<p>It amuses me immensely when people talk about IQ and ‘brain structure’ (whatever they think that is) as if it’s a rigid and unchanging thing. Yes, you can in fact increase your IQ (as studies have shown, people get better at the IQ test when they take it often). intelligence is slightly different but it can be done.</p>
<p>I have a friend who is a math and CS genius. He’s been programming since he was very very young and participated in a ton of Math Olympiads. Someone might say he has an amazing mathematical intelligence. Then there was me; I had very little mathematical talent and only went up to advanced algebra in high school. Everyone though that I’d go into a patsy major such as English or foreign languages since that was my talent area. I decided that I WOULD become good at math in order to pursue my passion; physics. I now beat the pants off of high school geniuses and I’ve participated in more than a few math competitions and did quite well. So yes, obviously you can get smarter at someone. I believe that the ‘little g’ or general intelligence factor, is a load of bullcrap. People make amazing contribution in maths, sciences, and the like because they put in the dedication and passion to get there, not because their brain is different from your’s.</p>
<p>In my History of Science and industry class, the professor said that most influential scientists and even philosophers made their ground breaking theories in the 15-30 age limit. After that, they fed on it or spend time trying to convince people.</p>
<p>Newton made no significant discovery after the age of 30! and Eisntein had the relativity theory in the early 1900. But it took him almost half a century to convince the “other” scientists. </p>
<p>It has been seen that the ages 0-15 shape a person for progress. Why do kids learn languages AND the right accent in TWO different languages? Thats because they are encouraged constantly by the people around them. If you are in your french class, you fail the quiz if you say stuff wrong.</p>
<p>Try to stick to easy problems in math. Then go advance. It has been shown that the brain develops with constantly challenging problems. Doing the same math problem will not help you become wiser, but a good crammer. And if your not 30, you can still change the world. off course, i dont believe its hard coded into life that you will stop producing results after 30. I am just telling you what has been observed.</p>
<p>The thing is though that you probably had some knack for math even before you started college, you just didn’t care before you did.</p>
<p>And although that article is nice because it is built on a great deal of research it is however not really relevant to this discussion since it is all derived from how the best chess players minds work, which is just a ton of memorization and not really much of what most scientists would call intelligence. The deal is that if you don’t go seriously about chess you will stop memorizing more and more patterns while playing which will stall your progress, the same can be done in any field really so just through memorizing huge amounts of information anyone could be able to become a great engineer and do math competitions.</p>
<p>But that do not mean that you became any smarter, just that you became more serious about it. And I thought that peoples notion of intelligence is that you did not need to rigorously memorize every detail of the subjects you are taking since you can instead from a few base laws derive the rest of the contents of the course if you are studying math or some of the hard sciences.</p>
<p>A good memory is a part of being smart but it is not everything, you need to apply the memories in a smart way too. I would say that the most important aspect of being intelligent is to be able to correctly assess a situation you have never experienced and thought about before, which have nothing to do with how the best chess players work.</p>
<p>Like, can you get the highest grade on math tests by just being at the lectures, not doing any problem sets at all and barely reading the book? In a course you have never seen the materials in before of course.</p>
<p>And of course the presumption here is that people always play the most ‘rational’ equilibria strategies in real-life. It has been experimentally shown that they do not. For example, the subgame perfect equilibrium in the centipede game is for every player to always defect at the first opportunity. But numerous experiments have demonstrated that real-world subjects who actually play the game substantially deviate from the predicted behavior and that the centipede is actually allowed to ‘grow’ for awhile before somebody finally defects, which should never happen if everybody always defects at first opportunity.</p>
<p>I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: game theory is not a science, in the sense that a science is actually supposed to describe real world observations. Game theory is actually a mathematical tool intertwined with a philosophy that describes perhaps how people should behave, but not how they actually do behave in the real world. </p>
<p>Hence, even if you know that I am studying game theory in order to increase my intelligence, you still may not choose to play the ‘correct’ response of studying game theory in order to
increase your intelligence.</p>
<p>Let me give everyone a chance to brace themselves before I offer my opinion on this matter . Ok</p>
<p>One could very well say that in all walks of life you will find people who seem to be gifted to a point beyond just average guy/girl who works VERY hard to become good at something. A good analogy in my opinion, although perhaps not an exact parallel, would be athletics. For instance, it is very possible to become faster and stronger by developing your muscle fibers. I am not a neurosurgeon so I will refrain from arguing decisively that this is possible to do with the brain. However, it would seem highly logical to derive the conclusion that by consistently training your brain you will become, if nothing else, better at performing mental functions. When most people speak of intelligence I feel that they are generally referring to something innate, a theoretical maximum potential of mental ability if you will. As is the case with a gifted athlete, their theoretical maximum potential in sports may be well above anothers theoretical potential. The same would seem to be true in with intelligence. While I may work very hard to learn something, there is a strong possibility that another person will not have to work hard at all in order to learn the same thing. This would be a very important part of the equation to derive the maximum potential of a person, how much effort do they have to put in in order to receive the same result as another person. Precisely, what is the efficiency at which their brain operates. </p>
<p>Another important aspect to consider, is the ability of a person to translate their theoretical potential into useful skill. It is very common in sports to find a person with great athletic ability in certain areas, but not in others. For instance, some weightlifters can move hundreds of pounds with brute force, but are incredibly slow, inflexible, and therefore are not good with many sports. Some sprinters are very fast but lack the coordination to catch a football with ease. You could also say that some mathematicians have no knack for writing. So, where is the line drawn? I guess you would have to take some theoretical average of intelligence across a wide range of specialty areas. For instance, the most gifted athlete would then have to be seen as the one who performs well in many areas, but perhaps isnt the best in any single area. Therefore, the measurement of intelligence would be highly inconsequential at best. Perhaps a more meaningful measurement would be one that measures your knack for a particular area, only then will a theoretical maximum become significant. </p>
<p>All in all, what it really boils down to is ambition. How many people have you known in your life that had all the talent in the world but wasted it? Countless athletes of great ability can be found in the prison systems across America. No doubt, some of the smartest end up there as well, or working as a janitor at MIT lol. The point here is this, there is no need to compare your theoretical maximum with that of others because A.) you cannot change your theoretical maximum anyway B.) your theoretical maximum will never single handedly decide your fate, for as I just mentioned, ambition and hard work is half of the equation. Find an area that seems to come naturally to you and develop that to the best of your ability. You can certainly become better at performing mental functions by training your brain. While you may not become smarter, you will get closer to your theoretical maximum. Use this knowledge and apply some strategy to your life, hope for a little luck, and thats all you can do folks And remember, enjoy yourself :)</p>
<p>Start working on many problems of many fields… Before I got into engineering, I used to do math problems for biological sciences, economics and physical sciences for fun (It opens your mind on how to make math into such a useful subject). Thats an example…</p>
<p>Perhaps this is true – the thing is that what people ASSOCIATE with intelligence often has more to do with experience + concerted efforts. For instance, how many would argue that a professor of mathematics at Princeton is not a mathematical superstar…well, this has to do with a combination of experience and raw talent. </p>
<p>The funny thing is that I don’t think most people can actually appreciate the raw talent side, because to them, solving X problems or Y problems is the same – they don’t necessarily have a specialized understanding of the given subject. Similar remarks go to chess – it takes someone’s extreme interest to really process the subtleties of the game to appreciate the masters.</p>
<p>There are likely theoretical maximums, in the spirit of what purduefrank was saying, corresponding to several different areas of ability…and often, life circumstances determine which of these really gets used. I’m a mathematical infant at this point, but relative to many students around me, I learned rather quickly, and certainly there’s a long string of circumstances leading to this.</p>
<p>Sooner or later you will have to go where none have gone before, during that time natural ability is the most needed and that is what separates good scientists from bad. You can train to do certain problem sets all day but you can’t train innovative thinking. </p>
<p>Of course you need to get a lot of mundane training before you can do something really new since everything even close to mundane have already been done. </p>
<p>Tests can’t see the difference between innovative thinkers and memorisers, most people can’t tell the difference between them yet the actual potential difference between those persons can be huge.</p>
<p>That is why the society tries to find the real intelligent persons instead of those who are just doing science like a treadmill, of course the memorisers are not useless at all, they are needed everywhere in the form of engineers and other applied forms of the sciences (But the innovators are still better at those jobs since they can better tackle situations which are outside his field)</p>
<p>PS. Most people are a mix of those, I just put the extremes to make things clearer.</p>
<p>People aren’t born as innovators. They become innovators. I don’t care how much natural ability you have, if you teach yourself science through memorization, you won’t get far at all. I am immediately suspicious of anyone who claims to have some magical ability that I don’t have and that’s why they’ve succeeded. It depends on how you teach yourself to think and how you’re taught the material, more than anything.</p>
<p>And the idea that some people are innovators and some are memorizers is a self-serving argument. What if a former memorizer starts making great original contributions? Then you say “Oh, he was an innovator all along!” And if an innovator does nothing original or insightful, you label him as a memorizer. </p>
<p>You can say that only people who make innovative contributions are innovators but if you’re going to judge people based on the result of their work, then you can only classify them based on the fruits of their labor. What you’re trying to do is label people as a type of thinker by innate qualities, none of which can be seen or judged but only inferred by the work of the person you’re judging. In short, your argument has a logical inconsistency.</p>
<p>I’m not trying to spread some sort of optimistic nonsense like “Anyone can do it, if only you belieeeve!” or other feel-good propaganda, but I am cautioning anyone against making major decisions based on what talents they think they possess or don’t possess. Life is about how you allocate your time, focus, and efforts. With enough time and effort, you could do almost anything you want and be quite good at it, assuming you got sufficient instruction. The people who you think are ‘more gifted’ than you simply have a head start, something that is easily rectified by putting in more work now to get to their level. </p>
<p>Sorry if my argument is slightly confusing but I hope it got the general point across. Anyway, anyone who shies away from doing something they love because they doubt their abilities is a weiner. If you like it enough and want it enough, you’ll do the work and get it, come hell or high water.</p>
I do not say that anyone should either, what I am saying that there is undeniably a difference.</p>
<p>Now, I have tried for a long time to explain why I can take an extremely heavy course load, work almost nothing and still get comparable grades as the best peers who works a ton more and take a lot fewer courses in the most respected Engineering university in Sweden and taking the most respected line there (The culture have developed in such a way that engineering physics became an Elite line giving you both a math and an engineering physics major at the same time). (I am not a US citizen, I am just here since I like discussing engineering ****)</p>
<p>I haven’t done a single exercise set since middle school, I have never taken a single note in class, my mind drifts away all the time during class and I sleep a lot during them too and its not like I have on my own developed a superduper study technique which just requires me to sit and half-heartedly listen to professors.</p>
<p>I would love to think that everyone else is just doing things wrong, but what are the odds?</p>
<p>
I don’t mean that as in the only way of learning, but you can classify people more or less on either side. Some do comparably more memorisation and other do comparably more conceptual learning.</p>
<p>Innovators are better at conceptual learning since to learn a concept you have to construct your own thought patterns on how things work and that is never taught, people think differently and you have to meld the theories to fit your own mind.</p>
<p>And you know that there are people who can’t even grasp the concept of numbers since they got genetic anomalities, same as how some have a very hard time to grasp the art of reading? If some can be worse naturally, why is it so hard to imagine that some can also be better?</p>
<p>Edit: Also, if you are saying that it is almost impossible to learn science through memorisation, how do you explain that almost every science student can’t do a problem if he haven’t seen a similar problem before even though he got by far enough theory to solve it?</p>
<p>
Um, what do this have to do with anything? This statement do not say anything at all, you use the premise that “memorisers” and “innovators” both have the same chances of making great original contributions, I argue that they do not which means that they are not useless notations.</p>
<p>Lets say that “Innovators” have 100% more chance of doing a great discovery compared to “Memorisers”, it would still be significant to label them even if both are capable of doing said discoveries. It is how smokers have a larger chance of developing lung cancer even though every person can develop it naturally just by chance.</p>
<p>I make the difference not on merit but by their general way of treating science. An innovator learns A and from that derives the conclusions B, C, D, E etc, a memoriser just learns A, B, C, D, E etc.</p>
<p>Listen, if you want to believe that you’re better than your peers academically because you’re lazy and still get good grades (and that this is somehow proof of innate intelligence…?) then that’s fine with me. And yes, college students are notoriously studying poorly, staying up drinking, and just generally stupid. The fact that you do better than them means that you’ve beaten a bunch of clueless drunks. Congratulations! You remind me of the people who put up a great show of ‘snoring’ in class and then think that because they did better than a few of the slackers or grinds in the class. Annoying and untrue, since not one of these bozos has ever produced an actual original design to save their lives. Getting good requires work, regardless of talent. </p>
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<p>Because they’re not science students; they’re robots who can copy down scientific facts. We seem to have different definitions of ‘learning’. What goes on in most student’s heads isn’t learning since all they do is dump unexplored, unsorted, and unimportant facts and ideas into their heads and then wonder why they failed a quiz. Your ‘innovators’ take the time or effort to actually sort through this and make something out of the knowledge, making them learners but again, it’s not innate and unchangeable. Simply a matter of learning how to learn.</p>
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<p>It is relevant, but I can excuse you missing the point since your native language isn’t English. And I said nothing of the sort. Assuming you could pin down people as either memorizers or innovators, the chances they have of being good at their field are significantly different. However, if you’ll reread what I said, I said it was difficult and illogical to label people as being one or the other because you seem to take innate ability as one of the major deciding criteria. Innate ability is something that is multi-faceted, variable, and changing, so I have no idea why you would make such a silly proposition as to be able to measure it in people. </p>
<p>While labeling in your way would undoubtedly help your ego and those of others like you, it really has no significance in the long term. All the scientists I’ve talked to have said that without hard work and a desire to learn, they never would’ve gotten where they are now. Do you think your opinion, an untried and unknown student trumps that of a dozen scientists (and one with a Nobel prize in physics, actually)? </p>
<p>It’s only an opinion of course, but this discussion has gone way off topic. I’m done debating on this thread but I hope the OP got the advice they were looking for :)</p>
You don’t see, I am up against the best students in Sweden and I also impressed one of my professors enough that he specifically asked me if I wanted to work on a research project the summer after my first year which later lead to a paper since I broke through some barriers they where stuck on. </p>
<p>If you are interested it was about using ultrasonic waves to manipulate microparticles, sonic micro tweezers. The reason to use sonic tweezers instead of electromagnetic ones is because living cells gets killed by electromagnetic radiation while sonic waves are very soft, doing this you can keep individual cells floating freely which will keep them alive and well and using this you could do a lot of interesting experiments on cells that are impossible today.</p>
<p>Edit: And please do not dismiss my argument like this, I could just as easily attack your story on how you proved them wrong and therefore it doesn’t matter.</p>
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How could “innate” be changing over time in the same person? It is multi faceted, that’s it.</p>
<p>Also experiments have proved that you can raise your intelligence temporarily through training but it do not last.</p>
<p>I put my response to that in this quote since it isn’t really on topic anymore, still genetic enhancements to mice intelligence is also proof that intelligence is dependant on your genetic setup.
<p>In the various discussions that are had about the very talented, we do not often get a chance to understand how their minds work. So, a few questions, if you don’t mind:</p>
<p>Can you explain how you learn? What is the “acquisition path” - is it verbal? spatial? Do you find yourself making deductions through a chain of reasoning or associations?</p>
<p>Do concepts tend to “lock in” right away? That is to say, do you understand things both quickly and firmly, so that you don’t need to reinforce concepts?</p>
<p>If someone tells you that something is true, do you believe them, or do you require proof (or at least, some kind of internal consistency of mind) of its truth?</p>
<p>Are there things (even outside of what you are studying) that you have problems with? Do you understand what the nature of the problems are? Are they something that you could fix, if you wished to? But also, would spending time on the things you find difficult take time away from the things you find easier, thus making those things difficult? In other words, is it a zero-sum game, in that your mastery of certain subjects depends upon a certain amount of time spent on them (even if it’s very little compared to your peers)?</p>
<p>Finally, what is your perceived value of your knowledge? Have you ever been in a situation where you knew you were correct, but no one believed you?</p>
<p>Here is a short anecdote that underlies some of my questions:</p>
<p>In my high school, there was a very bright math student. He won all sorts of competitions, and “placed out” of an experimental math program for gifted math students. Upon entering college, he was so advanced that he was taking Calculus of Manifolds in his first semester, while others were just taking first-year calculus. But his ability to learn French lagged behind his ability to learn math considerably. His French teacher, who knew how good a math student he was, gave a report on him saying that he could be as good a student in French as he was in math if he would only apply himself in the same way. But what if that wasn’t true? What if either there was nothing he could do to improve his French, or the act of doing so would compromise his mathematical prowess?</p>
<p>These all seem like stereotypes to me. Of course people who are in shape, eat healthy, do puzzles, and sleep are smarter on average than those who don’t. But does that really mean that eating healthy makes you smarter? I doubt it. Einstein would probably still be Einstein if you gave him a few donuts. And if eating healthy and exercising made you smarter, than why aren’t most of the top scientists and engineers also amazing athletes (note that many of them are, but to my knowledge there is not a significant positive correlation).</p>
Well, mostly I create a derivation in my head which feels 100% natural, doesn’t work for everything of course but since I have done that for most things in the science subjects I have a really broad base of things which feels as intuitive as 1+1=2. The important part is to solidify every step, although that do not happen instantly but in my experience I haven’t met anyone else who even tries to get such deep understanding.</p>
<p>Like in physics, if you know what the physical quantities are and if you know the fundamental laws of physics by hearth you can derive so damn much just by that. Those are my main goals, fundamental understanding of the stepping stones for each course and from those you can reach everything around without much problems as long as you know them really really well.
I don’t have full recollection of exactly everything, none does, but I basically do not forget things that I remember a few days later, saves a lot of time studying the same things over and over. This is probably one of the main reasons I can do well after just going to the lectures, the other was the point above that if I just learn the fundamentals of each course well enough I don’t really need to learn the rest of the course since it falls out trivially from the fundamentals.
I neither believe them or take it as truth, i think in terms of probabilities and keeps everything as new statistical data points and after a quite short while you can get a quite good interpretation of the truth.</p>
<p>If something is probably true you as an individual can treat it as if it where true since the side effects if you are wrong are quite small, but the important part is to have an open mind so that you don’t stop evolving at the same time as you have some stability and thus don’t throw away everything old just because something new just arrived.
I mostly have problems with trying to conjure motivation, so really the only reason I can study at all is because the way I work makes it really easy to do things like math and physics, while a course load filled with more essay’s etc would be a lot tougher just because it requires more menial work from my part.</p>
<p>And for the rest, I pick up roughly everything I hear so as far as I know its nothing but time management. And oh, I find names and such quite abstract generally so I am quite bad at remembering those, it can be name of people, formulas or anything.
Not really, if none believes me I would understand why and then I would either understand why it doesn’t matter if they believe me or not or if I find it necessary I am really good at debating so I can make almost anyone believe me. Unless I am wrong of course, a large part of my goal when I debate with people is to find out if I am wrong or not and if I were wrong I update my views accordingly. </p>
<p>Actually, I believe that that is one of my strongest points, the facts that I can keep many conflicting “truths” as all being true at the same time, since in the end it is impossible to really know what is true and the only way to not do it wrongly is to keep everything.
That is probably very case dependant. I have gotten many compliments for my writing skills etc, but I don’t really care about that since I can do things much easier by studying science.</p>
<p>I think the things I am bad at is that I barely have any opinions myself. I am not really happy of being me, I don’t really look forward towards anything.
Edit: Oh, and my short term memory is nothing special, hardly better than the average Joe’s, but the more time you add the comparably better my memory gets.</p>
<p>Hmmm … is it more likely that you will be called upon to answer questions that rely on a fundamental understanding of some things, and inferences from those? How well do you think you would do if instead it was necessary for you to answer questions that would take too long to determine from first principles - it was more likely one would have to use some kind of intuition or insight to solve the problems?</p>
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<p>I didn’t quite understand your phrasing. Do you mean that if you learned something on one day, a few days later, you are not likely to have forgotten it?</p>
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<p>Hmmm … I’ve never taken any physics beyond freshman E&M, so I don’t know much about what the classes are like, but I have taken a fair amount of advanced math. Some of it requires writing essays, in the sense that one is expected to linguistically, as well as logically, argue a point. Have you ever taken classes like that? Do you find those difficult? If so, do you feel you need to do something in order to improve?</p>
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<p>Hmmm … supposing you were in a situation where short term memory was more critical. How well do you think you would do? What do you think you need to do to improve your short term memory?</p>
<p>Too bad you aren’t in computer science. I could ask some other questions that would give me an idea of your talent.</p>
(But the innovators are still better at those jobs since they can better tackle situations which are outside his field)</p>