Autism to Astrophysics: Jacob Barnett

[momopi]

http://anonhq.com/autism-to-astrophysics-jacob-barnett/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uq-FOOQ1TpE

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OR36jrx_L44


This is one determined kid who wanted to leave K-12 and go directly to college. At age 10 he brought home a stack of books and taught himself high school math in 2 weeks.

[Ghost]

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[Cornfed]

Just think of how many highly intelligent boys America is throwing away because they have mental "problems." He is going on to do great things, but the article says his mom pulled him out of a "special needs" school and that she was told he would never function in society. So from early on, society was trying to fit him into a box with people who have "problems" and if he had not had a good upbringing would probably not have become what he is today.

Well maybe, but astrophysics as it stands seems to be useless mystical (in the negative sense) bullshit as far as I can see, so perhaps the baddies have succeeding in isolated him from society after all. They simply don't want great men making great contributions any more.

[S_Parc]

Yes, Jake appears to be a great kid and is quite inspiring, esp given the fact that it was expected that he'd never make anything out of his life ... kudos to him.

Now, on the flip side ... a lot of his fame/success has to do with his parents creating a cloistered environment where one, he's protected from the elements and two, he's able to fully pursue his interests w/o bullying. Plus, it seems like his college classmates, ages 18-22 (I'm guessing), are also pretty open minded to having a kid as a mentor.

In the end, however, the world does not want a revolutionary thinker. So while it's impressive at on Glenn Beck, he was able to tackle a converging series, in reality, however, a lot of ppl in their 20s/30s can do the same thing but spend their lives as postdocs, never to achieve a professorship. The difference is that Jake's a kid and that's where all the fascination comes from. When he's an actual adult, will ppl be paying the same attention?

I suspect that he's got basically a decade. If he can publish a major book or series of papers, which turns the world of math or physics upside down, then sure, he's made it. If not, then he'll be relegated to the back office, like a lot of other aspirants, who didn't take their academic merits to medical school, Amazon/Google, management consulting, or Wall St.

[S_Parc]

I had some conversations with a few former physicists, ppl who'd attended the CalTechs, MITs, Princetons, Brookhaven Labs, etc, for advanced degrees and research projects. Only one remains in academia, the others have left for careers in industry or govt.

Their consensus is that Jake's career will be mediocre and here's why … the field of theoretical physics has a high level of orthodoxy and politics. Jake, being a kid, is completely impervious to the real world of being published and recognized by the academic establishment. For example, if he wanted to be radical and let's say reject the Dark Matter hypothesis, chances are, he won't finding many appointments, even if his conjectures are sound.

Next, not having much experimental basis, the field of advanced physics is highly depended upon mathematical postulations as oppose to laboratory experiments, which is what differentiates the academics of chemists over physicists. Many chemists have medium cost experimental models which validate their theoretical postulations. In contrast, without access to a large national lab or grandiose university facilities, physicists can't do the same.

All and all, in their minds, Jake should leave theoretical physics and instead, pursue computational areas along with applied math, getting into regions like algorithmic design, cryptography, and/or number theory, where his individual work isn't so hampered by the politics of the academy.

[Moretorque]

I can vouch for these guy's being in their own kinda world. I live with one and he worked on some of the hardest problems to date. He was a research scientist at Los Alamos and taught at Yale and UF. He was supposed to be brilliant at what he did, he was a weapons # cruncher for Daddy Gov.

In the real world he is completely lost in some ways but very very book educated especially on old history from somewhat real history books that used to be in the mainstream.. He verified what was right about what I was reading on the net and what he thought was wrong on many subjects.

Astronomy is fascinating even if the great one thinks it's useless,

[S_Parc]

I can vouch for these guy's being in their own kinda world. I live with one and he worked on some of the hardest problems to date. He was a research scientist at Los Alamos and taught at Yale and UF. He was supposed to be brilliant at what he did, he was a weapons # cruncher for Daddy Gov.

In the real world he is completely lost in some ways but very very book educated especially on old history from somewhat real history books that used to be in the mainstream.. He verified what was right about what I was reading on the net and what he thought was wrong on many subjects.

Astronomy is fascinating even if the great one thinks it's useless,

The thing here is that Los Alamos is a Dept of Energy national lab, focused around nuclear fission (along with adjacent areas of interests), where many of the fundamental principles were already worked out in prior times. So while a lot of good work goes on in national labs, those attributes don't tend to be game changers. I even know of a guy with two CalTech PhDs, one in electrical engineering and the other in chemical engineering, along with an MIT postdoc, who's got such a career. So far, outside of recognition by some highly specialized teams out there, in energy and defense, he's not a household name.

I'd even argue that the best occupation for math geniuses is applied cryptography for the NSA or the DoD, not pure science. If Alan Turing wasn't gay, he would have had a clandestine *intelligence* career for life. It's too bad that the British justice system of his time, made him an outcast for all classified work in NATO.

What Jake's trying to do is be a game changer, much like a Maxwell, Einstein, or Schrodinger, but today, theoretical physics is not open enough to accept someone outside of the orthodoxy.