From: Eugene.Leitl@lrz.uni-muenchen.de
Date: Mon Jun 04 2001 - 12:53:39 MDT
"Eliezer S. Yudkowsky" wrote:
> For Ifni's sake, Eugene, what does a "kid" have to do to qualify as a
> wunderkind these days? Found his own moon colony?
Given his age, he was remarkably hazy on the science part
of the projects he was doing (btw, the version of the
article posted was missing something like 60% of the
info of the original article I came across earlier).
Experimental capabilities as described are not
impressive. Kudos go to the social engineering bit,
few kids are that cheeky at that age. Frankly, the
only thing which brought him into the headlines
were the hazmat people (who were following a SOP,
who in their turn were invoked by clueless cops).
I've known kids who have done better at that age, minus the
isotopes (nuclear chemistry is chemistry, too).
As to wunderkind, the bogglement threshold starts when I
see a toddler (3+ year old) read a newspaper. Such people make
most adults look pretty small in their shoes by early teen
age. If they scale into their early twens, they leave a
permanent footprint in a field, sometimes of their
own making.
I haven't met any wunderkind yet, unfortunately.
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