I'm friends with an incredibly smart kid. He's 14, but has been put up three grades in school at one point. He does all the obvious enrichment things which are available in the relatively small Australian city he lives in.
His life experience has been pretty unusual. He doesn't really know what it's like to be challenged in school. All his friends are way older than he is. (Once, I asked him how being constantly around people older than him made him feel. He replied, "Concerned for my future.")
He doesn't know anyone like him, which I think is a shame: he'd probably get along very well with them.
Does anyone know any similar kid geniuses? If so, can I give them my friend's details?
Thanks.
From what I've seen and heard of Jake Barnett, he's a very bright kid being overpromoted to an unhealthy extent. I remember reading news articles that casually mention that he's debunked big bang theory. Watching Youtube videos of him explaining his supposed "expansion" of the theory of relativity shows that he has a worse than rudimentary understanding of the theory. I also recall watching a TV show where they had Jake solving a math problem in the background while his parents chatted with the interviewer. I don't remember the details, but anyone with a college-level math background would have realized that he was applying methods that would work on similar problems, but for fairly obvious reasons would not work on this particular problem. The interviewer ignored the fact that the problem wasn't actually being solved and instead expressed great admiration at the fact that the kid was writing Greek letters on a chalkboard.
The Jake Barnett trajectory is exactly what smart kids should be avoiding.
I'd like to see that particular video. I'd paid attention to what he actually said and wrote in other videos, and didn't catch any problem. Plus he is actually doing work for Indiana University, which is a pretty serious accomplishment. Plus he got published in Physical Review A. It is possible that we are both correct and that he learned enough between our observations.