The "I Didn't Comment in Another Thread" Thread

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Confidence in one's own brightness is generally fine, imo.

According to psychologists, no. Telling kids they're smart is praising what people (incorrectly) believe to be a fixed trait. If a kid believes that their success is based on a fixed ability they cannot improve, when they run into something that intelligence doesn't instantly help them with, they can decide they won't ever be able to do anything about it and give up.

It sounded hare-brained to me until I saw my hyper-verbal nephew who was told how smart he was for having a good vocabulary at age 4 essentially give up in elementary school, because if he was a genius and didn't instantly understand math, then he never would understand it.

Praise kids for being hard workers for figuring things out, praise them for doing the work, praise the effort. Don't praise them for being smart, even if they are, because it tells them the wrong thing is what's behind their success.

The problem really begins, imo, when that self-assuredness in one's own smarts comes at the expense of qualities like humaneness, empathy, and respect for community. I think that's what got our civilization so drenched in privileged techbros.

Yes. I also see a lot of people in my own work who get themselves into trouble for not realizing that, even if they were the smartest person in their elementary school, the world is a lot bigger than that and there's always someone smarter than them out there.

 

[Ryujin]

Was your school a one-room red building?




Everybody makes jokes about having an evil twin... But it's not so funny when you actually have one.

Check this out... There used to be another family in our town with the same last name as us, which we discovered because we used to get their mail all the time until they moved away. And apparently the father of the family had the same first name as my father.

Years later, starting in high school, I began to get arrest reports clipped out of the newspapers taped to my desk - for a guy with my name (although the first name is spelled differently and the middle initial is different).
Over the years, he's been arrested for everything from driving an unregistered vehicle to drug possession.
At one point he even robbed a local bank.
I've worked with two guys over the years that knew this guy: the first time, my first day at work the guy came up to me and said, "You're ----. I've heard of you." and the other guy came up, looked at me and said, "...You're not him..."
Even my own relatives have called to check that it wasn't me when they saw this guy's name in the paper.

I've almost gotten into fights because people thought I was this guy.

I almost lost a job because they thought I'd submitted two different applications.

But the best one?

My mother was in the hospital. A candystriper came in, looked at her chart and said,
"Mrs. ----?
Oh, are you ----'s mother?
Would you like to see pictures of your grandchild?"

Got beat up once, as a teen, because there was a guy in the neighbourhood who looked like me, who beat up some kid's little brother. THAT was fun. At least it got sorted out in the end, but didn't help the pain.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

I'm begging everyone, please use paragraph breaks. You probably have good points buried within a block of text I cannot and will not parse as it is.

 

[Ryujin]

True but there is the converse problem, if you have a really smart child and try to explain things too them while pretending they aren't smarter than everyone in the room then they tend to tune out the "stupid" people. I went through that line of thinkng as a kid. I always listened to the teachers that acknowleded I was smart but pointed out they were better educated. The ones that tried to ignore that I was smarter and tried to pretend I was just like the other kids got put on ignore and they lost all ability to influence at that point. Smart kids know they are smart, not feeding to avoid narcissism is a good goal but many people conflate that with trying to convince them they are just like everone else and they are not average like everyone else. You'll do better teaching them that intelligence is a lucky tool they inherited and drive home to them that working hard, at your tasks, in getting along with others, and accepting that even less intelligent people can have great ideas and great abilities, and the people that work harder are statistically more likely to succeed. Please ignore the outliers, and that will serve them far better than trying to hide how smart they are. Just remember they are that smart and they are always in the room with themselves and they know it even if they don't say it. Also remember it's a scary scary world for smart kids who realize they are smarter than the ones in charge. You watch people make mistakes, when you the child try to point it out they emotionally react and double down and you begin to think people are crazy.

Reminded of this one.

 

[payn]

I'm begging everyone, please use paragraph breaks. You probably have good points buried within a block of text I cannot and will not parse as it is.

I find the never use paragraphs at all to be more difficult to read.

 

[J.Quondam]

According to psychologists, no. Telling kids they're smart is praising what people (incorrectly) believe to be a fixed trait. If a kid believes that their success is based on a fixed ability they cannot improve, when they run into something that intelligence doesn't instantly help them with, they can decide they won't ever be able to do anything about it and give up.

It sounded hare-brained to me until I saw my hyper-verbal nephew who was told how smart he was for having a good vocabulary at age 4 essentially give up in elementary school, because if he was a genius and didn't instantly understand math, then he never would understand it.

Praise kids for being hard workers for figuring things out, praise them for doing the work, praise the effort. Don't praise them for being smart, even if they are, because it tells them the wrong thing is what's behind their success.

Yes. I also see a lot of people in my own work who get themselves into trouble for not realizing that, even if they were the smartest person in their elementary school, the world is a lot bigger than that and there's always someone smarter than them out there.

I could certainly believe that. I don' t have children, so the how-to's of raising them is a bit outside my wheelhouse, tbh.

I was thinking more about the adulthood behaviors. But, yeah, it's pretty obvious that many "smart" people are raised less conscientiously than others, never understanding that there's someone in this world who is smarter than you at something is important, or that the view of someone less "smart" can be equal - or even superior - to your own.

You know, it's actually kind of neat that humility - as difficult as it can be in practice - is itself so empowering.

 

[payn]

annnnd now we see why you should comment on the opinions in opinions threads.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

I find the never use paragraphs at all to be more difficult to read.

Yeah, there's lots of studies around how paragraph breaks and proper use of capitalization make content easier to parse and remember. The message clearly hasn't reached everyone, though.

 

[Ryujin]

I could certainly believe that. I don' t have children, so the how-to's of raising them is a bit outside my wheelhouse, tbh.

I was thinking more about the adulthood behaviors. But, yeah, it's pretty obvious that many "smart" people are raised less conscientiously than others, never understanding that there's someone in this world who is smarter than you at something is important, or that the view of someone less "smart" can be equal - or even superior - to your own.

You know, it's actually kind of neat that humility - as difficult as it can be in practice - is itself so empowering.

If my father didn't treat anything less than an "A" as a failure (including a "B" in gym), I'd likely be a real dick. As it stands I'm just a cheap knock-off.

 

[Old Fezziwig]

And yet everyone insists on pronouncing the W, and/or putting the emphasis on the last syllable, like it's a French name or something.

My last name is Irish, but it was anglicized at some point in the past. There are a bunch of different anglicizations, many of them easily pronounced. Our version retained a stray and silent i though, and people lose their damn minds when they see it. What always confuses me is that there's an easy and phonetically sensible mispronunciation but people either go right by it into nonsense or just give up after the first syllable and swallow the rest.