[Letter] Advice for High School #2

lsusr30 Apr 2021 8:42 UTC
37 points
16 comments13 min readLW link

This is amazing. Thank you, so, so much. I’ll start coding in Hy with Vim. I’ll start doing weekly blogs once my tennis season ends (three weeks from now), and I likely wouldn’t have the guts to start if it wasn’t for your advice. On the general high school advice; it’s invaluable. I look forward to reading the books you’ve recommended. As a sidenote; I love books, and read as many as I can; any books that you’d recommend, on any subjects? I’ve started using Anki on a daily basis; the main bottleneck right now is that I’m making too few cards/​day, but that can be addressed with more dedicated time, I think. Starting Strength is what my personal strength training needed. Meditation will be a useful intervention; I thank you for the guidance. I read How to… a year or so ago, and my social skills have improved significantly as a result; definitely a good recommendation. Luckily, I don’t have any especially angry people in my life, but your Anger post serves as an excellent life guide. Do you know of any rationality/​recommended programs near [redacted]? I’ve failed to find anyone near my intellect at my school/​any other program I’ve done, and there aren’t any rationality meetups nearby other than the [redacted] one, which I plan to go to, whenever possible. Again, thank you so much.

Yours truly,

[redacted]

Dear [redacted],

Don’t worry about having too few cards in your Anki. Reviews pile up fast. Sustainability is more important than intensity. If you need more cards you can go to Ankiweb and download a frequency-based vocabulary deck for the foreign language of your choice.

Finding someone near your intellect…

Young people are sorted by geography. The average IQ at a typical high school is 100. Going to college bumps it up by a standard deviation to 115. An MD gets it a little higher to 120.

Enrolling in the hardest college major brings the IQ distribution a full two standard deviations above average to 130 which equals the average IQ of a science PhD. If you have an IQ of at least 145 (three standard deviations above the mean) then no undergraduate degree is sufficient.

College Undergraduate Major IQ
Physics & Astronomy 133
Mathematical Sciences 130
Philosophy 129
Materials Engineering 129
Economics 128
Chemical Engineering 128
Other Engineering 128
Mechanical Engineering 126
Engineering 126
Electrical Engineering 126
Physical Sciences 125
Banking & Finance 125
Other Humanities & Art 124
Chemistry 124
Computer & Information Science 124
Civil Engineering 124
Industrial Engineering 123
Religion & Theory 121
Earth, Atmosphere & Marine Science 121
Biological Sciences 121
English Language & Literature 120
Humanities & Arts 120
Art History, Theory, Critical Theory 120
Political Science 120
Foreign languages & Literature 119
Anthropology & Archaeology 119
History 119
Architecture 118
Library & Archival Sciences 117
Other Natural Sciences 117
Social Sciences 115
Agriculture 115
Arts-Performance & Studio 114
Life Sciences 114
Sociology 114
Business 114
Psychology 113
Communications 111
Curriculum & Instruction 111
Health & Medical Sciences 111
Business Admin & Management 111
Other Social Science 110
Education 110
Accounting 110
Evaluation & Research 109
Public Administration 109
Other Education 109
Elementary Education 108
Administration 107
Home Economics 106
Student Counseling 105
Early Childhood Education 104
Social Work 103

An eminent theoretical physicist is at least 160. An IQ of 160 makes you 1 in 32,000. An IQ of 175 makes you 1 in 1.5 million. There are 200 such people in the entire United States—and that includes adults. If you have an IQ of 175 then there might be three equally-smart teenagers your age in the entire country. How do such people find each other?

When I worked at a particle physics laboratory it was the first time I felt like I was interacting with my own species. But the physicists didn’t feel alive. My colleagues weren’t Albert Einstein and Richard Feynman. The first time I felt like I was talking to cognitive equals was at the Y-Combinator interview pool when I met a pair of Nigerians (this is not a joke) who were attempting to monopolize the entire African financial system.

The second time was when I met someone on Less Wrong who runs his own hedge fund.

If you are four or more standard deviations above average then you won’t find equals at your high school. You won’t find them at teenage chess tournaments or teenage music tournaments either because success there is driven by parents—training outweighs innate talent. Maybe try math or debate tournaments?

I don’t live near you so I can’t recommend anything specific to your region. I have never been to an IRL rationality event. Here is general advice for meeting smart people. Try it out to discover what works for you. Discard strategies that don’t work.

  • Start your own rationality meetup.

  • Find an existing group of people that does quantitative finance or similar.

  • Attend public scientific lectures at your local research university.

  • Create art (blog, YouTube, etc.) and post it online.

  • Do awesome stuff. For real. Not just reading about it.

The best way to live among the monkeys is to assume a leadership role for yourself. Organize events. Get groups of people to do novel things. Make stuff happen. You may be surprised by how much it is possible to accomplish out of sheer nerve. Especially when your competition is the ordinary high school students who happen to live in [redacted].

The most important thing for you right now is to try all sorts of different things. Don’t wait until you feel ready to live your life. You never will. Just do it. Failure is fine, as long as you recover. Don’t hurt other people. Don’t cause significant financial damage. Don’t injure yourself. Don’t throw away years of your life. Mere embarrassment doesn’t matter. It is best you decondition yourself ASAP.

More Book Recommendations

I have excluded all books mentioned in the previous letter. I have excluded math, science and engineering textbooks too along with drawing manuals. Nothing has prerequisites. Listening instead of reading is fine.

Books with extraordinary claims I have not verified are marked with a dagger †. Books I have not read cover-to-cover at the time of writing this letter are marked with a double dagger ‡.

Autobiographies

  • Arabian Sands and The Marsh Arabs by Wilfred Thesiger

  • Goodbye, Darkness: A Memoir of the Pacific War by William Mangester

  • Silent Running: My Years on A World War II Attack Submarine James F. Calvert

  • “Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman!”: Adventures of A Curious Character by Richard P. Feynman

  • The Autobiography of Martin Luther King, Jr by Martin Luther King Jr.

  • Built, Not Born: A Self-Made Billionaire’s No-Nonsense Guide for Entrepreneurs by Tom Golisano and Mike Wicks

  • Consider This: Moments in My Writing Life after Which Everything Was Different by Chuck Palahniuk

  • Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly by Anthony Bourdain

  • Monster: The Autobiography of An L.A. Gang Member by Sanyika Shakur

  • Under and Alone: The True Story of the Undercover Agent Who Infiltrated America’s Most Violent Outlaw Motorcycle Gang by William Queen

  • Priceless: How I Went Undercover to Rescue the World’s Stolen Treasures by Robert K. Wittman and John Shiffman

  • †Catch Me If You Can by Frank Abagnale

  • One L: The Turbulent True Story of A First Year at Harvard Law School by Scott Turow

  • The Plant Messiah: Adventures in Search of the World’s Rarest Species by Carlos Magdalena

  • iWoz: Computer Geek to Cult Icon: How I Invented the Personal Computer, Co-founded Apple, and Had Fun Doing It by Steve Wozniak

  • Just for Fun: The Story of an Accidental Revolutionary by Linus Torvalds and David Diamond

  • Down the Rabbit Hole: Curious Adventures and Cautionary Tales of a Former Playboy Bunny by Holly Madison

  • How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big: Kind of the Story of My Life by Scott Adams

  • The Actor’s Life: A Survival Guide by Jenna Fischer

  • Moonwalking With Einstein: The Art and Science of Remembering Everything by Joshua Foer

  • Eat, Pray, Love: One Woman’s Search for Everything Across Italy, India and Indonesia by Elizabeth Gilbert

  • The Audacity to Win: The Inside Story and Lessons of Barack Obama’s Historic Victory by David Plouffe

  • A Promised Land by Barack Obama

Biographies

  • ‡Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World by Jack Weatherford

  • Catherine the Great: Portrait of a Woman by Robert K. Massie

  • ‡Napoleon: A Life by Andrew Roberts

  • Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson

History

  • These three books about China

  • Destiny Disrupted by Tamin Ansary

  • ‡A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous 14th Century by Barbara W. Tuchman

  • †1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus and 1493: Uncovering the New World Columbus Created by Charles C. Mann

  • ‡Napoleon’s Wars: An International History, 1803-1815 by Charles J. Esdaile,

  • The Most Powerful Idea in the World: A Story of Steam, Industry, and Invention by William Rosen

  • ‡The Rising Sun: The Decline and Fall of the Japanese Empire, 1936-1945 by John Toland

  • The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich: A History of Nazi Germany by William L. Shirer

  • Auschwitz: A New History by Laurence Rees

  • ‡Africa’s World War: Congo, the Rwandan Genocide, and the Making of a Continental Catastrophe by Gerard Prunier

  • The Wrong Enemy: America in Afghanistan, 2001-2014 by Carlotta Gall

Ethnographies

  • Nisa: The Life and Words of a !Kung Woman by Marjorie Shostak

  • †Don’t Sleep, There Are Snakes: Life and Language in the Amazonian Jungle by Daniel L. Everett

  • The Chrysanthemum and the Sword: Patterns of Japanese Culture by Ruth Benedict

  • Behind the Beautiful Forevers: Life, Death, and Hope in a Mumbai Undercity by Katherine Boo

Cyber

  • The Code Book: The Science of Secrecy From Ancient Egypt to Quantum Cryptography by Simon Singh

  • Exploding the Phone by Phil Lapsley

  • The Soul of A New Machine by Tracy Kidder

  • The Art of Intrusion: The Real Stories Behind the Exploits of Hackers, Intruders, & Deceivers by Kevin D. Mitnick

  • Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game by Michael Lewis

  • Bringing Down the House: The Inside Story of Six MIT Students Who Took Vegas for Millions by Ben Mezrich

  • The Quants: How a New Breed of Math Whizzes Conquered Wall Street and Nearly Destroyed It by Scott Patterson

Physics

  • A Brief History of Time and The Universe in a Nutshell by Stephen Hawking

  • Quantum Generations: A History of Physics in the Twentieth Century by Helge Kragh

Biology

  • Paleontology: A Brief History of Life by Ian Tattersall

  • †The Vital Question: Energy, Evolution, and the Origins of Complex Life by Nick Lane

  • March of the Microbes: Sighting the Unseen John L. Ingraham

  • The Nature of Plants: An Introduction to How Plants Work by Craig N. Huegel

  • Botany for Gardeners by Brian Capon

  • ‡Remarkable Plants That Shape Our World by Helen Bynum and William Bynum

  • Understanding the Brain: From Cells to Behavior to Cognition by John E. Dowling

  • ‡The Variety of Life: A Survey and A Celebration of All the Creatures That Have Ever Lived by Colin Tudge

Sociology & Economics

  • †Sex at Dawn: The Prehistoric Origins of Modern Sexuality by Christopher Ryan

  • Born to Run: A Hidden Tribe, Superathletes, and the Greatest Race the World Has Never Seen by Christopher McDougall

  • Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies by Jared Diamond

  • An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith

  • Roadside MBA: Backroad Lessons for Entrepreneurs, Executives, and Small Business Owners by Michael Mazzeo

  • The Bell Curve: Intelligence and Class Structure in American Life by Charles Murray and Richard J. Herrnstein

  • Human Diversity: The Biology of Gender, Race, and Class by Charles Murray

  • Class: A Guide Through the American Status System by Paul Fussell

  • Dead Aid: Why Aid Is Not Working and How There Is a Better Way for Africa by Dambisa Moyo

  • Poor Economics: A Radical Rethinking of the Way to Fight Global Poverty by Abhijit V. Banerjee and Esther Duflo

  • Out of Poverty: What Works When Traditional Approaches Fail by Paul Polak

  • Fooled by Randomness and Antifragile by Nassim Nicholas Taleb

  • The Innovator’s Dilemma by Clayton Christensen.

Psychology

Altered States of Consciousness

Modern Art

  • Seven Days in the Art World by Sarah Thornton

  • The $12 Million Stuffed Shark: The Curious Economics of Contemporary Art by Donald N. Thompson

  • The Last Leonardo: The Secret Lives of the World’s Most Expensive Painting by Ben Lewis

Science Fiction

  • 1940s-1950s | Foundation and I, Robot by Isaac Asimov

  • 1954 | I Am Legend by Richard Matheson

  • 1963 | Planet of the Apes by Pierre Boulle

  • 1966 | The Moon is a Harsh Mistress by Robert A. Heinlein

  • 1974 | The Forever War by Joe Haldeman

  • 1974 | The Mote in God’s Eye by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle

  • 1979 | The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams

  • 1984 | Neuromancer by Willian Gibson

  • 1985 | The Postman by David Brin

  • 1985, 1999 | Ender’s Game and Ender’s Shadow by Orson Scott Card

  • 1989 | On My Way to Paradise by Dave Wolverton

  • 1989 | Hyperion by Dan Simmons

  • 1992 | Red Mars by Kim Stanley Robinson

  • 1992, 1995, 2015 | Snow Crash, The Diamond Age and Seveneves by Neal Stephenson

  • 1993 | Parable of the Sower by Octavia E. Butler

  • 2006 | World War Z by Max Brooks

  • 2008 | The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins

  • 2008, 2013 | Saturn’s Children and Neptune’s Brood by Charles Stross

  • 2011, February | The Martian by Andy Weir

  • 2011, August | Ready Player One by Ernest Cline

  • 2013, 2014, 2015 | The Imperial Radch Trilogy by Ann Leckie

  • 2015-2020 | There is No Antimemetics Division by qntm

Fantasy

  • 1943 | The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

  • 1976 | Interview with the Vampire by Anne Rice

  • 1993 | The Giver by Lois Lowry

  • 1995-2000 | His Dark Materials by Philip Pullman

  • 1997-2007 | Harry Potter by J.K. Rowling

  • 2001 | The Magicians’ Guild by Trudi Canavan

  • 2009 | Escape from Hell by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle

  • 2010 | The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms by N.K. Jemisin

  • 2010, 2012 | The Magicians and The Magician King by Lev Grossman

  • 2010-2015 | Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality by Eliezer Yudkowsky

  • 2020-2021 | Luna Lovegood and the Chamber of Secrets by me

Fiction, Other

  • ‡1813 | Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen

  • 1899 | Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad

  • 1973 | The Princess Bride by William Goldman

  • 1996-present | any two novels by Chuck Palahniuk

  • 1998 | The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver

  • 2012 | The Fault in Our Stars by John Green

Classics

  • Late Spring and Autumn Period (5th Century BC) | Sun Tzu’s Original Art of War: Special Bilingual Edition by Sun Zi and Andrew W. Zieger

  • Tang Dynasty | 《花非花》 by 白居易

  • Tang Dynasty | 《静夜思》 by 李白

  • Edo period | ‡Sky Above, Great Wind: The Life and Poetry of Zen Master Ryokan by Kazuaki Tanahashi

Oral

  • Folktales from Iraq by C. G. Campbell

  • Norse Mythology by Neil Gaiman

Miscellaneous

  • Citizenship in a Republic by Theodore Roosevelt

  • Guerrilla Warfare by Che Guevara

  • ‡The Amateur Magicians Handbook by Henry Hay

  • ††Sorcerer’s Apprentice by Tahir Shah

  • Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry into Values by Robert M. Pirsig

  • Fluent in 3 Months: The Radical New Way That Anyone, at Any Age, Can Learn to Speak Any Language From Anywhere in the World by Benny Lewis

  • The 4-Hour Workweek by Tim Ferris

Podcasts

YouTube

Lastly, check out Code Geass.

Yours truly,

Lsusr

lsusr30 Apr 2021 8:42 UTC
37 points
16 comments13 min readLW link