7mo ago

Asking a girl out (the László Polgár story)

Shamelessly stealing this post from reddit because it's a really cool story:

Context - László Polgár, a Hungarian educational psychologist, conducted an experiment to prove that exceptional talent is developed through intensive education and training, not innate ability. He believed in his theory so strongly that he sought a partner willing to raise children under this philosophy. Polgár wrote to Klára, a Ukrainian teacher, explaining his ideas and proposing marriage as a collaboration in this experiment. Intrigued, Klára agreed, and they married, later raising their three daughters—Susan, Sofia, and Judit—as chess prodigies. From a young age, the girls were immersed in chess and rigorous intellectual training The experiment was a success: all three became world-class chess players, with Judit Polgár widely regarded as the greatest female chess player in history.

Posted here by /u/heroking4

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Undiscussed but Polgar helped disprove eugenics. His program proved it wasn't an undeclared genetic trait within the person but the environment they were raised in that proved exceptional individuals can emerge from anywhere.
- What? Ofcourse it works, its just that if the childhood environment is bad it will limit the potential so much that investing into that is much more effective most of the time. But yes, parental intelligence absolutely has some impact on the potential of a child, that is proven beyond any doubt.
  The good arguments against eugenics are moral, not biological.
  
  You confuse things. The childhood environment is part of the nurture part, thus unrelated genetics (the biological aspect). So an adoptive child (no genetical relationship) would do equally well raised similarly.
  The intelligence of the parent (or other genetical bagage) has little effect on the development of the child.
I'm assuming they got along alright if they set up not one, not two, but three test cases in bed.
- Sergeant Colon owed thirty years of happy marriage to the fact that Mrs. Colon worked all day and Sargent Colon worked all night. They communicated by means of notes. They had three grown-up children, all born, Vimes had assumed, as a result of extremely persuasive handwriting.
  Guards! Guards! - Terry Pratchett
- If the vibe is right, why not.
If I were one of the kids I would feel taken advantage of
- I know there are lots of gymnasts, musicians, ballet dancers, olympic athletes, etc. that probably feel that exact way, although I'm sure many also are grateful to have had the guidance. It probably depends on how much the kids enjoyed the game vs feeling pressured.
  I've read some about how fiercely competitive Judit was as a kid - demanding to play against the boys because she didn't like that everyone expected her to play in the women's leagues. She's incredible and is living proof that women can achieve the same level of play as men (which sounds obvious today, but she became a GM 30 years ago).
- Oh no, my parents made me a genius.
  Pass the pop tarts.
  
  Parents made you a genius by basically denying you a childhood you should have had, as an experiment, teaching you one of the most useless thing possible - playing an old boardgame.
No control group. They needed to have just as many kids who were never allowed to play or observe chess.
Also, small sample size.
One other thing that he helped prove is that his children had the same general development curve compared to other children when trained on a subject. Just offset for the early start.
Hence he didn't raise prodigies, as he tried to prove, but rather proved the effectiveness of training/education.

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