Slashdot Mirror
Entertaining Your Brain?
Spencer Wilson asks: "I'm constantly told that I have an extremely high intelligence. I always feel like I should know so much more, though. Do you, the Slashdot readers, know of any ways to improve ones brain power? Perhaps books, Web sites, etc., that provide questions that involve ways to increase memory, creativity, mental agility, logic reasoning, intelligence, etc. Are there any diets/exercises that really help?"
Drinking, lots of drinking.
SuDZ
That's true. I think drugs, drunken violence, wild orgies, mosh pits, and occult study are *all* superior to watching television.
:)
The smartest people will have the fullest and richest of the human experience. Go out and try a little of everything... and, while you're at it, if you find one or two fields that really strike your fancy, indulge yourself in as much knowledge as possible. Try to be slightly controversial, while you're at it... if you pull it off right, you'll be noticed and remembered
--TheOrangeSquid Is it any wonder things seem so awry? We swim in a sea of confusion and don't have to think to survive
...is to hang out on Slashdot, of course. Especially at the -1 filter level. My goodness, this place positively drips with intelligence. All the smart kids hang out here.
[rolls eyes]
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'm constantly told that I have an extremely high intelligence
Quit hanging out with your mom.
For every annoying gentoo user, are three even more annoying anti-gentoo crybabies. Take Yosh from #Gimp for example.
I'm afraid I'm not sure of too many shortcuts for intelligence. If you want to be quicker at math functions, for instance, you're going to have to do a lot of math. Like another poster said, just don't sit idle.
was obviously wrong. If you had extremely high intelligence, you wouldn't post a story on Slashdot - under what seems to be your real name, for gods' sake - starting "I'm constantly told I have extremely high intelligence . . . "
Seriously, speaking as someone with an IQ in the high genius range: the first thing you have to learn is how NOT to walk around telling everyone how frelling smart you are. They'll figure it out quickly enough on their own, believe me: most geniuses are obvious within a few minutes of meeting them, just from the way they interact with other people.
Other things not to do: DON'T join Mensa. Mensa is a club for losers who have a high IQ and nothing to show for it. Not for no reason is a former Mensa national president an advice columnist for Parade. DON'T talk about chess all the time. It's all right if you're good at it (or Go), but talking about it to everyone you meet will make you look like an A-1 geek, and your chances of spreading those high-intelligence genes around some will drop precipitously.
Grow up. Study. Find something you love and put your whole heart into it. If you really have the brains, you'll exercise them on your own without having to trick things out.
Someone with a lot of brainpower would always be itching to put it to use. Neither Linus nor Alan Cox would worry about how to kill time. Richard Feynman probably had to find ways to get his head off Physics to get it some rest, same with Einstein.
If youre wondering how to improve brain power or kill time, somethings wrong. Find a cause, like making so much GPL software, Microsoft gets broke, or start some world domination plans.
Thats all you have to do.
"Give orange me give eat orange me eat orange give me eat orange give me you." -Nim Chimpsky
"I'm constantly told that I have an extremely high intelligence.
Yeah, I only hang around with dumb people that make me look smart too.
SuDZ
I always feel like I should know so much more, though. Do you, the Slashdot readers, know of any ways to improve ones brain power?
You're confusing intelligence and knowledge. Intelligence is pure processing power. Knowledge is how much data you've got stored on your hard drive. If you need to know more, read a book.
Wikipedia is always in need of good contributors. Give it a try.
When in doubt, go to the library. - Ron Weasley in Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets
Set your home page to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Randompage instead of Slashdot.
Sign up for classes. Any classes. Cooking, SCUBA, basket weaving, learn a language, learn a new subject, join a choir.
Now is the time. Carpe Diem.
The mind's just like the body. It gets stronger when you exercise it. Doing math, learning new things, studying philosophy, whatever you want. If you don't code, learn to code. If you do code, learn more languages. Anything like that gets you marketable skills and exercises your mind at the same time is good too. Don't neglect the body though. Eat healthy and exercise your body, as boring as it may seem, and your overall health will be good. A healthy body means a strong mind. Also, remember to get enough sleep. We're all idiots when we're tired enough.
In Repressive Burma, it's not just your connection that dies. slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=314547&cid=20819199
Yes Spencer, I do know of ways to improve "brain power". (You did ask a yes or no question didn't you?)
Thank you for your question, which I assume was actually just a vehicle to let us all know how extremely high you feel your intelligence is (based on what people tell you).
Mod this as flamebait. Thank you.
Michael.
Linux : Mac
I'm going to assume you're not stupid. Probably a safe assumption, since you're obviously smart enough to see that you don't know as much as you should. So that leaves ignorant. So why are you ignorant.
Steve Allen tells this story about a young, smart assistant he had who was dismally ignorant. He had to explain to her that her boyfriend was not a kind of Protestant (the guy was a Catholic!) and that the U.N. wasn't in Los Angeles (small schedule issue!). He blamed her ignorance on a sloppy education. But I have to ask, How do you grow up without learning where the U.N. HQ is? Answer, lack of curiousity.
There's more to knowing stuff than memorizing lots of facts. It's an active thing. You read lots of books, journals, and newspapers. And you think about what you've read. Which means talking about it with others, writing about it, finding a place for it in your mental landscape.
So, short answer to your question: there's no one book that will make you more knowledgable. What you should do is go to a library or a bookstore. Avoid the aisles with the recreational reading you normally go for. Than browse around until you find a book that looks interesting. Try to get into it. If you can't, put it back on the shelf and look for another book. If you can, read it, think about it, discuss it with other people who've read it.
Repeat until you feel sufficiently smart. Which, if you're really smart is never.
Well, meditation is a good idea, though the previous poster didn't explain why. Meditation can help focus the mind, and allow you to concentrate fully on what you are doing. I used to have this problem all the time in high school. Every time I sat down to do something, distractions came by the dozens to take me away from the task at hand. Early in my senior year I started studying Zen (which is a sect of Buddhism), and after meditating and being mindful of what I was doing for quite some time, I noticed significant improvements in my ability to concentrate on what I'm doing.
Most westerners (like myself) are very goal oriented. There's no "point" or "goal" to Zen, or meditation. By that, I mean "I'm going to improve my concentration by at least a power of 2 in the next six weeks!" Results are also not instant. I was fairly capable in high school, but my grades were terrible. I didn't see much improvement until later in that school year (and since it was my senior year it didn't really affect my overall GPA), but now that I am in college I have a good GPA and no problem "finding time" to do homework.
I also don't think that 1 hour a day is reasonable for most people. If you can meditate for an hour a day, great! If you can manage 15, perfect! If you can manage 5, wonderful! The point is, you should just meditate for the sake of meditation. It's true that it is relaxing, calming, peacful, and it helps with focus, concentration, etc, but unless you meditate for the sake of meditating (with no goal or "time limit") you will probably find it too difficult to reliably do every day.
If you would like more information on meditation or Zen, you can always try your local Google. There are also MANY good books out there too that introduce the beginner concepts of Zen and meditation. I would suggest heading to your local book store/library and read through some of the books on Zen.
As a final note, Zen can be practiced outside of any religion. The day-to-day practices of Zen has very little to do with religion.
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Did you ever notice that *nix doesn't even cover Linux?
Hey, who are you to challenge the submitter? He is constantly being told that has an extremely high IQ. How many times have *you* been told that?
I am often in the same situation. People tell me that I think totally differently from most people and am really smart and all that stuff. It's very hard to understand what they mean, because I just think the way I always have. I came to the conclusion that there are different types of intelligence, and people in various types view the other types as the intelligent ones.
I really think that intelligence just boils down to the equivilent of system registers in the brain. Being able to hold more of an understanding of what's going on than those around you makes you more intelligence. This can be applied as social intelligence, mathematical intelligence (understanding the systems behind the numbers), scientific intelligence (understanding larger portions or more detail in the natural world than most), etc. Its a curiosity.
I tend to have a social intelligence. I just think of it as common sense, but apparently others see it as something nice. Which helps, I guess.. but is weird. I look at a mathematically intelligent person and get intimidated. Or I look at the linguistically intelligent people who appear to be flaunting their intelligence by using ridiculously arcane words in common speech. It's more than likely they just know the words and use them without thinking.. but to people who don't it seems intelligent.
So I guess to answer your question, Intelligence isn't about what you know. It's about what you CAN know, and what you can process successfully.
Now, if you are looking for wisdom, you may want to make with the learning.
If you want to be smarter do what I do. Try to learn stuff. Don't just volger around the internet reading shit like slashdot and playing stupid games. Spend that time learning something or spend it somewhere besides the computer/tv/videogames/dvd/etc.
Here are some examples from my life.
Example 1: I heard the words fast fourier transform many times. I realized, hey I don't know what the fuck that is, and I probably should. I searched on google and researched it. Now I know it as well as if I would have taken a college course on it. You know you know something when you can write a program that does it.
Example 2: Hey, this python programming language seems to fit my style. Buy Nutshell book, learn python in a couple weeks.
Example 3: hey, I have a project to do for class. I think I'll use the GTK+ library. Proceed to teach self everything about GTK from the GTK website.
Example 4: Argument about gas prices. I thought the markup was a lot, my roomate correctly knew it was only a few cents markup at the gas station. We went out on the net and not only determined who was right, but learned all about fuel prices.
Example 5: Hey, this Initial D anime is pretty cool, but no way is that drift driving realistic. Proceed to use internet to learn all about cars, drifting, etc. I now also am very fond of F1 racing. Just last week I read the entire rules at formula1.com and simultaneously learned a great deal about how they make the best cars in the world.
Pretty much, if you want to learn just try to. The information is free. Just go out and read what you want to know, and if you're serious about it you'll learn it. Things that you are genuinely interested in knowing are easy to learn because you will pay attention and actually try. If you are having a hard time learning something its probably because you don't actually want to know it, but instead are being forced to learn it. Or you could have a "learning disability".
Read.
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Our intelligent designer has never created an animal that we couldn't improve by strapping a bomb to it.
Occult study - unless you're studying "How Can Anyone Be Such A Moron As To Bother With This Crap" - is for losers.
wrong, wrong, wrong...
Just because you study it doesn't mean you have to become a believer in it. You've just demonstrated a case of closed-mindedness, the number one blockage to intelligence. Now don't get me wrong I'm not saying you're stupid, I'm just pointing it out to you... I've studied it because I think it can be very interesting, not because I necessarily agree with it. It's all a matter of getting fresh perspectives...even if you don't agree with them at all.
...and yet another way to give your brain a workout - try to teach something that you know to an absolute beginner. It is the only way to expose the holes in your knowledge. Just be prepared to learn how little you really know...
I often ask myself the same question (and not because people tell me I am brilliant).
This is because now that I work I am not learning much. Back in school, I didn't have this problem, as my brain was always crunching something.
There's a library near my job. I go there sometime and walk by shelves, and when I see a book that does not sound totally boring while being on a subject I have no idea about, I grab it. In fact, I grab a few of them.
To be honest I rarely finish any of these books, but it constantly gives me more and more data in my head, as I at least become aware of the subjects.
In particular, there's a great book called something like Century of Mind, or something like that, about all the great thinkers of the 20th century, from Picasso and Freud, and Wright Brothers to.. well, I didn't finish the book but you get the point... it was great to get into the heads and the environment during which these great thinkers did their thinking.
Oh, and I didn't finish it because someone put it on reserve when I came to renew it and they took it from me.
Ecce Europa - Web Design for Business
My advice is to study math and the sciences.
Intelligence is predictability
"Not many people understand how rare it is to really, really know something."
-Richard Feynman
If I could ACCURATELY predict the stock market, weather patterns, or the lottery -- would you call that intelligence? If I could quickly tell you the final result of any given set of initial conditions -- would you call that intelligence?
Intelligence is predicatability. People may be impressed by philosophers and musicians, however when it comes to raw brainpower, never look past mathematics and the hard sciences. Predicitability is key. Anyone can collect stamps. Anyone can observe. Most people can describe. However ask for an uncanny and accurate prediction and the room becomes silent.
I've found that studying mathematics and science has improved my ability to understand history, the humanities, and art. You learn to quantify things in science. When you study physics you learn what really knowing something means. You learn about the limits of knowing what you can know. You can only quantify so much. The question is how much can we actually quantify?
"Everything should be made as simple as possible, but no simpler."
-Albert Einstein
Reasoning is basic symbolic manipulation
Mathematics takes us into the region of absolute necessity, to which not only the actual word, but every possible word, must conform.
-Bertrand Russell
Reasoning is basic symbolic manipulation. Even Aristotle believed this. Look at the syllogistic form. A tautology is a valid line of reasoning. Admittedly, any attempt to formalize inductive reasoning is as weak as formalizing probability itself.
Intelligence is about encoding mechanisms. When you make a mapping from the real world to a rigourous set of rules or you merely compare sets of rules, you are finding a way to encode one system in terms of another. Thus the application of analytical geometry to our (observed) real space, is an encoding of real world geometry into algebraic equations. Any description in one has a signifigant result in the other.
Teach yourself
You've got to teach yourself. Frankly, even Havard won't make the dumb smart, it will only make them educated. Just having the ability to break down information and understand it on your own is a skill. You've get to be able to solve problems on you're own. Don't just stare at the problem. Play with it. Do something. Even if it's tedious. You'd be suprised at how just hacking away at a piece of it can help you solve a problem. Heck, I'm probably preaching to the choir here.
"Don't let school get in the way of your education."
-Mark Twain (or Ben Franklin or somebody else...)
Give me a man who is mathematically mature and physcially intuitive and I will give you a genius. Genius is merely a social measurement of intelligence. Whose to say if Einstein was smarter than Hilbert. Was Godel smarter than Russell? Frankly, most of these parlor discussions are nothing more than pure bovine fecal matter. Don't obsess about how intelligent other people think you are. Frankly, if you're really smart, you will get two responses, comraderie or fear. Intelligent people will seek your company. Insecure people will tell you that you are foolish or ignorant only because they fear you actually know more. Intelligence is part performance and part stubborn confidence that you can figure something out by shear intellectual will. Of course, proving that you are a genius or even a genius in a world of geniuses is tough. However, I will leave that exercise to the reader.
What do you mean my sig is repetitive? What do you mean my sig is repetitive? What do you mean....
You can develop concentration and focus with meditation, or with anything else that requires them. If you're not concentrating on what you're doing, make it more difficult: if you can play a piece on the piano without hitting any wrong notes, try playing it with perfect posture and rhythm; if you're fluent with a programming language, write your next source file with cat; if visualization-meditation on a labyrinth is getting easy, imagine moving through the same labyrinth with walls made of boulders, a blue sky overhead, and shrubs at your feet. The better your concentration and focus, the better your performance in anything you do.
Meditation is also great for building elaborate mnemonic structures. Is your visualization of yearly or the daily cycles out of proportion? Do you find the breadth of material covered in a book or course a bit much to handle at once? Find a picture (with motion and sound, if possible) that corresponds better than whatever you've got, then just sit there and imagine the thing, explore it, interact with it. Art is another way to focus on the same thing: project conceptual structures into 2 or 3 dimensional space and build them there.
open minded enough to see things for what they really are
This article talks about Rajan Mahadevan who memorized some 31,000+ digits of pi for the (then) world record. Another interesting article on Mahadevan if you're into that.
The first article, however, discusses what it takes to become considered "best" in your area of study. Read through it for a fascinating look at performance and intelligence and how it relates to the amount of practice. The short version, for those who are allergic to reading, is that you can reach a level considered "best" after about 10,000 hours of practice regardless of whether you start out slow or whether you're a quick study.
Want to become a killer programmer? Put in 10 solid hours a day coding (and related research activities) for 3 years (ie: 1000 days). After 18 months, you'll be at a stage where you're qualified to teach. After 2 years you'll be considered very good. And after 3 years, you'll get a call from Carmack. (Okay, maybe I made that last one up.)
Want to improve your Karma? Instead of "Post Anonymously", try the "Post Humously" option.