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The Boy Genius of Ulan Bator
An anonymous reader writes "A lot of us grew up tinkering with electronics and cherishing the one or two reference books we could find that explained exactly what we wanted to know. Nowadays, with internet access widely available and online educational materials coming into their own, we're going to see a lot more kindred spirits coming out of places all over the globe. The NY Times has a story about one such, a lad from Mongolia who hacked together complex sensors at the age of 16 and was one of the 0.2% of students to get a perfect score on MIT's first Massive Open Online Course. From the article: 'Battushig, playing the role of the car, moved into the sensor's path to show me how it worked, but it was clear he was not entirely satisfied with his design. "The use of the long wires is very inconvenient for my users," he said, almost apologetically, clasping his hands together in emphasis. He realized that contractors would be reluctant to install the siren in other buildings if they had to deal with cumbersome wiring, so he was developing a wireless version. ... Battushig has the round cheeks of a young boy, but he is not your typical teenager. He hasn't read Harry Potter ("What will I learn from that?") and doesn't like listening to music (when a friend saw him wearing headphones, he couldn't believe it; it turned out Battushig was preparing for the SAT). His projects are what make him happy. "In electrical engineering, there is no limit," he said.'"
"In electrical engineering, there is no limit,"
In real life, there is.
When we could simply call him "Master"?
Not taking anything away from this young man's abilities but what struck me most about the article was his high school principal, Enkhmunkh Zurgaanjin. To quote from the article:
The answer has to do with Battushig's extraordinary abilities, of course, but also with the ambitions of his high-school principal. Enkhmunkh Zurgaanjin, the principal of the Sant School, was the first Mongolian to graduate from M.I.T., in 2009, and he has tried since then to bring science and technology labs to his students. "My vision," he told me, "is to have more skilled engineers to develop Mongolia. To do that, everything has to start from the beginning."
Here is a man who graduated from M.I.T. but rather than entering the private sector to cash in on his hard work he instead went back to his home country to bootstrap his fellow countrymen. Kuods to this man.
He hasn't read Harry Potter ("What will I learn from that?") this is both an ignorant and arrogant statement. an intelligent individual would read the books and then say there was nothing to learn from them, yet this kid assumes there is nothing to learn from it. the fact of the matter is that one can learn something from anything, it's merely dependent on perspective. he could learn things like loyalty, courage, conviction, friendship....many life lessons that he won't learn unless he pushes himself outside of his comfort zone of academic achievement. just like he needed help from others to make his reality a possibility.
"I want to make good things for humans."
how can he do good things for humans if he doesn't understand humans or have perspective? but the kid isn't smart enough to figure that out. some genius.
It's not at all impossible to track the lives of these people. And you're right that they very well might be going on to do great work that never see's the light of day for most people. Which is exactly what everyone else does. I think his point is that there are lots of smart people doing really great things out there, but the media has an over-fascination with these extreme cases where the kid ultimately ends up like everyone else.
You see it in the high school sports world as well. There will be some article about a 7 foot tall 9th grader who's tearing up the competition and is destined for the NBA and then... nothing. You actually can find out what happened with a little research, and it usually ends up being something like they weren't nearly as good in practice as they were on paper, at the higher levels of the sport. So they go on with life and maybe even play some college basketball, but eventually settle into something completely unrelated, but more realistic.