Don't get hung up on "14 year old". Pay attention to "took up origami 6 years ago". That's 6 years of passionate learning, experimenting and improvement.
Also, ‘years’ tend to be a lot more hours for kids, and each hour yields more learning due to neuroplasticity. I learned so much faster at 15 than I do at 35. I know more now, which often more than makes up for slower learning, but I can’t learn difficult novel subjects in depth as fast as I once did.
I’m glad I learned OS in depth during high school via Gentoo linux. And engineering/physics/math in college. It’s very easy to assimilate any new knowledge which can be understood through those areas of first principles.
But learning more advanced math is quite a task now.
Can you really say that unless you switched fields multiple times? Of course you'll pick up on math and physics faster in high school than in college or postgrad, but that's because the problems get way, way harder as you progress. I've found that even in my late 30s I can still easily pick up new skills outside my field of expertise as long as I start with the basics that could also be picked up by a high-schooler. I started learning a new language last year and thanks to modern study apps, I actually find it easier today. Of course it will still take a long time to become an expert, but I'm not sure it would need more total hours than if I had started 20 years ago. It just gets more difficult to allocate the necessary hours for learning.
> even in my late 30s I can still easily pick up new skills outside my field of expertise as long as I start with the basics that could also be picked up by a high-schooler
Same age and same experience. I am learning my third language, after acquiring my second to a fluent level in my early 30's (by living in a country where it's spoken). But it's an entirely different character set, and has nearly zero cognates. I'm sure some skills transferred from my second language learning but I'm massively enjoying it and don't feel bogged down.
I think a lot of it is managing my mental energy, I look at it as a finite per-day resource replenished by sleep. If I have a mentally heavy workday, or overly emotional day, I know my language skills will be sub-par and don't try too hard. I also approach my learning in the morning, when I have an excess of this energy, because my job will do a good job of getting it close to zero, regardless of the starting point.
I think we don't give enough credence to the mental toll of an adult life and corporate job, and how much that takes from us, versus when we were young.
Totally agree. Adult life is just mentally taxing. I'm more curious and more eager to learn now in my 30s than I was in any of my schooling. The learning isn't hard but the energy regulation is.
I think it's so easy for people to discount "mental energy" since culturally we don't often acknowledge it as a finite resource the same way we do physical energy. Well maybe the problem is we view them as separate things in the first place.
When I was younger I just didn't have to worry about so much stuff.
This thread is a really good point. I am in my late 50ies now im really good with computer hardware because I started when I was 11. But I started wanting to become a SCI-FI writer at 35 and it has been an up hill battle to get good at for all the reason described in this thread.
Totally of the same persuasion as you, I'll say I did hear a very good counter point when Magnus Carlsen said in an interview at 30 he feels he can't compute lines as deep as he could previously, and his edge is now his experience. That was rather convincing.
Most of the folklore around "neuroplasticity" I've found pretty underwhelming. But yeah, if even he says it at that level of consistent practice, that seems like a good yardstick.
As I've experienced getting older I've found it's more about the lack of available time and focus.
I don't have the hours of time a young person does and I don't have the focus, there are a lot of other thoughts, emotions and responsibilities competing for my attention.
Would love someone who's aware of the literature to throw their hat in the ring though.
It's entirely possible, but as I've approached and now passed 30 my improved patience, self-discipline, and self-knowledge has allowed me to pick up skills and wrap my head around things I bounced off of several times as a high-schooler, and the technical foundation I've built up in that time has helped me build more connections and understand things in more depth/from more angles.
I'm sure I'll slow down eventually, but I've always found that thinking fast is vastly overrated. I've always had an easy time understanding things quickly, but it still takes me time to understand them well.
> Can you really say that unless you switched fields multiple times?
I have ;-) far too many times! Even going back and taking undergrad math coursework that my engineering curriculum didn't have like Discrete Math or Statistics got a lot harder than calculus / differential equations was when I was younger. I felt like I got less out of each hour, and also couldn't put in as many hours - not just because I have more responsibilities, but also because my brain just gets tired after fewer hours.
Have you tried creatine supplements? Especially if you're vegan or don't eat a lot of meat. Most people take it for muscle performance, but I found it insanely helpful for maintaining a sharp mind throughout a long day, especially with little sleep. That's also what the latest research starts to appreciate. I wouldn't be surprised to see recommended doses above 10g/day in elderly soon-ish since there are basically zero downsides even at much higher doses. In my early 30s I thought I lost my ability to pull all nighters because of increased tiredness, but now I feel like I can do even more than when I was 18. Most people greatly underestimate diet in general because they used to get away with anything when they were young.
Counterpoint: I've been taking creatine (10-15mg/day) for over 8 months and I can't say that I notice a difference at all.
That said, while I think that creatine's effects on cognitive performance are often overstated, creatine is scientifically proven to increase brain performance in some cases[1].
And fortunately, creatine is safe and very cheap[2], so maybe worth a try.
Did you have problems with tiredness and concentrating? Especially after only getting very little sleep for an extended time? Or did you already consume a lot of meat? There are many factors here that could potentially make it not worth your while. As with all supplements, a good diet and lots of rest can make them little more than expensive pee. But not everyone can have a perfect diet and lots of sleep all the time. Creatine is a supplement for a very particular lifestyle.
>> Especially after only getting very little sleep for an extended time?
>No
Then I'm not really surprised. I also see no real cognitive effects when everything is well anyways. But this one study is what I found to be the most accurate finding overall beyond enhancing muscle power:
I think it's just because hours spent learning by children often don't look like work to us. Like, when children are watching children's television or looking through those baby books with shapes and colors, they are studying. To them, that is learning. And I guarantee that in 1 hour of studying, I can learn every single color in Spanish, whereas a baby might need months of daily reading to finally understand it. But because we don't register it as studying, we would still say the baby learned language "effortlessly", while adults need to "study".
I'd argue I learn much faster now. I did study math and physics but I've found that those tools have accelerated a lot of learning and have a lot of compounding effects. Maybe mileage may vary but I suspect a strong base allows one to learn even faster.
Though only in last few years did I realize I was a fast learner. I thought I was slow because I'd say I didn't understand unless I had a deep understanding. But found that where I would not feel comfortable claiming understanding was a different threshold than others.
Where I've found math and physics helpful is in depth and abstraction. The science builds a good framework to dive deep into understanding and tease out the critical components. Science is a search algorithm in some sense. The math helps abstract, or generalize. To see the patterns and extend and use in ways beyond what was taught. That's where the real compounding happens and where I personally start to feel I understand things. But it requires the depth. But that's my framework and I'm sure there's a million good ones and a million better ones
Math and physics certainly allow you to learn fast in technical fields and that is my experience as well, but the other comment was more about completely unrelated fields like humanities where previous experience may not translate at all. For example an english speaker with a PhD in Physics will still have to start more or less from zero when learning japanese.
Strangely I've found there's still a lot of translative skills. But I think it is more to do with the approach than the base knowledge.
Physics definitely helps me learn things like a sport or driving a new vehicle. Forces me to think more about things like where force is being applied, positioning, paths, and many other things. I'll focus on the small things that compound and I think this makes the start a little slower but that makes things accelerate as my base isn't shaky as I'm moving forward.
But this also helps when I've doing things like learn a language. It's why I wrote the last paragraph like I did. The science side gives you the habit of breaking things down into their atomic units. The framework of build, attack/critique/deconstruct, rebuild. When I was younger I couldn't do this. If I were trying to do something like learn Chinese I'd first focus on just memorizing rather than focus on the radicals.
The iterative style of building up is such a useful framework. Naturally when forming a hypothesis you try to build something stable. But the most important thing to then do is attack it as hard as you can. This is a step most people don't take, but it's probably the most important one for finding truth. It damages and even sometimes completely destroys your construction. But when you rebuild it is better, it is stronger. The framework taught me the importance of doing the boring stuff like revisiting what I've already learned.
And that's also why I'm saying there's a million paths and I doubt my background that I'm leveraging is particularly advantageous. The base knowledge is helpful in the first example but nonexistent in the second. The utility still exists though because of the metaphysics/metamathematics. The framework of how to approach problems, to dive into details, to find what are the important parts, to navigate through mental spaces filled with many unknown unknowns. Maybe my neuroplasticity isn't as high as when I was a teen, but I sure didn't have the (mental) tools I have today and boy what a difference it makes.
I've definitely found that I could inhale information faster and memorize much faster as a teenager. I think I was even faster in college.
In my mid-30s, I'm definitely slower to pick up new things than in my college days, but I have much more mental discipline and patience, a broader base of knowledge to draw from, and maybe the biggest differentiator: a much more developed sense of priority and focus in order to get more benefit out of less time.
> I've definitely found that I could inhale information faster and memorize much faster as a teenager.
One of possible explanations is a passion. What really helps to memorize are emotions. If something triggers emotions or somehow connected to them, then you have much more probability of remembering it. I felt strong about mathematics as a teenager, any math result I found was a happy event. Or rather not any result, I felt nothing about trigonometry formulas and I struggled to remember them, I invented techniques to reconstruct them. Mostly those techniques had nothing to do with math. But the point is: I remember what I like and don't remember boring things. It is emotions at work.
> a much more developed sense of priority and focus in order to get more benefit out of less time.
Which is an evidence confirming my hypothesis: you are not as interested in knowledge you acquire as you are interested in results. You are juggling priorities and subject your learning process to some higher goals. No more learning driven by emotions, now rationality is the king, no place for emotions.
It doesn't mean that my hypothesis is true, I just mention it for a completeness: we don't really know what is the reason behind learning difficulties growing with age. AFAIK even neuroplasticity itself can be at least partially caused by emotions.
> I've found that even in my late 30s I can still easily pick up new skills outside my field of expertise as long as I start with the basics that could also be picked up by a high-schooler.
this was rather famously the technique of Jonas Salk to learn and master things, switch fields every so often, giving you a wide base of disciplines to apply to new fields.
its 60-70% time and energy from lifestyle, financial security (subconscious anxiety),
someone like peter steinger can sit at home experimenting for hours and learn+create vastly more at the age of 48 than the average 30 year old
But, if you compare outright performance, the brain like any other part of the body is at its biological peak function in the late teens. Rachmaninov wrote most of his work as a teenager. mozart wrote first at age 8. zuckerberg create fb in undergrad. the youthful organism is full of vitality and ease
Try something completely different from your field of expertise. For a typical nerd, this might be motor skills like in gymnastics. My experience is this takes a very long time to learn.
I don't know - i'm 33 ~ now - recently with AI learning is much easier - don't get me wrong I definitely won't say that the brain does not slow down - but I'd definitely argue that we have advantages over kids - be it discipline, knowing how to learn ; and stuff like that - for example let's take coq which is I suppose one of the hardest thing we can learn - you can decompose it in ways myself as a kid or as a 20yo wouldn't even be able to. What I mean is that there is a lot of complexities or stuff i would get stuck upon that I just fly over today and know I'm alright - much better ability to focus in a sense
I wonder if everyone who said it was a lot easier for them to learn when they were younger aren’t factoring in their increased responsibilities as an adult.
I know when I’m actually able to sit quietly to study something, I’m able to pick it up fairly quickly. (One thing going for me is I’m much better able to sit still as an adult than a kid, ha.) But yeah, having to juggle work responsibilities for 8-9 hours a day and then having to also manage a bunch of things I didn’t have to think as hard about when I was younger (bills, cleaning, pets), I definitely just don’t have as much time to dedicate towards focused studying like that.
I've never understood this belief. There are many things I struggled with as a child that are very easy for me to understand now. For instance, calculus. I struggled barely passing my classes originally. A few years ago I decided that I really needed to know calculus so I bought a book and worked through all the problems. Not only was it not difficult but the whole thing just made logical sense; it was all straightforward.
I can believe there are some things that would take me longer as an adult to learn than if I were a child (a new language for instance) but origami folding wouldn't be one of them.
Calculus may have seemed easier because you actually learned a lot more than you thought you did in school. Just having been exposed to the ideas before may have allowed you to develop an intuition that you didn't have access to the first time around.
As far as I'm aware, this is not true at all. Adults actually learn considerably faster per hour spent, it's simply that most adults don't have as much time to dedicate to learning as kids do. This is confirmed both by studies as well as intuition — you get better at most things as you do more of it, studying is the same.
I wonder if it may depend on the type of learning.
Whether it's something completely new and alien - in which case children might be better, or whether it's learning through association - ie I understand that because I can connect it to previously learnt concepts ( which would favour people with more previous knowledge ).
For example, something like maths is often seen as a young persons game, but at the same time you probably don't want a 14 yr old running your company.
Gentoo is what really made Linux click for me, too. I'm still very, very glad for that and remain a loyal user to this day!
Although I've had to restrict it to the 2 desktop machines. Maybe I should give it a shot again on the laptops, now that binary packages are universally available...
> and each hour yields more learning due to neuroplasticity
I don't think that's true. As an extreme example, it takes a newborn a couple of years before they can start speaking a language; an adult can learn a few basic phrases in an hour or so.
Don't get hung up on "14 years old". It's a classic journalist trop designed to get you to read their paper without putting too much weight on the actual content which is a paper thin, pun intended, PR fluff thing for The Society for Science. The prize is not even linked to the origami but on-site team challenges in a final event.
The origami is Miura-ori fold by the way and they are already used in plenty of fields. Fairly interesting stuff from the 60s. Would have made for a great article.
The kids tested some paper configurations and specific fold patterns. Really impressive stuff considering it was totally impossible to do with computer simulation and hasn't been studied to death in aerospace. Neat science fair project, awful headline.
I was actually wondering why haven't the computational geometry and shape optimization people found these structures so far. I would expect us to at least know these shapes or category of shapes.
Getting it via origami is art and a testimony to wonders of intuition and observational learning, but getting the shapes could be done by other methods.
Koryo Miura, the man known for the Miura fold, is kind of a legend in astrophysics and this fold has indeed been studied to death in aerospace since the 60s. So yeah it was pretty hard sarcasm.
Can't we just accept that some kids do cool stuff that many adults can't even think of? Note that this kid was distinguished in a competition for STEM projects by kids, so he's not unique, but that doesn't reduce the fact that he's uncommon to say the least.
I'm trying to think of what I did when I was 14 that was as cool as that and I can't. I had an imagination and I created stuff all the time, but nothing I'd brag about today. The Space Pistol with Disintegrator Ray was only a prototype that I never managed to really put into production.
Also don't get hung up on "folded". He hasn't innovated a design (it was invented by a Japanese astrophysicist, Miura-Ori), merely measured sustainable load across different designs.
Don't get hug up on "invented". Ruth Asawa registered for (1956) and received US patent 185,504 on June 16, 1959 at the suggestion of her professor, Buckminster Fuller.
You can even spend time and money to acquire a patent and it still doesn’t guarantee profit. It’s called the Miura-ori even though it was patented decades earlier. In this case, the patent acts as a record emphasizing that it’s all been done before.
You should pay attention to the fact that his parents are rich and educated enough to figure out submarine marketing for him. Winning a major national level science fair plays a pretty big role in college admissions and having the press trumpet his achievements ensures that he will have an easier path to get future internships and other type of prestigious if-you-know-you-know type of positions (who knows, maybe he might apply to YC too in a few years).
To be fair, how many kids of rich parents spend time in doing experiments similar to this? Reading the article, I think he is naturally talented & motivated (& not targeting college admissions).
> isn't this more a trait of autism than anything else?
No. It’s a sign of drive and discipline.
The latter, specifically the focus element, overlaps with autism. But more broadly it does not. (There are a lot of impressive teenagers applying themselves diligently to impressive ends. Most of them are not on the spectrum, though I suspect mild autism is slightly over-represented in that set.)
You're assuming that autism is always going to be a disadvantage. In fact, the obsessive focus mirrors scientific practice. Good luck to him, I respect him.
The key here is scale. What works in inches often falls apart at feet. The structure is holding about 33 psi over the area (which is rigidly supported from below), much more along the contact edges. By comparison balsa wood can support significantly more pressure (varies, but well over 100psi) but doesn’t concentrate pressure on edges.
Is there anything useful about this? Maybe as an inexpensive(?) core for high strength skins?
Directly: no, the end of the article has a nice list of reasons why, somewhat hidden
(ex. "Actual shelters...need to respond to multidirectional loads" = these were tested with load in one direction)
Miles, if you're reading this, it's useful. You're already doing what .1% of people do. I call them journeys and emphasize they're a million steps without clear direction, and if you're lucky, maybe positive feedback along the way. You're just on step N < 1,000,000. This works out, in some way, you already know it's not literally "yes this is sooo useful that we should start autofolding it at 1000x scale". It will work out. maybe as exactly this, this with some tweaks, or the $25K helps you do $X, or the publicity helps you do $Y.
Note that boxes may get pressure from all the sides(different kind of pressure & movements during shipping), not just from the top as seen in the images (or shelters) in the article.
I think the goal would be not to make the whole box out of this structure, but to scale this structure down to be 4 millimeters high and use is as the core of the cardboard (or corrugated fibreboard as it's known in the industry).
I loaded semis for UPS in the summer of 1967 in Milwaukee, between my first and second years of college. I worked 4 hour shifts at night, 6-10 pm, M-F. Hard job. Paid very well. Deep inside the trucks the temperature and humidity were so high me and my partner had to shift roles every 15 minutes, one of us outside the back of the truck selecting packages off the belt that ran along the back of all the trucks in the loading bay and the other inside the truck, pulling them off the long elevated metal roller-topped structure that extended from the back belt at the back of the truck to the front of the semi.
When the outside temperature was 90° and up, it was insanely hot 30 feet deep inside the trucks with no air circulation: we wore gloves and shorts. The noise also was incredibly loud, deafening. Toward the end of our shifts we were semi-delirious and exhausted and so we just threw the rapidly incoming packages over our heads back into the truck instead of stacking them as was proper.
So the damage was likely done long before the delivery person took it the last few feet.
Anyone who’s worked inside the sortation centers has also seen sorters crash and rip packages to shreds.
Obviously that’s not “normal” damage to packages, because those things certainly aren’t getting delivered, but it’s not like these things get handled gently by the automation. Packages slide into collection belts where they land hard on top of other packages, they zip down chutes to be loaded into semis, etc.
There’s a reason they want breakables properly packed, and it’s not because the last-mile delivery guy is going to shoot a three with your box.
> The key here is scale. What works in inches often falls apart at feet
Does that mean we could increase the orders of magnitude if we made it smaller? Lots of tiny stuff needs mechanical support. And lots of folded small things agglomerated is another way to say biology.
Yes, the math is probably somewhat similar to what carpenters use to determine if a tabletop will sag as a function of its length: https://woodbin.com/calcs/sagulator/
Obviously not the same because the force isn't being applied perpendicular to the edges, but still, almost certainly will be not nearly linear.
Closer to "mineralogy", plenty of things are both smaller and tougher (on this "support its own weight" metric) than cells or proteins with their squishy folding rules.
Even if we include things like hydroxyapatite in teeth, or even lignin, those are more like byproducts of biology than active biology itself.
> plenty of things are both smaller and tougher (on this "support its own weight" metric) than cells or proteins with their squishy folding rules
I was thinking microscopic versus nanoscale. Folding something out of a flat material is probably cheaper than machining it, and if it's stronger than additively manufacturing it you have applications in medical devices and aerospace for starters.
Microscopic is unnecessary. Tessellation is already used in space and medical devices (not mentioned in this article: it's used in devices like stents). The specific fold being used here is named after an astrophysicist and has already been used in space.
> a simple piece of paper, folded into a Miura-ori origami pattern, could hold 10,000 times its own weight
> Wu was especially intrigued by the Miura-ori fold, named after its inventor, the Japanese astrophysicist Koryo Miura. Famed for its use in aeronautical engineering, the fold has been leveraged to make solar panels for spacecraft and satellites. One of its earliest space applications was in Japan’s Space Flyer Unit, a satellite launched in 1995.
This is very cool, but I don't really see the direct connection between a paper structure which is very strong in compression and emergency accommodation (which the article really focuses on).
Tents don't need to be strong in compression - there's no weight on the roof. And obviously paper is not a material that scales up or would be practical for outdoor use.
Just a bit confused by the obvious mismatch here - maybe it's the journalist putting more weight on the disaster application than the kid did.
This is a problem with our science funding system. We really discourage pure research, so everything needs to be justified in terms of saving lives or helping to cure cancer. He'll make a good academic someday.
100% this. There's nothing wrong with focusing on first principles and this is a rediscovery in that matter.
It's just an acknowledgement that the Miura pattern works and this kid kept his focus. To be perfectly honest, he just took something that was already done before (the fold) and applied it. Scientists do this all the time and win prizes--like cellophane tape to create graphene.
We never know when the result of pure research will have applications. Maybe his findings would have material impact 20 years from now in a field we are unable to foresee today.
> tents don't need to be strong in compression - there's no weight on the roof
But there is on the floor, unless you expect the inhabitants to sleep more or less directly on the ground, including themselves, whatever is used as a mattress, belongings, small appliances, etc. Emergency habitation is not the same as a camping tent, it needs to be able to service populations that have difficulty with camping's limitations, like the elderly.
> Paper is not a material that scales up
Citation needed? It's made from a renewable resource (wood) and there's some 400+ million metric tons of paper production yearly (source: Gemini, so feel free to take with a grain of salt).
> Or would be practical for outdoor use
If exposed directly to the elements, sure. But what if the paper is laminated or otherwise enclosed within plastic, rubber, or other synthetic material well-recognized as hydrophobic?
The ground can already support the weight. Anything whatsoever in between the ground and the occupants is sufficient if your goal is to separate their feet from it.
> It's made from a renewable resource (wood) and there's some 400+ million metric tons of paper production yearly
They don’t mean production volume, they mean physically. You can’t increase the thickness of paper by 1000x to just make thicker, stronger, paper. It’s a different material entirely.
>Citation needed? It's made from a renewable resource (wood) and there's some 400+ million metric tons of paper production yearly (source: Gemini, so feel free to take with a grain of salt).
Sorry, I meant in the sense of physical scale - I wouldn't imagine the properties of paper at 50cm scale translate directly to say 5 or 10 metre scale.
Most tents are in fact not very strong in compression unless designed for snow. If you do get a big snow you need to wake up in the night and remove the snow so it doesn't crush the tent.
I remember cutting an IKEA desk top down one side and discovering the inside was just corrugated cardboard under a few layers of laminate. it was trivial to break by shearing it but in a typical construction where the weight is mostly up/down it was obviously sufficient - until you cut the rigid sides off that is...
While this probably does have incredible Z-axis strength, I can't imagine it being very strong with any kind of lateral loads.
This design is terrible for desks, they all end up sagging after a few years of use. Their "SANDSBERG" kitchen table is a much better choice for a desk, no cardboard and metal reinforced
It’s cardboard covered with a thin layer of plastic and wood. People buying this aren’t doing it for longevity. It’s so they can spend $15 on a side table for their college dorm.
I like the idea of not buying disposable furnitures, especially when there are alternatives at the same price. I can stand on my current desk (the ikea kitchen table) with my full weight and probably jump on it, the previous one was bowing if I did as little as resting my elbows on it
No phd, no funding committee, no peer review anxiety. Just curoisity and paper. Sometimes the breakthrough comes from not knowing the problem was supposed to be difficult. This is what happens when you don't tell a kid something is too hard
Does this shape hold up good weight distribution properties when 3D-printed? Maybe this could be huge for 3D-printing mostly hollow, yet strong parts that require in fewer plastic and time spent.
So initially my thought was "why would this be better than existing infill patterns" but my second thought was that the reason Miura-ori patterns are interesting in the first place is because they fold. Not in this application so much, but in general, the way they flex is why they're interesting. The upshot here is that if you embedded that sort of pattern in a closed box, the degrees of freedom would try to transfer the force of a vertical load on the top to a horizontal stress in the outer shell of the base, in both x and y. A bit like a spherical dome.
I'm not sure that it's better than a dome; it might be for cases where you can't predict where on the top surface the load is going to be? I'm also not sure that a sheet of printed infill is sufficiently similar in its physical properties to a sheet of paper/card for this to transfer well, but it would be an interesting experiment to do.
There is also 3d printing origami shapes [1]. But 3D printing is still plastic(usually).
The idea of origami steel sheets has stuck on my mind ever since I found out about laser welding. Cutting thin 2mm sheets of steel, stitching them back together in different shapes, and holding tons of weight? That sounds very compelling to me.
Anyone knows how does 3D printed metals compare to CNC-made parts?
I know it's been used to build engines, which suggests they are strong, but there's also all this process around ancient swords around tempering, folding, etc that suggests that maybe just 3D-printing metals might result in weaker structures.
There's something about this that stands out as very concerning for me.
This, clearly very clever, young man is 14 years old. The article says: "Wu had always been fascinated with the ancient Japanese art of origami, but he really began indulging in it as a hobby about six years ago."
At eight. He was *indulging* in a hobby at eight years old. Indulging in a hobby should be a pre-retirement activity. What an incredible weight the attitude of the writer puts on kids.
I've heard/read the expression "to indulge in a hobby" many times and never thought it was pejorative or paints hobbies as extravagancies. If you google indulge hobby, there's plenty of hits. Strangely though, ChatGPT says it does sound negative. It had never occurred to me, and probably not to the author.
Just because ChatGPT says it sounds negative doesn’t mean it is. I didn’t think of it negatively either.
Who knows how ChatGPT made that suggestion [this time around]. Maybe 30% of the English-speaking population thinks it’s negative, or 60%, or perhaps someone simply wrote a high-profile negative op-ed that included the phrase in its title.
Anyways, not that you did this, but we need to be careful not to use LLMs as the deciding factor in how to feel about things. :) It gives too much power in swaying our thought to those who build the models.
Same with me. It's just an expression. One definition of "indulge" is "to take unrestrained pleasure in" (MW). I just read it as an activity the kid really really enjoys.
I apologise for you misunderstanding my example as a strict definition?
For anyone who hasn't understood my meaning:
Indulge is a word that implies that you're allowing yourself something that you might not ordinarily. The point being: it is (or should be) silly to suggest that a child can be said to indulge in a hobby. This is because the further implication is that an eight year old might show some restraint and focus on their book learning and networking.
That last line was humor. Those are recognised "productive" activities. I guess if I had to really explain it, I was trying to offer a rephrased take on what I saw as the meaning of that line in the article. And so highlight that expecting children to do strictly productive things is silly. Dunno. Does that make sense now? I guess I've learned my lesson about my sense of humor not travelling well.
I'd argue that kids should be generalist, as in learning diverse set of experiences rather than spending years honing a single craft. This is peak time where brain can quick adapt to new novel problems (like language learning) and spending this time to perfect a single niche feels counter-productive if not straight unethical. Kids should only specialize when they become grown enough to idependently decide on what they want to do.
I think about this sometimes. On one hand, is it really "right" or net positive for adults to guide children into some specialized craft at a young age? Even if the kid shows some prodigal predilection (haha) for it, maybe it is the responsibility of their guardians to expose them to a number of alternative interests/possibilities?
It's interesting because the approach of encouraging your kid to foster highly specific skills fails to satisfy the categorical imperative: if everybody did it, nothing would work. Or at least it seems that way... it's probably a safe bet that having a sizable majority of adolescents who are somewhat flexible/aimless and can respond to a variety of market demands in terms of career specialization is a good thing if not a necessary one.
On the other hand, manipulating (not to be taken with a necessary pejorative connotation) a child into this kind of specialization is almost certainly a necessary precondition for greatness. If you aren't a competent musician by the time you're 8 years old it is vanishingly unlikely you are ever going to be a true orchestral soloist. Ditto for something like chess. So if we want a world with those heights of greatness in it, we need to accept that some people are going to compel or allow their kids to be specialists rather than generalists.
> If you aren't a competent musician by the time you're 8 years old it is vanishingly unlikely you are ever going to be a true orchestral soloist. Ditto for something like chess
To me this sounds like an exception to the rule than rule itself. Our society would be perfectly fine to not have this type of entertainer "greatness". I mean, we got rid of castrados because it went too far but the line between cutting kids testicles off vs making them play some useless game 12 hours a day for a decade is quite blury.
I'd argue this extreme specialization of children is fundamentally unethical and should be shunned or even made illegal but it'll take decades if not centuries for our society to realize this because we just value this type "greatness" too highly.
Ok sure but in this sense it is already a rule (most people do not either prescribe these things to their kids or allow them to indulge in them) and what we're debating is how firm that rule.
As it happens, I think I disagree with you. I do value greatness. I value a culture that lauds greatness. The point of virtuosic musicianship isn't entertainment, or at least not a banal thoughtless kind (a symphony is not a substitute good for ragebait podcast clips with a subway surfers overlay), it's inspirational art. The examples I chose are particularly evocative, but there's no real difference between that and a parent who compels or allows their child to become ridiculously capable in some kind of mathematics or literature. Imagine if Terrence Tao's parents had insisted that he carry on with a typical pre-university series of broad survey courses for the sake of making him a generalist! Imagine all the less high-profile examples who were maybe even more important to pushing some practical effort forward.
Making it illegal is a nonstarter because I think it runs afoul of the categorical imperative in exactly the same way. I'm a strong believer in the idea that most progress (again, not intended to have a positive connotation) is made by a small group of people who were almost never generalists. Einstein was not a generalist. Kant, who I've been referencing throughout this conversation, was really not a generalist. The possibility of greatness is just as necessary as a certain number of pliable generalists.
What would the point of living in a world without greatness be? Since I meant that question rhetorically: is there a way to allow such greatness to be achieved without manipulating young people into obsession?
I think we have different undersrand of what greatness is. Being the best paperclip making machine is hardly meaningful. True greatness is in balance and virtue. A truly great person is well rounded and plays to true human strength- adaptability.
I'd be willing to bet everything I have that our society on average would be better at every single specialized thing if everyone was well rounded generalist with minor specialization instead of niche expert and it's incredibly easy to see why given the era of technology were living through right now. After all, all best in anything are finally defeated by a few years of collective technological progress.
Now what's the meaning of life if we have no treadmill to run on indefinitely? Well that's for each to figure out but what a sad meaning it would be if it was just to be slightly better at one niche activity for a very short while?
But you didn't say that. You just said I didn't know what 'indulge' means. Although I'm sure the irony of your final quip has escaped you, you have editorialised it into a valid criticism of my take, which I totally accept. Not everyone reads and uses the word with the tone it conveys in my vernacular, and which I'm sure must be, at least implied, in any respectable dictionary definition. Fair enough. Out of curiosity, do you think this is a geo-cultural difference? I am Australian. I imagine most commonwealth and formerly commonwealth countries read it the same way. Where are you from?
> But you didn't say that. You just said I didn't know what 'indulge' means.
Right. My objection was that you projected a negative meaning, which in my view was not demanded by the author. I could be wrong about what the author meant, but I didn't pick up any hint of "incredible weight the attitude of the writer puts on kids". So yes from my perspective that suggested that you probably didn't know the meaning of the word or didn't consider that there was another way to interpret it.
> Although I'm sure the irony of your final quip has escaped you
No, that was the point. The word can be used more than one way.
> Out of curiosity, do you think this is a geo-cultural difference?
As a grown adult in this mid 30s, I wonder when the transition happens in kids who are passionate about certain subject or career turn into becoming lawyers or accountants in adulthood… it’s like encounters in life changes people to pursue a career which they never imagined they’d do in their childhood
You won’t find a kid who’d say, “I want to be accountant when I grow up…” instead you’d find people want to be pilots or police officer….
> I wonder when the transition happens in kids who are passionate about certain subject or career turn into becoming lawyers or accountants in adulthood…
> You won’t find a kid who’d say, “I want to be accountant when I grow up…”
When they realize that people with more money and more connections to powerful people get their way over people with less money and fewer connections to powerful people. The children of the former group also get a significantly better starting position in life compared to the children of the latter group. That is, if the latter manage to attract a suitable mate as poor people. If you choose dreams over money, you're not only failing your own potential desires and ambitions that will then probably never materialize, but also your future family and offspring. As the wealth inequality gap widens ever more, such pressures only intensify, and everything turns more and more into shit. Those kids' (from your post) desire to live a life with a fulfilling career is sacrificed at the altar to the dragons hoarding more and more wealth at all costs (billionaires).
This is weight distribution on a flat plain. Think of Roman Arches.
On a curved plain, weight distribution of THIS origami falls apart as pressure is added horizontally (not just vertically).
I've made similar tessellations before, they can be curved. You can trivially make a pre-folded tessellation into a cylinder of arbitrary diameter; to curve it like a submarine, you'd just adjust the angle of the creases. Optimize the curve so the pressure is always perpendicular and there's no problem here.
The real issue here is that there's not much point in it, as the very thing that makes this useful (the ability to fold it up) would also make it collapse easily in a pressurized environment. You'd also have to deal with preventing leaks if you wanted air inside, likely by adding an outer hull, which would then defeat the purpose.
Submarines work on the principle of the arch: a spherical or cylindrical hull section transfers all the force into compression of the material so there is no net "inwards" force.
The weak points then turn out to be joints, material defects (the famous Titan failure), windows and other piercing points, and any unexpected shear forces.
I'd be curious what kind of variation there was across his 54 different designs. If he's discovered the existence of a narrow window where strength dramatically increases, that seems a much more interesting find than if this whole family of origami patterns is knowns to perform well and this variant just happened to be slightly better than the rest. It's exciting to think that there may be super strong designs just waiting to be found with a little bit of rigorous refinement.
It’s amazing how emergent structural properties can come from simple, deterministic folding rules.
In algorithmic design, we often struggle to balance form and physical function. But rigid foldability proves that finding the exact right geometric constraint actually creates the function. Respect to the 14-year-old.
> It's ok to say this has no practical uses but is very cool.
Agreed. But it doesn't go viral as much. Every cool robotics research goes with a comment that says "it could be useful for disaster response in a post-apocalyptic world where the conditions have changed in such a way that only my robot can save us".
How impressive holding 10k times ones weight is, depends on size right? E.g. an ant can hold 50 times its weight, but a 10x10x10 times upscaled ant would not be able to do that
The size and 10k amount here are impressive compared to the ant nonetheless
Doesn't everyone else roll paper receipts etc. by the corner into a long stick? As a kid I sometimes licked the trailing corner to make it stick even better. I was and am always intrigued by how it becomes so much stronger and stiffer than the original flat sheet, but I never scienced too much into it :)
I wish the parents could be given a bit of credit. Instead we pretend the kid was doing this all solo... Its way less impressive when the parents are guiding them.
But the parents are doing lots of unappreciated work here.
Agreed, but then it makes the whole thing a lot less impressive and it doesn't get viral.
Parents or a teacher most likely guided this kid to empirically measure how much weight a known origami fold can hold. I mean I remember that we were guided to do similar experiments at school when I was the same age... I don't remember making the news for "14-year olds empirically confirm Newton's law" :-).
I don't know, personally I think it's a bit weird for any mentor to expect recognition for their mentee's success. Surely the success itself is the reward? Pay it forward and all that. I would hope any parent would be adult enough not to feel like their child was stealing the spotlight from them.
You could look at this in at least two different ways. 1) journalism, and how it’s a better story if the kid is a self-contained genius; or 2) having youth be thankful for mentoring, and to understand little in life is achieved without others’ assistance.
I don’t consider that the parent comment is seeking to “steal the spotlight”; just that it’d be a more realistic appraisal of how success is achieved.
It's individualist exceptionalism taken to modern extremes. I remember having these sorts of science assignment in middle school, one with dried pasta with textbooks, and another with dropping egg safely in a box. Invariably the winners won (me and my partner) because our dads had "advice" when we got home and they saw what we were playing with. Winning in my experience was the most corrosive part of those experiences because I literally did not come up with the solution.
A couple of years ago, National Geographic magazine had a feature on the use of origami in engineering and art; the print edition featured a striking cover photograph of a gold colored sunshade for a space telescope under test at JPL.
The web site is aggressively paywalled, to such a degree that I cannot determine the date of publication.
But they had a public access podcast and transcript here
I propose a moment of silence, for what if all the hype here proves to be half true, is the last time in history that there will be anything like a youth bieng able to achive a simple cognitive performance that distinguises them from a dollar store calculator.
It looks like the top 10% from 6th to 8th grade Society of Science fairs are invited to participate. They are then selected down to a top 300[1] and a top 30.[2] You can find a project name for the top 300 and a paragraph on each of the top 30.
These teen science fair winners almost never amount to anything exceptional, and are a product intense parental supervision. Most universities have wised up.
Sometimes, but I do find his story inspiring. He has taken an age old craft and demonstrated it may have practical applications. I hope he can patent some design based off this and then he can make some money off it. (Yes, I know he didn't invent this particular fold.)
> Yes, I know he didn't invent this particular fold
So how could he patent it?
I join the parent: it's a kid who empirically evaluated how much weight an existing fold can hold. It's not like he solved a hundred years old mathematical problem.
That evaluation has value and the possible use case of strong and cheap emergency housing is interesting though it sounds like it would take substantial work to push it to fruition and would need to be competitive with existing solutions.
It's true, it's a bit tricky, but it's an interesting idea. One could imagine a deployable carpet that consists of folded paper sandwiched between thin water impermeable layers to make a lightweight collapsible elevated floor. Maybe there could be other applications too.
That said, it may not be strong enough to hold the weight of an adult on one foot.
I think that's my point: what that kid did is "just" put some books on different origami folds laying on the ground and measuring how much weight they could hold. It's nice that kids have an interest in science, but I don't think it helps them to make them believe they almost solved anything they can imagine (e.g. "building shelters for disaster relief").
At this age at school, I remember making all sorts of physics experiments. I don't think it would have been worth giving us a prize and publishing articles saying that "our work on the Newton's laws may someday lead to new insights about orbital mechanics". We dropped an object and measured the time it took to hit the ground, and checked that the physics formulas were predicting it pretty well. That's all.
Don't get hung up on "14 year old". Pay attention to "took up origami 6 years ago". That's 6 years of passionate learning, experimenting and improvement.
Also, ‘years’ tend to be a lot more hours for kids, and each hour yields more learning due to neuroplasticity. I learned so much faster at 15 than I do at 35. I know more now, which often more than makes up for slower learning, but I can’t learn difficult novel subjects in depth as fast as I once did.
I’m glad I learned OS in depth during high school via Gentoo linux. And engineering/physics/math in college. It’s very easy to assimilate any new knowledge which can be understood through those areas of first principles.
But learning more advanced math is quite a task now.
Can you really say that unless you switched fields multiple times? Of course you'll pick up on math and physics faster in high school than in college or postgrad, but that's because the problems get way, way harder as you progress. I've found that even in my late 30s I can still easily pick up new skills outside my field of expertise as long as I start with the basics that could also be picked up by a high-schooler. I started learning a new language last year and thanks to modern study apps, I actually find it easier today. Of course it will still take a long time to become an expert, but I'm not sure it would need more total hours than if I had started 20 years ago. It just gets more difficult to allocate the necessary hours for learning.
> even in my late 30s I can still easily pick up new skills outside my field of expertise as long as I start with the basics that could also be picked up by a high-schooler
Same age and same experience. I am learning my third language, after acquiring my second to a fluent level in my early 30's (by living in a country where it's spoken). But it's an entirely different character set, and has nearly zero cognates. I'm sure some skills transferred from my second language learning but I'm massively enjoying it and don't feel bogged down.
I think a lot of it is managing my mental energy, I look at it as a finite per-day resource replenished by sleep. If I have a mentally heavy workday, or overly emotional day, I know my language skills will be sub-par and don't try too hard. I also approach my learning in the morning, when I have an excess of this energy, because my job will do a good job of getting it close to zero, regardless of the starting point.
I think we don't give enough credence to the mental toll of an adult life and corporate job, and how much that takes from us, versus when we were young.
Totally agree. Adult life is just mentally taxing. I'm more curious and more eager to learn now in my 30s than I was in any of my schooling. The learning isn't hard but the energy regulation is.
I think it's so easy for people to discount "mental energy" since culturally we don't often acknowledge it as a finite resource the same way we do physical energy. Well maybe the problem is we view them as separate things in the first place.
When I was younger I just didn't have to worry about so much stuff.
This thread is a really good point. I am in my late 50ies now im really good with computer hardware because I started when I was 11. But I started wanting to become a SCI-FI writer at 35 and it has been an up hill battle to get good at for all the reason described in this thread.
Totally of the same persuasion as you, I'll say I did hear a very good counter point when Magnus Carlsen said in an interview at 30 he feels he can't compute lines as deep as he could previously, and his edge is now his experience. That was rather convincing.
Most of the folklore around "neuroplasticity" I've found pretty underwhelming. But yeah, if even he says it at that level of consistent practice, that seems like a good yardstick.
As I've experienced getting older I've found it's more about the lack of available time and focus.
I don't have the hours of time a young person does and I don't have the focus, there are a lot of other thoughts, emotions and responsibilities competing for my attention.
Would love someone who's aware of the literature to throw their hat in the ring though.
It's entirely possible, but as I've approached and now passed 30 my improved patience, self-discipline, and self-knowledge has allowed me to pick up skills and wrap my head around things I bounced off of several times as a high-schooler, and the technical foundation I've built up in that time has helped me build more connections and understand things in more depth/from more angles.
I'm sure I'll slow down eventually, but I've always found that thinking fast is vastly overrated. I've always had an easy time understanding things quickly, but it still takes me time to understand them well.
> Can you really say that unless you switched fields multiple times?
I have ;-) far too many times! Even going back and taking undergrad math coursework that my engineering curriculum didn't have like Discrete Math or Statistics got a lot harder than calculus / differential equations was when I was younger. I felt like I got less out of each hour, and also couldn't put in as many hours - not just because I have more responsibilities, but also because my brain just gets tired after fewer hours.
>my brain just gets tired after fewer hours.
Have you tried creatine supplements? Especially if you're vegan or don't eat a lot of meat. Most people take it for muscle performance, but I found it insanely helpful for maintaining a sharp mind throughout a long day, especially with little sleep. That's also what the latest research starts to appreciate. I wouldn't be surprised to see recommended doses above 10g/day in elderly soon-ish since there are basically zero downsides even at much higher doses. In my early 30s I thought I lost my ability to pull all nighters because of increased tiredness, but now I feel like I can do even more than when I was 18. Most people greatly underestimate diet in general because they used to get away with anything when they were young.
Counterpoint: I've been taking creatine (10-15mg/day) for over 8 months and I can't say that I notice a difference at all.
That said, while I think that creatine's effects on cognitive performance are often overstated, creatine is scientifically proven to increase brain performance in some cases[1].
And fortunately, creatine is safe and very cheap[2], so maybe worth a try.
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creatine#Cognitive_performance
2. https://www.bulksupplements.com/products/creatine-monohydrat...
Did you have problems with tiredness and concentrating? Especially after only getting very little sleep for an extended time? Or did you already consume a lot of meat? There are many factors here that could potentially make it not worth your while. As with all supplements, a good diet and lots of rest can make them little more than expensive pee. But not everyone can have a perfect diet and lots of sleep all the time. Creatine is a supplement for a very particular lifestyle.
Yep, I bet you're exactly right.
> Did you have problems with tiredness and concentrating?
Yes. Still do.
> Especially after only getting very little sleep for an extended time?
No
> Or did you already consume a lot of meat?
Yes. I mean, I probably eat less meat than the average American, but certainly plenty. Beef, too (high in creatine).
> As with all supplements, a good diet and lots of rest can make them little more than expensive pee.
Yep, this probably describes me. It's still pretty cheap, so I still do it (especially since my kids take creatine as well).
>> Especially after only getting very little sleep for an extended time?
>No
Then I'm not really surprised. I also see no real cognitive effects when everything is well anyways. But this one study is what I found to be the most accurate finding overall beyond enhancing muscle power:
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10902318/
It's also super easy to test yourself.
Hell even my young brain got tired on statistics and algebra. Could part of this also be field mismatch?
I think it's just because hours spent learning by children often don't look like work to us. Like, when children are watching children's television or looking through those baby books with shapes and colors, they are studying. To them, that is learning. And I guarantee that in 1 hour of studying, I can learn every single color in Spanish, whereas a baby might need months of daily reading to finally understand it. But because we don't register it as studying, we would still say the baby learned language "effortlessly", while adults need to "study".
I'd argue I learn much faster now. I did study math and physics but I've found that those tools have accelerated a lot of learning and have a lot of compounding effects. Maybe mileage may vary but I suspect a strong base allows one to learn even faster.
Though only in last few years did I realize I was a fast learner. I thought I was slow because I'd say I didn't understand unless I had a deep understanding. But found that where I would not feel comfortable claiming understanding was a different threshold than others.
Where I've found math and physics helpful is in depth and abstraction. The science builds a good framework to dive deep into understanding and tease out the critical components. Science is a search algorithm in some sense. The math helps abstract, or generalize. To see the patterns and extend and use in ways beyond what was taught. That's where the real compounding happens and where I personally start to feel I understand things. But it requires the depth. But that's my framework and I'm sure there's a million good ones and a million better ones
Math and physics certainly allow you to learn fast in technical fields and that is my experience as well, but the other comment was more about completely unrelated fields like humanities where previous experience may not translate at all. For example an english speaker with a PhD in Physics will still have to start more or less from zero when learning japanese.
Strangely I've found there's still a lot of translative skills. But I think it is more to do with the approach than the base knowledge.
Physics definitely helps me learn things like a sport or driving a new vehicle. Forces me to think more about things like where force is being applied, positioning, paths, and many other things. I'll focus on the small things that compound and I think this makes the start a little slower but that makes things accelerate as my base isn't shaky as I'm moving forward.
But this also helps when I've doing things like learn a language. It's why I wrote the last paragraph like I did. The science side gives you the habit of breaking things down into their atomic units. The framework of build, attack/critique/deconstruct, rebuild. When I was younger I couldn't do this. If I were trying to do something like learn Chinese I'd first focus on just memorizing rather than focus on the radicals.
The iterative style of building up is such a useful framework. Naturally when forming a hypothesis you try to build something stable. But the most important thing to then do is attack it as hard as you can. This is a step most people don't take, but it's probably the most important one for finding truth. It damages and even sometimes completely destroys your construction. But when you rebuild it is better, it is stronger. The framework taught me the importance of doing the boring stuff like revisiting what I've already learned.
And that's also why I'm saying there's a million paths and I doubt my background that I'm leveraging is particularly advantageous. The base knowledge is helpful in the first example but nonexistent in the second. The utility still exists though because of the metaphysics/metamathematics. The framework of how to approach problems, to dive into details, to find what are the important parts, to navigate through mental spaces filled with many unknown unknowns. Maybe my neuroplasticity isn't as high as when I was a teen, but I sure didn't have the (mental) tools I have today and boy what a difference it makes.
I've definitely found that I could inhale information faster and memorize much faster as a teenager. I think I was even faster in college.
In my mid-30s, I'm definitely slower to pick up new things than in my college days, but I have much more mental discipline and patience, a broader base of knowledge to draw from, and maybe the biggest differentiator: a much more developed sense of priority and focus in order to get more benefit out of less time.
> I've definitely found that I could inhale information faster and memorize much faster as a teenager.
One of possible explanations is a passion. What really helps to memorize are emotions. If something triggers emotions or somehow connected to them, then you have much more probability of remembering it. I felt strong about mathematics as a teenager, any math result I found was a happy event. Or rather not any result, I felt nothing about trigonometry formulas and I struggled to remember them, I invented techniques to reconstruct them. Mostly those techniques had nothing to do with math. But the point is: I remember what I like and don't remember boring things. It is emotions at work.
> a much more developed sense of priority and focus in order to get more benefit out of less time.
Which is an evidence confirming my hypothesis: you are not as interested in knowledge you acquire as you are interested in results. You are juggling priorities and subject your learning process to some higher goals. No more learning driven by emotions, now rationality is the king, no place for emotions.
It doesn't mean that my hypothesis is true, I just mention it for a completeness: we don't really know what is the reason behind learning difficulties growing with age. AFAIK even neuroplasticity itself can be at least partially caused by emotions.
> I've found that even in my late 30s I can still easily pick up new skills outside my field of expertise as long as I start with the basics that could also be picked up by a high-schooler.
this was rather famously the technique of Jonas Salk to learn and master things, switch fields every so often, giving you a wide base of disciplines to apply to new fields.
its 60-70% time and energy from lifestyle, financial security (subconscious anxiety),
someone like peter steinger can sit at home experimenting for hours and learn+create vastly more at the age of 48 than the average 30 year old
But, if you compare outright performance, the brain like any other part of the body is at its biological peak function in the late teens. Rachmaninov wrote most of his work as a teenager. mozart wrote first at age 8. zuckerberg create fb in undergrad. the youthful organism is full of vitality and ease
Try something completely different from your field of expertise. For a typical nerd, this might be motor skills like in gymnastics. My experience is this takes a very long time to learn.
ooc, what are the modern study apps that you used?
I don't know - i'm 33 ~ now - recently with AI learning is much easier - don't get me wrong I definitely won't say that the brain does not slow down - but I'd definitely argue that we have advantages over kids - be it discipline, knowing how to learn ; and stuff like that - for example let's take coq which is I suppose one of the hardest thing we can learn - you can decompose it in ways myself as a kid or as a 20yo wouldn't even be able to. What I mean is that there is a lot of complexities or stuff i would get stuck upon that I just fly over today and know I'm alright - much better ability to focus in a sense
I learned coq as a teenager because the name was funny and one defined everything in terms of the `succ` function.
Never underestimate our motivation.
Continuing to do things only because they’re funny as an adult is one of life’s little treats!
Unfortunately, they changed the name to Rocq.
...as long as they also changed the defining function to `hard`, we're still good.
I wonder if everyone who said it was a lot easier for them to learn when they were younger aren’t factoring in their increased responsibilities as an adult.
I know when I’m actually able to sit quietly to study something, I’m able to pick it up fairly quickly. (One thing going for me is I’m much better able to sit still as an adult than a kid, ha.) But yeah, having to juggle work responsibilities for 8-9 hours a day and then having to also manage a bunch of things I didn’t have to think as hard about when I was younger (bills, cleaning, pets), I definitely just don’t have as much time to dedicate towards focused studying like that.
I've never understood this belief. There are many things I struggled with as a child that are very easy for me to understand now. For instance, calculus. I struggled barely passing my classes originally. A few years ago I decided that I really needed to know calculus so I bought a book and worked through all the problems. Not only was it not difficult but the whole thing just made logical sense; it was all straightforward.
I can believe there are some things that would take me longer as an adult to learn than if I were a child (a new language for instance) but origami folding wouldn't be one of them.
Calculus may have seemed easier because you actually learned a lot more than you thought you did in school. Just having been exposed to the ideas before may have allowed you to develop an intuition that you didn't have access to the first time around.
As far as I'm aware, this is not true at all. Adults actually learn considerably faster per hour spent, it's simply that most adults don't have as much time to dedicate to learning as kids do. This is confirmed both by studies as well as intuition — you get better at most things as you do more of it, studying is the same.
I wonder if it may depend on the type of learning.
Whether it's something completely new and alien - in which case children might be better, or whether it's learning through association - ie I understand that because I can connect it to previously learnt concepts ( which would favour people with more previous knowledge ).
For example, something like maths is often seen as a young persons game, but at the same time you probably don't want a 14 yr old running your company.
Gentoo is what really made Linux click for me, too. I'm still very, very glad for that and remain a loyal user to this day!
Although I've had to restrict it to the 2 desktop machines. Maybe I should give it a shot again on the laptops, now that binary packages are universally available...
> and each hour yields more learning due to neuroplasticity.
Hello! Excuse me, can you help me? I think that's my default brain state.
Do you know more about this? Could you answer questions?
I've noticed that learning something like advanced math as an adult feels slower, but the understanding tends to be more intentional
I had to learn and relearn a lot at 30-31. It was good. But it was not good at 27 for example. Learning new is habit. Hard to start, bur goes fast.
> and each hour yields more learning due to neuroplasticity
I don't think that's true. As an extreme example, it takes a newborn a couple of years before they can start speaking a language; an adult can learn a few basic phrases in an hour or so.
I'm learning better now the older I get. More good'erer.
Don't get hung up on "14 years old". It's a classic journalist trop designed to get you to read their paper without putting too much weight on the actual content which is a paper thin, pun intended, PR fluff thing for The Society for Science. The prize is not even linked to the origami but on-site team challenges in a final event.
The origami is Miura-ori fold by the way and they are already used in plenty of fields. Fairly interesting stuff from the 60s. Would have made for a great article.
The kids tested some paper configurations and specific fold patterns. Really impressive stuff considering it was totally impossible to do with computer simulation and hasn't been studied to death in aerospace. Neat science fair project, awful headline.
I was actually wondering why haven't the computational geometry and shape optimization people found these structures so far. I would expect us to at least know these shapes or category of shapes.
Getting it via origami is art and a testimony to wonders of intuition and observational learning, but getting the shapes could be done by other methods.
> it was totally impossible to do with computer simulation and hasn't been studied to death in aerospace
I can’t tell if this is sarcasm.
Koryo Miura, the man known for the Miura fold, is kind of a legend in astrophysics and this fold has indeed been studied to death in aerospace since the 60s. So yeah it was pretty hard sarcasm.
If you had to guess, which would you say it is?
Can't we just accept that some kids do cool stuff that many adults can't even think of? Note that this kid was distinguished in a competition for STEM projects by kids, so he's not unique, but that doesn't reduce the fact that he's uncommon to say the least.
I'm trying to think of what I did when I was 14 that was as cool as that and I can't. I had an imagination and I created stuff all the time, but nothing I'd brag about today. The Space Pistol with Disintegrator Ray was only a prototype that I never managed to really put into production.
Also don't get hung up on "folded". He hasn't innovated a design (it was invented by a Japanese astrophysicist, Miura-Ori), merely measured sustainable load across different designs.
Don't get hug up on "invented". Ruth Asawa registered for (1956) and received US patent 185,504 on June 16, 1959 at the suggestion of her professor, Buckminster Fuller.
https://theartian.com/ruth-asawa-patent-collaboration/
Don't get hung up on "patent". You can't patent an idea, you patent a specific implementation of an idea.
The boy experimented to find the optimal parameters (height, width, angles) for load bearing of that earlier invention.
So, the result of his work would warrant a new patent, of course with reference to all earlier patents of which his work is an improvement.
You can even spend time and money to acquire a patent and it still doesn’t guarantee profit. It’s called the Miura-ori even though it was patented decades earlier. In this case, the patent acts as a record emphasizing that it’s all been done before.
Don’t get hung up on “hung up”. Time goes by so slowly.
Don't.
.
i hear he didn't even produce the paper himself
He literally did fold all the folds himself. He didn't even get an LLM to reskin VS Code for him and apply to Y Combinator.
"To reduce human errors in his experiments, Wu opted to use a scoring machine to accurately fold the origami patterns."
"Miura" is the name of the astrophysicist. "Ori" (折り) just means "fold", as in "origami" = "fold+paper".
Thank you!
Being able to hold 10x the weight of paper doesn't sound so impressive that it would require an astrophysicist to invent it.
I was more ready to accept the headline if it had been invented by the kid.
Are you telling me you can't roll up 10 origami papers and stand them on a reasonably stable origami pattern?
it's 10k, 10,000, not 10
lol
that makes way more sense
not enough coffee bcak
Problem Exists Between Coffee And Keyboard? I can relate. :D
> I fear not the man who has practiced 10,000 origami folds once, but I fear the man who has practiced one fold 10,000 times
I wonder what was happening 6 years ago that gave him a chance to develop and explore the hobby.
As a kid you are plenty more free time as well. This boy has GRINDED origami. Very impressive.
People do tend to be pretty good at things they been doing for almost half their life!
You should pay attention to the fact that his parents are rich and educated enough to figure out submarine marketing for him. Winning a major national level science fair plays a pretty big role in college admissions and having the press trumpet his achievements ensures that he will have an easier path to get future internships and other type of prestigious if-you-know-you-know type of positions (who knows, maybe he might apply to YC too in a few years).
To be fair, how many kids of rich parents spend time in doing experiments similar to this? Reading the article, I think he is naturally talented & motivated (& not targeting college admissions).
The age makes for a catchy headline, but the real signal is the time investment and sustained curiosity
I'm sure nothing of significance was happening about 6 years ago that allowed for more free time either... :)
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> isn't this more a trait of autism than anything else?
No. It’s a sign of drive and discipline.
The latter, specifically the focus element, overlaps with autism. But more broadly it does not. (There are a lot of impressive teenagers applying themselves diligently to impressive ends. Most of them are not on the spectrum, though I suspect mild autism is slightly over-represented in that set.)
And this is all you can come up with this story?
Not all autism presents with intense narrow interests, and not all expressions of intense narrow interest are autism.
Would you say the same for a teenage sports prodigy?
Of course. But obviously I wouldn't be referring to those other types of autism in this case. Why would I?
Yeah that’s more AIDS. Sometimes I wonder if it’s my TB that makes me write these comments.
You're assuming that autism is always going to be a disadvantage. In fact, the obsessive focus mirrors scientific practice. Good luck to him, I respect him.
The key here is scale. What works in inches often falls apart at feet. The structure is holding about 33 psi over the area (which is rigidly supported from below), much more along the contact edges. By comparison balsa wood can support significantly more pressure (varies, but well over 100psi) but doesn’t concentrate pressure on edges.
Is there anything useful about this? Maybe as an inexpensive(?) core for high strength skins?
> Is there anything useful about this?
Directly: no, the end of the article has a nice list of reasons why, somewhat hidden
(ex. "Actual shelters...need to respond to multidirectional loads" = these were tested with load in one direction)
Miles, if you're reading this, it's useful. You're already doing what .1% of people do. I call them journeys and emphasize they're a million steps without clear direction, and if you're lucky, maybe positive feedback along the way. You're just on step N < 1,000,000. This works out, in some way, you already know it's not literally "yes this is sooo useful that we should start autofolding it at 1000x scale". It will work out. maybe as exactly this, this with some tweaks, or the $25K helps you do $X, or the publicity helps you do $Y.
Improved cardboard shipping boxes.
If I can make the shipping boxes less fragile with same amount of paper as current cardboard box designs, it is a win.
Note that boxes may get pressure from all the sides(different kind of pressure & movements during shipping), not just from the top as seen in the images (or shelters) in the article.
I think the goal would be not to make the whole box out of this structure, but to scale this structure down to be 4 millimeters high and use is as the core of the cardboard (or corrugated fibreboard as it's known in the industry).
No origami can withstand the force of a UPS delivery person.
I loaded semis for UPS in the summer of 1967 in Milwaukee, between my first and second years of college. I worked 4 hour shifts at night, 6-10 pm, M-F. Hard job. Paid very well. Deep inside the trucks the temperature and humidity were so high me and my partner had to shift roles every 15 minutes, one of us outside the back of the truck selecting packages off the belt that ran along the back of all the trucks in the loading bay and the other inside the truck, pulling them off the long elevated metal roller-topped structure that extended from the back belt at the back of the truck to the front of the semi.
When the outside temperature was 90° and up, it was insanely hot 30 feet deep inside the trucks with no air circulation: we wore gloves and shorts. The noise also was incredibly loud, deafening. Toward the end of our shifts we were semi-delirious and exhausted and so we just threw the rapidly incoming packages over our heads back into the truck instead of stacking them as was proper.
So the damage was likely done long before the delivery person took it the last few feet.
Anyone who’s worked inside the sortation centers has also seen sorters crash and rip packages to shreds.
Obviously that’s not “normal” damage to packages, because those things certainly aren’t getting delivered, but it’s not like these things get handled gently by the automation. Packages slide into collection belts where they land hard on top of other packages, they zip down chutes to be loaded into semis, etc.
There’s a reason they want breakables properly packed, and it’s not because the last-mile delivery guy is going to shoot a three with your box.
Some science right there
May be we'll get something like cardboard egg cartons which are designed for vertical loads but for other types of goods.
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> The key here is scale. What works in inches often falls apart at feet
Does that mean we could increase the orders of magnitude if we made it smaller? Lots of tiny stuff needs mechanical support. And lots of folded small things agglomerated is another way to say biology.
Yes, the math is probably somewhat similar to what carpenters use to determine if a tabletop will sag as a function of its length: https://woodbin.com/calcs/sagulator/
Obviously not the same because the force isn't being applied perpendicular to the edges, but still, almost certainly will be not nearly linear.
Closer to "mineralogy", plenty of things are both smaller and tougher (on this "support its own weight" metric) than cells or proteins with their squishy folding rules.
Even if we include things like hydroxyapatite in teeth, or even lignin, those are more like byproducts of biology than active biology itself.
> plenty of things are both smaller and tougher (on this "support its own weight" metric) than cells or proteins with their squishy folding rules
I was thinking microscopic versus nanoscale. Folding something out of a flat material is probably cheaper than machining it, and if it's stronger than additively manufacturing it you have applications in medical devices and aerospace for starters.
Microscopic is unnecessary. Tessellation is already used in space and medical devices (not mentioned in this article: it's used in devices like stents). The specific fold being used here is named after an astrophysicist and has already been used in space.
> a simple piece of paper, folded into a Miura-ori origami pattern, could hold 10,000 times its own weight
> Wu was especially intrigued by the Miura-ori fold, named after its inventor, the Japanese astrophysicist Koryo Miura. Famed for its use in aeronautical engineering, the fold has been leveraged to make solar panels for spacecraft and satellites. One of its earliest space applications was in Japan’s Space Flyer Unit, a satellite launched in 1995.
Yes, a young scientist gaining momentum.
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This is very cool, but I don't really see the direct connection between a paper structure which is very strong in compression and emergency accommodation (which the article really focuses on).
Tents don't need to be strong in compression - there's no weight on the roof. And obviously paper is not a material that scales up or would be practical for outdoor use.
Just a bit confused by the obvious mismatch here - maybe it's the journalist putting more weight on the disaster application than the kid did.
This is a problem with our science funding system. We really discourage pure research, so everything needs to be justified in terms of saving lives or helping to cure cancer. He'll make a good academic someday.
100% this. There's nothing wrong with focusing on first principles and this is a rediscovery in that matter.
It's just an acknowledgement that the Miura pattern works and this kid kept his focus. To be perfectly honest, he just took something that was already done before (the fold) and applied it. Scientists do this all the time and win prizes--like cellophane tape to create graphene.
We never know when the result of pure research will have applications. Maybe his findings would have material impact 20 years from now in a field we are unable to foresee today.
I suspect the connection isn't "paper roof holding weight" so much as "geometry that can turn thin sheet material into a stiff, self-supporting form"
I thought it was about the compressability of the material to save space, perhaps?
> tents don't need to be strong in compression - there's no weight on the roof
But there is on the floor, unless you expect the inhabitants to sleep more or less directly on the ground, including themselves, whatever is used as a mattress, belongings, small appliances, etc. Emergency habitation is not the same as a camping tent, it needs to be able to service populations that have difficulty with camping's limitations, like the elderly.
> Paper is not a material that scales up
Citation needed? It's made from a renewable resource (wood) and there's some 400+ million metric tons of paper production yearly (source: Gemini, so feel free to take with a grain of salt).
> Or would be practical for outdoor use
If exposed directly to the elements, sure. But what if the paper is laminated or otherwise enclosed within plastic, rubber, or other synthetic material well-recognized as hydrophobic?
The ground can already support the weight. Anything whatsoever in between the ground and the occupants is sufficient if your goal is to separate their feet from it.
> It's made from a renewable resource (wood) and there's some 400+ million metric tons of paper production yearly
They don’t mean production volume, they mean physically. You can’t increase the thickness of paper by 1000x to just make thicker, stronger, paper. It’s a different material entirely.
In a cold climate it's essential to have air/insulation between the floor and ground.
>> Paper is not a material that scales up
>Citation needed? It's made from a renewable resource (wood) and there's some 400+ million metric tons of paper production yearly (source: Gemini, so feel free to take with a grain of salt).
Sorry, I meant in the sense of physical scale - I wouldn't imagine the properties of paper at 50cm scale translate directly to say 5 or 10 metre scale.
Most tents are in fact not very strong in compression unless designed for snow. If you do get a big snow you need to wake up in the night and remove the snow so it doesn't crush the tent.
I remember cutting an IKEA desk top down one side and discovering the inside was just corrugated cardboard under a few layers of laminate. it was trivial to break by shearing it but in a typical construction where the weight is mostly up/down it was obviously sufficient - until you cut the rigid sides off that is...
While this probably does have incredible Z-axis strength, I can't imagine it being very strong with any kind of lateral loads.
IKEA moment is a perfect real-world demo of how much the outer geometry and boundary conditions matter
That the construction method of most hollow-core doors in your house.
I've had a ton of fun using these lightweight desks as makeshift porta-ledges while climbing.
Biggest downside is their lack of moisture resistance.
Would vacuum bagging help?
This design is terrible for desks, they all end up sagging after a few years of use. Their "SANDSBERG" kitchen table is a much better choice for a desk, no cardboard and metal reinforced
It’s cardboard covered with a thin layer of plastic and wood. People buying this aren’t doing it for longevity. It’s so they can spend $15 on a side table for their college dorm.
Yes especially in hot humid climates where they sag already after a year if you are keeping a Monitor and some books on it.
I don't think I have ever lived in a place where I've kept a desk, or any other furniture, long enough to care, though.
I like the idea of not buying disposable furnitures, especially when there are alternatives at the same price. I can stand on my current desk (the ikea kitchen table) with my full weight and probably jump on it, the previous one was bowing if I did as little as resting my elbows on it
The concept of disposable furniture is wild to me. As if fast fashion weren't wasteful enough, now we have fast furniture??
Small discussion 3 months ago (43 points, 9 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46106871
Thanks! Macroexpanded:
14yo won $25k for origami that holds 10k times its weight - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46106871 - Dec 2025 (9 comments)
Fun when these things hold a surprising amount of weight. Reminds me when these two engineers on Lego Masters made a bridge:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G9WT6TB15yE
wtf, why lego, whhhy? "The uploader has not made this video available in your country"
edit: What, they geoblocked a ~1min clip, wow.
This is from a Fox TV series, probably distribution rights.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lego_Masters_(American_TV_seri...
I live in the U.S.: I can watch it.
What is "your country?"
It's Lego Masters USA (Fox), rather than the Lego company itself, so I imagine they're being extra-careful with licensing.
I'm in the UK and it's geoblocked for me.
No phd, no funding committee, no peer review anxiety. Just curoisity and paper. Sometimes the breakthrough comes from not knowing the problem was supposed to be difficult. This is what happens when you don't tell a kid something is too hard
Does this shape hold up good weight distribution properties when 3D-printed? Maybe this could be huge for 3D-printing mostly hollow, yet strong parts that require in fewer plastic and time spent.
So initially my thought was "why would this be better than existing infill patterns" but my second thought was that the reason Miura-ori patterns are interesting in the first place is because they fold. Not in this application so much, but in general, the way they flex is why they're interesting. The upshot here is that if you embedded that sort of pattern in a closed box, the degrees of freedom would try to transfer the force of a vertical load on the top to a horizontal stress in the outer shell of the base, in both x and y. A bit like a spherical dome.
I'm not sure that it's better than a dome; it might be for cases where you can't predict where on the top surface the load is going to be? I'm also not sure that a sheet of printed infill is sufficiently similar in its physical properties to a sheet of paper/card for this to transfer well, but it would be an interesting experiment to do.
That’s already a thing. Infill. There’s lots of variations of infill that all have different strengths and weaknesses.
There is also 3d printing origami shapes [1]. But 3D printing is still plastic(usually).
The idea of origami steel sheets has stuck on my mind ever since I found out about laser welding. Cutting thin 2mm sheets of steel, stitching them back together in different shapes, and holding tons of weight? That sounds very compelling to me.
[1]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FNVBK7-h9Fs
Anyone knows how does 3D printed metals compare to CNC-made parts?
I know it's been used to build engines, which suggests they are strong, but there's also all this process around ancient swords around tempering, folding, etc that suggests that maybe just 3D-printing metals might result in weaker structures.
That’s like saying origami is already a thing. Agree that this could be cool to test as new kind of infill.
He didn't invent the pattern though
There's something about this that stands out as very concerning for me.
This, clearly very clever, young man is 14 years old. The article says: "Wu had always been fascinated with the ancient Japanese art of origami, but he really began indulging in it as a hobby about six years ago."
At eight. He was *indulging* in a hobby at eight years old. Indulging in a hobby should be a pre-retirement activity. What an incredible weight the attitude of the writer puts on kids.
Even worse was the passage: "First, Wu needs to consider thicker origami solutions as he scales his design up".
Needs to? When did he sign up for it? It's not like he tried to patent a shelter design or bid for a government contract.
I've heard/read the expression "to indulge in a hobby" many times and never thought it was pejorative or paints hobbies as extravagancies. If you google indulge hobby, there's plenty of hits. Strangely though, ChatGPT says it does sound negative. It had never occurred to me, and probably not to the author.
Just because ChatGPT says it sounds negative doesn’t mean it is. I didn’t think of it negatively either.
Who knows how ChatGPT made that suggestion [this time around]. Maybe 30% of the English-speaking population thinks it’s negative, or 60%, or perhaps someone simply wrote a high-profile negative op-ed that included the phrase in its title.
Anyways, not that you did this, but we need to be careful not to use LLMs as the deciding factor in how to feel about things. :) It gives too much power in swaying our thought to those who build the models.
Same with me. It's just an expression. One definition of "indulge" is "to take unrestrained pleasure in" (MW). I just read it as an activity the kid really really enjoys.
> Indulging in a hobby should be a pre-retirement activity
I don't think indulge means what you think it means.
I apologise for you misunderstanding my example as a strict definition?
For anyone who hasn't understood my meaning:
Indulge is a word that implies that you're allowing yourself something that you might not ordinarily. The point being: it is (or should be) silly to suggest that a child can be said to indulge in a hobby. This is because the further implication is that an eight year old might show some restraint and focus on their book learning and networking.
Or might spend it all outside playing football. Maybe that's what they should be doing.
You've got preconceived notions of what children "should be doing" in their free time to start with.
That last line was humor. Those are recognised "productive" activities. I guess if I had to really explain it, I was trying to offer a rephrased take on what I saw as the meaning of that line in the article. And so highlight that expecting children to do strictly productive things is silly. Dunno. Does that make sense now? I guess I've learned my lesson about my sense of humor not travelling well.
I'd argue that kids should be generalist, as in learning diverse set of experiences rather than spending years honing a single craft. This is peak time where brain can quick adapt to new novel problems (like language learning) and spending this time to perfect a single niche feels counter-productive if not straight unethical. Kids should only specialize when they become grown enough to idependently decide on what they want to do.
I think about this sometimes. On one hand, is it really "right" or net positive for adults to guide children into some specialized craft at a young age? Even if the kid shows some prodigal predilection (haha) for it, maybe it is the responsibility of their guardians to expose them to a number of alternative interests/possibilities?
It's interesting because the approach of encouraging your kid to foster highly specific skills fails to satisfy the categorical imperative: if everybody did it, nothing would work. Or at least it seems that way... it's probably a safe bet that having a sizable majority of adolescents who are somewhat flexible/aimless and can respond to a variety of market demands in terms of career specialization is a good thing if not a necessary one.
On the other hand, manipulating (not to be taken with a necessary pejorative connotation) a child into this kind of specialization is almost certainly a necessary precondition for greatness. If you aren't a competent musician by the time you're 8 years old it is vanishingly unlikely you are ever going to be a true orchestral soloist. Ditto for something like chess. So if we want a world with those heights of greatness in it, we need to accept that some people are going to compel or allow their kids to be specialists rather than generalists.
> If you aren't a competent musician by the time you're 8 years old it is vanishingly unlikely you are ever going to be a true orchestral soloist. Ditto for something like chess
To me this sounds like an exception to the rule than rule itself. Our society would be perfectly fine to not have this type of entertainer "greatness". I mean, we got rid of castrados because it went too far but the line between cutting kids testicles off vs making them play some useless game 12 hours a day for a decade is quite blury.
I'd argue this extreme specialization of children is fundamentally unethical and should be shunned or even made illegal but it'll take decades if not centuries for our society to realize this because we just value this type "greatness" too highly.
Ok sure but in this sense it is already a rule (most people do not either prescribe these things to their kids or allow them to indulge in them) and what we're debating is how firm that rule.
As it happens, I think I disagree with you. I do value greatness. I value a culture that lauds greatness. The point of virtuosic musicianship isn't entertainment, or at least not a banal thoughtless kind (a symphony is not a substitute good for ragebait podcast clips with a subway surfers overlay), it's inspirational art. The examples I chose are particularly evocative, but there's no real difference between that and a parent who compels or allows their child to become ridiculously capable in some kind of mathematics or literature. Imagine if Terrence Tao's parents had insisted that he carry on with a typical pre-university series of broad survey courses for the sake of making him a generalist! Imagine all the less high-profile examples who were maybe even more important to pushing some practical effort forward.
Making it illegal is a nonstarter because I think it runs afoul of the categorical imperative in exactly the same way. I'm a strong believer in the idea that most progress (again, not intended to have a positive connotation) is made by a small group of people who were almost never generalists. Einstein was not a generalist. Kant, who I've been referencing throughout this conversation, was really not a generalist. The possibility of greatness is just as necessary as a certain number of pliable generalists.
What would the point of living in a world without greatness be? Since I meant that question rhetorically: is there a way to allow such greatness to be achieved without manipulating young people into obsession?
I think we have different undersrand of what greatness is. Being the best paperclip making machine is hardly meaningful. True greatness is in balance and virtue. A truly great person is well rounded and plays to true human strength- adaptability.
I'd be willing to bet everything I have that our society on average would be better at every single specialized thing if everyone was well rounded generalist with minor specialization instead of niche expert and it's incredibly easy to see why given the era of technology were living through right now. After all, all best in anything are finally defeated by a few years of collective technological progress.
Now what's the meaning of life if we have no treadmill to run on indefinitely? Well that's for each to figure out but what a sad meaning it would be if it was just to be slightly better at one niche activity for a very short while?
> I apologise for you misunderstanding my example as a strict definition?
My point is that I believe you have probably misinterpreted the author and used that as a basis to critisize them, unfairly in my view.
We don't all need to indulge (hey look another one) your personal perspective of how that word should be used.
But you didn't say that. You just said I didn't know what 'indulge' means. Although I'm sure the irony of your final quip has escaped you, you have editorialised it into a valid criticism of my take, which I totally accept. Not everyone reads and uses the word with the tone it conveys in my vernacular, and which I'm sure must be, at least implied, in any respectable dictionary definition. Fair enough. Out of curiosity, do you think this is a geo-cultural difference? I am Australian. I imagine most commonwealth and formerly commonwealth countries read it the same way. Where are you from?
> But you didn't say that. You just said I didn't know what 'indulge' means.
Right. My objection was that you projected a negative meaning, which in my view was not demanded by the author. I could be wrong about what the author meant, but I didn't pick up any hint of "incredible weight the attitude of the writer puts on kids". So yes from my perspective that suggested that you probably didn't know the meaning of the word or didn't consider that there was another way to interpret it.
> Although I'm sure the irony of your final quip has escaped you
No, that was the point. The word can be used more than one way.
> Out of curiosity, do you think this is a geo-cultural difference?
Definitely could be. I'm from the US.
As a grown adult in this mid 30s, I wonder when the transition happens in kids who are passionate about certain subject or career turn into becoming lawyers or accountants in adulthood… it’s like encounters in life changes people to pursue a career which they never imagined they’d do in their childhood
You won’t find a kid who’d say, “I want to be accountant when I grow up…” instead you’d find people want to be pilots or police officer….
> I wonder when the transition happens in kids who are passionate about certain subject or career turn into becoming lawyers or accountants in adulthood…
> You won’t find a kid who’d say, “I want to be accountant when I grow up…”
When they realize that people with more money and more connections to powerful people get their way over people with less money and fewer connections to powerful people. The children of the former group also get a significantly better starting position in life compared to the children of the latter group. That is, if the latter manage to attract a suitable mate as poor people. If you choose dreams over money, you're not only failing your own potential desires and ambitions that will then probably never materialize, but also your future family and offspring. As the wealth inequality gap widens ever more, such pressures only intensify, and everything turns more and more into shit. Those kids' (from your post) desire to live a life with a fulfilling career is sacrificed at the altar to the dragons hoarding more and more wealth at all costs (billionaires).
Could concept be applied to submarine vehicles to exponential increase their resistance to pressure at depth?
This is weight distribution on a flat plain. Think of Roman Arches. On a curved plain, weight distribution of THIS origami falls apart as pressure is added horizontally (not just vertically).
I've made similar tessellations before, they can be curved. You can trivially make a pre-folded tessellation into a cylinder of arbitrary diameter; to curve it like a submarine, you'd just adjust the angle of the creases. Optimize the curve so the pressure is always perpendicular and there's no problem here.
The real issue here is that there's not much point in it, as the very thing that makes this useful (the ability to fold it up) would also make it collapse easily in a pressurized environment. You'd also have to deal with preventing leaks if you wanted air inside, likely by adding an outer hull, which would then defeat the purpose.
Unfortunately it stops working when the paper gets wet. ;)
Submarines work on the principle of the arch: a spherical or cylindrical hull section transfers all the force into compression of the material so there is no net "inwards" force.
The weak points then turn out to be joints, material defects (the famous Titan failure), windows and other piercing points, and any unexpected shear forces.
Exponential in relation to what other value?
Adding 1 to _____ causes a doubling of resistance to pressure, adding 2 is a quadrupling, adding 3 is an octupling, what goes in the blank?
So what is the ideal pattern and how can you build a shelter with it?
I think it would be fun to build a playhouse out of it.
I think that design has the easiest application in something like corrugated cardboard, as the middle layer.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miura_fold
I'd be curious what kind of variation there was across his 54 different designs. If he's discovered the existence of a narrow window where strength dramatically increases, that seems a much more interesting find than if this whole family of origami patterns is knowns to perform well and this variant just happened to be slightly better than the rest. It's exciting to think that there may be super strong designs just waiting to be found with a little bit of rigorous refinement.
It's a well understood shape, but we're happy to see a teenager playing and learning.
It has a particularly cool region in its configuration space where it can be bistable: https://journals.aps.org/pre/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevE.93.03...
It’s amazing how emergent structural properties can come from simple, deterministic folding rules.
In algorithmic design, we often struggle to balance form and physical function. But rigid foldability proves that finding the exact right geometric constraint actually creates the function. Respect to the 14-year-old.
Ugh, emergency shelter? We already have 50 million emergency shelter designs. It's ok to say this has no practical uses but is very cool.
It's a science fair project. It's part of the rubric. More broadly it's a scène à faire (an obligatory genre trope) for academic writing.
> It's ok to say this has no practical uses but is very cool.
Agreed. But it doesn't go viral as much. Every cool robotics research goes with a comment that says "it could be useful for disaster response in a post-apocalyptic world where the conditions have changed in such a way that only my robot can save us".
It can hold a considerable amount of weight then that may have application for areas where sand, snow or even rocks may be a problem
How impressive holding 10k times ones weight is, depends on size right? E.g. an ant can hold 50 times its weight, but a 10x10x10 times upscaled ant would not be able to do that
The size and 10k amount here are impressive compared to the ant nonetheless
Doesn't everyone else roll paper receipts etc. by the corner into a long stick? As a kid I sometimes licked the trailing corner to make it stick even better. I was and am always intrigued by how it becomes so much stronger and stiffer than the original flat sheet, but I never scienced too much into it :)
Our future is bright. This made me smile more than most news I've read in recent months.
Emergency shelters you can fold flat and ship anywhere. This is what happens when someone spends six years getting really good at one thing.
I wish the parents could be given a bit of credit. Instead we pretend the kid was doing this all solo... Its way less impressive when the parents are guiding them.
But the parents are doing lots of unappreciated work here.
/parent here
Agreed, but then it makes the whole thing a lot less impressive and it doesn't get viral.
Parents or a teacher most likely guided this kid to empirically measure how much weight a known origami fold can hold. I mean I remember that we were guided to do similar experiments at school when I was the same age... I don't remember making the news for "14-year olds empirically confirm Newton's law" :-).
I don't know, personally I think it's a bit weird for any mentor to expect recognition for their mentee's success. Surely the success itself is the reward? Pay it forward and all that. I would hope any parent would be adult enough not to feel like their child was stealing the spotlight from them.
You could look at this in at least two different ways. 1) journalism, and how it’s a better story if the kid is a self-contained genius; or 2) having youth be thankful for mentoring, and to understand little in life is achieved without others’ assistance.
I don’t consider that the parent comment is seeking to “steal the spotlight”; just that it’d be a more realistic appraisal of how success is achieved.
It's individualist exceptionalism taken to modern extremes. I remember having these sorts of science assignment in middle school, one with dried pasta with textbooks, and another with dropping egg safely in a box. Invariably the winners won (me and my partner) because our dads had "advice" when we got home and they saw what we were playing with. Winning in my experience was the most corrosive part of those experiences because I literally did not come up with the solution.
I hope the smart boys keeps engineering mind growing and gets a good degree and keeps contributing to the better good! Good luck to him!
Triangles together strong!
Surprisingly it's not hexagons, because hexagons are supposed to be the bestagons!
Pretty impressive work for 14 and more importantly, a great example of curiosity turning into real engineering thinking
Proves that a child can be perfectly happy without having access to social media. Just give them a sheet of paper.
Looks kinda like an egg carton to me. So if an empty egg carton weighs 50g, that's like saying you could stack 500kg on top. Pretty impressive.
Whats unique or special about these particular tessellations? My students have been making similar ones for 10 years (and googled them)
> Whats unique or special about these particular tessellations?
1. He talked about them to people who were interested in listening.
2. He was able to apply the knowledge he gained for his specific task in a variety of team tasks at the event.
Pretty cool, good for him. My Thermo Fisher bottle opener is a prized possession. Much like those cancer center ash trays.
A couple of years ago, National Geographic magazine had a feature on the use of origami in engineering and art; the print edition featured a striking cover photograph of a gold colored sunshade for a space telescope under test at JPL.
The web site is aggressively paywalled, to such a degree that I cannot determine the date of publication.
But they had a public access podcast and transcript here
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/podcasts/article/unfoldin...
what if, instead you just placed whatever weight you wanted onto a flat unfolded piece of paper.
what a smart kid! wishing him all the best
no one will say he is a chines descendant this time as origami is not AI, not military, not bats!
Smart teen :)
Imagine 3D printing this from titanium...how much weight could that hold? Amazing achievement!
Holy shit there is so much cope in this thread. Give the boy his props
I propose a moment of silence, for what if all the hype here proves to be half true, is the last time in history that there will be anything like a youth bieng able to achive a simple cognitive performance that distinguises them from a dollar store calculator.
Where can we read about the other submissions?
It looks like the top 10% from 6th to 8th grade Society of Science fairs are invited to participate. They are then selected down to a top 300[1] and a top 30.[2] You can find a project name for the top 300 and a paragraph on each of the top 30.
[1] https://www.societyforscience.org/jic/2025-top-300-junior-in... [2] https://www.societyforscience.org/jic/2025-finalists/
The top 30 finalists are listed here:
https://www.societyforscience.org/jic/2025-project-showcase/
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These teen science fair winners almost never amount to anything exceptional, and are a product intense parental supervision. Most universities have wised up.
Sometimes, but I do find his story inspiring. He has taken an age old craft and demonstrated it may have practical applications. I hope he can patent some design based off this and then he can make some money off it. (Yes, I know he didn't invent this particular fold.)
> Yes, I know he didn't invent this particular fold
So how could he patent it?
I join the parent: it's a kid who empirically evaluated how much weight an existing fold can hold. It's not like he solved a hundred years old mathematical problem.
That evaluation has value and the possible use case of strong and cheap emergency housing is interesting though it sounds like it would take substantial work to push it to fruition and would need to be competitive with existing solutions.
Did you have a look at the pictures in the article? How would you build housing with that fold?
It's true, it's a bit tricky, but it's an interesting idea. One could imagine a deployable carpet that consists of folded paper sandwiched between thin water impermeable layers to make a lightweight collapsible elevated floor. Maybe there could be other applications too.
That said, it may not be strong enough to hold the weight of an adult on one foot.
I think that's my point: what that kid did is "just" put some books on different origami folds laying on the ground and measuring how much weight they could hold. It's nice that kids have an interest in science, but I don't think it helps them to make them believe they almost solved anything they can imagine (e.g. "building shelters for disaster relief").
At this age at school, I remember making all sorts of physics experiments. I don't think it would have been worth giving us a prize and publishing articles saying that "our work on the Newton's laws may someday lead to new insights about orbital mechanics". We dropped an object and measured the time it took to hit the ground, and checked that the physics formulas were predicting it pretty well. That's all.