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Ask HN: How do you become smarter?

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Re: Ask HN: How do you become smarter?

#61

Post by l33tbro »

I've found regurgitating cliches and mirroring others to be really helpful. Really helps knowing I'd be fine and fit in if everything around me cratered.

Eating like shit has also really impacted the way I look at the world and gave me a much deeper appreciation for everything good in my life. Nothing like deep burger regret to put into perspective what's important.

Oh yeah and I've become a pick-up artist. Not really intelligence, per se, but I did pay $9000 in seminars and it's been a wild ride of self-discovery. I love being humbled by how great some of my competitors are at it, and it relaxes me knowing that it's something I can improve on yet never really care about being exceptional at.

Finally, I spend a lot of time observing sociopaths. When you actually dig into the lives of the people so many of us look up to, there's a lot of things in their lives that are either undesirable, or not any more figured out than most of us have it. So it helps in a weird way to go to the apex predators of our species who engage without the burden of moral artifacts.

Re: Ask HN: How do you become smarter?

#63

Post by bheadmaster »

shrimp_emoji wrote: post #60
dev_0 wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does Jordan Peterson helps?

The poster said "philosophy", not "quacky neo-theologian mysticism from a psychology professor drifting out of his lane while coming off of benzos".

Nietzsche was a filologist, and had a problem with opium.

If you want to criticize someone's philosophy, you need better arguments then ad-hominem.

Re: Ask HN: How do you become smarter?

#64

Post by kleer001 »

bheadmaster wrote: post #55
dev_0 wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does Jordan Peterson helps?

Jordan Peterson is impressingly insightful, and a great motivational speaker. I wouldn't call him a philosopher, because philosophy to me must have a timeless element that is necessarily detached from any specific time or society, and Jordan is first of all a clinical psychologist, which makes his experience inherently tied to the current society through his practice with patients. That being said, we are living in t…

> Christianity in itself is extremely toxic life-denying philosophy

Hmmm, you lost me there. Are you talking about the politics and practices of current American evangelical right wing Christians? I'd agree with you there.

But in light of how Peterson digests Christianity I'd say it's the exact opposite of your claim. "Pick up your damn cross." and "Clean your room." as exemplars of such.

Re: Ask HN: How do you become smarter?

#66

Post by aristofun »

ambivalents wrote: post #59
aristofun wrote: post #54

Our brain only gets smarter by pursuing a goal. And "get smarter" is the worst goal to have. In you 30s you're not a child, your biology tells you - now pick the target, we can't afford to be smart everywhere anymore. So either you get very smart at something specific by focusing on it (or few specific areas if you have enough capacity) or not smart at all. Another alternative is to keep soothing yourself with those…

I'm intrigued by this viewpoint and want you to elaborate more! Why is getting smarter the worst goal to have? Do you think it's useful to get very smart at something specific, or does it amount to the same as not being smart at all? Asking as someone perpetually soothing myself with advice about diet, alcohol, spirituality, etc.

> Why is getting smarter the worst goal to have?

Because it's an empty, abstract and leading to nothing goal. Our mind needs to know "why exactly" to find its "hows". It's just how it works.

Re: Ask HN: How do you become smarter?

#67

Post by quickthrower2 »

p1esk wrote: post #57
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…

Reading more doesn’t make you smarter, it just makes you more knowledgeable There are signs from GPT family progress indicating otherwise.

GPT, so far, is evidence for the knowledgable but not smart assertion.

Re: Ask HN: How do you become smarter?

#68

Post by quickthrower2 »

Work on stuff that motivates and resonates with you, that gets you hooked in. I was pretty dumb at a the Object Oriented Microsoft nonsense from the 2000s for example, and flunked the interviews of companies that wanted a thoughtworks style of thinking and coding everything. I am definitely dumb at that stuff, because I find it tedious.

Weight training, get lean etc.

More sleep.

Avoid shitty jobs that take it out of you.

Re: Ask HN: How do you become smarter?

#69

Post by quickthrower2 »

throw_away1525 wrote: post #46

Something no one has mentioned yet: stop drinking alcohol to the greatest extent possible. A lot of us in our 30s are into craft beer, good wine, expensive Scotch etc... try abstaining for a full quarter (3 months) and see how you feel after. Even if your consumption was within government health guidelines (<14 drinks per week for men, less for women, and government drinks are small) you will probably be amazed at th…

I have some kind of CFS / Fibro and I meed to avoid alcohol (mostly) and train at the gym to keep up with the average person who does what they want. But I remember back in the day a heavy night out per week means a constant state of fog. For what really.

Re: Ask HN: How do you become smarter?

#70

Post by p1esk »

quickthrower2 wrote: post #67
p1esk wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reading more doesn’t make you smarter, it just makes you more knowledgeable There are signs from GPT family progress indicating otherwise.

GPT, so far, is evidence for the knowledgable but not smart assertion.

After spending many hours with GPT-4 I disagree.
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