combination of nascent-wisdom + the patience to work AND wait.. (for the Big rewards.)
Andy Hertzfeld - (orig. Mac team) really Did go back and get his engineering degree, after all those years of exponential growth, 36-hour daze and: with enough bucks to coast mindlessly for life, even.

I dunno anymore.. where those with a good chance of achieving adulthood before age 60ish - ought "to go." We have to remember always: Murica IS an 'anti-intellectual' society. From the first, but especially later-on, after lots of cheap toys exploded, next became: the things to Get. Endlessly.

The idea of "a liberal education" was always strong with the already-educated, and for them - the idea of a Glorified Trade School instead, was anathema. But levels-of-Crass appear to have risen with every new 'financial instrument' imagineered, until - now, it's ALL about the Money / Getting Yours and - screw Beowulf, Cato (but not the Cato Institute) or ''' apostrophes.

Sadly too, for proper weighting of that 'degree' + Murican myths, folkways - AE as Prime example:
It does seem that the Very-bright are as often confounded by the ritual/rote aspects of "average(d) coursework" - as actually catalyzed. (Even AE 'consulted' on advanced math - with his first wife and with others, re the heady math of the General/Special Theories. And we know what his Profs thought of his response to their content/style.)

Then look at the code genius Alan Turing - killed off by a braindead pecksniff (even Ashcroft was not That sort of cretin - if we are to believe his refusal to sign a blank check for the Constitution - over to the WH mafiosi scum sent to Get One. And he did this while still drugged, yet! +3 for John.) Genius, even - counts for shit in any Puritan-derived group. (And that was UK.. less excuse.)

But yeah, at the level of us mere mortals + kids in any ghetto: our entire Star-besotted kultur sends them all the diametrical opposite direction, for them ever to achieve the functioning brain behind that modern rarity - adulthood.

(That 'biz-ed' bears little relationship to 'an authentic education' too; that such a choice affects many millions, maybe even: is the strongest dark-force maintaining a plurality here.. at the puerile level of 'consumer'-only -??- Well, no point in a thread of that direction.)

You can't diss the Actual Murican godhead ($$$) to any more effect than when one suggests a moratorium on (sugar-water + acids) carbonated beverages -- and those attack the body; only indirectly - this 'Mind' we are trying to feed.


That said -
..now, could I have played the trumpet like Sergei Nakariakov (or Alison Balsom) in early-teens? Screw! n lambda = 2d sin theta -- is what I would have said/done :-)
(Even ~knowing the precarious existence of instrumental solo work, long -term)
Fortunately (??) .. wrong bone-structure for such transcendence.

We are NOT 'rational creatures' - except in hindsight and when prescribing for Others.
Maybe the bonobos will do a better job with their opposed thumbs. Could hardly do worse.
Now, IF NOT ELSE the cockroaches... forget all about Consciousness - a passing fad.