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Can you make yourself smarter?

nytimes.com

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Re: Can you make yourself smarter?

#31

Post by hackinthebochs »

georgieporgie wrote: post #25
invalidOrTaken wrote: post #9

Wow, the timing here seems auspicious. Lately I've been thinking about the limitations that being human puts on a programmer. We work very hard (and should) to reduce cognitive load on ourselves through good development tools that act as crutches for memory---REPL's and good debuggers allow us to try something and see what happens, as opposed to simulating a multivariate operation in our heads. Intellisense and easil…

Your comment reminds me of the Charles Petzold essay on getting away from the IDE, which is summarized fairly nicely in this Coding Horror post: http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2005/10/the-cognitive-style... Personally, I think that attaining the state of flow is what makes programming enjoyable, and I haven't experienced it in many years. There are just too many APIs, too much poor documentation, too many bugs, and…

Absolutely! I totally miss this from my college days. Being able to crank out a project from start to finish the day its due: being in the zone for many hours straight. You could hold the entire set of necessary APIs in your head at once so there was nothing separating your ideas from the editor. It's an experience of pure creation that you simply will never achieve these days, except for very short bursts.

I cope by taking every chance I get in my day job to experience these short bursts of pure creation. Do I need an interesting algorithm implemented? I'll hand code it myself rather than spend an hour or so trying to find and shoehorn the "standard" implementation into my application. I love the rare occasions where I notice a, dare I say, "clever" solution* to a problem. Coming up with and implementing these cases are a joy. I admit this isn't always the best way to solve a problem from a "software engineering" standpoint. But it keeps me in the game.

*Not clever as in obscure, WTF worthy; but clever as in elegant and expressive, albeit perhaps inaccessible to less skilled coders.

Re: Can you make yourself smarter?

#32

Post by liber8 »

ajross wrote: post #27
liber8 wrote: post #22

It's interesting to think about what intelligence really means. In some ways, this has been frequently discussed (ie multiple types of intelligence) and in other ways it seems that this has never been discussed (ie what are we actually talking about when we call someone intelligent?) Is intelligence the ability to learn something quickly? Is it the ability to understand something quickly? Is it the ability to solve a…

Yes, you certainly did get smarter between 6 and 25. Children's brains are still developing until late puberty. All sorts of cognitive tasks show development, including short term memory, working memory, etc... It's absolutely not just factual learning taht is happening.

Agreed (and studies show that brains are developing until at least 18, possibly into early 20's).

But why? Most people seem to think that this rapid development is, for the most part, genetically driven. Doesn't it seem strange to reach this conclusion when we don't even have a solid idea about what "intelligence" really means (other than "performs above X level on some cognitive test")?

Re: Can you make yourself smarter?

#33

Post by laxatives »

jessriedel wrote: post #18
iskander wrote: post #13

Their sidebar explaining IQ scores seems a little silly. I'd like to see a citations for average scores of Nobel prize winners. Also, who went back in time to administer an intelligence test to Mozart?

IQ is just defined in terms of standard deviations. Having an IQ of 130 means you are 3 standard deviations smarter than average, i.e. in the 99.7th percentile. Presumably, they just put Motzart in the top 99.xxxxxx% percentile by guess and calculated the resulting IQ.

Well calculating using a guess is no better than just starting or ending with a guess

Re: Can you make yourself smarter?

#34

Post by marquis »

dfan wrote: post #15

I did some moderately serious dual n-backing a year or so back in an effort to improve my chess game. Of course it wasn't a remotely scientific experiment so I can't tell if it really helped, but I did feel that my ability to concentrate increased, if not my ability to reason. I felt more able to take a breath after working out a variation and take a few seconds to really concentrate on the final (imagined) position…

I feel the same way while learning a new technique on an instrument. It's having that focus and attention to detail that you can draw upon in your work when you need it.

Re: Can you make yourself smarter?

#37

Post by kiiski »

jessriedel wrote: post #18
iskander wrote: post #13

Their sidebar explaining IQ scores seems a little silly. I'd like to see a citations for average scores of Nobel prize winners. Also, who went back in time to administer an intelligence test to Mozart?

IQ is just defined in terms of standard deviations. Having an IQ of 130 means you are 3 standard deviations smarter than average, i.e. in the 99.7th percentile. Presumably, they just put Motzart in the top 99.xxxxxx% percentile by guess and calculated the resulting IQ.

Of course you have to remember that different tests use different standard deviations. For example, Mensa here in Finland uses a test with standard deviation of 15, so 130 is "only" two standard deviations smarter than average. The point is, the scores are meaningless without knowing the standard deviation used.

Re: Can you make yourself smarter?

#38

Post by AngryParsley »

liber8 wrote: post #32
ajross wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, you certainly did get smarter between 6 and 25. Children's brains are still developing until late puberty. All sorts of cognitive tasks show development, including short term memory, working memory, etc... It's absolutely not just factual learning taht is happening.

Agreed (and studies show that brains are developing until at least 18, possibly into early 20's). But why? Most people seem to think that this rapid development is, for the most part, genetically driven. Doesn't it seem strange to reach this conclusion when we don't even have a solid idea about what "intelligence" really means (other than "performs above X level on some cognitive test")?

>But why?

For the same reason that people grow taller until they're in their late teens and get stronger until they're in their early 20's.

>Most people seem to think that this rapid development is, for the most part, genetically driven.

It is. Depending on which studies you cherry-pick, the heritability of intelligence is somewhere between 0.5 and 0.8. The best way to be smart is to choose your parents.

>Doesn't it seem strange to reach this conclusion when we don't even have a solid idea about what "intelligence" really means (other than "performs above X level on some cognitive test")?

People can argue about the definition of strength just as easily. Who is the strongest person in the world? Is it whoever can bench-press the most weight? What about leg press? Clean-and-jerk? Maybe some average of these measures? Maybe we want to factor the person's weight in as well. While "strength" doesn't always have a precise definition, it's usually pretty easy for us to tell weak people from strong ones. It's the same when people talk about intelligence. The precise definition varies, but there are lots of correlating ways to measure it.

Re: Can you make yourself smarter?

#39

Post by mhartl »

moldbug wrote: post #14
astrofinch wrote: post #6

The scientific evidence for Dual N Back improving fluid intelligence is actually fairly weak as far as I can tell, see this critique and the other studies discussed: http://www.gwern.net/DNB%20FAQ#criticism My personal theory is that solving difficult math and programming problems is a better use of time than doing working memory training exercises. I'd guess that solving math and programming problems improve working…

That's a brutal critique which comes close to a charge of scientific fraud. I'd be curious to see a response. If there isn't one, I know what to think.

Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/N-back) links to a semi-rebuttal:

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0160289610...

Naturally, the full article is behind a paywall.

Re: Can you make yourself smarter?

#40

Post by dedward »

Don't know about the specifics in the article, but modern research is showing (has already shown, I think...) that the brain shows far more plasticity than they thought not long ago. Things (not specificially intelligence) that were thought to be invariable turn out to not exist.... the brain can learn.
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