This kid has a bright future!
His thirst for knowledge is really inspiring!
*promote

Promoting this video and sending it back into the queue for one more try; last queued Monday, July 2nd, 2012 4:46pm PDT - promote requested by seltar.

*education

Adding video to channels (Education) - requested by hpqp.

The fate of the universe is you're going to die and the universe doesn't give a fuck.

GET HIGH AND GET LAID WHILE YOU CAN, KID!

pfff...this kid's playing the game with cheat codes on — that's no fun.

It's unfortunate that his learning will be limited by the extents of knowledge determined by his lower potential predecessors.
What will he do when he runs out of books?
His ultimate 'knowledge' will come down to his own creativity, and less his ability to absorb previous discoveries.

Someone once made a comparison of us to hypothetical aliens.
How the alien children might do our most complex physics problems in their kindergarten equivalent.
How those aliens could encounter us, and think "oh, look how cute, the human can derive a series approximation".

People like Tanishq are a step/stage between us regular people, and those theoretical aliens. He can do more as a child - but he has the potential to do more as a maximum. A personal maximum that likely humanity can't supply him with today.

People in general are a mix of creatives, memorizers, knuckleheads, middle-grounders, etc.
So the question that comes to my mind is, which kind of person is Tanishq?

We know that he absorbs information better than a regular person.
But there's a difference between memorization, understanding, and intuition.

We've all met people that memorize like crazy. They get amazing grades, but you can tell that their understanding is weak when they ask painfully stupid questions. The kind that would never be asked had they even the slightest understanding of the 'mechanics' of the subject at hand. (This always made my jaw drop. Seeing a person with perfect grades just 'not get it' to badly)

We've all met people that have a strong sense of understanding. They see one example, and they can run with it, adapting it to all kinds of changes. They 'get it'.
(Not always the best grades though. Why study when you can figure it out as you go? Because you won't figure everything out on the spot come test time...)

Then there are those with real intuition. The kind of person that looks at a problem, and thinks "the solution is something like this, I can't say why, but I can feel it. Let me work on it and figure it out." Then some time later they return with a real solution and a proof of why... and it was right along the lines that they had suspected to begin with.
No one had to give them an example, and no one had to pump them full of set-up material. They could feel it, and knew enough to recognize what it was they were on to.
These are the people that make the big leaps for human understanding.

The saddest case for Tanishq would be that he turns out to be a very enthusiastic expert memorizer.

But I hope he, and humanity, can be lucky enough for him to be both a prodigy, and a true intuitive.

-scheherazade


P.S.
Something amazing about those parent's genes. Definitely should save a [consentual] copy... Too good to lose.
IMO there should be focus on creating a gene therapy program to improve learning/intellect.
That will in itself lead to greater progress in other fields, as there would be many more super-intelligent people available to work on those problems, and many more opportunities for big breakthroughs.
It's something that could raise the potential [and actual] achievement cap of all humanity. 'It's kind of a big deal'.
It's like figuring out 'how to become those hypothetical aliens'.

Crappy starcraft example : Don't rush... macro instead. You'll be farther along later than you would be otherwise.