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Six-year-old breaks women's world Rubik's Cube record [video]

68 points · 62 comments · 1659447091

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N_Lens · 1790228202 · focus · HN ↗
For her, it's all downhill from here.
Which is a good thing, because going downhill is fun and easy!
KevinMS · 1790228962 · focus · HN ↗
something is wrong with that category when a six year old wins
1. flippingheck · 1790230054 · focus · HN ↗
  When the category is playing with cubes, I'm not so sure?
  1. phatfish · 1790235480 · focus · HN ↗
    She is supposed to be mindlessly scrolling TikTok/Instagram (or Chinese equivalent) by 6, not developing an attention span and problem solving!
    jabron · 1790237739 · focus · HN ↗
    4 seconds of attention is not particularly impressive!
    KempyKolibri · 1790239605 · focus · HN ↗
    What's the argument here, that achieving mastery sufficient to get to a 4 second Rubik's cube solve requires at most 4 seconds' attention span?
    throwaway198846 · 1790242217 · focus · HN ↗
    It is a joke
    jabron · 1790249746 · focus · HN ↗
    Thank you
    firmretention · 1790248743 · focus · HN ↗
    Is this really problem solving? I thought this stuff was done by basically just memorizing patterns. Not saying it's easy, but seems like more a combination of memorization + muscle memory.
  2. KevinMS · 1790574253 · focus · HN ↗
    well, why is there a women's category for this? How do we know there isn't a open category where the real competition happens?
2. brianyu8 · 1790230427 · focus · HN ↗
  or, something is very cool when someone unexpected excels at something :)
3. MarcScott · 1790231300 · focus · HN ↗
  There's something wrong with symphony writing when an eight year old can do it.
  1. KevinMS · 1790426657 · focus · HN ↗
    not really the same thing as breaking a world record.
Romanulus · 1790229393 · focus · HN ↗
[dead]
fr2029 · 1790229467 · focus · HN ↗
[dead]
harry8 · 1790230140 · focus · HN ↗
She trains for 2 hours a day.
Average of 3 is under 4.5 seconds.
1. Markoff · 1790240724 · focus · HN ↗
  ...at least that's what they claim, so child services won't visit them and people online don't bash them for abusing the child, if they claim 2 hours it's fair to assume she trains at least double that, poor kid. You have it same with all those athlete factories in China, dozens of thousands childhoods ruined, so they find one great athlete able to compete at olympics.
bronlund · 1790230732 · focus · HN ↗
Poor little soul.
1. vachina · 1790233816 · focus · HN ↗
  Didn’t take long for this to show up.
  Next up: something something China slave labor, Wang Wang.
etiennebausson · 1790230765 · focus · HN ↗
I'm a bit curious about the rationale behind splitting the category by gender for rubik's cube. Is there a difference in dexterity to justify it?
Sound about as useful as splitting rubik's cube champion by weight class.
Video looks impressive, though the resources poured into that training seems excessive to me. Maybe I'm too poor and don't understand how rich people raise their kids?
1. MarcScott · 1790231532 · focus · HN ↗
  It's probably more about encouraging participation in the event amongst women. There's probably a hundred male competitive cubers for every female cuber. Having it segregated means that stories like this find their way onto the front page of HN.
  1. figassis · 1790236074 · focus · HN ↗
    I get it, but if women feel discouraged in a sport they're perfectly qualified for and not disadvantaged in the least, creating a category jus tto accomodate anxiety or lack of interest is actually discrimination no?
    Shouldn't the work of incentivising more women be outside of the tournament and not bend the tournament altogether?
    agos · 1790238915 · focus · HN ↗
    that's a debate as old as affirmative action policies, which have existed since a long time. Calling them "actually discrimination" is a bit reductive
    Markoff · 1790240218 · focus · HN ↗
    I remember when it was called publically "positive discrimination", but I guess it's not part of the newspeak, because everyone can see it's actually a discrimination even if you slap there "positive" to make it look better.
    agos · 1790240308 · focus · HN ↗
    "affirmative action" has been in use since the early 60s, are you that old?
    brigandish · 1790259997 · focus · HN ↗
    Easy now, I’m sure there are plenty of people on this forum that can remember the 60s.
    Markoff · 1790261771 · focus · HN ↗
    anyway I don't get what has official name since 60s to do with how people commonly called it up until recently, at least in 90s it was frequently called positive discrimination, heck I even remember when black people could be called black and not african american
    chilmers · 1790239491 · focus · HN ↗
    How is tracking a women’s world record discrimination or “bending the tournament”? It’s not as if women are being prevented from competing with men. Speedcubing competitions are open, single-category.
    figassis · 1790246680 · focus · HN ↗
    It’s not as if women are being prevented from competing with men - I don't know a lot about this, so I automatically assumed they are all segregated. If they aren't I have no problem, everyone is free.
    rusticpenn · 1790242876 · focus · HN ↗
    There are a lot of environmental factors which need generational changes to make Women compete equally with Men. Most of the really talented women are never given the chances they need or their focus is diverted to "girly" things. So we are only seeing a small subset of women. To encourage more women, we need categories like this.
    wccrawford · 1790243270 · focus · HN ↗
    In an ideal world, yes. But I think we're finding that it's practically impossible to eliminate toxicity completely, and people are irrationally bothered by "the outgroup".
    "I can tolerate anything except the outgroup" talks about how people more fiercely reject a group very similar to their own, yet slightly different, more than they reject groups that are actually very different.
    It leads to stupid gatekeeping like "treat the male chess players better than the female ones" and small nudges will never overcome it.
    If women feel put off by chess unless they have their own tournaments, then they can have their own tournaments. It literally hurts nobody.
    If you want to have a chess game against women, I'm sure you can do so. They aren't stopping you from playing them.
    They're just stopping you from playing in the tournament they created because others were toxic to them in the existing ones.
    figassis · 1790246162 · focus · HN ↗
    and people are irrationally bothered by "the outgroup" - so is that not a problem worth solving? We just avoid it?
    alphabeta3r56 · 1790258415 · focus · HN ↗
    You are trying to extrapolate one single solution to all situations because they appear identical to your mind. Those situations are very different in their details.
    figassis · 1790280562 · focus · HN ↗
    how so?
    brigandish · 1790260235 · focus · HN ↗
    What kind of toxicity are females experiencing when entering Rubik’s cube competitions?
    I think it’s more likely that people often don’t like being in a noticeable out group, and that females experience that more negatively than males, so they skip it.
    No need to blame anyone, and it doesn’t deny the attempt to help females participate.
    uqual · 1790269756 · focus · HN ↗
    "If women feel put off by chess unless they have their own tournaments, then they can have their own tournaments. It literally hurts nobody."
    I'm not convinced that this is completely true.
    The fact that there is a category reserved for women when there is no technical reason for such separation in that activity could make girls assume that women are somehow less proficient at that activity and other similar activities. That could discourage the best of them from even engaging in that activity or similar activities.
    In some activities, such as power lifting, it's pretty obvious that such separation is essential as women would rarely, if ever, win at the most levels of competition in almost any age group (I don't know if this is true, for example, in the 1-3 month old category!). In these cases offering separation encourages participation.
    In this particular case, who cares?! It's speedcubing and likely this girl will lose interest in the activity soon and move onto something else (or, more likely, I suspect her parents will push her into something else and drill her on that for a couple years).
    em-bee · 1790282375 · focus · HN ↗
    you do have a point in that separate categories reduces or even prevents both groups from competing against each other. thus we'll not know if they are differently qualified. also competition drives effort, so having a larger pool of competitors pay push participants to increase their effort.
    on the other hand, in this young age physical development between boys and girls can be very different. so maybe separation is necessary because of that.
    alphabeta3r56 · 1790258325 · focus · HN ↗
    It depends on what your goals are. If your goal is to get more women to do rubik cube becsuse they are underrepresbted then the discrimination is justified.
    Any kind of treatment that doesn't follow the law of jungle is discrimination. We need to think which one of them are better for our societal outcomes as a whole.
2. _ink_ · 1790231871 · focus · HN ↗
  I was surprised, too, and looked it up. WCA officially doesn't differentiate. The human World Record is 3.51 currently held by a Yiheng Wang (male). So there is quite a gap to the new record by Lian Yunzh. But if she continues like that, I think we will find out soon whether there are any biologic reasons for the gap or if it is just because there are many more males into that kind of thing.
  1. ErroneousBosh · 1790235625 · focus · HN ↗
    > or if it is just because there are many more males into that kind of thing.
    Women "trail behind" men in things like speedcubing, e-sports and so on, and I've always felt that it's simply because they've got better things to do with their time.
    _ink_ · 1790238462 · focus · HN ↗
    That feels unnecessary judgemental. If you enjoy a thing, I think that's a great way to spent your time.
    philipallstar · 1790242582 · focus · HN ↗
    > I've always felt that it's simply because they've got better things to do with their time.
    Feeling is no substitute for thinking, no matter how much applause this sort of statement will get you from the fairer sex.
    alphabeta3r56 · 1790258530 · focus · HN ↗
    Evoltuonarily, males have evolved to be more competitive.
    Specially in contest competitions.
  2. Randomno · 1790236123 · focus · HN ↗
    There's a big gap between the top 2 solvers (Yiheng Wang and Xuanyi Geng) and everyone right now. Yunzhi Lian is 4th in the world.
3. madaxe_again · 1790234387 · focus · HN ↗
  I mean, chess makes the same supposition, that women need a separate league.
  There are arguments that it promotes equality, that it’s more fair… but I think the reality is closer to “it would be embarrassing for a man to be beaten by a woman”.
  1. jabron · 1790237693 · focus · HN ↗
    The Chess world championship has an Open section and a Women's section. The Open section is open to every gender.
    But it's a fair assumption considering how Kasparov treated Polgar.
  2. [deleted] · 1790237820 · focus · HN ↗
    [deleted]
  3. rowanG077 · 1790241187 · focus · HN ↗
    If you look at chest rankings the more reasonable explanation is that almost no women chess player would even come close to the top currently. Of the top 500 only 8 are women.
  4. philipallstar · 1790242620 · focus · HN ↗
    > There are arguments that it promotes equality, that it’s more fair… but I think the reality is closer to “it would be embarrassing for a man to be beaten by a woman”.
    The reality is simply that women would not stand a chance, with unbelievably few exceptions (and even they wouldn't have much of a chance). Do you also think that we have women's sports because it would be embarrassing for men to be beaten by a woman?
    madaxe_again · 1790254145 · focus · HN ↗
    Why would women not stand a chance in Rubik’s cube or chess? Please explain.
    philipallstar · 1790257097 · focus · HN ↗
    Not women in theory, women in practice. The chess-playing women alive right now would not stand a chance based on their performance and ability.
    As with football, basketball, and other pursuits, in chess there are 13 year old boys who will beat the top women. Although in chess they're fractionally harder to find.
    So no, it's not because men would be embarrassed that we have women's sports. It's so women (whose top contenders probably would not rank in the top 100 million men on the planet if those men were offered the same opportunity to compete at such a low level for the money) can have a chance to win something.
4. voidUpdate · 1790234623 · focus · HN ↗
  I would be interested to see a leaderboard comparison between male and female cubers. As far as I know, there should be no real biological advantage either way
  1. stefantalpalaru · 1790243891 · focus · HN ↗
    [dead]
5. 0-_-0 · 1790237344 · focus · HN ↗
  How about chess?
6. patrec · 1790242154 · focus · HN ↗
  Can you name any fields from the top of your head that have a) objective scoring b) no gender split rankings b) women in the top 10, consistently?
  1. jstanley · 1790243141 · focus · HN ↗
    This was not from the top of my head but:
    * Equestrian endurance racing: <a href="https://www.fei.org/endurance/rankings" rel="nofollow">https://www.fei.org/endurance/rankings
    * Long-distance sled-dog racing: <a href="https://iditarod.com/race/2023/" rel="nofollow">https://iditarod.com/race/2023/
    * NHRA drag racing: <a href="https://www.nhra.com/news/2023/final-2023-camping-world-drag-racing-series-top-10-standings" rel="nofollow">https://www.nhra.com/news/2023/final-2023-camping-world-drag...
    * Crossword solving: <a href="https://crosswordtournament.com/2018/index.htm" rel="nofollow">https://crosswordtournament.com/2018/index.htm
    * Dog agility: <a href="https://www.agilitynow.eu/results/agility-world-championship-2024/" rel="nofollow">https://www.agilitynow.eu/results/agility-world-championship...
    I read that the reason so many fields appear to be male-dominated is just that men have wider variance on almost anything you can measure, so outliers on any metric are more likely to be men.
    etiennebausson · 1790282528 · focus · HN ↗
    I would argue that sled dog racing at least is heavily impacted by the participant weight, but fair enough.
  2. 1659447091 · 1790243901 · focus · HN ↗
    [delayed]
    patrec · 1790253475 · focus · HN ↗
    Ultra-endurance definitely seems to have one of the thinnest sex differentials in sports.
    Still, when I ask Google to provide a list of top 10 ultra endurance runners in terms of absolute performance across sexes, it lists not a single woman and elaborates: "While female athletes like Courtney Dauwalter have occasionally won mid-tier ultramarathons outright over the entire field, in highly competitive, top-tier international events, the absolute raw times and physical performance indexes lean heavily toward the elite male field."
    1659447091 · 1790259563 · focus · HN ↗
    [delayed]
7. philipallstar · 1790242469 · focus · HN ↗
  It's for the same reason we split any contest by gender: so women can win it.
  Chess has a whole separate WxM category so while if they're really good at chess they can become a real GM, but there's also an easier category called WGM (Woman Grandmaster). Same for IM, FM, and CM - they have easier equivalents called WIM, WFM, and WCM.
metalman · 1790231105 · focus · HN ↗
So happy to see that she is still 100% kid, but with superpowers that surprise her, first, I might add, because she is just fast like that. As a (past) cuber myself, but generaly into almost any competitive hand eye cordination thing, it would be fun to introduce her to the full varity of targeting, thrown or shot , and similar sports, and more practical things like useing hand tools, very, very precisely. The down side is that bieng better can often be a liability and also teaching her to recognise the ones who get viscious passive/agressive and will then seek to undermine, cheat, trick, trap, and betray, because thats what THEY are good at.
rinnemak · 1790237902 · focus · HN ↗
When the differences are in the one tens and one hundreds of a second, isn't the initial configuration a huge factor? How do they prepare the start for a competition like this? Can't just be a random scramble, right?
1. gunalx · 1790241026 · focus · HN ↗
  There is a min cap on how few moves the cube shall be possible to complete in.
Markoff · 1790240400 · focus · HN ↗
before opening - I hope she is not Asian
of course she is Asian, poor kid, Asian parents do this to their kids, so they excel in one field/discipline after hundreds of hours training and lost childhood, it's completely meaningless victory for her future life, but at least parent's ego was stroked and they have now bragging rights, sad...
1. nvarsj · 1790240572 · focus · HN ↗
  [delayed]
  1. Markoff · 1790241367 · focus · HN ↗
    she started at earlier age, parents at that age can easily brainwash a kid, the kid will "enjoy" whatever they will tell him to enjoy, now after years of abuse, sorry, I mean training, she doesn't even most likely know there is any alternative to life like this
    I can assure you Chinese parents can very easily force 6yo to do anything 2 hours a day (she spends most likely more hours a day than they claim), what is she gonna do, what's her other alternative at this age?
    xquce · 1790282269 · focus · HN ↗
    Most countries have versions of this, not unique to China. Many parents are willing to use their kids to achieve what they could not and be successful even in horrible ways. In the US you have child stars, beauty competition, sport sponsorships, talent scouts and alot more horrible ones I won't mention, ways that parents push their kids into fucked up industries, drugs, surgeries etc.
    Not to defend this, but to say I wouldn't blame China but instead the international culture of everybody that watches a video of children online or tv. Stop it, it is never for the enjoyment of the child, always the fucked up adults around them.
    I always cringe when someone shows me a video of someone who has an amazing singing talent and it's some 7 year old...
    em-bee · 1790300092 · focus · HN ↗
    sure, this does exist in many places, but not to the extent that it happens in china. in the west these cases are the exception, in china they are more like the norm.
    Markoff · 1790311940 · focus · HN ↗
    [dead]
    em-bee · 1790299991 · focus · HN ↗
    what the kids enjoy is getting their parents approval. that's what encouragement does. the key is to encourage children to do things that are actually good for them. i am glad my chinese wife got trained as a montessori teacher. they know a thing or two what's actually good for kids.
tsoukase · 1790416128 · focus · HN ↗
This is an amazing endeavour for a child but I am sceptical about the transfer of this dexterity to real life achievements and eventually happiness. My son was obsesssed with LEGO, making his own sets and uploading them to public repos, at that age and now at 11 yo all he wants to be a soccer player with no interest in any intellectual activity.
1. bkaae · 1790501041 · focus · HN ↗
  Soccer is not just physical - it's also team work, strategy, diet, tenacity, etc. A lot of those skills can be learned from almost any activity, including building lego sets online.
  The best soccer players are incredibly intelligent and fast thinking.
kromapiona · 1790752000 · focus · HN ↗
cool
kromapiona · 1790768422 · focus · HN ↗
[dead]

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