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Which is fair. But "is a myth so far" suggests disproof, not proof that it's not currently true. As they repeatedly show, it would be very difficult for them to prove that, since they'd have to usefully measure delta in intelligence.
I've been interested in brain training and nootropics for a very long time. The conclusion I've come to is intelligence is pretty much fixed, current psychopharmaceuticals are of very, very, very limited usefulness, and most of the differences in intelligence we see between people are caused by genetic factors not education or rearing. This was immensely disappointing for me - I'd literally give everything I own to b…
Looks like you've been reading Bostrom. I was actually annoyed about the amount of time he spent on the whole notion of genetically engineering smarter humans. I think his intent was to rigorously prove that even if technology for some reason halted and all progress in machine learning ended along with moore's law we'd still reach super intelligence. From that standpoint I get it as a philosopher to create a bulletpr…
I've been interested in brain training and nootropics for a very long time. The conclusion I've come to is intelligence is pretty much fixed, current psychopharmaceuticals are of very, very, very limited usefulness, and most of the differences in intelligence we see between people are caused by genetic factors not education or rearing. This was immensely disappointing for me - I'd literally give everything I own to b…
When young you have less thing to worry about, your focus is very high quite often. This goes away past your twenties. Time goes faster and you become a juggler. I recently had health issues, stupid things like crippled blood flow will impair you capacity to warm up and retain data. The brain version of going out of breath because harmed lungs.
Also, vaguely related, taught myself music in an ad-hoc manner, 6 years until I understood harmony, and by understanding I don't mean knowing the so-called theory, I mean 'sensing' harmony like heat or color, it's almost tangible. I can't explain it, but it seems, depending on the brain, that after a while even the subtle and elusive things start to get parsed by your neurons. It just take a while before you have a mapping of it. And it goes in layers, the more years, the more you're able not to care about simple things, say, fundamental harmonics, and can start to tune yourself to subtle data (higher harmonics, "dissonant" tones, modulated and non quantized movements etc)
It's more important to increase effectiveness than intelligence anyway. An IQ 20+ points greater causes reduced credibility, which is why people with IQs over 150 are under-represented in "elite" professions like finance, law, consulting[1] [1] http://michaelwferguson.blogspot.com/p/the-inappropriately-e...
(I might not have an IQ of 150+, but I can spot the same pattern 30 seconds later.)
The idea of intelligence has always made me leery. I have a little brother who placed second in a state competition (musical instrument) for kids who almost doubled him in age before his tenth birthday. People like to say he's a genius, but only my family knows the truth: two hours of piano a day, four on weekends, since before he was even in kindergarten. I don't really believe in intelligence.
I still don't understand why, if everybody in the control group only change around the error ratio and the test group on average advances beyond the error ratio, that doesn't show an improvement. According to the authors what would show an improvement?
[0] they don't say this outright in the paper, but the SAT discussion clearly allude to this form of thinking. They don't even entertain the idea that practice might be the reason for a large increase in a persons SAT score, but rather say, the highest score is representative.
The idea of intelligence has always made me leery. I have a little brother who placed second in a state competition (musical instrument) for kids who almost doubled him in age before his tenth birthday. People like to say he's a genius, but only my family knows the truth: two hours of piano a day, four on weekends, since before he was even in kindergarten. I don't really believe in intelligence.
So far it does not appear to be possible to increase intelligence via training. You can increase some proxies for intelligence that way, for example memorization, or puzzle solving.
True intelligence is very hard to define, but I define it as the capacity to reason in a non-linear way. i.e. to reach a conclusion without any obvious steps that took you from a to b.
The idea of intelligence has always made me leery. I have a little brother who placed second in a state competition (musical instrument) for kids who almost doubled him in age before his tenth birthday. People like to say he's a genius, but only my family knows the truth: two hours of piano a day, four on weekends, since before he was even in kindergarten. I don't really believe in intelligence.
If only your family knows the truth, how do you know that the people twice his age that he beat didn't practice for four hours a day since they were in kindergarten?