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Comment by smeej | Hacker News Reader

Speaking as someone whose school administrators wanted me to start university by 13 but whose parents objected and held me back, being the same age as my chronological peers was meaningless and did not help me relate to them.

The odds that an 18-22yo traditional college student will overlook a 5-9 year age gap because you share a lot of interests and can have interesting conversations are much higher than the odds that another 13yo will overlook the fact that you have no shared interests at all because hey, you're the same age.

I found it extremely difficult to make friends until I got out from under the limiting influence of my parents who didn't want their kid to be "weird."

Now I have a whole bunch of weird friends who are fascinating, joyful dorks, so it's not hopeless either way, but I'd have loved to experience this much sooner.

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> The odds that an 18-22yo traditional college student will overlook a 5-9 year age gap because you share a lot of interests and can have interesting conversations are much higher than the odds that another 13yo will overlook the fact that you have no shared interests at all because hey, you're the same age.

I see both as same odds - mainly zero.

A lot of people ITT who are like, “I’m so high IQ - I went to college when I was 13” like many of us out here didn’t have that option. (Rubs very much the same way of r/iamverysmart) It’s not as difficult as people make it sound. Most of your education growing up is a complete joke - it’s just babysitting. Exclaiming that you were some version of detective Conan is also quite cringe.

It's always a bit cringe worthy when a person talks about how smart he is. But that doesn't make it wrong.

You seem to have read it as some kind of bragging, but I see no reason to interpret it that way.

Usually, it’s some moron on the Internet saying he was a “gifted kid” like it’s an achievement but you have independent verification that Colin Percival (cperciva - this topic starter) is smart. He’s a multi-time Putnam winner and the founder of Tarsnap.

Also the source of one of those amusing HN exchanges where people think everyone else is run of the mill. You know the one.

multi-time Putnam winner

Alas, only once.

He himself said he couldn’t associate with people who were lower than his IQ. I don’t give a shit what his accomplishments are - he clearly still has the same asinine mentality that any 13-year old has when they think they’re smart.

Idk why people on HN assume this is the first time I’ve had to deal with a Putnam winner (or a fields medalist), a celebrity, a billionaire, etc. I live in SV after all. I’ve talked to all of these folks many times. I talk to this person no different than any of the other people I’ve talked to. They deserve no different when they say such things. I judge what they say and are actively doing - not what past accomplishments they have made in some unrelated field.

It's not about the achievement or the title of being a whatever. It's just that if you're the kind of kid really interested in math competitions and you're really good at it, then you've got a small set of people with whom you can really enjoy sharing your view of the world through your favourite lens.

Whatever. Essentially, I like this guy's software and he seems fairly personable, so I'm inclined to not really believe he's "I'm so much smarter than you"ing a bunch of people.

He himself said he couldn’t associate with people who were lower than his IQ

That's not really what he said at all. He said he fit in somewhat better with his intellectual peers than with his age cohort. There's nothing really controversial about that at all. Most people prefer the company of those with whom they share common intellectual pursuits and viewpoint over those for whom their only common factor is age. Often physical and mental age councide but when they don't, it doesn't seem unreasonable that common mentality would be a stronger bond.

And even if the sentiment were elitist (which I dispute) I don't think I'm the context of this discussion, it deserves a hostile response. I appreciate the individual sharing his personal experience, even if I wouldn't qualify as the type of person he'd share a beer with.

You sound like you have an inferiority complex, you probably were not blessed with a comparable IQ to the people you describe and resent them for it because in SV that's your most important asset.

I'm not that smart compared to the other people you replied to but smart is relative. I chose to go to the 3rd best high school in my mediocre Romanian town and had the highest entry grade in the entire high school. When it came to math I would grok the concepts by simply reading on my own 30 minutes before class while my peers would need tutors and still not get it.

Do you think I had a good time in high school? What my peers lacked in math skill they gained in ego preservation. They saw intelligence as a threat that must be neutralized. I doubt my story is that different. I'm telling you this because it's pretty obvious you did not live it so you might gain some empathy and let go of your resentment

Please be less hostile. Writing like this is not in accordance with the HN guidelines.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

My comment was primarily to give the opposite side of the same coin as the parent comment. It sounded like we were probably similar children whose parents made dissimilar choices.

He seems to think his parents made the right choice. I wanted to confirm that I thought the choice my parents made was the wrong one.

You can read bragging into it if you really want, but it's extrinsic to the conversation.

All I can advise is a little bit of empathy. There are plenty of people who are nerdy, and have horrible social skills. For every bit of how obnoxious “I’m so high IQ - I went to college when I was 13” sounds to you, the flip side is that the person saying that probably:

1) Doesn't have very many friends

2) Which doesn't give many opportunities to practice social interactions

Which sort of cycles back on itself. It's hurting them a lot more than it's hurting you.

Society could use a lot more empathy.

>The odds that an 18-22yo traditional college student will overlook a 5-9 year age gap because you share a lot of interests and can have interesting conversations are much higher than the odds that another 13yo will overlook the fact that you have no shared interests at all because hey, you're the same age.

I think the odds are honestly in better favor of the 13YO. if only because a 5 year age gap for an 18 YO is a magnitude different than a 5 year age gap for a 30 year old, or even a 24 year old.

It may even be a legal risk depending on the profiling of each peer for the former. Of no fault of either party, just of the fault of decades of bad actors and a culture highlighting them.

I have a lot of friends and coulleages like that now, but I can't imagine them even giving me the time of day if we met a decade prior and somehow all had identical interests.

Grass is always greener. You don't know the counterfactual and you would have likely been disappointed in your parents had they sent you to college early as well.

I'll let other people, like the parent comment, speak to their experiences. He, at least, doesn't seem to think my grass was greener.

I do think listening to any of the professional educators who unanimously and repeatedly told my parents it would have been better to accelerate my path through school would have been a good idea.

First of all, neither do /you/ know the counterfactual and so you have no bearing on whether or not this person "would have likely been disappointed in your parents had they sent you to college early as well."

Do you have any experience with folks who went to secondary education early? Because I was miserable in high school bored out of my mind and left 1 year only and my only regret was not leaving even earlier like some of my peers did. Speaking platitudes like "the grass is always greener" may make you feel better but it doesn't line up with 25% of the profiles of students I've seen go to secondary education early (and I know a lot of them).

I had a similar experience: I started college at 17 and with little effort could have started at 16.

I did hang out with a 15-year-old at college and he seemed to have a relatively normal college experience.

Genuine question, cause I don't live in the US, is starting college at 17 unusual? Over here half of the cohort finishing high school are 17, so I expect a similar proportion starting college here are 17.

Personally I had a 2 year gap between high school and university, so I went from being one of the youngest in my year to one of the oldest,which was kinda nice. Plus the time away taught me some self reliance so college was pretty easy to adjust to.

Canadian here, but I think the US follows the same age-grade mapping. Kids usually enter Kindergarten in September of the calendar year in which they turn 5, i.e. those born January-August are 5 years old and those born September-December are still 4 years old. After that, grades 1-12 follow with a majority of post-secondary-education-bound students entering a few months later.

So yes, in the modal case (advancing with the cohort) a student entering college will start at 17 years old if their birthday is late in the year.

In most US areas, grade cutoff is around August, so before college starts. Most students start college at 18.

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