The question is... Can you make yourself less intelligent by indulging in the antithesis of the authors five principles? (viz. Seek Novelty; Challenge Yourself; Think Creatively; Do Things The Hard Way; Network)
You can increase your intelligence
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Re: You can increase your intelligence
#42I had to stop reading when I got to the part about GPS where the author says he almost lost his job, due to tardiness, becuase he refused to use GPS.
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Re: You can increase your intelligence
#43From the article:
>"One of my first clients was a little boy w/ PDD-NOS (Pervasive Developmental Delays-Not Otherwise Specified), a mild form of autism. When we began therapy, his IQ was tested and scored in the low 80s—which is considered borderline mental retardation. After I worked with him for about three years— one on one, teaching in areas such as communication, reading, math, social functioning, play skills, leisure activities—using multimodal techniques [pdf] —he was retested. His IQ score was well over 100 (with 100 considered "average", as compared to the general population). That’s a 20 point increase, more than one standard deviation improvement, by a child with an autism spectrum disorder!"
As a parent of a PDDNOS child this put a lot of noise in my mind. When my son got his diagnostics, the psychologist couldn't finish the IQ test because he couldn't focus on the questions. Now three years later, all people who know the case agreed that he is a brilliant boy. So was that a huge increase on his IQ? or Was just a noisy measure of the IQ at the beginning?
Re: You can increase your intelligence
#44Earlier quoted context omitted.
Focus! Here I am wasting time/procrastinating. There certain days, that no matter what I do, consistent concentration is impossible.
Hear, hear. I'm getting kinda desperate in my non existing pursuit of being able to focus / getting things done. I am considering meditation but I'm not sure there's actual evidence that it actually makes it easier to focus.
Meditation is all about controlling your concentration and attention. It certainly helps, heaps. Speaking from experience. Please try it. :)
(Although I also attacked the lack of attention span problem by doing totally seeminly dumb tasks such as reading a book backwards which makes no sense and really forces you to re-focus all the time. From a few minutes I was able to get up to 10, and later 15 minutes per time without huge mental wandering. Same goes for meditation, from minutes to tens of minutes with ease in a matter of weeks.)
Re: You can increase your intelligence
#45Earlier quoted context omitted.
Focus! Here I am wasting time/procrastinating. There certain days, that no matter what I do, consistent concentration is impossible.
Hear, hear. I'm getting kinda desperate in my non existing pursuit of being able to focus / getting things done. I am considering meditation but I'm not sure there's actual evidence that it actually makes it easier to focus.
Jogging outdoors... the effect is quite profound. Difficult terrain is best because you are forced to be vigilant and you cannot let your mind wander. Make sure there is a clear start and finish.
Re: You can increase your intelligence
#46Most of us on HN have enough intelligence. Other qualities (focus, dedication, ambition, sociability) will have much greater impact on our success in life.
Focus! Here I am wasting time/procrastinating. There certain days, that no matter what I do, consistent concentration is impossible.
In my opinion, the urge to procrastinate is just our brain telling us that the kind and amount of effort we're demanding from it is not natural. People aren't meant to spend 40+ hours a week sitting behind a desk and concentrating on stuff they have little connection with. Marx wrote about that (the alienation of workers) 150 years ago.
Re: You can increase your intelligence
#47Most 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.
Scoring better in IQ tests means understanding the problems better -- if you encounter similar problems, or problems which provoke the same areas of brain -- better IQ test score should correlate with better performance in the said problems. Whether this happens alot or not is another thing though. However, as the TFA implies, we can practice and better our brain, intelligence and mental skils, maybe that's exactly what happens when we "work hard". We become more intelligent, more skilled, our brains work more efficiently which, when added with the fact that we use that brain more by working hard, makes us more intelligent/mentally capable/whatever.
Of course high IQ/mental capability/intelligence means nothing if it isn't put to use, so step first is to start doing stuff which matters and learning from it.
Re: You can increase your intelligence
#48Earlier quoted context omitted.
True, but since virtually no one takes IQ tests on a daily basis, the IQ test is still a valid measure of one's intelligence (or potential, I don't really know what IQ is supposed to measure).
People who score high on IQ tests do take IQ tests (or similar puzles on a daily basis). > I don't really know what IQ is supposed to measure Neither does anyone else.
They attempt to measure the theoretical concept of generalized intelligence, known by psychometricians as g. They're obviously not perfect, but they're better than anything else we have.
Re: You can increase your intelligence
#49The question is... Can you make yourself less intelligent by indulging in the antithesis of the authors five principles? (viz. Seek Novelty; Challenge Yourself; Think Creatively; Do Things The Hard Way; Network)
I think brain can be thought to behave like a muscle and skeleton. If you put it under stress(learning) and let it recover(sleeping) it improves and grows stronger. Similarly if you let it idle, atrophy hits and it weakens. Just like muscles and bones do. Both can be trained with consistent and proper effort.
Re: You can increase your intelligence
#50Every day, I train my memory by memorizing a pack of cards. I started because I had lousy memory and I wanted to improve it. I have been going at it for a few weeks now, memorizing and shuffling a deck of cards (twice a day). I can now memorize a deck of cards in just a little over 3 minutes (I started at a painful 19 minutes). Have I noticed am improvement in my memory? Yes, and much much more.
What I've come to realize is that memorizing a deck of cards trains so much more than your memory. The way I memorize is to associate every card with an object and its corresponding action, and memorizing the deck of cards is a matter of creating a sequence of events that corresponds to the sequence of cards. So by memorizing a deck of cards I'm actually training different parts of my mind: recalling the item that is associated with the card, coming up with creative stories on the fly when I see a card, and holding the story in my mind as I add 52 objects into the story one by one.
Each of these steps was painfully difficult in the beginning, but now I'm starting to see the fruits of my training. I almost never misplace my things (keys, wallet, etc) anymore. Mind blocks like, "what was the company's name? I used to know it...", happens less frequently and I can recollect facts much faster. Most importantly though, I have seen a dramatic improvement in the speed I learn and understand things. I'm not 100% sure, but I think that the rapid association of cards to objects and creatively creating a story have somehow improved my ability to comprehend and grasp new knowledge.
I whole heartedly believe that the brain is a muscle that can be strengthened through exercise.