
Can you make yourself smarter? - restofus
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/22/magazine/can-you-make-yourself-smarter.html?_r=1&pagewanted=all
======
astrofinch
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 memory just as fast
as playing 'brain games', and they have the additional benefit of improving
one's math and programming skill.

Of course, this is just a guess of mine that is unsupported by any
experimental evidence.

~~~
palguay
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.

~~~
joe_the_user
And the argument and evidence he provides is what?

~~~
hackinthebochs
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
memory system more than advanced math does.

~~~
gala8y
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...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanislas_Dehaene#Numerical_cognition)

~~~
hackinthebochs
Sounds very true in my experience. This is one of the reasons why naming (in
programming and everything else) is so crucial: good naming directly
influences how easily one can mentally manipulate the objects in question.
This is another reason why mathematicians work so hard to create concise
abstractions.

I'll have to take a look at that book, sounds fascinating. Thanks.

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palguay
Not yet HN ready and I wanted to post this later . I have been working on a
HTML 5 implementation , If you want to try the tasks mentioned.

<http://alpha.brainturk.com>

the chein task can be found here <http://alpha.brainturk.com/chein>

Please let me know your suggestions on how to improve this . I need to make a
few more changes for this to be played on ipad but for now works with the
keyboard

~~~
molsongolden
Keep going with this! I was just playing multiplication asteroids and there is
a little lag between when I "die" and when the game over comes up so I can get
an extra 2 or 3 answers in. Also, would it be possible to show lives remaining
in asteroids?

I'd make the instructions pop up at first or at least make the link a little
more prominent. I struggled with how to play the color game at first and it
took me a minute to find the instructions.

The games are fun and I could see them being used for brain training or even
just as teaching aids for middle school aged children.

~~~
palguay
Yes that will be a small fix to show the lives and as far as the instructions
popping up first that is something I thought about but now that you mention it
too I think that will be added next

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leot
Superficially, the answer to this question is, obviously, yes. We reason
spatially and with mental simulation, but we also reason by applying the
linguistic conventions learned from our culture (e.g., "if this statement were
false, then ...").

What most people seem to fail to realize is just how different people are from
each other cognitively, and how many different ways there are of getting to a
particular conclusion. "Intelligence" is like a country's GDP -- a
complicated, non-stationary mess that, taken together and measured in a way
our culture deems important, ends up representing our "Gross Cognitive
Product".

So, dual n-back probably improves working memory in most people, which will
probably improve their problem solving ability, most of the time. But there
are, without a doubt, many other subtle, complicated, and idiosyncratic
aspects of cognition that are likely to have far more dramatic effects if
appropriately tweaked.

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iskander
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?

~~~
jessriedel
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.

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

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

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invalidOrTaken
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
easily-available docs allow us to cheat a bit on learning(and what I really
mean is memorizing) API's.

But what if we could do these things without relying on JIT computer aids?
What if I could simulate more levels of abstraction in my head? The private
dream of many a Lisper(this one, anyway)---writing programs that write
programs that write programs---would be a bit more attainable.

I've been using Anki with great success to learn API's and keyboard shortcuts
(Anki+emacs is a match made in heaven), but I despaired at my inability to
hold the _whole_ stack, from top to bottom, in my head at once. So I posted a
badly phrased question on Stack Exchange, ("How can I increase the number of
levels of abstraction I can reason about at once?), and kept Googling.
Eventually I came across Jaeggi's research. It looks promising, but hasn't
passed the wide-replication test yet. I'm glad this came up on HN, because I'm
eager to see more research in the area and get come confirmation or refutation
of the findings.

In the meantime, the premise of Jaeggi's conclusion raises two questions---if
working memory can be trained, can it decay with disuse? In that case, are
with our fancy debugging tools mere shadows of Real Programmers that used to
walk the earth? The other question is this---if the brain is likened to a
computer, working memory corresponds to RAM. If we are successful at training
working memory and making people "smarter," will we in the future face a
bottleneck of processing speed rather than space?

~~~
bostonvaulter2
How are you using Anki with emacs? Or are you using Anki to learn Emacs?

~~~
invalidOrTaken
Anki to learn emacs. Should have been more clear.

One thing I've noticed about Anki is that the pain of memorizing and retaining
stuff has been _significantly_ reduced. As such, I tend to be much more
willing to "just memorize the whole thing" in a lot of cases. I guess a good
analogy is the impact faster CPU's/more memory has had on programming---when
they stop being the limiting factor, we start using languages adapted to us,
rather than them. Similarly, as memorization has become "cheaper" to me, I
find myself making choices that involve more memorization. A few days ago I
made a deck specifically for all the gmail keyboard shortcuts. It would not
normally be worth my time to commit those to memory, but because the cost has
fallen so much, it didn't seem like a bad idea.

------
dfan
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 and scrutinize it for tricks.

(My USCF rating did go up fairly significantly around then but it's no proof
of any causation, plus I was doing plenty of other things at the same time to
increase my chess results anyway.)

~~~
marquis
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.

------
liber8
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 particular type of problem quickly?

Depending on what we mean, "Can you make yourself smarter?" has fairly obvious
answers.

Start by looking at children. In one regard, we rarely learn faster than when
we are kids. Everything is foreign to us, and we are constantly learning, our
brains little sponges in a wet world. But clearly, our 25-year old selves
could solve far more complex problems than our 6-year old selves. Did we get
smarter between 6 and 25?

In the same vein, think about how severely retarded people are described: "He
has the mind of a 4 year old." Whether that description is medically accurate
or not isn't the point. We certainly think of children as intellectually
inferior, even though all of our brains started out that way.

So what changed? Why is a 25 year old "more intelligent" than a 6 year old? Is
it the creation of new neural pathways? Is it simply the way they've learned
to look at the world or quickly apply answers and processes they already know
to fit new problems?

Maybe you can provide more answers? Because it seems to me that the fact that
we got to where we are today indicates that you can absolutely make yourself
more intelligent, depending on how you define that. But I'm open to
objections.

~~~
ajross
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.

~~~
liber8
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")?

~~~
AngryParsley
>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.

------
paulsutter
This reminds me of an old New York Times article that categorized people into
two categories:

1\. Those who believe that intelligence is fixed from birth, and

2\. Those who believe that intelligence can be improved

The finding was that folks in category (1) tended to be fearful of being
wrong, and had trouble succeeding in life whereas the folks in category (2)
felt it was OK or good to make mistakes, and tended to be more successful.

EDIT: article is <http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/06/business/06unbox.html>

~~~
gojomo
[dweck mindset] will find the work of the researcher most associated with that
result.

------
onuk
When learning to program, my first major project was a feature-loaded N-back
in C#/XNA. I crammed in every option I could think of. The game and code is
available at <http://workingmemoryworkout.codeplex.com>, and it's worth noting
that the inspiration came from Brain Workshop.
(<http://brainworkshop.sourceforge.net/>)

------
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.

------
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>

~~~
gwern
> can tell you in half a second or less whether or not a number's even or odd.

Sure, but just because it takes half a second or less doesn't mean it's not
reflecting mental performance. For example, testing reflexes takes even less
time, down to tenths of a second, but yet, reflex time still correlates with
IQ.

------
K2h
from the article, one of the games is <http://www.soakyourhead.com/dual-n-
back.aspx>

update:

You need a speaker to play

should say "Press A when the box appears in the same location _since the start
of the game_"

~~~
nollidge
FYI: requires Silverlight.

------
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_.

------
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.

------
unimpressive
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.

~~~
gwern
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...](http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0191886912000815)

~~~
Sonthun
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.

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mhartl
The title needs a question mark at the end (as in the original).

------
ekm2
Unscientific data point:Two weeks after playing this game,my chess rating
improved by 70 points.I had tanked for close to six months

------
6841iam
Can anyone recommend games on the android that do "N-back testing"?

~~~
gwern
<http://www.gwern.net/DNB%20FAQ#android>

