On the subject of gifted children, don’t praise kids for being smart. Praise them for working hard or for participating in activities that will make them smarter, but not for being, intrinsically, smart.
Broadly, don’t praise people for things that they couldn’t have done differently. All it’ll do is increase the importance that they assign to a trait that is out of their control. That makes them weaker, not stronger.
This applies to physical appearance as well, for instance.
But people have a lot of control over many aspects of our physical appearance. We also have a lot of control over many aspects of how “smart” we are. Don’t we?
What this means is that we should teach the kids what they can and can’t change about those things, and how to change them (via hard work), instead of continuing to teach them that appearance and intelligence are completely fixed, and then rewarding them for those traits anyway.
I certainly agree that it’s important to learn what we can and can’t change, and how to change what we can change, and that it’s important to teach kids things that it’s important to learn.
It’s possible to make a mistake in both ways. I wish someone told me in my childhood: “Viliam, some things you are interested in are simply too complex for an average person to understand and care about. To discuss them with someone, you must first find sufficiently intelligent people.”
My parents never gave me information of this kind, probably believing that it would be morally bad for me to have it. So I spent many years believing that I am too weird and no one can understand me; that my only way to interact with people is to meet them at their turf, never going to mine. (And that social skills consist mostly of pretending to be like other people, and denying what is unique about me.) I did not have a good explanation for this asymetry.
And then (a dramatic exaggeration) I found LessWrong, and I realized there are other people like me on this planet. Then I went to a CFAR seminar and met them in person, so now I also feel on the emotional level they are real.
Sometimes working hard is not an answer, for example when you are a hard-working member in a team of idiots, and it’s a job you can’t manage all alone. The only solution is to find another team; but to do that you have to believe that different teams are possible, that not all people are the same.
“Go to school to learn how to socialize with other children.” That has some value if they’re genuine peers, but if he’s too much smarter than they are, that socialization will likely not turn out well for him.
So I spent many years believing that I am too weird and no one can understand me;
Similar feelings here.
And I had my own LessWrong moment. Or at least, an HPMOR moment. Seeing Harry as a kid
fundamentally refuse to accept death as an inevitable part of the natural order, and otherwise always with a sense of boundless opportunities in the world brought me back to the attitudes I had as a kid. Of course death is just a problem to be solved. I knew that then. But over the years, I lost that feeling, even if I was part of groups like the Extropians list or LessWrong who predicted such things.
It is also useful to socialize with people who are different than you. They make the majority of the world, don’t they? But at some point being only with that kind of people becomes exhausting. Finding people like you, that’s like… finally finding a home. A place where you can stop pretending, where you can fit as you are.
As I’ve indicated in this thread, I reject the notion that children are successfully socialized by putting them together in a big pile and letting them figure it out.
The younger the child, the less they need difference, and the more they need competence and acceptance, both of which the 8 year old under question will be unlikely to find institutionalized with all the other unsocialized 8 year olds, most all just too far from his level of intelligence to make suitable peers.
The 8 year old has a home—that’s where his parents live. Certainly it would be great to get him some actual peers his age too, but the socially competent elders who love him are the most important agents of his socialization at this point.
Though at some moment you should admit they are smart, or at least not actively deny it, otherwise they will have an incorrect model of the world.
As an extreme example, if a person with IQ 200 believes that intelligence does not exist and all that matters is the hard work, it may motivate them to work hard, which is great, but it may also make them believe that all other people are simply not trying if they can’t do even such simple things as winning a Nobel price. This can make them have unrealistic expectations of less intelligent people, or even make them believe that the less intelligent people are actually morally inferior (too lazy, don’t care enough, etc.). -- Now imagine a person with IQ 150, and it’s less extreme, but still similar.
Exactly. Praising means socially encouraging someone to do more of X. If X is fixed trait, there is no way one could do more of X. They can only do more signalling of X.
People sometimes think that giving a honest feedback about any positive trait is implicitly a praise. And they have a point, too. But I guess it’s a question of giving this feedback in a proper context.
Signalling of a fixed trait is sometimes useful and sometimes harmful. It can encourage people to work on what they are good at. It can also discourage them from trying new things.
On the other hand praising hard work could also lead to some failures, such an clinging to lost purposes. (“What I am doing now is probably meaningless, but people reward me for working hard, so I can’t give up.”) It’s complicated.
On the subject of gifted children, don’t praise kids for being smart. Praise them for working hard or for participating in activities that will make them smarter, but not for being, intrinsically, smart.
Broadly, don’t praise people for things that they couldn’t have done differently. All it’ll do is increase the importance that they assign to a trait that is out of their control. That makes them weaker, not stronger.
This applies to physical appearance as well, for instance.
But people have a lot of control over many aspects of our physical appearance.
We also have a lot of control over many aspects of how “smart” we are.
Don’t we?
What this means is that we should teach the kids what they can and can’t change about those things, and how to change them (via hard work), instead of continuing to teach them that appearance and intelligence are completely fixed, and then rewarding them for those traits anyway.
I certainly agree that it’s important to learn what we can and can’t change, and how to change what we can change, and that it’s important to teach kids things that it’s important to learn.
I didn’t intend to devolve into platitudes; sorry if that happened anyway. I was just trying to relate your comment to the general topic.
I wish you could talk to my parents 25 years ago.
It’s possible to make a mistake in both ways. I wish someone told me in my childhood: “Viliam, some things you are interested in are simply too complex for an average person to understand and care about. To discuss them with someone, you must first find sufficiently intelligent people.”
My parents never gave me information of this kind, probably believing that it would be morally bad for me to have it. So I spent many years believing that I am too weird and no one can understand me; that my only way to interact with people is to meet them at their turf, never going to mine. (And that social skills consist mostly of pretending to be like other people, and denying what is unique about me.) I did not have a good explanation for this asymetry.
And then (a dramatic exaggeration) I found LessWrong, and I realized there are other people like me on this planet. Then I went to a CFAR seminar and met them in person, so now I also feel on the emotional level they are real.
Sometimes working hard is not an answer, for example when you are a hard-working member in a team of idiots, and it’s a job you can’t manage all alone. The only solution is to find another team; but to do that you have to believe that different teams are possible, that not all people are the same.
This is other side of the socialization pancake.
“Go to school to learn how to socialize with other children.” That has some value if they’re genuine peers, but if he’s too much smarter than they are, that socialization will likely not turn out well for him.
Similar feelings here.
And I had my own LessWrong moment. Or at least, an HPMOR moment. Seeing Harry as a kid fundamentally refuse to accept death as an inevitable part of the natural order, and otherwise always with a sense of boundless opportunities in the world brought me back to the attitudes I had as a kid. Of course death is just a problem to be solved. I knew that then. But over the years, I lost that feeling, even if I was part of groups like the Extropians list or LessWrong who predicted such things.
It is also useful to socialize with people who are different than you. They make the majority of the world, don’t they? But at some point being only with that kind of people becomes exhausting. Finding people like you, that’s like… finally finding a home. A place where you can stop pretending, where you can fit as you are.
As I’ve indicated in this thread, I reject the notion that children are successfully socialized by putting them together in a big pile and letting them figure it out.
The younger the child, the less they need difference, and the more they need competence and acceptance, both of which the 8 year old under question will be unlikely to find institutionalized with all the other unsocialized 8 year olds, most all just too far from his level of intelligence to make suitable peers.
The 8 year old has a home—that’s where his parents live. Certainly it would be great to get him some actual peers his age too, but the socially competent elders who love him are the most important agents of his socialization at this point.
Though at some moment you should admit they are smart, or at least not actively deny it, otherwise they will have an incorrect model of the world.
As an extreme example, if a person with IQ 200 believes that intelligence does not exist and all that matters is the hard work, it may motivate them to work hard, which is great, but it may also make them believe that all other people are simply not trying if they can’t do even such simple things as winning a Nobel price. This can make them have unrealistic expectations of less intelligent people, or even make them believe that the less intelligent people are actually morally inferior (too lazy, don’t care enough, etc.). -- Now imagine a person with IQ 150, and it’s less extreme, but still similar.
So to simplify—explaining the state of the world is fine, but there’s a difference between that and praising someone for it.
Exactly. Praising means socially encouraging someone to do more of X. If X is fixed trait, there is no way one could do more of X. They can only do more signalling of X.
People sometimes think that giving a honest feedback about any positive trait is implicitly a praise. And they have a point, too. But I guess it’s a question of giving this feedback in a proper context.
Signalling of a fixed trait is sometimes useful and sometimes harmful. It can encourage people to work on what they are good at. It can also discourage them from trying new things.
On the other hand praising hard work could also lead to some failures, such an clinging to lost purposes. (“What I am doing now is probably meaningless, but people reward me for working hard, so I can’t give up.”) It’s complicated.