There are a bunch of things in the post I would never do. But I doubt highly that most of the things are of a sort that is likely to lead many to be miserable. The two who are the most miserable in the sample are Russell and Woolf who were very constrained by their guardians; Mill also seems to have taken some toll by being pushed too hard. But apart from that? Curious: what do you find most high-risk apart from that?
But I doubt highly that most of the things are of a sort that is likely to lead many to be miserable. The two who are the most miserable in the sample are Russell and Woolf who were very constrained by their guardians; Mill also seems to have taken some toll by being pushed too hard. But apart from that?
Mind the potentially strong selection bias specifically here, though. Even if in our sample of ‘extra-successful’ people there were few (or zero) who were too adversely affected, this does not specifically invalidate a possible suspicion that the base rate of creating bad outcomes from the treatment is very high—if the latter have a small chance of ever getting to fame.
(This does not mean I disagree with your conclusions in general in any way; nice post!)
I’m positing that there is a set of people for who the various preconditions you’ve identified for being an exceptional person, and you’ve then post-hoc selected the ones who were exceptional. I wondered if it might be the case that a majority of that set, but only a minority of the chosen subset, are miserable. And the reason I think that is that some people do poorly with only self-direction.
There are a bunch of things in the post I would never do. But I doubt highly that most of the things are of a sort that is likely to lead many to be miserable. The two who are the most miserable in the sample are Russell and Woolf who were very constrained by their guardians; Mill also seems to have taken some toll by being pushed too hard. But apart from that? Curious: what do you find most high-risk apart from that?
Mind the potentially strong selection bias specifically here, though. Even if in our sample of ‘extra-successful’ people there were few (or zero) who were too adversely affected, this does not specifically invalidate a possible suspicion that the base rate of creating bad outcomes from the treatment is very high—if the latter have a small chance of ever getting to fame.
(This does not mean I disagree with your conclusions in general in any way; nice post!)
I’m positing that there is a set of people for who the various preconditions you’ve identified for being an exceptional person, and you’ve then post-hoc selected the ones who were exceptional. I wondered if it might be the case that a majority of that set, but only a minority of the chosen subset, are miserable. And the reason I think that is that some people do poorly with only self-direction.
Yes, I encourage everyone to avoid the nitpick trap. There’s plenty of good things to take from this essay. You don’t need to hire abusive tutors.
That completely misunderstands the objection—see my other response.