[Letter] Advice for High School #1

It's not clear to me that reading about the problems with education is a good use of your time in high school. It might be interesting, but it's not really useful unless you plan to go into education-related politics.
I don't think graduating with minimum debt is good advice for college students. The ROI for engineering degrees is ridiculously high. The important thing is to not waste money (i.e. don't go to a tiny private school or get a Music Theory degree). Also, work while you're in school since work experience + school experience >> just school experience.

Understanding problems with the education system helps to decide how to educate oneself.

Yeah I agree, I think you can get pretty far with educating yourself while having read maaaybe 1 or 2 of the 4+ books listed in the post, unless you find that that is something that really interests you. Of course reading nonfiction is a gr8 way to educate yourself (though you have to be careful, because a lot of published nonfiction has lower epistemic standards than would be ideal), but again, that nonfiction doesn't have to be about the flaws of the education system unless you really care about learning about the flaws of the education system.

sincerely, someone who reads a lot about the flaws in the education system

[-]Brendan Long4y40

Yeah, I definitely recommend reading the given list of books if you're interested in the education system, but I would frame it that way. If you don't really care about the education system, you shouldn't feel like you need to read them.

[-]Ericf4y150

High School (and even more so College) is a good time to try lots of different things. Don't pursue one thing obsessively, sample different kinds of activities.

Coding, writing, drawing, exercise, conversation, dating, "going steady," playing video games, playing irl games, playing sport, build things with your hands, clean every room in your house, cook, pontificate, take standardized tests (PSAT), visit other places - that could be other countries or just a different neighborhood depending on your parents finances, go camping overnight, watch live performances, perform live, eat new things, babysit various ages of kid, have a variety of part-time jobs.

As you build up a wide range of experiences, you will be able to get a sense of what you actually like to do, and can make a life plan from that.

Specifics:

If you want to eventually raise kids, the most important thing you can do now is work on your own mindfulness, and improve your patience. The second thing you need is upper body strength.
Unless you're in the top 0.1% of something (family wealth, acting ability, writing ability, etc.), having a BS degree will make your career easier. Talk to your financial advisor, but it seems like the best options are:
1. If you aren't Asian, and live in the US, but not in New England, and you can get great grades and great test scores (ie perfect ACT / Over 750 on each section of the SAT, plus AP & subject exams with similarly good scores), you can get in to a school with a big endowment (Ivy or Ivy equivalent) and have them pay for it (as long as your parents can afford the "family contribution.")
2. If you just have the great grades and test scores, you can get a full academic scholarship to some rando university somewhere
3. If you live in California or another location that has good community colleges, you can pay for and take classes there while living at home, and transfer to a full college, possibly while still living at home. You can even stop going to High School to do this - if you finish your BS or BA, no-one will care that you didn't actually get a HS diploma.
4. If you don't have parents (or someone else) who can support you financially while you go to college, line up a job first. Big institutional employers often have educational support, and you can get a degree taking one class at a time, and having your employer pay for it (especially if it's a job-relevant program). Note that this requires you to work an 8-4:30 style job, not at an "unlimited vacation and food" startup where you're actually working 12 hour days, and 4 on Sunday, with one day off a year to attend your "Grandmother's Funeral."
Get a credit card ASAP (or get added to your parent's account) (one statistic in your credit report is longest open account). Use it and Pay it off every month (% on-time payments is another). Open as many cards as you can, and get the limit raised whenever possible (low % of available credit used is another statistic). Don't ever buy something unless you already have the money in the bank - the card is just a convenience / source of free points.

[-]SatvikBeri4y80

Is there a reason you recommend Hy instead of Clojure? I would suggest Clojure to most people interested in Lisp these days, due to the overwhelmingly larger community, ecosystem, & existence of Clojurescript.

[-]lsusr4y60

I recommend Hy because it's what I personally use and I can therefore vouch for it. I have heard nothing but good things about Clojure. I even attend a Clojure user group. The Clojure programmers I meet tend to be smart which is a good sign.

[-]wunan4y80

To any high schoolers reading this: If I could send just one of the items from the above list back to myself in high school, it would be "lift weights." Starting Strength is a good intro.

[-]lsusr4y90

The recommendation to lift weights applies to boys and girls. If you are a woman, lifting weights won't make you bulky. It will make you hot.

[-]Phil Scadden4y60

Fascinating question as what advice I would give my high school self if I could. "Dont be such a prat" would be good start. Listen much more than talk, figure out how people work without trying to change them. Try lots of things (safely) and have fun. Be an agent for good things. Read everything (not advice I needed). Dont wait till uni before trying to change the world. Dont be afraid to fail, just learn from it. Master calculus as fast as you can and then learn the science properly instead of way curriculum prescribes. Master some form of coding. Find some physical activity that you really like (with the old dictum of "if you cant do it well, learn to enjoy doing it badly").

[-]Phil Scadden4y10

I should add that my high school self failed badly at the "listen", "figure out how people work" and especially "dont be a prat". Didn't lose fear of failing till University.

[-]Torrent4y10

Why do you suggest Calculus?

[-]Phil Scadden4y30

C.S. Lewis said "“I could never have gone far in any science because on the path of every science the lion Mathematics lies in wait for you.” I would say the lion was mostly calculus (though algebra skills are more or less assumed by calculus. At my high school and my son's high school, algebra and calculus were taught in same course). Even in stats, you can't move into the proofs for many theorems without calculus and I strongly recommend study of proofs so you know the real background to any theorem you might be applying (this is university level for most part).

I work in earth science and too many of my colleagues take fright at sight of an integral or partial derivative sign in a paper. Lack of calculus becomes a limiting factor so master it if you can. If you can't, make good friends with colleagues who can.

[-]Arti4y20

I use Vim, but I'm a bit surprised to see (lisp + vim) recommended over (lisp + emacs), since aiui emacs is much more common/better supported in the Lisp ecosystem. (I learned Vim while using C-family languages, then later learned Lisp.)

Also, I'd recommend Racket and How to Design Programs for learning Lisp and programming. (This is based on me having taken the intro CS course taught by the book's author; I can't say for certain that the book on its own is as good as the course, but I expect it to be pretty good.) Main downside is that the only vim bindings plugin I've found for DrRacket isn't very good. (I believe it has some emacs features built-in, though.)

[-]mpr4y30

Apparently OP is recommending the vim keybindings system, not so much the application. They mention writing this post in Spacemacs.

I am also a convert to this philosophy: vim is the best language for editing, emacs is the best environment for editing.

[-]Adam Zerner4y20

Why do you see weight lifting as something that has an absurdly high payoff?

[-]Viliam4y50

Weight lifting improves health, which has all kinds of physical and mental benefits. It makes you look stronger and more attractive, which via halo effect makes you look better at everything (smarter, more competent...). Being stronger is useful instrumentally (sometimes you need to move heavy things) and makes you more intimidating, giving you an advantage at social interactions (people are more polite), and increasing your chance to avoid physical conflicts or win the ones you can't avoid.

That's pretty impressive in my opinion for something that requires like 1 hour a day at home to get into the top 5-10% of population.

[-]Adam Zerner4y20

To me, those points are good ones if you're arguing that it is worth doing, but to argue that it is in that top tier of things with absurdly high payoffs (or even second, or third tier), the points need to be much stronger.

[-]lsusr4y40

Research into exercise physiology plus personal experience lifting weights.

[-]Adam Zerner4y40

I accept that it successfully builds muscle. What I'm asking is why having muscle is something you see as really valuable.

[-]lsusr4y40

That is a complicated subject which would require a dedicated post to explore in detail.

[-]ChristianKl4y60

I'm curious about reading that post ;) It might help with motivation. I would expect that it might convince other people as well.

[-]Zolmeister4y20

I dropped out of high school. It's not a place for smart people.

[-]Charbel-Raphaël4y10

Why would Vim be important ? I mean, everybody uses VS Code nowadays, and it's much more easy and versatile and no need to read a book to understand it...

[-]cata4y20

Probably if you are a programmer you will be spending thousands of hours SSHed into this or that over your life, so you had better be able to view and edit files there.

[-]Charbel-Raphaël4y10

You can SSH directly with VS Code in just one click with the remote extension.

[-]lsusr4y*00

Everybody?

Vim keybindings (whether you're using Vim, emacs, whatever) are faster than standard keybindings. If a lot of your time is spent editing code or writing then even a small pays off a lot over the decades. That alone is sufficient reason to learn Vim.

Perhaps more importantly, faster edits gives me a faster iteration time. I suspect this increases my effective working memory since there is less time between edits for me to forget things. There is evidence working memory and -factor are closely related, perhaps even the same thing. General intelligence is extremely important to writing advanced software. Anything which can give you a similar edge ought to be extremely valuable.

[-]Charbel-Raphaël4y10

Visual Studio Code lets you perform most tasks directly from the keyboard. You can even use a Vim emulator if you like.

But more importantly, "faster edits gives me a faster iteration time" : when developing complex stuff, your writing speed is clearly not the limiting factor. Using proper file structure visualization and navigation tools is way more important.

LESSWRONG
LW

LESSWRONG
LW

93

[Letter] Advice for High School #1

93

93

Vim

Lisp

Blogging

High School Advice

College Advice

Cheat Codes for Life