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by mewpmewp2 656 days ago
I just think for some people math is very fun since the very young age and so they of course practice it. For others it may not be, so it is hard work for them. E.g. I have always enjoyed ever since I can remember doing these exercises. When walking home I used to multiply different numbers as a past time in my head. Most people are not going to do those things, and it didn't feel hard work at all.

In first grade I used to run through workbooks being addicted to solving those problems like some addictive mobile or video game and at that point teacher had to stop me and I was frustrated.

I only had this addiction to math and physics - a bit to chemistry, and I couldn't really focus on other text / memorization based subjects.

And it makes sense to me that genetically in a population you will have brains out of the box that are naturally optimized for different specialities, since having a specialized brain allows you to have more power in that specific area. Problem is when you force those specialised brains into the same way of studying.

1 comments

Exactly. We enjoy different activities. For math oriented kids it's not a grind, it's interesting and fun. For me, reading novels was much more of a grind, as I just wasn't that interested in people and their conflicts and condition.

It took until my twenties that I could realize the value in humanities and "social" topics.

Similarly most people will naturally learn about countless types of fashions and connotations of liking various music bands etc which is actually quite a lot of information to memorize. But it's fun and feels relevant while math feels disembodied and irrelevant to their social goals in life.