was at a prenatal class and after the nurse said marijuana isn’t good for the baby, one of the parents was asking “but like what’s the actual limit before it’s harmful”. So don’t be too sure that “surely kindergarten is early enough that kids are still on equal footing”. Another data point is I know a parent that has a 4 yold that doesn’t know how to read nor write because “he’s stubborn” nor is he going to preschool. Yet every parent that I know of that’s applied effort has their child typically by 2 or 3 and writing by 4/5 which is when basic math should already be going.
Nowhere did I state that there aren’t natural limits. But I also think academic achievement isn’t 90% genetic - there’s plenty of “naturally gifted” people who go on to not achieve anywhere as near as much as those who just work - perseverance trumps almost everything and environment trumps that because that’s how you learn perseverance.
The closest to the truth for Polgar is he had time to spend with his kids, but mainly because he prioritized doing so in a way to help them grow. Also, he did so with help from his wife. He wasn’t a chess prodigy. He chose chess because there was a clear demonstratable progression that a) could be used to demonstrate his theories b) his kids had immediate feedback on success c) could repeat the game endlessly to try out various tactics d) they studied chess as a family.
I agree, not every child can become a genius. Most of the reason for that today is less because of a learning disability or “physical limits” and more because of the environment the children are raised in (and the need to teach them perseverance and to keep trying regardless of how others are achieving).
Yes, but that kind of aristocratic tutoring is not scalable to the bulk of the population. You need the equivalent of deep PhD expertise in every subject to accomplish that, and even AIs are nowhere close to that level.
One needs to be a (long term present) parent to understand these subtleties.
You also hear just the success stories which are often extremely marginal, when such approach wouldn't fit development curve of some other potential genius we would not be hearing their less successful story, would we.
Not diminishing the overall message, in 80s even in western democracies deeper info was not so readily available so its not like his parents just threw him wifi-connected tablet with wikipedia opened and that was it.
But I think what should be celebrated more is some proper hard long term effort and not just usual approach with exceptional results.
Apologies I am not a native speaker so sometimes more complex thoughts take long sentences to explain.
We are discussing his parent's contribution to his growth. Some, like me, tend to agree they just gave him (good) tools and he found his interest and way through and beyond due to superior analytical skills and overall intelligence, not through some super duper tutoring by them.
I have cca such cousin. He was way ahead of his class (which was already math-focused class from secondary school), geniune interest in deeper math, physics and philosophy from early age. Even very good at software development in old Pascal or C. Nobody was tutoring him in any way, he just went to public library and borrowed what he liked.
The stuff thats not hard but still counts as discovery and learning must be self-motivating in way more average folks simply don't experience, not with same topics.
His parents, as an old saying in my country, must have done a tremendous amount of good things in their previous life to be rewarded with an easy kid :P
Fascism always trends to incompetency because it is stupid.
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