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."

Comments

Wait, is this drawing conclusions

[GoodNewsJimDotCom]

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?

Of course you can get more intelligent.

[Anonymous Coward]

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.
 

Re:Of course you can get more intelligent.

[U2xhc2hkb3QgU3Vja3M]

Study up on a new subject. Learn the material. Practice to acquire the skill. *poof* you are more intelligent.

No you aren't. Intelligence is not knowledge.

Re:Of course you can get more intelligent.

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes but there is currently quite a political push for a natural aristocracy, which with my British heritage reminds me of Thatcher's speech in 1983ish where she talked about how she wanted a return to Victorian values - ostensibly about hard work getting you Up There, but in practice about everyone deserving and maintaining their place, no matter how opulent or squalid.

So you have an awful lot of studies which try to tell you that some tests determine your rightful position in life, when in fact such tests are about likelihood that someone measured only by that test will perform to certain standards. It hopefully doesn't take more than a high school understanding of statistics to understand why even regarding this as a measure of potential is going too far - and to select people based on such tests is irrational.

I have an IQ in the 140s, and certain larger firms take this way more seriously than they should, as I'm going to royally fuck up certain tasks that some of my colleagues with lower IQs can perform from competently to excellently. I will probably be quite good at quickly identifying how I'm being measured performance-wise, though, and I'll be great at Playing The Game for career advance. Similarly, I did really well at school and university, but I hardly cared for or understood in much depth any of the material beyond what I saw as required for homework and exams.

I was great at cramming, and forgetting everything within a month. I am almost ashamed at my professional (engineering) qualifications, because - while they're not relevant to my current field, tf - when I achieved them, I knew there is no way I should ever be given the responsibility they imply I am ready for. If you want anything actually deliverable, you will need to put me in a wider team of more disparate talents, and keep me only on the things I excel at. In fact, people like me are probably more trouble than I'm worth - or at least this was true before I stopped thinking I was hot shit and understood that we've set up so many of our modern educational and professional structures around very limited metrics, creating a positive feedback loop which promotes an increasingly narrow range of abilities.

So, I have a fairly high if not astronomical IQ, I'm actually talented at certain specific things but fairly crap at most things (and hopeless at a lot of "obvious" things), and people like me are useful but by no means necessary - if someone else takes twice as long to do certain things I can do, but also doesn't fuck up on so much else, they're a more valuable contributor to the advancement of humanity. IQ is a test of speed, and the world makes itself increasingly a test of speed - yet speed does not solve very big problems.

My poor brother is genius level IQ, yet can't really function in life at all - he's gripped with anxiety and shame and low self-confidence... self-confidence is in fact listed in the article as a significant factor in achievement. If you tell people they can do better, they're likely to do better - but if you tell people that for some reason their biology prevents them from improving, they won't improve. Is this like the placebo effect for intelligence? I know if I'm panicking about solving some problem and become convinced that I'll fail then my short term memory seems to disappear and I miss obvious patterns in favour of making some ridiculously complex set of connections.

From the article, I take positive lessons:
- Brain training exercises won't help your IQ, but that doesn't matter at all - even if they simply make you feel more confident, you will do better from day to day because of placebo effect. If they help you with specific skills such as mental arithmetic or memorisation techniques, even better.
- Performance-enhancing drugs might be similarly placebo.
- Physical exercise is once again shown to benefit mental acuity.
- Socialisation is either correlated with or causes slower decline.

Re:Of course you can get more intelligent.

[ShanghaiBill]

Intelligence is not knowledge.

Intelligence is the ability to formulate an effective initial response to a novel situation. Having a large database (ie: knowlege) of other problems and solutions, is a big part of that, because you can often adapt the solution to a similar problem, to the current situation. Intelligence is the application of knowledge.

Re:Of course you can get more intelligent.

[Bengie]

Knowledge does help, but some people can walk into a problem with virtually no related knowledge and still come up with good answers quickly. In these situations, it seems to be someone's ability to simplify a problem, use reason, and ask good questions to quickly find their missing knowledge.

Re:Of course you can get more intelligent.

[Anonymous Coward]

The rarity of some score depends on the scale used. "Genius" is an informal term used to draw a line sometimes, and I wouldn't use it to describe me. I do use the label for my brother, however, because I recognise the raw power of his mind. But, as psychologists have already debated long ago, it's maybe a bad term to associate with IQ - you need way more ingredients to demonstrate the atypically brilliant productive output popularly associated with genius.

We were both tested before taking academic scholarship exams to a private school, so early teens. I know my upbringing was atypical - I was the offspring of a senior civil servant and a PA to a then well-known business owner, so I got a privileged education and an ambitious mix of family friends. But if you hang around a forum with millions of visitors who are reasonably bright, the 1-in-200ers (say) are going to appear fairly often. General intelligence testing has become a ridiculously big deal in society, creeping way beyond its original purpose, so people with high IQ are likely to take notice of discussions about it.

But the Internet is the Internet, and people do bullshit a lot, especially when anonymised. So, if you're hesitant to believe personal accounts - and I don't blame you - consider their objective plausibility. If you still don't feel comfortable, ignore them entirely and concentrate on the arguments.

Compute + Storage

[michaelmalak]

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.)

Smarter ?

[randalware]

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" :)

Re:Smarter ?

[PPH]

when to say "I love you"

When looking in the mirror.

This doesn't agree with the research I've seen.

[tlambert]

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.

You have to be particularly stupid to believe this

[UpnAtom]

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.