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Ask HN: How do you become smarter?

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Re: Ask HN: How do you become smarter?

#11

Post by BigHatLogan »

fnordian_slip wrote: post #8

I feel like there are too many definitions of "smart" for me to give a useful answer, and people are too different anyway so what worked for me might not work for you, but I'll just write down what helped me. You could probably start by asking yourself what you really want to achieve, and why, and it might help you more than anything I am writing here. My first instinct was to tell you to read books, or listen to aud…

Appreciate it. I was thinking of reading more books, too, but it might be better to think about what I want to achieve, as you mentioned. It's all quite vague in my head. I just feel a lot more mentally sluggish / sloppy than I used to when I was younger. I get the feeling my 20-year-old self would run [mental] circles around me. Who am I kidding--physical ones too!

Re: Ask HN: How do you become smarter?

#12

Post by BigHatLogan »

dieselgate wrote: post #9

Without getting into the weeds of trying to define intelligence: just go into more detail/deeper of what you already know. That’s all the education system really does anyway after a certain point. Edit: whenever you come across something you don’t understand/know - learn more about it. It’s a journey not a destination.

Thanks. That's good advice. I have noticed a tendency to shy away from things more often lately--when I'm diving into one of our legacy systems at work, for example, if I come across something I don't understand, I immediately start to get frustrated, panicked, and look for a way to get this assignment off my back. Spending a bit more time not knowing, and more time diving in, might be the better approach here.

Re: Ask HN: How do you become smarter?

#13

Post by jschveibinz »

fnordian_slip wrote: post #8

I feel like there are too many definitions of "smart" for me to give a useful answer, and people are too different anyway so what worked for me might not work for you, but I'll just write down what helped me. You could probably start by asking yourself what you really want to achieve, and why, and it might help you more than anything I am writing here. My first instinct was to tell you to read books, or listen to aud…

One more thing to add to your comment: write about what you think you know well, or else try to teach somebody about what you know. You will quickly identify your limits and then you can go back and fill in the “blanks” of your understanding.

Re: Ask HN: How do you become smarter?

#14

Post by anigbrowl »

BigHatLogan wrote: post #5
anigbrowl wrote: post #3

Read heavy books and scientific papers, bang your head against a (metaphorical) wall a lot. Follow intellectual trails and be willing to get seriously lost.

Heavy books and scientific papers about anything I find interesting? Or about things in my work domain?

Things you find interesting, which may or may not coincide with work.

Re: Ask HN: How do you become smarter?

#15

Post by rumdonut »

Sleep well. Sleep is critical for structural learning (insight, generalization, etc.). Your hippocampus is theorized to randomly walk through memories to build these structural connections in your cortex during slow wave sleep.

Re: Ask HN: How do you become smarter?

#16

Post by theaussiestew »

The main way is increasing your general level of health. Physically, emotionally and mentally. Reading more doesn’t make you smarter, it just makes you more knowledgeable. Imagine if you had the level of acuity and liveliness you did when you were a child, but the maturity and experience you have now. People say that humans have an intellectual peak in their twenties, well that’s only because most people’s health starts going downhill at that point. Excessive stress, mental overstimulation, emotional problems, etc. You remove these, there’s no doubt you’ll have a clearer and faster mind.

Re: Ask HN: How do you become smarter?

#17

Post by BigHatLogan »

theaussiestew wrote: post #16

The main way is increasing your general level of health. Physically, emotionally and mentally. Reading more doesn’t make you smarter, it just makes you more knowledgeable. Imagine if you had the level of acuity and liveliness you did when you were a child, but the maturity and experience you have now. People say that humans have an intellectual peak in their twenties, well that’s only because most people’s health sta…

Well said! I was thinking something along these lines--that there must be some sort of correlation between physical health and mental sharpness. Maybe that's why professors are typically fairly lean.

Re: Ask HN: How do you become smarter?

#18

Post by davidhyde »

Try to learn something difficult. Something that you really struggle with and find mentally exhausting. Preferably something useful but it’s not a waste of time to try learn something that you may never use. For example, if you are not naturally talented at math try to fundamentally understand general relativity. Or learn a musical instrument if you are not musical. This may not work for everyone but it works for me. It has reversed the arrow of time for my brain for sure.

Take your time, months or years if you need to. Learn different things at the some time. Mix it all up in there and let it brew while you sleep.

Re: Ask HN: How do you become smarter?

#19

Post by bumbledraven »

Much of philosopher Elliot Temple’s work is about how to think better. That’s a big topic which includes, among many other things:

- becoming aware of and fixing mistakes (https://www.elliottemple.com/essays/life-overreaching-correc...)

- identifying and working with bottlenecks (https://criticalfallibilism.com/most-factors-arent-borderlin...)

- managing your error rate for faster progress (https://fallibleideas.com/gradualism)

- becoming more honest (https://www.elliottemple.com/essays/lying)

- evaluating ideas using binary criteria (e.g., does idea X have important property Y), as opposed to continuous criteria (e.g., how good is idea X on a scale of 1-10) (https://yesornophilosophy.com)

Temple put a lot of thought into what might be called interventions for adults who want to improve their thinking (such as OP). One of those interventions is learning to speedrun a video game (https://curi.us/2198-mario-odyssey-discussion). Temple argues that many of the things you learn as part of speedrunning can help you learn to think better in general.

Re: Ask HN: How do you become smarter?

#20

Post by carapace »

Learn (self-)hypnosis. You have lots of brains, so to speak, you just have to organize them coherently.

Also, "Augmenting Human Intellect: A Conceptual Framework" SRI Summary Report AFOSR-3223 by Douglas C. Engelbart, October 1962 https://dougengelbart.org/pubs/augment-3906.html

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