Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Can you make yourself smarter?

nytimes.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 55 posts

Re: Can you make yourself smarter?

#41

Post by tokenadult »

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?

Also, who went back in time to administer an intelligence test to Mozart?

A very astute question. IQ scores are specific to a particular test taken at a particular time, even when comparing IQ scores according to today's standard score definition of IQ for test-takers taking several tests very close together in time.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intellectual_giftedness#Identif...

(See the sortable table, with reference to the original publication, at this page anchor location on Wikipedia. The same table appears at the page anchor link below. ALL of the Wikipedia articles on human intelligence and IQ testing need a lot of updates, because they have been subject to frequent edit-warring, but that table is quite useful.)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ceiling_effect#Validity_of_inst...

Nobody has an IQ score from more than about a century ago. The current standard score definition of IQ, performance on a cognitive test with the population median set at 100 and performance two standard deviations above the median being called IQ 130, began with the Wechsler adult tests in the 1950s and spread to child testing by the 1970s, and is now pretty nearly universal. But even with that definitional issue kept straight, an individual person's IQ score can bounce up and down over time, and by any kind of testing theory we can never be completely sure of a person's "true" score, as any score on any occasion of testing is an estimate of the test-taker's behavior on other occasions or with other item content. Honest IQ test-givers report scores with an error band around the score, as has always been done, for example, by the psychologist who has tested my children for appropriate educational placement.

The very excellent book Terman's Kids: The Groundbreaking Study of How the Gifted Grow Up by Joel N. Shurkin

http://www.amazon.com/Termans-Kids-Groundbreaking-Study-Gift...

gives the full back story to the silly estimates you see of historical figures who lived before the era of IQ testing, which were mostly made up by Terman's collaborator Catherine Cox. Her procedure was justifiably laughed at by Shurkin as he described it: she counted the lines in biographical reference works on different historical figures, and supposed that the people in history who got the most ink probably had the highest IQs. There were always plenty of anomalies in her results from the very beginning, and no one takes them seriously anymore.

Re: Can you make yourself smarter?

#42

Post by 6ren »

Working memory is convenient for mental dexterity. But it doesn't help you see deeper associations between the apparently unrelated, which is the true crux of genius and of all revolutionary insight and progress, IMHO. That comes from long-term associative memory, seeded by persevering immersion and experiment.

IQ!=genius. Genius is what you do.

Re: Can you make yourself smarter?

#43

Post by K2h »

palguay wrote: post #8
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…

In this book http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0141035501/ the author says that solving simple math equations (addition,subtraction ,division) fast is much more stimulating than doing complex math.

I think he helped with brain age, which had a good reputation, and then a mediocre one for actually working. Despite that, after conversing with my wife we are of the opinion that fast simple math may be promising.

http://www.nintendo.com/games/detail/Y9QLGBWxkmRRzsQEQtvqGqZ...

Re: Can you make yourself smarter?

#44

Post by roryokane »

Another generic "intelligence" booster, for certain definitions of intelligence, is learning about cognitive biases and certain reasoning skills - "rationality". When I read the Sequences (http://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Sequences) on Less Wrong (http://lesswrong.com/), I think my reasoning and analysis skills improved, and I was able to avoid some thinking mistakes, such as by training myself to be "fair" to all sides of an argument. I also found reading the Sequences fun; their subjects include interesting mental puzzles. Go check them out.

Re: Can you make yourself smarter?

#45

Post by gala8y »

hackinthebochs wrote: post #29
joe_the_user wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And the argument and evidence he provides is what?

Seems very true in my opinion. I've always excelled at math, essentially have a bachelors in mathematics, etc etc. My weakness has always been getting the details of the "basic" math correct. Higher math is about logic, abstractions and applying them to solve problems. Basic math is about holding bits of information in your head and manipulating them accurately. I absolutely believe that basic math taxes your working…

I just skimmed Outliers book by Malcom Gladwell. One of the things author discusses are differences in number systems in different cultures. He argues (in fact quoting Stanislas Dehaene [1]), that in eastern languages number words are shorter and faster to pronounce. Thus, you can hold more of them at a time in memory (short term memory is very time sensitive). You could say that you dont really need to 'pronounce' stuff to make mental operations, still they have sensory form (be it visual, auditory,...), so argument holds.

He also brings up the issue of regularity of eastern number systems making it much easier to do calculations in these languages - to an extent that it gives eastern children real advantage in math. Developmentally speaking.

[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanislas_Dehaene#Numerical_co...

Re: Can you make yourself smarter?

#46

Post by SiVal »

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.

IQ tests are normed for a standard deviation of 15 points, not 10. (And I'll bet you knew that but got distracted by the '3' in 130. The "D'oh! Effect" -- a side effect of our associative memory architectures.)

Re: Can you make yourself smarter?

#47

Post by sente »

I'm probably just being overly critical here but his example of "deciding if a number is odd or even in a matter of seconds" seems odd, I think 2nd graders and up can tell you in half a second or less whether or not a number's even or odd.

He says:

"In addition to working memory, researchers are seeking to improve fluid intelligence by training other basic mental skills — perceptual speed (deciding, in a matter of seconds, whether a number is odd or even), visual tracking (on a shoot-’em-up computer game, for instance) or quickly switching between a variety of tasks."

http://i.imgur.com/k9PXE.png

Re: Can you make yourself smarter?

#48

Post by jessriedel »

laxatives wrote: post #33
jessriedel wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Oh sure. I was just clarifying how they went about giving Motzart a number without administering a test.

Re: Can you make yourself smarter?

#50

Post by Sonthun »

gwern wrote: post #30
unimpressive wrote: post #12

While I can't read the article. My answer to this question was always along the lines of "Oh I'm sure you can, but the problem is that thanks to the Dunning-Kruger effect, dumb people won't feel that they need to put in the effort to get smarter. " So the smart get smarter and the dumb get dumber; so to speak.

Actually, there was a weird recent re-analysis of Jaeggi 2011 using the Big Five psychology data they recorded for the subjects at the time, where the Conscientiousness (rough synonym for hardworking and self-disciplined) benefitted least in terms of far transfer/IQ while their scores improved the most: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0191886912...

Thanks for that article. In the abstract, they seem to state that they believe the conscientious didn't improve as much because they developed specific strategies for the particular game. So, they basically gamed the system instead of improving organically. It looks like you could vary the game rules and objectives to keep the conscientious from developing those strategies.
Post reply on HN