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You Can't Get Smarter, But You Can Slow How Fast You Get Dumber (nytimes.com)
An anonymous reader writes: An article at the NY Times summarizes the state of research on cognitive improvement. There are multiple industries — from big pharma to the makers of "brain-training" games — trying to convince you there are ways to become more intelligent. Unfortunately, scientific research doesn't really bear that out. There is, however, evidence you can provide short-term boosts, slow aging-related cognitive decline, and trick yourself into achieving better outcomes. Experiments show that simply telling a group of low-performing students that intelligence is malleable led to higher test scores. Researchers also found a use for mental exercises, but only in adults over the age of 60, a time at which some level of cognitive decline is common. Physical exercise seems to help fight that cognitive shrinkage as well. Oddly, different exercises fight it in different ways. As for drugs, there is some evidence that stimulants help with long-term memory, but that's about it. That's not to say they have no effect, just that their effect is more to make you feel smarter instead of actually being smarter. The article does point out one of the best ways to combat cognitive decline: maintain social engagement as you get older. "[P]eople with the highest level of social integration had less than half the decline in their cognitive function of the least socially active subjects."
People with dimensia normally dont have a lot of social interactions precisely because they are hard to communicate with. Does social interactions actually help, or do people not want to be around people who's faculties are going?
God spoke to me
sure plays a mean pinball
but dumb means mute
mute means cannot speak
article premise is nonsense
i rest my case
Study up on a new subject. Learn the material. Practice to acquire the skill. *poof* you are more intelligent.
The statement might have been about the intelligence quotient, which (according to the theory) does not change over time. But it is also not a measure of intelligence. Nor was it ever intended to be. It is a measurement of intelligence potential.
A person with a very high IQ but no education or opportunity can spend his entire life wallowing in ignorance (and probably poverty). A person with a boring average IQ who applies himself can master many difficult subjects and skills, and accomplish great things by doing so.
Don't get too hung up on definitions of "intelligence," as they are numerous and vague.
As any computer systems engineer knows, it's all about compute and storage. This article is about compute. But storage has been vastly improved for all of us. We now store or keep knowledge on the Internet instead of keeping it in our heads. The access time of this storage is very fast, too, compared to paper files and libraries. This access time is also of low variability, as it is in our pockets now.
Only trouble is that in terms of competitive advantage, the Internet is available to all. The best you can do is to learn how to use it slightly more effectively.
But in terms of the Slashdot headline, "You Can't Get Smarter," I disagree -- we've all gotten a lot smarter.
(That's right, I don't agree with those who say the Internet has made us dumber. I think the opposite.)
Buy the cheap trimming if you can't afford the slices. But they work on the brain and better than Pacific, Alaskan and Norwegian salmon.
their effect is more to make you feel smarter instead of actually being smarter
Just what we need, more idiots with high self esteem.
Smart is to keep trying and learning from your mistakes & failures.
anyone can be smart.
Wisdom is hard. :)
When to say no, when to say yes, and when to say "I love you"
This is my opinion based on what little I know and understand of the rumors and lies Thanks, Randal
You Can't Get Smarter, But You Can Slow How Fast You Get Dumber
...what?
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
You can't get smart but you can slow how fast you get dumber by not choosing express delivery.
"[P]eople with the highest level of social integration had less than half the decline in their cognitive function of the least socially active subjects."
...Or the less the decline of their cognitive functions, the easier people find it to continue to keep with their up their social interactions?
I was on Facebook for a few years (before getting disgusted by their evil machinations and closing my account). I can't imagine that participating in the insipid, mindless, superficial interactions there does anything but ACCELERATE cognitive decline.
#DeleteChrome
This doesn't agree with the research I've seen.
The cognition-enhancing effects of psychostimulants involve direct action in the prefrontal cortex.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/p...
Prescription Stimulants' Effects on Healthy Inhibitory Control, Working Memory, and Episodic Memory: A Meta-analysis.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/p...
Efficacy of stimulants for cognitive enhancement in non-attention deficit hyperactivity disorder youth: a systematic review.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/p...
Psychostimulants and cognition: a continuum of behavioral and cognitive activation.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/p...
Cognitive effects of methylphenidate in healthy volunteers: a review of single dose studies.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/p...
The neurobiology of modafinil as an enhancer of cognitive performance and a potential treatment for substance use disorders.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/p...
Not to mention Adderal, caffeine, and Nootropics, such as Piracetam, Ocetam, high dose B12, Hydergine (an ergoloid mesylate), as well as about a dozen others.
But you know: NYT knows best.
I've tried Lumosity for a while, and I wouldn't recommend it. The scope of the problems is so narrow, I couldn't imagine it increasing your intelligence. If you want to do better on an IQ test, then study for that; otherwise there are better uses for your time.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Some well known scientists are famous with their forgetfulness, and social skill, e.g, Paul Frampton:
The former wife of Paul Frampton, the Oxford-educated scientist in prison in Argentina accused of smuggling cocaine, says in her first full interview that he is a "naïve fool".
I have been interested in whether brain training, for example to increase the working memory, works or not. There is some scientific evidence indicating that dual n-back memory training improves the working memory and attention control for some groups of people with some disorders in order to better focus on tasks. Scientific meta-studies have however not found any general benefits across groups from such training. This is far from the claims of companies such as HighIqPro who claim that their program will increase the working memory as well as IQ with several points.
On the other hand, the experiment done by BBC is a joke. How can you expect to become significantly better at how the brain foundationally works by only training 30 minutes three times a week for six weeks? This totals 9 hours training, which hardly will have any impact on how your brain foundationally works. Say that each person in the experiment is awake for 16 hours/day, then the memory training only has attention focus 1.3% of the time the participants are awake. One cannot expect any significant effect from so little practice, apart from the placebo effect, of course.
"Experiments show that simply telling a group of low-performing students that intelligence is malleable led to higher test scores"
But only for students who knew what "malleable" meant...
We've been making computers smarter for half a century through software alone. But we can't make people smarter by giving them better problem-solving techniques?
Derp.
Memory and problem solving abilities are. You can make up for a lack of those using the Internet, but you'll still run into the old Dunning Kruger effect at some point. What you're doing is mistaking Cleverness for raw Intelligence. In D&D terms it's your Wisdom stat vs your INT.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
"You can't get smarter..." but you "can provide short-term boosts [to intelligence]"
So if there is an activity that provides a short term boost, periodically doing that activity for the rest of your life would make you smarter.
I feel exactly the same & have seen those "languishing in poverty geniuses" that never DEVELOPED their potential (@ least according to established norms, & instead, applied their intelligence to rather SINISTER ends (as in forms of crime/insert your choice here)... it's sad.
It's also made me wonder WHAT THEY COULD HAVE ACHIEVED if they didn't waste their time (especially in youth & I am guilty of SOME of that, as 'pussy' took me down a path of waste (well, yes & no, if you're male, you'll 'get it')).
The same goes for all the boys who were killed in wars. One of them MIGHT have cured say, AIDS or Cancer, given taking advantage of his GI Bill & taking a risk on loans if it was "for him"... that's never going to happen for them (or us) now though.
* I pulled out/wised up (some @ least, lol) on THAT front, albeit later (when my looks began to fade which happens to us all) when my means/weapons were worn out for lack of a better expression... then?
"Necessity was the mother of invention" & it was sink or swim, rebuild yourself as best you can, live up to that potential now (or it will be never).
APK
P.S.=> Nice part is, & I've always said this: "The MIND IS PLASTIC" (just like the body - it can be reshaped if you work it out)-> http://it.slashdot.org/comment... & you seem to feel the same (see subject)... apk
Welp, we're screwed.
"[P]eople with the highest level of social integration had less than half the decline in their cognitive function of the least socially active subjects."
Ummm ... could that be because those who don't spend their lives on Facebook and Twitter actually have room to decline, while those who spend all their time on social media can't get much dumber?
Social integration as a neuro-protective influence was of interest to me since A) I'm getting old, and B) I can't fucking stand people except my wife, and even her sometimes...
"People with the highest level of social integration had less than half the decline in their cognitive function of the least socially active subjects." But here's the thing, that study's assessment of so-called cognitive function was wildly extrapolated from "a simple word-recall test." It seems unsurprising that doing the social ramble and making smalltalk with everyone like a chatty fuck [using words] will make you better at [a simple word-recall test]. Kind of like how "...playing the math puzzle KenKen will obviously make you better at KenKen. But does the effect transfer to another task you haven’t practiced, like a crossword puzzle?"
What absolute nonsense this entire article is spouting.
That sample is also ridiculous. How embarrassing.
This isn't science, this is some morons thinking they know how science works.
THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS A HUMAN AVERAGE. STOP IT.
This horrible abuse of statistics pisses me off to no end.
It is patently provable that you can increase a persons intelligence.
To something beyond what their genetics can provide? Probably not.
To what their genetics allows for? Something that the majority of people never reach because most education systems are hilariously terrible? Abso-fucking-lutely.
Most people are THICK as hell. Even with a good education. They are taught to think in very very wrong ways about how to tackle and deal with situations, how to learn and so on.
Brute-force is NOT a good way to learn.
We create connections when we learn. The more connections, the higher your overall intelligence.
You need to basically learn your brain to perform that process better.
People that go on about how SO SUPER AMAZING biology is and how we can never best it are absolute idiots. We have already bested biology countless times over in THIS decade alone. (the 5 years)
The human body is terribly "designed". It is amazing it even WORKS! (the heart especially. what a horrible thing)
Besides that part, the brain itself is a terrible thing. It isn't as optimized as it can be. In fact, we know this for an absolute fact because our evolution has forced our bodies to make decisions on what to allocate resources to, and the brain, despite it being a major priority, can still be improved on massively.
And more to the point, IT can't directly understand abstract concepts at a conscious level, it is the overall consciousness that comes about that leads to most of the advances in the learning process. As we get smarter, we are able to take in things considerably better. Our learning process IMPROVES as we learn.
But if you exist in a situation where you learn a certain brute-force way, a "throw everything and hope it sticks" approach, your brain gets shit on, bad.
It isn't the proper way to learn. Our brains are highly visual. Use it, damn it.
You can memorize an entire dictionary back to front if you just create a visual story of it. And it can stick with you if you actually continue learning things with that approach, it becomes second nature eventually.
Brain training apps and stupid crap like that are brute-force learning systems, by the way. They don't require you to think or adapt your learning style, they just reinforce what you already know: a shit synapse generator.
People that are highly creative, visually, tend to be massively more intelligent than those that are in a similar bracket by have a terrible imagination.
Human society is against this stupid study in its entirety. Just like the stupid "fat is bad", "salt is bad", "air is bad", "living is bad" and every other stupid bullshit study that comes out of that damn country.
Also, it is a damn newspaper. It is already terrible. Fuck everything.
Slow aging-related cognitive decline (as measured by IQ tests) is a myth, which has been known to be incorrect for decades.
The bulk of the stereotype of the old being senile is the result of a handful of diseases (such as Alzheimers, CJD, and strokes). These affect a significant number of individuals, but not the bulk of them. Considering the rest:
During the first few decades after the invention of IQ tests, much research was done on many people in many age groups and many regions of the US (and elsewhere). Graphing the average IQ scores versus age made curves that told seemed to tell a simple story:
- IQ rises steeply and linearly from birth to about age 19.
- From about 19 to about 21 it knees over.
- After about age 21 it declines slowly (and with a few wiggles) for the rest of life.
But this story was wrong. It conflated two things: IQ vs. age, and IQ versus date of birth (and thus period of history of childhood, adolescence, and adulthood). The two needed to be separated.
After tests had been conducted for several decades, enough results had been compiled on particular people to follow their scores as they aged, and thus separate the two effects. NOW the graphs told a very different story:
- IQ rises steeply and linearly from birth to about age 19.
- From about 19 to about 21 it knees over.
- After about age 21 it rises very linearly but much more slowly, for the rest of life.
- People born in earlier decades (of the first few decades of IQ testing) scored lower on IQ tests. (This has since flattened out - recent generations score about equally.)
For a long time the date-of-cohort influence on IQ scores was a big puzzle. Was it changes in education? More exposure to ideas thanks to better news media penetration? Cultural bias in the tests being compensated for by cultural homogenization? (Regional effects were present and much stronger in the earlier generations.) Much more research went into figuring this out.
At last the culprits were apparently identified: Several dietary deficiencies stunt the brain, and they were pretty much eliminated over those same decades. The 800 lb gorilla of them was iodine deficiency (far more prevalent in the interior than on the coasts) and this (along with goiter) was pretty much eliminated by iodizing salt.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Guess I am proving the article right
... countries.
Anybody care to discuss?
Oh, wait... This is Slashdot. Where all the 'smart' people are. The people who can't actually THINK any more about anything that actually matters, because the TV told them they would be 'bad people' if they questioned the bullshit that the TV has been telling them, every single day of their lives...
How 'racist' of me to simply want to live around my own kind. Apparently, white people make better countries than non-whites, therefore it would be unkind to prevent non-whites from living with us, right? Oh, wait... "We're all the same", and "Immigrants enrich our countries".
Can't have it both ways. Are you capable of basic thought?