Natha comments on Welcome to Less Wrong! (6th thread, July 2013) - Less Wrong

21 Post author: KnaveOfAllTrades 26 July 2013 02:35AM

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Comment author: Alex_Miller 17 November 2014 08:33:05PM 34 points [-]

Hello. My name is Alex. I am the 10-year-old son of LessWrong user James_Miller.

I am very good at math for my age. I have read several of the books on rationality that my dad owns, and he convinced me to join this community. I like the idea of everyone in a community being honest because I often get into trouble at school for saying honest things that people don't like and talking back to adults(which seems like it's defined as not doing exactly what you're told.)

My favorite subject in school is math. At home, my interests are playing the video game Minecraft and doing origami, but I also like to read and play soccer.

I have much to learn in the art of rationality, such as finding more ways to be in flow. My dad tells me that there are a lot of people on this site who were like me as children, and I would love advice on how to be less bored in school, controlling my emotions, and finding ways to improve myself in general.

Comment author: Natha 18 November 2014 08:37:07PM *  7 points [-]

Hey Alex!

When I think back to when I was your age, I really wished I had gotten more involved in math competitions. Does your school have any programs like MATHCOUNTS, AMC8, etc.? I didn't compete in any academic competitions until high school, and I really wished that I had known about them earlier on. It makes getting ahead in math so much fun and it helps lay some really important foundations for the more complicated stuff.

Anyway, keep up the good work!

Comment author: Sarunas 18 November 2014 10:33:18PM *  5 points [-]

Also anything by Martin Gardner, because his books are so much fun and help to spark your imagination.

At a young age one of the most important thing to develop is a habit of perseverance and not giving up when trying to solve a problem and avoiding developing areas of learned blankness. You should develop an unfaltering confidence to use your own head when trying to solve the problems. Sharpening mental capabilities and developing good mental habits and attitudes seems to be more important than learning more things (for example, the author of many AoPS books, Richard Rusczyk, thinks that it is better for kids to sharpen their minds solving olympiad problems than learn calculus), although desire to learn more, to build your own understanding, is also important. And it is not necessary that the problems are mathematical in nature. For example, if you read Richard Feynman's "Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!", you would notice that as a young boy he loved to fix things and everybody brought their broken radios to him. He would then fix them, seeing it as a challenge, as a problem to solve. He had to find a way to fix it, no matter how non-obvious the problem was. I think this helped him to sharpen his mind and instilled a good habit to see interesting problems everywhere. If you have to think for yourself, you lessen the risk of developing learned blankness. Try to think for yourself, even if it takes much more time than simply finding solution on the internet. In the long run, developing good mental habits is probably the most important thing.

Comment author: iarwain1 18 November 2014 08:50:43PM 4 points [-]

Also check out the Art of Problem Solving books. They've also got some interesting resources on their website.

Comment author: ike 18 November 2014 09:24:10PM 1 point [-]

Also Journey through Genius by William Dunham and The Art and Craft of Problem Solving by Paul Zeitz.