
You can increase your intelligence - bootload
http://www.scientificamerican.com/blog/post.cfm?id=you-can-increase-your-intelligence-2011-03-07
======
chegra
I don't think people on HN need more intelligence. After 120 IQ points, it
doesn't make much of a difference to winning a Nobel Prize. I think what
people need here is an increase in their willpower to see boring stuff through
to the end.

~~~
barry-cotter
[http://infoproc.blogspot.com/2008/07/annals-of-
psychometry-i...](http://infoproc.blogspot.com/2008/07/annals-of-psychometry-
iqs-of-eminent.html)

[Review] Anne Roe: The Making of a Scientist

 _After 120 IQ points, it doesn't make much of a difference to winning a Nobel
Prize._ Not true

Test (Low / Median / High) Verbal 121 / 166 / 177

Spatial 123 / 137 / 164

Mathematical 128 / 154 / 194

~~~
ArbitraryLimits
If you follow that link, you'll find that in the study referenced the
researchers made up their own more or less ad hoc tests of "ability" precisely
because "most IQ tests are not good indicators of true high level ability
(e.g., beyond +3 SD or so)." It seems to me this study supports the idea that
IQ is irrelevant to winning a Nobel Prized past a threshold instead of
refuting it.

~~~
barry-cotter
In the blogpost

"Roe devised her own high-end intelligence tests as follows: she obtained
difficult problems in verbal, spatial and mathematical reasoning from the
Educational Testing Service, which administers the SAT, but also performs
bespoke testing research for, e.g., the US military. Using these problems, she
created three tests (V, S and M), which were administered to the 64
scientists, and also to a cohort of PhD students at Columbia Teacher's
College. The PhD students also took standard IQ tests and the results were
used to norm the high-end VSM tests using an SD = 15. Most IQ tests are not
good indicators of true high level ability (e.g., beyond +3 SD or so)."

Seems a decent try at it to me. But a better indicator that IQ is predictive
of success is

[http://infoproc.blogspot.com/2009/01/horsepower-matters-
psyc...](http://infoproc.blogspot.com/2009/01/horsepower-matters-
psychometrics-works.html)

 _Can psychometrics separate the top .1 percent from the top 1 percent in
ability? Yes: SAT-M quartile within top 1 percent predicts future scientific
success, even when the testing is done at age 13._ The top quartile clearly
outperforms the lower quartiles. These results strongly refute the "IQ above
120 doesn't matter" claim, at least in fields like science and engineering;
everyone in this sample is above 120 and the top quartile are at the 1 in
10,000 level. The data comes from the Study of Mathematically Precocious Youth
(SMPY), a planned 50-year longitudinal study of intellectual talent.

Ability Differences Among People Who Have Commensurate Degrees Matter for
Scientiﬁc Creativity

[http://www.vanderbilt.edu/Peabody/SMPY/ParkPsychScience2008....](http://www.vanderbilt.edu/Peabody/SMPY/ParkPsychScience2008.pdf)

~~~
wisty
OK, so "Most IQ tests are not good at sorting out people above 120".

So yes, intelligence is important. But many tests are useless at quantifying
it above a certain threshold.

------
abeppu
The author juxtaposes his recommendations against his unnamed professor's
claim that intelligence is genetic and fixed at birth, pointing out that there
are broad classes of behaviors that can improve our intelligence -- but he
neglects half of the response to his professor's genetic predestination view,
namely the whole host of physical/chemical/biological factors impacting both
brain development and cognition later in life.

As just an example, I was recently impressed by a study
([http://rspb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/270/1529/2147...](http://rspb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/270/1529/2147.full.pdf))
demonstrating improvements on both a memory task and an intelligence task
through creatine supplements. The explanation suggested by the authors (and it
looks like some other literature as well, though I haven't really dug into it
yet) is basically that creatine is part of a mechanism for rapid ATP
synthesis, that the ion pumps in your neurons run on ATP, and that if you're
sometimes "fuel-limited" (their word) creatine levels matter, in the same way
that oxygen and glucose do. This make sense, but I was quite surprised to read
this, I think in part because I'm used to seeing my brain as being a
relatively static thing. Stepping down a level of abstraction, and thinking
about the instant to instant chemical resource needs of individual cells and
gates is kind of eye-opening. And for all I know there's hundreds or thousands
of other documented effects, where increasing or decreasing the presence of
some reagent associated with running ion pumps, or growing axons or
synthesizing neurotransmitters has some measurable effect on intelligence.

~~~
gwern
> As just an example, I was recently impressed by a study
> (<http://rspb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/270/1529/2147...>)
> demonstrating improvements on both a memory task and an intelligence task
> through creatine supplements.

I would point out that Rae 2003 was conducted using _vegetarian_ subjects.
When you run tests on normal subjects, no benefit is found. To quote what I've
said the last few times creatine came up
<http://www.gwern.net/Nootropics#creatine> :

> I’m not a bodybuilder, but my interest was sparked by several studies
> showing IQ boosts (such as Rae 2003; however, Rae 2003 was only in
> vegetarians, who are known to be creatine deficient (much like B vitamins,
> creatine is usually gotten in one’s diet from meat), and the other studies
> are likewise of subpopulations. Rawson 2008 studied young omnivores who are
> not stupid or sleep-deprived, and found no mental benefit. The summary of
> the DNB ML discussion was that Rawson 2008 is a broad null result for
> healthy young omnivores who aren’t idiots. Vegetarians, idiots, the sleep-
> deprived, and old people may benefit from creatine supplementation.

~~~
abeppu
Thanks for pointing that out, and linking to those notes. As it happens, I'm
vegetarian and often sleep deprived, so I still might try the creatine thing.

------
bumbledraven
<http://sourceforge.net/projects/brainworkshop/> is an open-source
implementation of the dual n-back test for Windows, Linux, and OS-X.

"Following training of working memory using the dual n-back test, the subjects
were indeed able to transfer those gains to a significant improvement in their
score on a completely unrelated cognitive task. This was a super-big deal."

~~~
Splines
FYI, this game crashed on me at launch (W2K8 R2). Setting the exe to run under
WinXP compat mode made it work.

It's also devilishly hard. Dual 1-back is easy, but Dual 2-back is
surprisingly difficult. I think it'd be fun to get good at this :).

~~~
Kutta
I usually play it at d9b with 2,5 sec intervals. I intend to advance higher
though.

------
ambertch
'#4 Do Things The Hard Way'

I think this is so important for our young generation b/c everybody is trying
to "hack" or "game" the system. The problem is that you don't actually
internalize things by hacking your way through

So it depends on your goals. Let's take a computer science degree for example:
if your goal is to do investment banking and having a CS/engineering degree
from a top university really puts you apart from all those econ/business
majors in the finance interviews (which it does), sure hack your way through
CS/EE: you're not planning to go into that field anyways so copy-change
homework and study past tests to hack the system and get a good GPA. But if
you're doing CS to be a software engineer, you DON'T want to hack your way
through, you'd want to "do things the hard way" and really learn the material.

~~~
ankrgyl
I think your definition of "hack" is confusing with respect to this forum.
Hackers are people who understand the system so well that they can manipulate
it to their advantage. Good hackers have done things the hard way and use
those experiences to make things easy in the future.

~~~
hackinthebochs
I'm no authority but I'm gonna have to disagree. Hackers as understood on this
forum are people who find the shortest path to an intended outcome. This
usually takes a novel way of looking at the system. But it by no means
requires a complete understanding of it. Hacking requires a clever insight
that allows you to quickly accomplish your goal. Total understanding is
usually too time consuming for the hacker.

~~~
ankrgyl
To clarify, my definition of hacking is inspired by this
<http://stallman.org/articles/on-hacking.html>

------
aresant
The bullet point version extracted from the 4,474 words:

1\. Seek Novelty

2\. Challenge Yourself

3\. Think Creatively

4\. Do Things The Hard Way

5\. Network

~~~
jacques_chester
Perhaps in meeting point 4, we should skip your summary?

~~~
thaumaturgy
Yeah, the TL;DR thing really grates on my nerves. Are we so miswired now that
we can't take the time out to read 4,500 well-written words on a subject, and
instead need it condensed to a list appropriate for Twitter? Is there really
no other value in the entire essay other than the list items themselves?

~~~
Jach
Go read _How to Read a Book_. The second level of reading is about skimming,
picking up the general point of something, then deciding if it's _worth_ a
careful, analytical (and perhaps synoptic) reading. I don't think this article
deserves it, so I didn't give it the full time to read everything, and since
I've read other stuff in this area before, I think the bullet points really do
sum it up.

~~~
pygy_
The article focuses on the motivations behind these advices and how to apply
them in practice. A big part of thevalue of the article comes from this and
your bullet list fails to account for that.

------
mberning
I take exception to the 'Think Creatively' item. It's kind of like making a
to-do list with 'lose 20 lbs' as a line item. Much easier said than done.

That being said, I think one of the best ways to improve your creative
thinking is to work directly with other people that YOU consider to be
creative thinkers. At my previous job I always enjoyed working with the CEO,
sales, and marketing folks because they almost always approached problems from
a completely different angle than I would. Experiencing how others ideate is
very mind opening and often times humbling.

------
anthuswilliams
#4) Do things the hard way. It's hard for me to agree with this. In principle,
I want to bemoan the decline of my ability to spell as a result of auto-
correct. But I think that casts an unfair negative light on the idea of doing
things "the easy way".

Think about math. There is no question that the Arabic numbering system makes
doing math easier. Why should I to go back to scratching out base-60
cuneiform? I can challenge myself just as easily by pushing on to more
powerful and abstract mathematical concepts made possible by timesavers like
the Arabic numbering system.

I'm sure that having access to high-level languages limits my understanding of
the bits and bytes. But I can use these new tools of abstraction to do things
that I would have found impossible if I were writing machine code. I'm not
sure I see the value in doing things the hard way, when my brain will be
challenged enough probing the depths of what these new innovations have made
possible. I think the author misses one crucial part of intelligence -
intelligence, insofar as it is about abstract thought, is positively
correlated with the sorts of things I can do without thinking about them.

~~~
melvinmt
"Any fool can make things bigger and more complex. But it takes a genius to
move in the opposite direction." - Einstein

Solving things in the easiest way, is often the hardest challenge there is.

~~~
sophacles
Simple and easy are not the same thing. Please stop being lazy and bother to
learn the words you are using. It is simple to do, just read the dictionary.
This really isn't easy tho, you have to cross reference other words, take time
to do so, bother to remember, and so on - lots of effort.

------
bendmorris
You can increase your measurable intelligence. This is only true to the degree
that intelligence tests measure what they're supposed to.

~~~
arethuza
I've suspected this for a long long time - when I was a young kid (around 5
years old) my oldest sister was at university studying psychology with an
emphasis on child development - so for years I got bombarded with
"intelligence" tests to the point where I could do them very easily and I used
to get extremely high results in IQ tests in my teens. However, I've _never_
thought I was particularly brighter than anyone else, just that I had done a
lot of these silly tests and had acquired the skill of doing them.

~~~
rimantas
But by doing that you also acquired a skill to spot patterns and connections:
I'd argue, that this ability is important part of intelligence.

~~~
arethuza
I've thought about this quite a bit (I was motivated by those experiences to
go into AI research - which I did for six years) and I'm not convinced that
the kinds of problems used in the tests I did map too well to "real world"
problems - in essence all of the difficulties have already been abstracted
away. Of course, I have no evidence for this but the fact that the
logical/symbolic approaches to AI failed to live up to their early promise
more or less supports my views.

------
tokenadult
The author raises a number of interesting questions after citing several path-
breaking research studies. Why, indeed, aren't school systems adopting some of
these techniques known to improve children's learning and problem-solving
ability? Quite a few mathematicians have written critiques of United States
practice in teaching primary and secondary school mathematics, informed by
practice in other countries, for example Hung-hsi Wu,

<http://math.berkeley.edu/~wu/Lisbon2010_2.pdf>

<http://math.berkeley.edu/~wu/Lisbon2010_3.pdf>

<http://math.berkeley.edu/~wu/Lisbon2010_4.pdf>

<http://math.berkeley.edu/~wu/NoticesAMS2011.pdf>

Richard Askey,

<http://www.aft.org/pdfs/americaneducator/fall1999/amed1.pdf>

<http://www.math.wisc.edu/~askey/ask-gian.pdf>

Roger E. Howe,

<http://www.ams.org/notices/199908/rev-howe.pdf>

Patricia Kenschaft,

<http://www.ams.org/notices/200502/fea-kenschaft.pdf>

and

James Milgram.

ftp://math.stanford.edu/pub/papers/milgram/milgram-msri.pdf

ftp://math.stanford.edu/pub/papers/milgram/report-on-cmp.html

All those mathematicians think that the United States could do much better
than it does in teaching elementary mathematics in the public school system. I
think so too after living in Taiwan twice in my adult life (January 1982
through February 1985, and December 1998 through July 2001). Taiwan is not the
only place where elementary mathematics instruction is better than it is in
the United States. Chapter 1: "International Student Achievement in
Mathematics" from the TIMSS 2007 study of mathematics achievement in many
different countries includes, in Exhibit 1.1 (pages 34 and 35)

<http://pirls.bc.edu/timss2007/PDF/T07_M_IR_Chapter1.pdf>

a chart of mathematics achievement levels in various countries. Although the
United States is above the international average score among the countries
surveyed, as we would expect from the level of economic development in the
United States, the United States is well below the top country listed, which
is Singapore. An average United States student is at the bottom quartile level
for Singapore, or from another point of view, a top quartile student in the
United States is only at the level of an average student in Singapore. I've
been curious about mathematics education in Singapore ever since I heard of
these results from an earlier TIMSS sample in the 1990s.

The article "The Singaporean Mathematics Curriculum: Connections to TIMSS"

<http://www.merga.net.au/documents/RP182006.pdf>

by a Singaporean author explains some of the background to the Singapore math
materials and how they approach topics that are foundational for later
mathematics study. I am amazed that persons from Singapore in my generation
(born in the late 1950s) grew up in a country that was extremely poor (it's
hard to remember that about Singapore, but until the 1970s Singapore was
definitely part of the Third World) and were educated in a foreign language
(the language of schooling in Singapore has long been English, but the home
languages of most Singaporeans are south Chinese languages like my wife's
native Hokkien or Malay or Indian languages like Tamil) and yet received very
thorough instruction in mathematics. I hope that all of us here in the United
States can do at least that well in the current generation.

P.S. Another reply mentions the Flynn effect (secular increase in raw scores
on IQ tests from generation to generation in most countries worldwide), and
links to the Wikipedia article. Thanks for bringing that up. Being aware that
the Wikipedia article on that subject has been subject to edit wars that have
gone to the Wikipedia Arbitration Committee,

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Race_and_intelligence)

I think it may be helpful to link to another source about the Flynn effect

<http://cscs.umich.edu/~crshalizi/reviews/flynn-beyond/>

that has had the influence of better informed and more impartial editors.
There are several good discussions of the Flynn effect in recent books on IQ
testing, and citations to those can be found in Wikipedia user space.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:WeijiBaikeBianji/Intellige...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:WeijiBaikeBianji/IntelligenceCitations)

~~~
ellyagg
Personally, I don't think the situation is nearly as gloomy in the US as a lot
of my fellows seem to. It's a characteristic of nation citizens to be over
hard on certain aspects of their community.

As a matter of fact, if the US school system is partly or significantly
responsible for the productivity and creativity of adult residents, I'm pretty
satisfied with it on the whole. I'm not sure studying to tests produces the
best outcomes. I'm more interested in novel problem solving, invention, and
innovation, and typical international standardized tests don't suss that out
especially well, do they?

Moreover, it's hard to know what to infer when comparing a giant,
multicultural country with a small, much more homogeneous one such as
Singapore. It makes sense that some small countries might outperform the US at
testing in the same way that you expect some small countries to have a higher
per capita gdp. Unless I miss my guess, we could cherry pick some communities
in the US that do better on either than Singapore.

This article about US test scores, after adjusting for demographics, was
discussed on HN before, although I can't find the link just now:

[http://super-economy.blogspot.com/2010/12/amazing-truth-
abou...](http://super-economy.blogspot.com/2010/12/amazing-truth-about-pisa-
scores-usa.html)

It's extremely interesting, and I haven't seen anything that impeaches it.

That's not to say that I think the US school system does not have huge room
for improvement. That's clear, and I'm hopeful that continued technological
development and research will provide amazing breakthroughs. Moreover, we're
not even using some of the best methods that are already available; research
suggests the Montessorri method is advantageous, and indeed my own son was
trained at one, and we were much happier with the result in comparison to his
time at a public elementary school.

But it's not necessary to down talk where we're at to motivate improvement.
What I _don't_ want to see is throwing the baby out with the bathwater. US
schools get some things right. Students come out believing they can do
anything. They're not afraid to try new approaches. I'd rather not end up with
test taking automatons who are mainly expert at memorization and thoughtless
skills drills.

~~~
thaumaturgy
Just a couple of quibbles:

> _But it's not necessary to down talk where we're at to motivate
> improvement._

It is necessary if the general perception of where we're at is much better
than where we're actually at. I think the U.S. still has a very strong
cultural air of superiority which perhaps is no longer justified (if it ever
was). The first step to solving a problem is to realize that it exists, and
the U.S. educational system is only recently coming under scrutiny because of
repeated criticisms of it.

> _Students come out believing they can do anything._

I'm uncertain about this -- both whether it's true, and whether it's
beneficial if true.

> _They're not afraid to try new approaches._

Actually, there's a growing murmur of dissent that, at least in the special
case of "gifted" children, the constant praise of their intelligence leads to
a fear of failure which, in turn, leads to a fear of trying things which
others might try without hesitation.

~~~
lsc
>Actually, there's a growing murmur of dissent that, at least in the special
case of "gifted" children, the constant praise of their intelligence leads to
a fear of failure which, in turn, leads to a fear of trying things which
others might try without hesitation.

Citation needed. Speaking as a giftie myself, and someone who has many friends
who went through various gifted programs, this is not my impression.

~~~
thaumaturgy
<http://nymag.com/news/features/27840/>

Googling for "praise effort not intelligence" will turn up a bunch more
references, but most of them (at a glance) are referencing the same work by
the same individual(s) (Dweck, et al). I didn't have this saved in my
pinboard, so I had to go find it again.

I have to snark a little about a giftie not investigating this for themselves.
(snark snark snark) :-)

~~~
lsc
> I have to snark a little about a giftie not investigating this for
> themselves. (snark snark snark) :-)

Hah. well, you are the one talking about effort being more important than
intelligence. I, on the other hand, have always been lazy. I was in the
program through ability alone.[1]

I mean, clearly effort matters. But ability matters, too. Otherwise I'd be
working at the 7-11 like my parents said I would if I didn't go to college.[2]
Of course, if you can't do anything about innate ability and you can do
something about effort, "praise effort not ability" makes sense, as you should
try to improve the thing that can be improved, right?

On the other hand, I think effort has limitations, too. As a kid, I was pulled
out of the "gifted" class one hour a day to work in the "special ed" room.
Handwriting. My stepmother made me spend probably five hours a week practicing
my handwriting at home on top of that. To this day I can't write a legible
sentence.

I think key is to put effort in to areas where that effort makes a difference.
Consume all the low hanging fruit before you start scaling a sequoia looking
for pine nuts.

[1] the ability to do well on standardized tests, that is. I've never had to
learn to work a cash register, so it's gotta correlate to something useful,
but I'm first to say that I'm really not all that bright.

[2] Actually, considering my schedule variance, I wonder if I could hold down
a job where the primary performance metric was "did the guy show up on time?"

------
keyle
You can play dual n-back here: <http://cognitivefun.net/test/5>

~~~
joelthelion
There is also a very good app for android, called n-back if I recall
correctly. Very handy to kill time during the daily commute!

~~~
phucnguyen
Hey Joel, try out mine too ;)
[https://market.android.com/details?id=phuc.entertainment.dua...](https://market.android.com/details?id=phuc.entertainment.dualnback)

------
latch
Anyone interested in this might also be interested in the broader Flynn
effect: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flynn_effect>

I've always believed that additional/new stimulations is largely responsible
for our increased intelligence.

~~~
absconditus
Flynn recently found the opposite effect among British teens:

[http://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/educationnews/4548943/B...](http://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/educationnews/4548943/British-
teenagers-have-lower-IQs-than-their-counterparts-did-30-years-ago.html)

------
MetallicCloud
Excellent post. It's made me realise how much I have been taking the easy road
lately.

I used to always be looking into new areas to learn about new things and
really pushing myself, but I realise now that lately to solve a problem I
reach for a familiar way to solve it, because it's easier and faster. This
could be the reason why I am getting less satisfaction with solving problems
lately.

Time to get back on that horse...

------
eande
Excellent article and here is a link to an open source Dual N-Back game, have
fun. <http://brainworkshop.sourceforge.net/>

~~~
pella
"Join the Dual N-Back, Brain Training & Intelligence forum & mailing list at
Google Groups for some interesting discussions on dual n-back, memory,
intelligence and the brain"

<http://groups.google.com/group/brain-training>

------
gwern
'I know what the statistics say - but gosh darn, I have an anecdote to the
contrary!'

OP spends a lot of time & space on Jaeggi 2008... and she quietly omits all of
the _other_ results and considerations:
<http://www.gwern.net/N-back%20FAQ#criticism>

------
mannicken
From what I saw, society reserves creativity to artists, writers, composers,
and other "creative types". For some reason creativity has become associated
with creating useless inventions that no one will ever buy; sometimes people
see creative person as a loner who spends days and nights on drugs throwing
paint around or mumbling crazily.

In reality, creativity is, perhaps, our only advantage when trying to not get
killed by other animals. Picking up a stick and fighting off a larger animal
-- great example of creative solution. It's novel.

Before, no one ever thought to pick up a stick. Perhaps sticks were viewed as
merely lying there, to be carefully avoided in case somebody steps on one.
Maybe those who tried to pick up sticks were viewed as crazy, sinful by some
sort of primitive Republicans (not that Republicans now are more evolved :)...
I mean, who cares about sticks, animals were usually fighting with their own
teeth, hands, or horns (I wish I had a horn).

It's not until an animal with a stick has beaten the shit out of another
animal without a stick for calling him crazy, that the sticks became a useful
tool.

I mean, face it -- we're just animals, and without creative approaches to our
problems we wouldn't be talking about this on a giant electronic mind-network-
thing.

------
notsosmart
I really enjoyed this article. I wish she had given specific tips on how to
think more creatively. She mentioned what happens "when" you think creatively,
but did not really go into the "how."

~~~
jfoutz
Try to fit math ideas.

What does zero mean? what does one mean? does addition make sense? can you
take the limit of something? What if something blows up to infinity?

So... try cars. zero being no car. one being a "standard" car. say a honda
civic. how much honda can you take a way and still be a car? like taking the
limit at zero. There are crazy efficient cars with tiny little internal
combustion engines and bicycle wheels that get 100+ mpg but piss poor
acceleration. hmm. what would a car be at the other end? a ferrari? Do cars
associate? do cars commute? :)

Creativity isn't painting. It's looking at the same crap you look at all the
time and playing with it. Math has a lot of tricks for labeling things, then
seeing what shows up when you try do stuff with the labels. New dimensions
will pop out.

------
chalst
The key study cited by the article is available in full as a PDF.

Jaeggi, Buschkuehl, Jonides, and Perrig (2008), Improving Fluid Intelligence
with Training on Working Memory:
[http://lowellinstitute.com/downloads/BrainLearning/Fluid%20I...](http://lowellinstitute.com/downloads/BrainLearning/Fluid%20Intelligence.pdf)

------
dopkew
"So to make the most of your intelligence, improving your working memory will
help this significantly"

This reminds me of how RAM is underestimated in improving computer
performance.

~~~
sayemm
Excellent analogy

------
alexandros
The subtitle for this piece is '5 ways to maximize your cognitive potential'.

Shouldn't that be -realize- your cognitive potential, or maximize the
utilization of your cognitive potential or some such? What good does it do to
maximize my potential?

------
IvarTJ
PDD-NOS – Pervasive Development Disorder Not Otherwise Specified, is not
necessarily a mild form of autism. The meaning is in the name. It means that
the diagnosed doesn’t fit more specific diagnoses such as Kanner’s autism or
Asperger syndrome.

Even though someone who’s autistic fail to show intelligence through a test, I
believe they still may be very intelligent and can show this better through
training.

I personally still believe reasoning skills can be trained by learning new
heuristics at least.

------
bluekeybox
My addition (6): observe others, be inquisitive about other people. This will
not only help you appear smarter to others (believe it or not, there is such
thing as behaving/appearing smart), but will also help you with networking
because (a) people respond positively when someone displays genuine interest
in them (well as long as you are being nonthreatening) and (b) smart people
tend to seek out others like them.

------
ashbrahma
Dual N-Back test: <http://www.soakyourhead.com/>

------
pella
"Brain fog - poor memory, difficulty thinking clearly etc"

[http://www.drmyhill.co.uk/wiki/Brain_fog_-
_poor_memory,_diff...](http://www.drmyhill.co.uk/wiki/Brain_fog_-
_poor_memory,_difficulty_thinking_clearly_etc)

------
john2x
Haven't read the entire article yet, but(this is off topic), highlighting any
word on the website shows a "Learn More" tooltip which automatically loads
more info for the highlighted text. Awesome.

~~~
amirmc
Wow. I'd never have discovered that if I hadn't read your comment, so thanks.
I'm not sure how useful it would be in general but for an article like this
quickly looking up terms seemed pretty neat (e.g fluid intelligence).

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kmt
I always slack when it comes to number 5 (networking). I'm always busy with
something "more important" and kinda have to force myself to get out and meet
people.

