zlacker

>>i7l+(OP)
I'm not quite a "child prodigy", but I did skip two grades in math in school. It made me feel very special when it was a kid but as a thirty-something software person I don't think I'm smarter than most of my coworkers now.

I think I was better than most kids at math, particularly algebra, but those kids grew up and caught up and I suspect many of them are as good or better at math than I am. I know nothing about child psychology or anything adjacent, but I honestly think a lot of "advanced child" stuff is just maturity.

>>tomber+Bc
No.

My friend's child is profoundly gifted (160+ IQ). He is 12 years old and finishing Calculus and next year will be taking college math courses. His friends are a year younger than him and have qualified for AIME since they were 8 years old.

Giftedness is very real, and it's not just "maturity". Their brains are different. Seeing them squabble over math problems, it's like watching people talk a different language.

>>blindr+is
I took an IQ test about twelve years ago and I also got 160 on the Stanford–Binet [1], so if we are going to use that as the metric I was a “prodigy” as well (though no one ever called me that). I didn’t take calc when I was twelve though, that would have been cool. I had to wait until I was fifteen.

Anyway, if that’s the scale, it still can fit with the “doesn’t lead to exceptional outcomes”. I am a perfectly competent software person, and maybe I even understand some of the mathematics behind it better than the average programmer, but I am still basically just an “adequate” worker, and honestly I am afraid that I have more or less peaked career-wise. I am sure that some prodigies do great but the article seems to indicate that they’re rarely exceptional at adulthood.

[1] honestly I think that IQ is stupid and that it’s dumb to try and distill something as complicated and multi-faceted as intelligence to a single dimension or even a couple dimensions is pretty reductive.

>>tomber+0B
You, my friend, are profoundly gifted, especially if you scored that high as an adult. That said, it only describes how your brain works, it doesn't describe how high achieving you will be. That is an amalgamation of all your life experiences and things like opportunity, perseverance, etc. The tools you have to understand complex things are much wider than a regular person, but it doesn't mean a regular person can't outhustle you. I don't know how old you are, but it's never to late to dust off your tools and give it a go at something more aspirational, if that's something you've always wanted to do. If you're happy as you are, then there's no point because happiness is what really matters in the end.

>>blindr+VA1
To be fair, I knew I would be taking the test well in advance, so I took dozens and dozens of practice tests over the course of two weeks. They like to say you can’t study for an IQ test but you can.

I like to think I’m pretty clever, but I almost certainly would not have gotten 160 if I hadn’t gotten the practice test.