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You can increase your intelligence

blogs.scientificamerican.com

21–30 of 120 posts

Re: You can increase your intelligence

#21
post #12
post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you suggesting that if both weak and strong people go to the gym regularly then the differences between them will remain?

Not weak and strong, but rather big and small. If someone is 1.6m and another one is 1.8m; the second guy obviously has an advantage (being a bigger guy). Sure the 1.6m can beat him. (exercise often, learn fighting techniques...) but if they both exercise in the same amount, the difference will remain.

[deleted]

Re: You can increase your intelligence

#23
post #11
post #10

Interesting! If anyone wants to give it a go, I just made a quick Dual-N-back app a couple of days ago, after reading Gwern's (who else?) excellent FAQ on the subject. My web app: http://nnback.ukoki.com Gwern's FAQ: http://www.gwern.net/DNB%20FAQ

Incidentally, if this is intended as some sort of response to gwern's other post [1] as if he's never heard of dual n-back... please do read that FAQ. All 124 pages of it, according to my Firefox print preview. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6521885

Or if you're lazy, just check the latest version of my n-back meta-analysis (http://www.gwern.net/DNB%20meta-analysis#control-groups): looks like the current point estimate for n-back's increase of IQ is 0.15 (so, 2 IQ points), and is not statistically-significant (p=0.14).

A few of the researchers in the area have encouraged me to clean this up for publication, which would be nice.

(Not that the rest of OP is much better than the n-back material. 'I worked with autistic kids and I can cherrypick a few examples of improvement!' As if he had never heard of regression to the mean or selection effects.)

Re: You can increase your intelligence

#24
post #13

I've always been surprised people thought any different, given the content of IQ tests. Is basically just puzzles and you usually get much better at puzzles if you do them all the time.

Increasing your score on an IQ test is one thing; getting the benefits expected from more "intelligence" may be another. In such matters, keep in mind Goodhart's Law: "When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure." In the domain of IQ, we might observe a very high correlation between higher-IQ and certain desirable results, like a longer/healthier life, lower rates of victimization, higher incomes,…

The other thing with optimising as a strategy is while it likes small changes, it really hates structural ones as they make it very hard to compare what you have now with what went before, so anything that is hard to measure is resisted. But usefulness and ease of measurement are not always particularly aligned.

Re: You can increase your intelligence

#25
post #12
post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you suggesting that if both weak and strong people go to the gym regularly then the differences between them will remain?

Not weak and strong, but rather big and small. If someone is 1.6m and another one is 1.8m; the second guy obviously has an advantage (being a bigger guy). Sure the 1.6m can beat him. (exercise often, learn fighting techniques...) but if they both exercise in the same amount, the difference will remain.

People do not go to the gym to increase their height.They are focused on things like increasing the size of their bicep,so the weak/strong analogy holds better.

Re: You can increase your intelligence

#26

Most of us on HN have enough intelligence. Other qualities (focus, dedication, ambition, sociability) will have much greater impact on our success in life.

Yes, it's been known for a while that IQ works in a "good enough" fashion -- once it's good enough there are so many other things more important. A good example is of course Einstein, which was tested and had a normal IQ.

Re: You can increase your intelligence

#27

This may seem very good and useful at first sight but it actually doesn't mean anything. The classical stance is that intelligence it's something fixed and can't be improved, so the smart guy will outsmart the average guy. Now they say that intelligence can actually improve so it's possible for the average guy to outsmart the smart guy. Well, not at all. If intelligence can improve this means that the average guy can…

You're forgetting that plenty of intelligent people don't work to maintain their intelligence, which means their intelligence will flatline or even decline.

To take the gym metaphor you used, some people are naturally athletic and some are not. A non-athletic person can work out to improve their fitness level, and a naturally athletic person can eat pizza and smoke a pack of cigarettes every day. In not too much time at all they will have traded places as far as their athletic ability goes.

Re: You can increase your intelligence

#28

Most of us on HN have enough intelligence. Other qualities (focus, dedication, ambition, sociability) will have much greater impact on our success in life.

Yes, it's been known for a while that IQ works in a "good enough" fashion -- once it's good enough there are so many other things more important. A good example is of course Einstein, which was tested and had a normal IQ.

Really? I never knew that! Can you point me to some sources?

Re: You can increase your intelligence

#29

Most of us on HN have enough intelligence. Other qualities (focus, dedication, ambition, sociability) will have much greater impact on our success in life.

Yes, it's been known for a while that IQ works in a "good enough" fashion -- once it's good enough there are so many other things more important. A good example is of course Einstein, which was tested and had a normal IQ.

There's no evidence Einstein had done an IQ test:

http://www.einstein-website.de/z_information/variousthings.h...

Re: You can increase your intelligence

#30

Most of us on HN have enough intelligence. Other qualities (focus, dedication, ambition, sociability) will have much greater impact on our success in life.

Yes, it's been known for a while that IQ works in a "good enough" fashion -- once it's good enough there are so many other things more important. A good example is of course Einstein, which was tested and had a normal IQ.

I don't think he ever took an IQ test and that anecdote he failed math was made up[1]. His estimated IQ was 160[2]:

1.http://physics.about.com/b/2007/09/19/physics-myth-month-ein...

2. http://www.cse.emory.edu/sciencenet/mismeasure/genius/resear...

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