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Comment by RomanBob | Hacker News Reader

Because in reality the teenager's mental output isn't higher than a random adult engineer.

But people just think "amazing" when a teenager does something, because people now have very low expectation for teenagers.

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Teenagers also tend to have all the time in the world for hobbies, relative to working adults.

I'm a firm believer that in order to reach virtuous levels in anything, you really need to take advantage of your teenage years to nail down the fundamentals.

I'm a musician myself, and spent almost every day between ages 13 to 20, often up to 6 hours a day, practicing and playing my instrument. Way more often than not, when I meet very talented people in different walks of life (music, tech, sports, etc.), it's the same story.

Teens also tend to have a very naive optimism and ambition / drive. Nothing is impossible, and no-ones gonna stop them. I think you need that no-breaks mentality to succeed.

And lastly, people naturally root for young people. The next hope, and all that.

I did a lot of programming in my teenage years, and i think that gave me a head start i am still enjoying today. But when i was a teenager, we didn't really have the internet at home, so picking up a programming book and having a go was amongst the easiest and most enjoyable distractions available to me in the summer holidays. I do wonder, if i was growing up again today, whether i would still do that, or just spend all my time on Reddit.

I disagree. Your teenage years are just your first opportunity to "master" a skill. If we take the 10000 hour rule as an example it takes 5 years of continuous effort. Between the age of 12 and 18 there is plenty of time for that. After that you go to higher which lets you master your second skill. After that you go to work and master your third skill and so on.

The only difference is that during your teenage years you get to choose. There is no pressure to get a "useful" degree or find a high-paying job.

Something obvious: Just because you have these opportunities doesn't mean you automatically take advantage of them and become virtuous. A lot of people waste their opportunities in exchange for something else.

> If we take the 10000 hour rule as an example it takes 5 years of continuous effort.

While your point about about teenagers having lots of discretionary time to become better at what they choose to pursue is very valid, the 10,000 hour rule is a distortion of the findings of a study on accomplished violinists. It is not broadly applicable. The tradition of violin playing has hundreds of years of teaching and quantifiable and measurable performance indicators. Other fields, not so much.

"Because in reality the teenager's mental output isn't higher than a random adult engineer."

This is why I think more companies should embrace skunkworks projects/time. Imagine if some of the best engineers around the world were given time during the day to work on some hard problems they wouldn't necessarily be thinking about. I'm sure we'd solve some problems pretty quickly. Instead engineers are working on extracting more eye time for ads.

The question then is why aren't more adult engineers in those awards (shrug). Maybe they know better and assure to patent their product/idea/project first to exchange it for a pat in the shoulder and a little gossip exposure to show your mum. Dunno...

For this guy the effort investment will be very profitable at least. I'm honestly happy for him (but a litte baffled that they still look for multitask superheros able to play the tuba. Why we would want a girl/guy, able to clean the ocean, spending one single hour of their precious time learning the baby elephant walk instead?).

It seems that the number of "don't apply if you are not young" job offers in science is increasing in any case.

The award is only open for kids aged 13 to 18, so it's hardly surprising.

> they still look for multitask superheros able to play the tuba

I don't think the prize takes his tuba skills into account at all. It's just that very driven people take to be driven in their various interests.

That said, one reason to prefer tuba-playing ocean cleaners might be to avoid those that will burnout before reaching the goals.

There's also good societal reason to encourage teenagers like this to undertake another 4-8 years of difficult education to become those random adult engineers.

Showing them "hey what you can do with your mind is valued by society" might help do that.

So the product that they are tring to sell here to adolescents is "science courses" and science itself is just an excuse (in those cases). "See? You could be like this guy and be a happy tuba player, sportsman and superscientist all in one" and all of that. This would explain a lot of things... :-)

... and for most of the participants, here comes the surprise...

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