[HN Gopher] First we shape our social graph, then it shapes us (...
___________________________________________________________________
First we shape our social graph, then it shapes us (2022)
Author : Curiositry
Score : 88 points
Date : 2024-06-23 17:24 UTC (2 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.henrikkarlsson.xyz)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.henrikkarlsson.xyz)
| mediumsmart wrote:
| _the great merit of society is to make one appreciate solitude_
| nico wrote:
| > Most who grew up to become geniuses, pre-1900, were kept apart
| from same age peers and raised at home, by tutors or parents
|
| Pretty much all kids are a lot smarter than we acknowledge
|
| Lazlo Polgar believed geniuses are made, not born, and raised his
| daughters to become chess grandmasters
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/L%C3%A1szl%C3%B3_Polg%C3%A1r
|
| The school system is more of an industrial childcare operation
| for working parents, than an actual education system for the kids
|
| It's also easy to criticize, and it is very hard for parents to
| provide good resources and enough attention for the kids to fully
| develop their potential
| leetrout wrote:
| > The school system is more of an industrial childcare
| operation for working parents, than an actual education system
| for the kids
|
| Bingo. And, as the spouse of a teacher, there's not a lot of
| hope of that changing any time soon. The pay would have to
| change... the people currently working would have to be
| dismissed or, for those introspective and motivated,
| retrained... never going to happen.
|
| And generally focused on creating followers not thinkers. I
| really enjoyed "The Coddling of the American Mind"
|
| https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/09/the-cod...
|
| https://www.thecoddling.com/
| mtillman wrote:
| Easy evidence is how they enter school loving books and leave
| school dreading books most of the time. Another point is how
| school times start just before work hours for parents.
| Finally, they pump the kids full of high sugar substances
| which actually damage cognitive functions over time.
| Thankfully, minimally incentivized people are there to keep
| them inline.../s
| unclebucknasty wrote:
| I agree that the school system is in need of help. And,
| there's the saying that it was intended to train workers for
| the machine, which is at least a minor upgrade from
| "industrial childcare".
|
| But, then is it really _that_ bad? I mean, as a nation, we
| 've managed to make it quite a way and lead the world in many
| categories.
|
| And, here we are on HN, cogently observing the issues from
| the "outside". Yet, I'd wager most of us are products of the
| public school system. How did so many manage to reach escape
| velocity?
| leetrout wrote:
| Part of this is touched on in "Coddling".
|
| Each generation is getting a different (worse?) experience
| as they are maturing several years later than previous
| generations. It's not just "public school bad"... quiet a
| lot of factors in play, especially at the collegiate level.
|
| But lots of people disagree with the article and the book.
| But I found it made compelling, accurate arguments.
| unclebucknasty wrote:
| I do agree about the maturation rate vs past times. But,
| I would chalk this up to a number of other factors which
| have changed and have had a more outsized impact than
| schools.
|
| For one, parenting is far different, with parents now
| more integrally involved in their childrens' day to day
| lives. Kids are not encouraged to be independent, nor do
| they have as much opportunity to make decisions for
| themselves.
|
| I would imagine "Coddling" speaks to that as well. But,
| that really has very little to do with schools.
| sdrinf wrote:
| Won't speak of others on HN, but for me, absolutely, 100%,
| succeeded _despite_ the public education system (as
| evidenced by ~99% of my peers not "making it" out from a
| dark place). And as someone self-medicating, and using
| their own money to seek psychologists, therapy, and help
| for the damage caused by it ~20 years later still, it is my
| value statement that it is absolutely 100% utterly,
| irredeemably horrible.
|
| If people really cared about their children, the public
| education system, as a whole system, would be terminated.
|
| They don't.
| llamaimperative wrote:
| Or people had a different experience from yours. Is that
| really so unbelievable that it's better to think everyone
| is as traumatized as you but they literally just don't
| care about their children? Sorry but that's completely
| absurd.
| unclebucknasty wrote:
| If a school has traumatized 99% of its students (or some
| co-hort within its student population), then there
| probably needs to be an investigation.
|
| But, I don't think that's most people's experience.
| krageon wrote:
| > is it really that bad?
|
| You must have spent at least _some_ time in school. You
| will have experienced exactly how bad it is - it 's not a
| space for thinking, it is a space for shutting up and
| conforming.
|
| You imply "many" manage to reach escape velocity. The GP's
| point is the opposite: Most do not, and this is the
| tragedy.
| unclebucknasty wrote:
| I largely agree that independent thinking isn't a
| priority, but there was TAG (which admittedly emphasized
| skills that all kids should've been taught), and the
| occasional outstanding teacher.
|
| I do believe that critical-thinking is the single-most
| impactful untaught skill in public schools. It's a
| gateway to so much more, including an autodidactic
| lifestyle. It's honestly mind-boggling that logic and
| critical-thinking aren't a recurring theme.
|
| Still, our schools produce a lot of amazing students who
| go on to make hugely impactful contributions.
|
| Sure, it needs improvement. But I think the degree of
| dysfunction is overstated.
| hobs wrote:
| Yeah, it was clear they were training us for an industrial work
| ethic with 40 minute periods with bells moving us from place to
| place, regimented bathroom and recreational activity, and
| generally a complete disinterest in learning, just do the
| homework kid, we don't care and we wont call on you.
| PartiallyTyped wrote:
| My early childhood is very similar to that of some Field
| medalists.. and then I went to school and the problems began..
| between bullying, isolation, and a host of other issues, adult
| me feels the burden of "potential".
|
| I don't blame my parents for it, they really didn't have much
| of a choice in the matter as we were too poor for private
| schools and homeschooling isn't a thing where I come from.
| cma wrote:
| Norbert Weiner was explicitly raised by his father to be a
| prodigy as well:
|
| https://www.amazon.com/Norbert-Wiener_A-Life-Cybernetics-Mat...
| rustcleaner wrote:
| I was incessantly mobbed, physically and psychologically,
| throughout early school with no escape and all cries for rescue
| rendered impotent... and all I got was this lousy +4 z-score IQ!
|
| I didn't choose the genius life, the genius life chose me. *sob*
| 082349872349872 wrote:
| Everyone wants to be a genius until it's time to do genius
| shit.
|
| > _I never sleep, I don 't know why. I had a roommate and I
| drove her nuts, I mean really nuts, they had to take her away
| in an ambulance and everything. But she's okay now, but she had
| to transfer to an easier school, but I don't know if that had
| anything to do with being my fault. But listen, if you ever
| need to talk or you need help studying just let me know, 'cause
| I'm just a couple doors down from you guys and I never sleep,
| okay?_ --JC
| vinnyvichy wrote:
| That's why sincere aspirants always do some obviously dumb
| shit on the side?
| mrdatawolf wrote:
| I Understood That Reference. Once I got to ".. I mean really
| nuts" I had started reading it in her voice :)
| Veuxdo wrote:
| > And after a handful of years of hanging about with people more
| skilled than themselves, our babies--these tiny, soft-skulled
| creatures--can out-compete chimpanzees in all but close combat.
|
| I don't even want to ask
| jon_richards wrote:
| Also not accurate. Chimps have extremely powerful numerical
| working memories. https://www.cell.com/current-
| biology/fulltext/S0960-9822(07)...
| JohnKemeny wrote:
| > The milieu around you--which shapes you, and which you shape in
| turn--we can model as a directed graph. The nodes are people and
| objects and ideas connected to each other. And the graph is
| directed because you have nodes that send you input and nodes you
| send output to.
|
| Then shows a figure of a weirdly symmetric undirected graph that
| looks nothing like a social or complex network!
| JohnKemeny wrote:
| Previous submission, no comments:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38776434
| lukas099 wrote:
| It's yin and yang. We forever shape each other.
| walterbell wrote:
| _> What you want to create is a distributed apprenticeship in the
| art of being you. You want to assemble a set of influences you
| can observe and imitate, and peers and mentors that can give you
| feedback on how well you converge with that model of yourself._
|
| Not limited to the living, i.e. we have centuries of potential
| human influencers whose contributions have been tested by time.
| ramesh31 wrote:
| >"Most who grew up to become geniuses, pre-1900, were kept apart
| from same age peers and raised at home, by tutors or parents.
| Michel Montaigne's father employed only servants who were fluent
| in Latin, curating a classical culture, so Montaigne would read
| the classics in his mother tongue. J.S. Mill spent his childhood
| at his father's desk, helping his father write a treatise on
| economics"
|
| I've noticed this as well, but took a different lesson from it:
| they were rich. They were _all_ rich. Of course there 's the odd
| rags to riches story here and there. But almost uniformly as a
| rule, anyone you've ever read about or heard of who was notable
| in any way as an intellectual in history was born and raised
| rich. There was nothing genetic or cultural about it. They were
| just afforded a thousand opportunities at every turn that the
| rest of us never were. That's really all there is to it.
| z3t4 wrote:
| And some form of autism. If you make a "normal" person rich
| they would spend their time and resources partying.
| Xeyz0r wrote:
| "Your culture shapes who you become". Agree. Culture molds
| individuals' identities, influences their values and behaviors in
| so many ways
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2024-06-25 23:02 UTC)