[SJC_Hacker]

Can't find the reference but from an interview with his parents there apparently there wasn't much "nurturing" other than simply making available the necessary materials which he gobbled up. Its not like they put a made him practice for an hour a day.

A boy in my high school class made IMO and got a gold medal (and later on won the Putnam one year). They interviewed his parents and it was a similar story.

[MrOrelliOReilly]

I think you might be underrating the value of even that enabling work. Some parents would not have the financial resources to provide those learning materials. And some parents would take a normative stance on how an 8 year old ought to behave.

More importantly, it's not as though individuals like Clements or Erdos was corresponding with Terrence directly to arrange a meeting. His parents clearly played an important role in facilitating and allowing these encounters. That deserves a lot of credit!

[koolba]

> I think you might be underrating the value of even that enabling work. Some parents would not have the financial resources to provide those learning materials. And some parents would take a normative stance on how an 8 year old ought to behave.

And most modern parents would swamp the child with a bunch of mind rotting auto playing TV and video games. There's an account of Terence's time at university where he nearly fails his oral qualifying exams as he spent most of his time playing Civ rather than studying anything. Imagine the travesty for the world if 5 year old Terence had been handed an Xbox.

[throwforfeds]

Yeah I agree, an 8 year old isn't setting up these meetings and correspondences.

I think beyond even having supportive parents, the most important part was that he had a parent that had a degree in the field that he happened to be a genius in. His mother knew exactly how to guide her child through the material, even if it just was to let him go off to a corner and read the books she guided him towards for 3-4 hours a day for fun. So many children have advanced proclivities for certain things and parents that just can't even see what it is their child is brilliant at.

Having someone that knows the path and can point it out to them is a beautiful thing to have as a child.

[fifilura]

Sure. But what about the parents who struggle every day with normally gifted children? They deserve even more credit. This seems like an easy child :)

[kccqzy]

That’s simply not quite true if you read the article. When Terence Tao got stuck on a continued fraction problem, his mother told him to use the quadratic.

In contrast when I was a kid and was thinking about optimizing my program to print all prime numbers, my mother, instead of telling me about the sieve of Eratosthenes, told me to do school-approved math instead.

Now shoutout to my actual math teacher, who, having been told that I got stuck on writing a program to solve simultaneous linear equations, told me about Gaussian elimination.

[hnfong]

Agreed. It's been decades, but personally being acquaintances with IMO and IOI gold medalists made me rethink a lot of things.

With our society being ostensibly meritocratic regarding intelligence, people generally don't like to listen to stories that suggest that nurture and hard work aren't as important as they presume.

[shermantanktop]

At the individual level of a newborn infant, all the genetic gifts collapse into a fixed quantity. Nurture and hard work (and self care and many other things) become 100% of the controllable factors.

Nurture and parental mental health are not controllable by the child, so those become fixed from their perspective as they grow to maturity. That still leaves a lot.

All the former G&T kids on here talking about whether they could have been this or that are likely discounting their own contributions that they made and make every day to their own trajectory.

No, you were never going to be Einstein, no matter what, but you can still be the best version of yourself- the kindest, the most capable, the happiest, the least resentful.

Maybe that’s happy talk? Certainly some people have been dealt a tough hand, and it’s an American naive attitude to think that can always be overcome. Sometimes it can’t.

[somenameforme]

It's still meritocratic even with dramatic genetic differences between individuals. A peer comment mentioned an anecdote of Terence nearly failing his orals because he ended spending all of his time playing Civ instead of studying anything.

It's basically the Gattaca story. Somebody can have the most brilliant mind in the world, but without actually applying it, they're not going to do great in life. If you give a person of average intellect Tao's life of dedication and work ethic, then he's going to end up a world class mathematician. He probably won't end up at the top of the top, as that's going to be reserved for those that hit the mega-lottery of genetics + dedication, but will also have no problem leaving his mark on this world and living a comfortable life.

[danielmarkbruce]

>> people generally don't like to listen to stories that suggest that nurture and hard work aren't as important as they presume

Having grown up in australia but living in the us, this attitude is very american. It's quite funny to see when you don't grow up thinking it. I married into a very athletic family and have a child who is a precocious athlete. Many parents ask us what training regime or practice sessions we do. The answer is nothing. People don't react well.

[zelphirkalt]

I don't think our society is even remotely meritocratic regarding intelligence. Maybe it is meritocratic regarding psychopathy.

We merely have a few pockets, where the very brightest are rewarded. However going from average intelligence up to those pockets, there is a ton of people, who are clearly more intelligent than most others. Much more intelligent than the typical lie-your-way-through-life people, who haven't shown any significant skill, yet are elected by the masses.

OK, this is making it political, but it's true in many countries, if not most. The truly very intelligent people rather focus on their area of expertise, where not many other humans are able to understand what they are doing or able to achieve a similar result. Similar thing happens in businesses. Talkers rise in the hierarchies, doers who don't self-promote massively remain low in the hierarchies, in most businesses. I don't see many scientists becoming millionaires for advancing humanity. We don't recognize great skills and smart people collectively in many cases. We chase silly trends and make-believe.

I could see "meritocratic regarding intelligence" somewhat in the way that smart kids don't have many problems at school usually, and then later at university, and then can maybe get a well paid job. But that's where the meritocratic system ends. In the job world it's mostly about other things. Like how well people fake being social with their higher-ups. Or how they have less worries about lying about their abilities. Or how they promote first and foremost themselves, rather than everyone, who significantly contributed to some achievement.

[boppo1]

Please elaborate

[ferguess_k]

I think they deliberately underplayed their role in this. Especially with Asian parents who think such nurturing is part of the "norm". I wouldn't be surprised that they spent TONs of time tutoring him when he was young -- and when he was more or less self-bootstrapped they don't need to spend too much time.

But I could be wrong. He is definitely a genius so maybe he did grasp the ideas rather early, like from 3 or 4.

[matsemann]

> and later on won the Putnam one year

Just the once, though, huh? [0]

[0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35015#35079

[jacquesm]

Hehe, that one will never die. It's the comment that more or less defines HN.