61–70 of 120 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
You forgot luck.
I don't think one can increase that.
You can of course not change the odds of rolling a 6 if you roll one dice. But you can influence how often the dice roll for you, and thereby increase your odds of rolling a six.
Every 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 rea…
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
The article kindly submitted here is from 2011. There is a new article, from today, http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/beautiful-minds/2013/10/... that follows up on recent cognitive training research. The research conclusions are becoming more and more nuanced, and thus are better and better guides to practical things you can do for your own intelligence boosting.
Earlier 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 consists of two main "directions": Concentration practice and contemplation practices. Most schools of meditation has one of these as their main focus, but contemplation practice includes certain levels of concentration practice as pre-requisite, either explicitly (separate ways to train your concentration), or indirectly as part of practising a form of contemplative meditation.
Concentration practice is generally what you might think of if you think of meditation as emptying your mind, repeating mantras or similar.
Try this simple exercise:
Set an alarm for five minutes.
Sit comfortably. Floor is traditional, but not at all necessary; a position that is comfortable enough that physical discomfort does not distract you too much is much more important. Half close your eyes (you can meditate with your eyes fully open, or fully closed, or anything in between - it is a matter of preference, but until you know consider that fully open means your eyes will be dry and there will be more distraction, and fully closed increases your chance of falling asleep).
Then breathe in and out through your nostrils. Count 1, 2, 1, 2, 1,2 as you breathe in and out.
Every time you notice that you have stopped counting, try to estimate (quickly) how long you have been "off track", and start again, until the alarm goes off.
Congratulations, you have just meditated. If you can make the whole five minutes, try it again but without counting, just noticing the breath.
Most first timers/beginners are lucky if they manage 30 seconds consecutively without going off track, often for minutes at a time. If you manage the full five minutes without finding yourself thinking about something completely difference, your concentration skills are already well above average. With practice, you can keep attention like that for hours. And it does translate to being able to keep focus in other situations.
If you want to try more, "Mindfulness in Plain English" is a good introduction: http://www.urbandharma.org/udharma4/mpe.html ; the html version is free. Gil Fronsdals "Introduction to Meditation" series of recordings are also great, free, and includes guided meditations that are quite useful to beginners: http://www.audiodharma.org/series/1/talk/1762/
These focus on vipassana - insight meditation or mindfulness. This is a contemplation practice, but the introductions above spend a substantial part on the basic concentration practice of meditating on the breath, which is a common concentration practice in many schools of meditation.
The "mindfulness" part is sort of in the gaps: Rather than trying to hold an "iron grip" on your mind to focus on the breath, the purpose is closer to "catching you thinking" (or feeling, or sensing, etc.) and paying attention to the sensations an quality of what arises in you, while you try not to get pulled away from paying attention to the breath, and then rather than forcing the thought away, to let it "fade" by "simply" (it is by no means simple) not follow the thought with another.
Both of these introductions are of buddhist origins, though if it matters to you one of the things that appealed greatly to me about them is that they are careful to keep the material mostly secular (there's some brief mentions of buddhist faith, but they are explanatory rather than essential toe the meditation practice).
Every 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 rea…
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
The instructions of the webapp are incorrect, isn't LEFT and RIGHT mixed up? At least for 1n and 2n, I didn't try more. update yep, the instruction text doesn't match the keyboard shortcut list
Every 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 rea…
Are you sure this isn't placebo effect? I.e. you've always had this capacity, but the reason you're having success is because you're now focused on utilizing it. That's somewhat different from not having the capacity in the first place.
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.
In high school, his IQ was determined to be 125—high, but "merely respectable" according to biographer James Gleick.[14]