A 12 Year Old Kid Questions Einstein's Theories

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Janissy
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31 Mar 2011, 3:47 pm

ZeroGravitas wrote:

Wavefreak: a bigger buzzkill would be to consider that perhaps many children show such promise, but very few manage to get over their first great error.

It takes a lot of experience and maturity to admit one has made a mistake. Many physicists will never have the chance to pursue a line of thought to the point they can realize it is a dead-end. Those that have, usually discover this much later in life.

How do you think he will react if, at 20, he finds himself in the position many physicists do not reach until past 40?

The bright side to this morbid reasoning is that if he does encounter such an obstacle, he will be young enough to devote decades more to alternatives, than the average physicist who may discover it at 60.

What I'm really hoping is that youth will be on his side. While on the one hand it takes experience and maturity to admit you've made a mistake, on the other hand, the very young can sometimes be far more blithe about their errors because they haven't lived long enough to have invested literally decades in them. If he keeps working at this breakneck mental pace, he may discover he's wrong about this and the next two theories he comes up with all by the time he's 20 and still young enough to say, literally, "oops, guess not". It can be really hard to do that after investing a 25 year career in a particular theory. It may be easier to do when young. So if he can think up theories and then be proved wrong while still very young, maybe he can learn to roll with that and get to something really paradigm shifting by his 30's.

wavefreak58
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31 Mar 2011, 4:24 pm

Janissy wrote:

I think a certain amount of hubris is to be expected and is healthy especially in one so young.

Definitely. You have to have a bit of arrogance to push through other's skepticism.

Quote:

I worry about publicity. If there is too much circulating footage he might feel compelled to live up to his own hype, cornering him into trying to defend a theory he knows in his heart has already failed just because there are a million youtube viewers commenting about it.

Yeah. I fear for the kid. If he gets swept up in the media circus it could really hurt him. It all rides on his support network. If he has good people around him, he'll be fine.

Quote:

I personally think it's just fine if he's wrong. Edison had many, many lightbulb protoypes. Even Stephen Hawking is re-thinking some things.

Being wrong prompts better questions. Someone has to help this kid learn that. Maybe he already has.

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31 Mar 2011, 9:03 pm

Janissy wrote:

wavefreak58 wrote:

Buzz kill ahead ...

I'd like to know how this kid handles it when proven wrong. Even the most brilliant people make mistakes. If he believes himself infallible he will have a lot of difficulty as he gets older. I hope there are people around him that help him keep perspective.

Hopefully he will be able to take a "it was just a prototype" perspective about his failed theories the way that Edison was about his failed inventions. It really could go either way. I think a certain amount of hubris is to be expected and is healthy especially in one so young. I worry about publicity. If there is too much circulating footage he might feel compelled to live up to his own hype, cornering him into trying to defend a theory he knows in his heart has already failed just because there are a million youtube viewers commenting about it. In the arid realms of academia he might be more willing to let go of something that is wrong. Or maybe not. It all depends on his psyche, I suppose.

When I googled math prodigies (which of course I did after viewing his youtube) I came to the cautionary tale of James Siddis. He burned out and eventually refused to do any math at all because of the intense pressure to "live up to his potential". And that was 100 years ago when some newspaper articles and the lecture circuit were what passed for a media circus. This days with all the youtube views of his videos, these internet articles and probably appearances on TV (Ellen, it was on in the background for a reason), he may crack under pressure. I hope not. But I read some pages of the comments in this article and there are definately some haters who want to take him down a notch and are waiting to pounce if he's wrong. I personally think it's just fine if he's wrong. Edison had many, many lightbulb protoypes. Even Stephen Hawking is re-thinking some things. But he's going to have to be able to ignore the haters who want to scoff at him when he's wrong. That's not easy to do. It all depends on what sort of academiv mentorship he lucks into at the university.

I worry about publicity too. I had a hell of a time handling publicity in my mid-20s that is far less than the publicity he is getting. (Of course it's quite possible that he's aware of more of the world than I was in my mid-20s. I hope so for his sake. I certainly had less awareness of aspects of the world in my mid-20s than most children have in general... but then he's autistic so that may be true of him as well.) I also worry about burnout, especially with the number of autistic people who hit it at puberty, and the amount of child prodigies who hit it in general. I hope that someone is helping him with these things. I also know someone who made a really important discovery in childhood, and has spent the rest of his life feeling as if he can never live up to that one thing he did back then, and thus has become increasingly arrogant and pseudo-intellectual (outside his chosen field) in his attitude towards the world in the mistaken belief that this will cause others to see him as continuingly brilliant while he fears secretly that he is nothing of the sort and sort of spirals towards self-destruction and all kinds of other unpleasant stuff -- impostor syndrome at its worst. All things to look out for.

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ooOoOoOAnaOoOoOoo
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31 Mar 2011, 9:48 pm

It's great that he's doing so great but the big bang theory has already been challenged. The problem is one of expansion. The universe has too much space between galaxies to support the big bang theory. Plus, there's too much matter and too many stars.
" The Big Bounce" could very well replace the antiquated notion that a big explosion was what created the universe.

Asp-Z
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02 Apr 2011, 3:36 am

_Square_Peg_ wrote:

But wait, didn't Einstein have Asperger's too (supposedly)? So this is basically isn't about Apsies being smarter, but rather a competition over which Aspie is right.

Well, he had a fair few traits, so there's a lot of speculation, but no one knows whether or not he was actually an Aspie - the diagnosis didn't exist in his time.

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02 Apr 2011, 3:35 pm

It's easier to question than actually contribute to physics. (I've read a book from Gribbin, the Schrödinger's kittens)

The general relativity theory may be interpreted with some minor alterations differently. For example by changing point of reference (introducing imaginary numbers) square root of -t2 can be calculated, problem of time-space singularity can be resolved.

More concerns raised against inertia, one of the fundamental principles of classical physics. Maybe 'Ether', the antagonist of relativity theory exists in some form anyway. How do an object 'know' that it should resist acceleration? Or, how can we on Earth be affected by the centrifugal force caused by Earth's rotation without knowing that it rotates? To what? I always had a bad feeling about the Foucault-pendulum experiment, I just could not put my fingers on it.

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ooOoOoOAnaOoOoOoo
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02 Apr 2011, 3:43 pm

What about loop quantum gravity? Isn't that the next great buzz? Why isn't he researching that?

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02 Apr 2011, 3:50 pm

ooOoOoOAnaOoOoOoo wrote:

What about loop quantum gravity? Isn't that the next great buzz? Why isn't he researching that?

He should.

astaut
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02 Apr 2011, 11:11 pm

I once met a little boy with Aspergers, about 9 years old. He started talking to me about Physics and theories.

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02 Apr 2011, 11:52 pm

We can have the oddest interests... This kid really reminds me of myself; I was interested in physics way earlier than most kids even know what it means. I'm not profoundly gifted like this kid is; but that is absolutely to be expected with Asperger's. You can get odd interests like physics, or really narrow ones like the different types of cheese graters, or just really intense ones like the five-year-old kid that memorizes the names of every dinosaur ever discovered or the teen who gets a world record in a video game. I've long since ceased to be surprised by the extent of oddity in autistics' special interests.

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03 Apr 2011, 2:33 am

I wish there were more kids like him with such narrow interests successful in their adult life. I believe four of the key factors are cooperation with others whose knowledge may be complementer to theirs (Einstein had this help), able to comprehend the world around them and put themselves into context, achieve a deeper philosophical understanding and take perspective of the field they are interested in (especially true for modern physics, where lots of mathematical models are conceived with questionable relevance to nature), solid and caring mentoring to compensate for the oddness of the personality.

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bdselbert
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13 Apr 2011, 8:35 am

actually the thing the got my attention first was that he was using the speed of light as a constant as there has been some controversy that the speed of light has actually been faster in the past and is slowing down??? As a Christian i find this believable as God 'stretched' the heavens twice in the distant past. So if you use the speed of light as a constant and not prone to a variation in it's speed then i can possible see how the kid would think that in another universe that tachyons exist and light has mass.
If you go to Chuck Missler's web site he has some interesting articles on the subject.

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13 Apr 2011, 9:08 am

bdselbert wrote:

This is your very first and only post and the first thing you did was advertise another site.

:roll:

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13 Apr 2011, 11:29 am

Janissy wrote:

People have been wishing autism would get some good publicity for once. It looks like that wish has been answered.

On the one hand, if he becomes the new Face of Autism, it might raise expectations to impossible-to-meet heights for people who share his diagnosis but not his startling math abilities.

On the other hand, if a pre-natal test for autism ever does come into existence, his very existence will make women less inclined to abort if the test comes back positive.

On the other other hand, will parents become extra-bitter if their autistic child isn't remotely like him?

An interesting can of worms has just been opened. You can see this in the comment section. Most of the comments are a version of "ohmigod he is so smart, maybe he can fix everything, or at least cancer, or at least renewable energy". But some comments show peiople starting to grapple with his autism. People have seen savantism before. Stephen Wiltshire is semi-famous for his cityscapes. But this kid seems to have a far more comprehensive understanding of math and physics than other similarly smart savants. Daniel Tammet is also jaw droppingly brilliant and autistic, but he douesn't seem interested in tackling problems of this scope. Or maybe this kid is actually more talented in math than Tammet.

Anyway, the world waits breathlessly to see what happens when he hits his stride. And we do pray he hits his stride rather than burning out such as James Siddis.

Honestly? Parents should be able to choose. This kid probably represents less than 1% of the population, period. You can be a NT supergenius or an autistic person of average/low intelligence.

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13 Apr 2011, 12:02 pm

Phonic wrote:

bdselbert wrote:

This is your very first and only post and the first thing you did was advertise another site.

:roll:

I don't see it as advertising. Personally, I'm not sure whether the phrase "God stretched out the heavens" is meant to be figurative or not; but if it's literal, there's no reason why it wouldn't be referring to the expansion of the universe after the Big Bang. You can find some pretty surprising stuff in the Bible sometimes--it almost reads like somebody back then had an idea of what happened, but not the science to back it up. For example, the creation account starts with light, that is, energy--just like our universe did. People often think that back in the BC era, the people were primitive and rather stupid; but that's not true--our brains haven't changed appreciably since then; and the only reason our technology is so advanced is that we're building on what others did. If this kid can understand how things must've happened, working along the same paths as modern researchers, why shouldn't the people who wrote the Bible and other early documents have had an idea?

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13 Apr 2011, 6:28 pm

Sure helped me gain hope. Salutes to this genius kid.

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