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Ask HN: How do you become smarter?

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Re: Ask HN: How do you become smarter?

#71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Christianity is a philosophy that is founded on guilt. The cardinal sin represents a general disdain of all humanity - everyone is guilty for being alive, for being sons and daughters of women and men. Everything else is a consequence of that disdain.

Re: Ask HN: How do you become smarter?

#72
I stopped drinking, maintain a good sleep hygiene, excersise more, eat better and read regularly about 18 books/year.

I did notice I can articulate ideas better and think clearer, but I also noticed the bad parts of my personality traits such as anxiety and obsessiveness increased and I had to develop new mechanisms to keep them in check.

This just proves to me that the old adage of ignorance being a bliss may actually be true.

Re: Ask HN: How do you become smarter?

#73
Standard dose sertraline has a cognitive effect in non-depressed people, as besides being a serotonin reuptake inhibitor, it also has a slight dopaminergic effect (irrelevant for therapeutic purposes it seems, but still noted in case reports) I've had friends that don't use stimulant medication, reporting positive effects in both mood and cognition with a short low dose trial (25mg/d)

If you go down this path, use your newfound perspective and mood (as you'll probably feel different) to learn more about your personality and work on improving it, so that you are able to deal better with life, and find out in what things your usual self falls short when dealing with others. The comment from austin-cheney seems very good addressing a similar thing.

About diet, check out this talk from Georgia Ede called 'Nutritional and Metabolic Strategies for Optimizing Mental Health': https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UkqZW_sBPTg

Not gonna touch on other good habits, as it seems already covered in general, but just going to add a few mindset related things I found that resonate with my experience:

Becoming smarter shouldn't be a goal in itself, as intelligence is already set. Whenever I spent days reading studies, reviews and guidelines trying to search for an edge or better health in general, it was mostly a form a entertainment. I did learn a lot with those deep dives, and I incorporated a lot of these things in my life, but the gains are very marginal over less detailed advice.

At this age your brain is already wired for specialization. Which is probably why learning from textbooks and other structured ways seems easier now than when you were young and exploring, learning by exposure. You can tell the difference especially with language-learning and music.

This is bad if you are just expecting to absorb a topic intuitively, but it doesn't mean you can't conquer and become an expert on it. Or become a quick responder at it. This is where after you have covered some ground, you continue learning using projects and examples.

Life is more complex also than in your early 20s. There's more to do in general, expectations from others and yourself, which sometimes gets in the way of learning, eventually becoming distracting and energy sucking instead of having everything taken care of, or not being bothered by it. You can optimize this by hiring help or finding ways to living a lower maintenance life, keeping a low maint. household.

I find whenever I take steps to simplify my life and time sinks, and take a little time off out of my usual environment, creativity in problem-solving and learning tasks follow.

Re: Ask HN: How do you become smarter?

#74
It depends on what you mean by "intelligence." Are you looking for an IQ? Trying to learn new skills faster? Learn new facts faster? Think faster? Have better recall for what you've learned? Be able to synthesize new things from information you already know? Being "smart" is complicated, and it can mean a lot of things, but here's what I would say is the most general advice from my own life: 1. If you're looking to improve IQ, the most important thing is practice. IQ is mostly based on reasoning and logic, so things like logic games or puzzles, or trying to look at a problem you're having from a different way from usual are good ways to work on it. 2. If you want to learn new skills faster, it's best to find one skill that can be "used" to help with a number of other skills. Anything related to hand-eye coordination can be picked up faster if that's already a skill that you have. 3. Learning new facts is... tricky, but ironically the best thing you can do to learn them faster is to slow down. Your mind can only hold up a max of seven new pieces of information at once, but that's assuming you have a very good short term memory and strong ability to convert short term to long term. For most people, it's more like 3 or 4. Slowing down how fast you encounter new information can improve your ability to recall it later. 4. Thinking speed, unfortunately, isn't really something you can change, at least not in my experience. Then again, I apparently think fairly quickly as is, so I may not be the best person to ask on that front. 5. Synthesizing information also mostly comes down to practice, but it also requires a level of thinking beneath the surface level (though if you're asking this kind of question, you're probably familiar with that) and analyzing each new piece of information to actively look for connections to what you already know.

Yeah, that was pretty long winded and may not even have been entirely what you were asking, but I hope it's still useful to you.

Re: Ask HN: How do you become smarter?

#75
I have been getting a lot of feedback from my colleagues for the past 2 years or so that I am one of the smartest people that they know of. My mother doesn't like me highlighting the fact that I am smart in front of other people especially our extended family (she thinks they will be jealous and wish ill of me) and pushes me to do better by working harder and keeping my head down.

TBH, I do not consider myself smart but inquisitive. I always try to create mental models based on the simplest explanations of a concept that is otherwise hard to understand. Taking care of my mental health is another thing I do proactively as I suffer from clinical depression. Will all that being said, I go through small obsessions every month or so and that pushes me to know everything about a certain topic and then summarize it at the end in my head. Being smart isn't always a natural characteristic, and it is definitely something you can work on.

Re: Ask HN: How do you become smarter?

#76
As I get older (54) I figured out a couple of things, the first is obvious and especially true in our industry and that is you must constantly be learning. Personally I devote one hour a day during the work week to study a given topic that relates to my job -I do this on company time, since it relates to my job. It's amazing what a difference it's made in my career. The second thing is to constantly challenge your self to learn/do new things, in particular things that don't come natural to you -basically you are forcing the brain to do stuff it doesn't like and making it adapt. It's just like working out except for the brain, constantly testing ans trying the system over and over to stimulate growth.

Re: Ask HN: How do you become smarter?

#78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Christianity is a philosophy that is founded on guilt. The cardinal sin represents a general disdain of all humanity - everyone is guilty for being alive, for being sons and daughters of women and men. Everything else is a consequence of that disdain.

While sin plays a crucial role in Christian doctrine, it does not mean that everyone is guilty for being alive or that Christianity promotes disdain for humanity. Christianity recognizes the inherent value and worth of every human being, as created in the image of God.

Furthermore, Christianity offers hope and redemption through faith in Jesus Christ, rather than promoting guilt. Sin refers to actions or thoughts that go against God's will, which can harm individuals and society. However, forgiveness and transformation are possible through faith in Jesus Christ.

Romans 3:23-24

Re: Ask HN: How do you become smarter?

#79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Christianity is a philosophy that is founded on guilt. The cardinal sin represents a general disdain of all humanity - everyone is guilty for being alive, for being sons and daughters of women and men. Everything else is a consequence of that disdain.

While sin plays a crucial role in Christian doctrine, it does not mean that everyone is guilty for being alive or that Christianity promotes disdain for humanity. Christianity recognizes the inherent value and worth of every human being, as created in the image of God. Furthermore, Christianity offers hope and redemption through faith in Jesus Christ, rather than promoting guilt. Sin refers to actions or thoughts tha…

Yeah, Christianity is also full of internal contradictions, and has no strong framework in which one can logically cruise through it. One more reason why I dislike anyone using it in philosophical discussions.

> Christianity offers hope and redemption

Hope and redemption is only necessary if you think all humans are guilty by being alive and therefore hopeless.

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