Hope this is not a tradegy in the making.
When I was in grad school (at a much older age)
there were two brothers 11 and 14 in the same program,
buying time until they were old enough to apply for medical school.
Their mom followed them around with their books.
Felt sorry for them. Plenty of time to learn to change the world when you are 20-30yo genius.
That said, for all the pessimism here about living forever…I do think the universe has at least a few centuries worth of things I would want to see and try, if one could stay healthy and find enough other people to stay with them for it. Anything beyond that is more extrapolation than I feel comfortable trying (while I am posting SMBC comics, this comes to mind).
Yeah, it’s usually the curse of child prodigies - they’ve learned to do the things that get adult (parent, teacher) approval and attention. I.e. give correct answers, perform something considered impressive, etc. - they master material that already exists, but aren’t so good at the kind of creative thinking that results in breakthroughs. As adults, at best they generally turn out to be competent in their fields, but not noteworthy.
The kid seems impressive. I’d like for him to listen to some of what Greta Thunberg (another impressive recently-a-kid) has to say and turn his mind toward making the planet live longer, rather than individual humans doing so.
he’s an 11 year old boy who thinks like an 11 year old boy in many ways. He happens to be uncommonly bright and dreams big. That’s ok by me. Some idiot adult asks an 11 year old what he wants to do in life and the kid thinks maybe it would be good to keep people going. He was trying to offer something good but hasn’t had the years to sort that out. Meh, so what? Ask the kid something related to his gifted skill set, maybe you’ll get an amazing answer. Most of us wouldn’t know if his answer was great or not. I like his mom’s insight too. She knows the boy is unique and their are no guidelines so she’s doing her best. Good luck to them both and I hope they have a lot of fun with the gift they’ve got. If we want to get dirty lets imagine what 11 year old trump would have said… world domination, people gotta worship me, I want more money than Bezos.
Let the kid grow and for god sakes I hope someone helps him when his little testosterone bombs drop in a couple of years. Then he’ll have some shit to figure out. Good luck kid and have fun.
So many haters here.
Most kids in his position are there because, luckily, they had parents that fed his fire rather than put it out. He’s only achieving because he has the talents that allow him to achieve.
He says that his research goal is “immortality” achieved by “replacing as many parts of the body as possible with artificial organs.”
I expect he’ll be getting a call from the Iron Hands and the Adeptus Mechanicus any day now.
Galois died at twenty-one, Abel at twenty-seven, Ramanujan at thirty-three, Riemann at forty. There have been men who have done great work a good deal later; Gauss’s great memoir on differential geometry was published when he was fifty (though he had had the fundamental ideas ten years before). I do not know an instance of a major mathematical advance initiated by a man past fifty. If a man of mature age loses interest in and abandons mathematics, the loss is not likely to be very serious either for mathematics or for himself.”
– GH Hardy, a mathematicians apology
Roger Apéry was in his 60s when he proved that zeta(3) is irrational.
The examples in Hardy’s quote do not really tell us anything about the present.
In Hardy’s time a mathematical career began earlier than it does today, and few of us die in duels anymore. 11 is quite young, but many great historical mathematicians were well into their careers by 20.
FWIW Hardy was born in 1877; the average life expectancy for an English person born then was just over 40 years. That’s going to skew the age statistics of historical mathematicians. Nowadays that same expectancy is just over 80 (or was pre-covid).
I am surprised at the number of people here who seem to be so keen to tear down a child.
Odds are he will read up on biology when he hits puberty.
Okay, so he is only the second-youngest college graduate in history, but that’s just because he became the youngest college dropout when he was 9.
The life expecancy being so low was due to a huge incidence of childhood mortality dragging the average down, not because people didn’t live until their golden years if they survived childhood.
Indeed
Oh, don’t worry, by the time your become immortal by replacing your body parts with machines, you won’t be human anymore. 
This also reminded me of an old 2000AD story from the late Eighties. But reading the synopsis doesn’t tally up with one of my lasting memories of it, planets over-crowded by the ever-living, all miserable.
The strip was The Dead.
Mind you, Torquemada, the antagonist in 2000AD’s Nemesis the Warlock, also served as a good warning about the dangers inherent in the pursuit of immortality.
He says that his research goal is “immortality” achieved by “replacing as many parts of the body as possible with artificial organs.”
Someone has never heard of the Cybermen from Doctor Who. DELETE. DELETE. DELETE.
Yeah, he’s giving his fellow country folk too little credit. The Dutch created the slave trade, which is undeniably the true foundation of modern society.
See how great life can be when it’s underwritten by millions of enslaved lives?
/s just in case
