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I'm pretty sure the purpose of the essay is to find child rearing ideas making the childhoods of negatively exceptional people irrelevant.


One of the commonalities the essay highlighted was lots of alone time as a child:

> A common theme in the biographies is that the area of study which would eventually give them fame came to them almost like a wild hallucination induced by overdosing on boredom. They would be overcome by an obsession arising from within

I can easily imagine a child being left alone for long periods of time becoming disconnected from society, potentially to a destructive or anti-social point. Force-ably isolating your child for hours a day is probably not something that should be recommended lightly.

Even mildly, its possible that your child will seemly be socially awkward or feel disconnected from their peers, which could affect them growing up more than any exceptionalism.


I think you're missing the point GC was trying to make, which is that the kind of child-rearing patterns that make "positive" geniuses might also make negative ones.

i.e. "all positive geniuses were given X, but not all people given X became positive geniuses (some became mass murderers).


That was my point, thanks for putting it into words a bit better than I could.


on the contrary, its possible there is a common factor for both which may become more obvious if plotted with the rest.

it might also point out things that might corrupt an exceptional person to become net-negative to society.




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