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Benito comments on Open Thread, May 19 - 25, 2014 - Less Wrong Discussion
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I have the privilege of working with a small group of young (12-14) highly gifted math students for 45 minutes a week for the next 5 weeks. I have extraordinary freedom with what we cover. Mathematically, we've covered some game theory and Bayes' theorem. I've also had a chance to discuss some non-mathy things, like Anki.
I only found out about Anki after I'd taken a bunch of courses, and I've had to spend a bunch of time restudying everything I'd previously learned and forgotten. It would have been really nice if someone had told me about Anki when I was 12.
So, what I want to ask Lesswrong, since I suspect most of you are like the kids I'm working with except older, is what blind spots did 12-14-year-old you have I could point out to the kids I'm working with?
Speaking as a somewhat gifted seventeen year old, I'd really like to have known about AoPS, HPMOR and the Sequences.
Also, I'd like to have had in my mind the notion that my formal education is not optimised for me, and that I really need to optimise it myself. Speaking more concretely, I think that most teenagers in Britain pick their A Levels (if they do them at all) based on what classes the other people around them are doing, which isn't very useful. Speaking to a friend though, I realised that when he was picking his third A Level to study, there was no other A Level he needed to study to get into his main area of specialisation (jazz musician), and his time would be better spent not doing the A level at all; he needed to think more meta. He was just doing an A level because that's what everyone seems to think you should do. I'm about to give up a class because it's not going to help me get anywhere, I can use the time better and learn what I want to better alone anyway. So, really optimise.
Don't know if that helps. And AoPS is ridiculously useful.