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Get Ready for Many More Prodigies

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There are some fields where getting reasonably good at them entails being comfortable with the high probability that somewhere out there there's someone who is better than you and is, say, 12 years old. If you started out with a lot of raw ability, and worked extremely hard, you might be able to push your mathematical skills to the point that you could compete in the IMO like Terence Tao did when he was twelve. Being in a similar percentile of chess skill worldwide would imply an Elo of around 2550, which Magnus Carlsen got to at age 13. Prodigies attract a lot of attention, and the nature of their skills makes those skills hard for outsiders to assess—success in math competitions certainly correlates with the ability to make meaningful contributions to the field of math, but they're optimizing for a different set of skills that eventually cuts against some of the instincts they'd want to cultivate—asking trick questions is a good way to assess skill, but reality itself does not have a

Get Ready for Many More Prodigies Get Ready for Many More Prodigies Plus! Optimization; Scarcity; Property Rights; Incremental Margins; Data and Product 22nd December 2025 Byrne Hobart Contents This post is for subscribers only Subscribe now Already have an account? Sign in Share this edition! Join 50,000+ industry professionals and curious generalists by subscribing to The Diff.

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