Increasing your intellect hasn´t been seen as possible up until recently. Playing video games like starcraft and exercising will increase your intellect. Also try to switch up the games you play so that your brain doesn´t become to comfortable with it.
How do you boost your intellect?
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Eh, i just made a quip about Cervantes taking the chance. It wasn't directed at her but if she feels insulted i can apologize.
Uh, did i do wrong in some way Taboo? If so, i'm sorry.
no I just wouldn't ever say that physics and engineering is the only way to be smart. I'm pretty passionate about art personally
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no I just wouldn't ever say that physics and engineering is the only way to be smart. I'm pretty passionate about art personally
I know. I've loved your drawings since i was a lurker in the forum but i couldn't let the chance of calling the greatest fuckin' writer of my native languague imbecile. I mean, i fuckin' love him but…yeah b:
edit: did that sentence make me look like a stalker? Shit, i think it did.
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Oh.
I was kind of referring to you and Taboo at the same time, but it looks like neither of you had any ill intent.
Maybe that's true of most people in my life? But I don't want to let that ridiculous notion fester in my head for too long. -
I was kind of referring to you and Taboo at the same time, but it looks like neither of you had any ill intent.
Maybe that's true of most people in my life? But I don't want to let that ridiculous notion fester in my head for too long.Eh, don't take life so seriously. There isn't any fun in that
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Why are so many people supports reading books? Taking tons of text in your brains doesn't seem like an effective way to improve someone's wisdom, unless reader thinks on his own as he reads. To become smarter a person have to think on his own instead of just consuming information without questioning it.
One thing to become better at by reading books would be learning the properly used grammar and structures of text written in those books and therefore subconsciously learns to write and talk better… But not neccesarily that makes one smarter just because of improving one's literal language.I agree about games helping to become more intelegent, but this is the same thing above - you have to actually think as you play or it would be same as reading a book without questioning what you read. I've played a lot CS 1.6 and I can say that I never got significially better at strategical part of this game until I started thinking while I play and started analyzing it.
When comparing games and books, difference is that books takes a lot more space in your brains for consuming big amounts of literal information, while for games you don't have to store athat much garbage in your brains.
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Eh, don't take life so seriously. There isn't any fun in that
Life is pretty serious business. I'm pissed that I only get one try, like one playthrough.
I like to go back to the last save when I screw up in my games, even if I don't actually die, just if I screw up. -
Why are so many people supports reading books? Taking tons of text in your brains doesn't seem like an effective way to improve someone's wisdom, unless reader thinks on his own as he reads. To become smarter a person have to think on his own instead of just consuming information without questioning it.
One thing to become better at by reading books would be learning the properly used grammar and structures of text written in those books and therefore subconsciously learns to write and talk better… But not neccesarily that makes one smarter just because of improving one's literal language.I agree about games helping to become more intelegent, but this is the same thing above - you have to actually think as you play or it would be same as reading a book without questioning what you read. I've played a lot CS 1.6 and I can say that I never got significially better at strategical part of this game until I started thinking while I play and started analyzing it.
When comparing games and books, difference is that books takes a lot more space in your brains for consuming big amounts of literal information, while for games you don't have to store athat much garbage in your brains.
You must be reading the wrong books. I would start praising again about how the good books make you question the status quo of everything and maje you analyze everything but i think i'm starting to sound like a PSA so i'll stop.
Life is pretty serious business. I'm pissed that I only get one try, like one playthrough.
I like to go back to the last save when I screw up in my games, even if I don't actually die, just if I screw up.We're all gonna die anyway, Have some fun. Maybe that way you will find the way to find inmortality beyond death in whatever means that would be.
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You must be reading the wrong books. I would start praising again about how the good books make you question the status quo of everything and maje you analyze everything but i think i'm starting to sound like a PSA so i'll stop.
We're all gonna die anyway, Have some fun. Maybe that way you will find the way to find inmortality beyond death in whatever means that would be.
Well, I don't think I've read wrong books, if you mention that then I actually have gotten a lot of my intelegence from books. However I don't remember any piece of text from any of books I've read, I've stored that knowledge from books into a form of insight. Perhabs reason why I wrote this is because I'm not sure about how other people use books when they read them.
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We're all gonna die anyway, Have some fun. Maybe that way you will find the way to find inmortality beyond death in whatever means that would be.
You mean like uploading my consciousness and living as a cute little anime girl for the rest of my (artificial) life?
That would be cool if that was like my "avatar", and people had to go like 500 floors up to find my "real body" in a tank.
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Well, I don't think I've read wrong books, if you mention that then I actually have gotten a lot of my intelegence from books. However I don't remember any piece of text from any of books I've read, I've stored that knowledge from books into a form of insight. Perhabs reason why I wrote this is because I'm not sure about how other people use books when they read them.
I…I really didn't understand anything you just wrote. Sorry, Could you run that again for me ?
You mean like uploading my consciousness and living as a cute little anime girl for the rest of my (artificial) life?
That would be cool if that was like my "avatar", and people had to go like 500 floors up to find my "real body" in a tank.
Ok, it's me. It must be me. I'm going to sleep. Too late for me and my decrepit body
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I…I really didn't understand anything you just wrote. Sorry, Could you run that again for me ?
I treat books as disposable filters for adjusting the way how I think about specific subjects what I read about, because I can't physically hope to remember everything I've read from a book, which is why I'm not focusing on learning any literal lines from books. But when looking at people around I'm not sure how they treat books. In some cases I see some examples where people can remember exact lines from books, which doesn't make sense to me. Which is why I assume that people treat books differently and which is why I'm not sure if people can just take a book and get the most of it just by someone suggesting to read it.
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Its not much, but today I discovered something great towards helping research and study.
[http://scholar.google.com.au/E](http://scholar.google.com.au/)ither I'm late to the party, or everyone else is in the dark on this too.
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Google scholar will not help you. It's a reference point for research papers, patents and other scholarly articles, which are mostly dense with information coded in the particular lingo of a field. It's not an entry level tool and is likely to confuse you more.
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I use that site to look up research studies and medical information.
Pretty useful when you have something in mind, pretty well useless otherwise. -
Well, I don't think I've read wrong books, if you mention that then I actually have gotten a lot of my intelegence from books. However I don't remember any piece of text from any of books I've read, I've stored that knowledge from books into a form of insight. Perhabs reason why I wrote this is because I'm not sure about how other people use books when they read them.
I mean it's just all what you take out of any medium.
It's why people bash stuff like reality TV or the tabloids. Absorbing them doesn't really provide anything useful, but taking something with more depth without really thinking about it and absorbing what it can teach you is fruitless as well. You could read something like "Crime and Punishment" or "Anna Karenina," but if you're not exercising your grey matter by really trying to understand the message, you wouldn't get much if anything out of it at all.
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@Purple:
I mean it's just all what you take out of any medium.
It's why people bash stuff like reality TV or the tabloids. Absorbing them doesn't really provide anything useful, but taking something with more depth without really thinking about it and absorbing what it can teach you is fruitless as well. You could read something like "Crime and Punishment" or "Anna Karenina," but if you're not exercising your grey matter by really trying to understand the message, you wouldn't get much if anything out of it at all.
Hm, isn't that what I meant? I mean absorbing information as just raw information isn't that useful, instead I focus on what I can learn from a medium and don't bother to focus on remembering pieces of literal information.
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Hm, isn't that what I meant? I mean absorbing information as just raw information isn't that useful, instead I focus on what I can learn from a medium and don't bother to focus on remembering pieces of literal information.
Yeah, pretty much. I was just doing my own input on it. Sorry if that wasn't clear.
I think reading is placed more highly than other media because when it comes to recorded information, be it stories or just data and research, the vast wealth of it often is stored away in the form of text. Makes sense, of course. Years and years of accumulation as well as the most easily accessible way for people to exchange ideas other than I suppose word of mouth. This isn't anything to be disparaging about other forms of media which may help other people out more such as visual learners or people who learn better in the moment of doing something, but it's simply that you miss out on a lot of stuff if you don't go and explore various texts, fiction or otherwise.
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Well from the look of things it can be very useful; that is if you know what you are looking for.
e.g I found a good paper on nootropics, which pretty much reaffirmed my belief that it is a huge scam at this time in history.But that said I doubt I would have many times that I would want to use it, or see it being a better option than regular ol' google.
And on the topic of chemical tablets/options: I finally saw an article about the fish oil/omega 3 fad that happened a while back. A study seemed to reveal that results showed no real change in patients using it. What a shame.
Then again if we could make any drastic effect on ourselves from something in a bottle, It would dominate headlines pretty fast.
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Well from the look of things it can be very useful; that is if you know what you are looking for.
e.g I found a good paper on nootropics, which pretty much reaffirmed my belief that it is a huge scam at this time in history.But that said I doubt I would have many times that I would want to use it, or see it being a better option than regular ol' google.
And on the topic of chemical tablets/options: I finally saw an article about the fish oil/omega 3 fad that happened a while back. A study seemed to reveal that results showed no real change in patients using it. What a shame.
Then again if we could make any drastic effect on ourselves from something in a bottle, It would dominate headlines pretty fast.
This is exactly why going on Google Scholar without knowing what you're reading about can be detrimental to you.
What is a good paper to you? Is it because it wrote up a study or a review on nootropics and how it plays a role in students boosting their scores? Or is it the basis of which it's used in certain treatments? People most certainly feel like they do better with adderall as college students, although I'd rather not use any chemical stimulants. An article can go on and be scathing all it wants but its perspective in certain fields.
Chemical tablets? Sure I don't agree with taking large amounts of multivitamins, but they're there for certain nutrient deficient people. And the thing about these studies are that one study can produce one set of results while another can contradict it (which is, in itself, actually good science to have people peer reviewing research even though it uneases people). For example, while not taking too many Omega-3 fatty acids may not be beneficial for you, there is no doubt that you absolutely need omega-3's because your body can't synthesize them. Yeah the fad's some BS, but that's what the majority of them tend to be.
Google Scholar is a tool. It's meant to ease the search of peer reviewed articles for the purpose of research, but I would not use it as a go-to for initial jumps into things.
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Btw what do you guys think about this?
If a guy reads a text, like on sentence of a book, in what kind of form does that text stays in his brains? Same for when hearing someone talk or seeing something. My point is that information we take is temporary and not whole anyway, therefore I think that the real purpose of consuming information is to condition one's brain to take certain state of understanding/insight. Like this text, it's meant to condition someone's else's understanding about what I mean to say. But do you still keep all sentences I wrote in your memory? Like I said, any pieces of information is immediately translated into form of abstraction/insight/instinct/primal language, regardless of how you mean to call it. My point is that this is the very basis of our intelegence and any forms of languages, like english, math, psychic formulas, art, etc, serves just as medium with purpose to condition this process in our brains.
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It's very refreshing to see so many of you with such a great insight into this topic.
One thing I'm keen to know is what book/books you would recommend towards improving, or expanding ones intellect. And yes this is a broad question seeming as it covers just about everything ever written. But still; if any of you have read a life changing book of any sort, I'd be keen to know what it was, and how it has made an impact on yourself. No matter how small or obscure it is.
The fault in our stars by john green is not giving up >_>
Alsom learning a new language can expand ur mind so much. I can't explain how, but when u learned it you will know what I'm talkin about
(German is a good and beautiful language >.> <.<) -
Is it not one of the same? ie do you not think being a profound person is spawned from the broad level of intelligence they hold? (but not the other way around)
In my experience most people attain that through the wisdom of knowledge, or life experiences that they unknowingly gained from living, and in some cases, actively through the search of knowledge.
Why is it that the AP awards have two different categories, one for smartest member, and one for most profound member, then?
I suppose that even common understanding vaguely senses a difference between the two, but is not clear about what that difference is. I’ll try to elucidate this common understanding from my point of view. If you don’t like it, just ignore it then. But if you like, engaging it can be a mental exercise to boost your intellect.[hide]
To be smart is more about being clever, witty, crafty, astute, prudent, shrewd or cunning, being effective, skilled or adept at something. It is the ability to process information at hand in order to quickly find a solution, a way to achieve a specific goal, to deal with a situation. It focuses more on result and has a more pragmatic, strategic, goal-directed nature, and can be enhanced through experiences and training, the various methods that have been suggested here.To be profound is more about piercing through appearance, accidentality, contingency, particularity, specificity, and immediacy in order to see the underlying nature of things, to see what’s essential, fundamental, universal, encompassing, and timeless. It focuses more on understanding, wholeness and meaningfulness, and has a more philosophical, existential nature, and is often gained through contemplative reflections. It requires a special kind of intelligence, close to what Howard Gardner termed “existential intelligence” but was reluctant to include in his theory of multiple intelligences.
The dichotomy here may bear some resemblance to Martin Heidegger’s dichotomy of calculative thinking and meditative thinking, but I am not exactly a Heideggerian, so I’ll just leave it at that. You may note, to the non-profound mind, what is profound can appear as pointless and nonsensical, and in some case is indistinguishable from what is really pointless and nonsensical. A large part of academic philosophy and postmodern literature are indeed nonsenses masquerading as profundity. I’ll leave it to you to decide if what I’m saying is pointless and nonsensical. I am not putting them into a hierarchy here. They can overlap, and each has its own importance.
I consider someone like Einstein extremely smart, but not particularly profound. He is more profound than most physicists, that’s for sure, as he quite appreciated philosophers like Spinoza and Schopenhauer, who also influenced his thoughts. Still, outside of physics, I don’t find what he said particularly stimulating. That is not to say I don’t appreciate his contributions.
To me, profundity is never merely intellectual, but also spiritual, i.e. it is not just about thinking, but also about being; it does not merely entertain a thought, put it at a safe distance in front of one’s mind, but integrates it into one’s being and becomes a way of being. It is not necessarily practical or impractical, and its practical implication is not always obvious. You want to know how to get good grade in college, earn two degrees in physics and engineering, prove a mathematical theorem, speak several languages, seduce a girl, entertain a crowd, win an election, climb the job ladder, thrive in the stock market or choose a business to invest? That doesn’t really require profundity, but smartness. You want to improve your general knowledge and intelligence? You can try memorizing the entire Encyclopedia Britannica, but that doesn’t necessarily make you more profound. The common spiritual devotees who practice meditation and follow a guru or a spiritual leader are not necessarily more profound than the man in the business suit either. What exactly fits the criteria of this mysterious, elusive profundity then? I wonder if it’s necessary for me to give a definite answer here.
Now, it seems appropriate to revisit the question: why do you want to boost your intellect? Is it just a general desire to surpass yourself? A young man in his 20s, feeling dissatisfied with himself, decides to explore his potential? I imagine the following scenario: You get bored with your usual routine, waking up only open your eyes to a boring circle of work, unable to find stimulation in the online message boards you frequent, unable to make breakthrough in the hobby of art and photography, and even your lovely German girlfriend has not been enough to make you feel fulfilled. Now and then you are looking at a computer screen, now and then you are gazing at the blue sky of Australia, and an empty, hollow feeling pervades your being. “Great Scott, what am I doing with my life?! Surely there must be more to life than this, surely I can be more than just this!” You want to change, but are uncertain about what direction you should take, like a man groping around in the dark, a sailor in a vast ocean without a compass. You want to improve yourself, but what purposes that will serve you are unclear. Is it simply to convince yourself that you are capable of more, to feel better about yourself, to feel that you are intelligent and cultured even without proving it to someone else, to lessen the dull boredom of your everyday life, to satisfy an idle curiosity?
But how far will that get you? To make great advance requires great motivation. Jus dabbling around being a dilettante won’t get you far, left alone pushing your potential to its limit. And it’s also important to remember that intelligence is not just about how much you know, but also about knowing how much you don’t know. Doubt is essential. It may benefit you then to pause and ask: What can I know? How do I know? How much can I know? What should I know? What do I know for certain (i.e. with absolute certainty)? Or you may disregard them as pointless obtuse philosophical bullshits. But then, what you fancy as knowledge may turn out to be unjustified beliefs. Many of what you hold as true for now may be falsified in a not far future. The feeling of knowledgeability and intelligence may turn out to be no more than an ephemeral self-satisfaction, a vain sense of accomplishment without any root in objective reality. If you aim for some practical goals, then know-hows and generally accepted conventions are enough to get what you want. And I certainly won't interfere with that. But if you aim for true knowledge, i.e. propositional knowledge/justified true beliefs, then it’s a whole different ordeal. A philosophical enterprise, which you may not be too interested in.
[/hide]It’s my humble input. ^_^
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The fault in our stars by john green is not giving up >_>
Alsom learning a new language can expand ur mind so much. I can't explain how, but when u learned it you will know what I'm talkin about
(German is a good and beautiful language >.> <.<)Well beautiful i don't know about. But with Germany looking as good as it does it could be a good investment.
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Why are so many people supports reading books? Taking tons of text in your brains doesn't seem like an effective way to improve someone's wisdom, unless reader thinks on his own as he reads. To become smarter a person have to think on his own instead of just consuming information without questioning it.
One thing to become better at by reading books would be learning the properly used grammar and structures of text written in those books and therefore subconsciously learns to write and talk better… But not neccesarily that makes one smarter just because of improving one's literal language.I agree about games helping to become more intelegent, but this is the same thing above - you have to actually think as you play or it would be same as reading a book without questioning what you read. I've played a lot CS 1.6 and I can say that I never got significially better at strategical part of this game until I started thinking while I play and started analyzing it.
When comparing games and books, difference is that books takes a lot more space in your brains for consuming big amounts of literal information, while for games you don't have to store athat much garbage in your brains.
how can you question anything without studying the topic (ie: reading multiple books/papers) and gathering information in order to make a well informed judgement? not being well informed just leaves you vulnerable to propaganda
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How can you question information….WITHOUT information for that matter??
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Well from the look of things it can be very useful; that is if you know what you are looking for.
e.g I found a good paper on nootropics, which pretty much reaffirmed my belief that it is a huge scam at this time in history.But that said I doubt I would have many times that I would want to use it, or see it being a better option than regular ol' google.
And on the topic of chemical tablets/options: I finally saw an article about the fish oil/omega 3 fad that happened a while back. A study seemed to reveal that results showed no real change in patients using it. What a shame.
Then again if we could make any drastic effect on ourselves from something in a bottle, It would dominate headlines pretty fast.
Scholarly articles tend to be written by people who know a lot about what they talk about, but nothing about writing.
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If you're not already a person who was privileged to be taught to, or pick up, the critical thinking skills necessary to independently support themselves in being able to absorb and take in information (related to their interests) already than you never will in the future just by thrusting yourself in. You will never know how to apply your curiousness.
Basically your life is over.
You will probably die sticking a rectangle up your ass and thinking the shape fits.
Bummer, dude.
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Some of the dumbest people I seen are highly educated upper middle class people who like know a lot but don't how to actually think.
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@Holy:
You will probably die sticking a rectangle up your ass and thinking the shape fits.
Bummer, dude.
Have I said that I love your posts?
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@Holy:
If you're not already a person who was privileged to be taught to, or pick up, the critical thinking skills necessary to independently support themselves in being able to absorb and take in information (related to their interests) already than you never will in the future just by thrusting yourself in. You will never know how to apply your curiousness.
Basically your life is over.
I've been thinking pretty much the same thing concerning this entire thread but just haven't been willing to say it out loud because, hey, if people want to find ways to civilize themselves, I'm all for it. Please do, it's good for you and makes your life an awful lot easier. Just don't expect to become the next Nietzsche simply because you do.
But I've been wondering… If "thrusting yourself in" doesn't work, and it definitely doesn't because if you're trying to be intelligent without actually knowing how to you'll only end up like the middle class globs of organic matter desperate to look spectacular that Zephos is talking about, is there a way to make it work? Ideally you'd get someone who's discerning enough to point out the flaws in your logic and to teach you how to process and use the information that you get all the time just by living, but that isn't very realistic. So how does someone who's stuck in their thinking like that move on? I'm not so cynical that I would believe it's completely impossible, it's just excruciatingly hard. And I wonder, how does someone like that start if they really want to?
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@Monkey:
Some of the dumbest people I seen are highly educated upper middle class people who like know a lot but don't how to actually think.
Reminds me of Will Smith yelling at the scientist in I Robot and saying she's one of the dumbest smart people he knows.
Anywho I tried the Lumosity site once. It's mostly just a bunch of mini games for memorization and being able to understand instructions. Sooo…Basically everything I learned how to do in very video game in a dumbed down version. Luckily it was free and I didn't lose anything other than time trying it out. But the ads for it says it's supposed to boost brain power.
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@Monkey:
Some of the dumbest people I seen are highly educated upper middle class people who like know a lot but don't how to actually think.
Some people are educated beyond their intelligence.
I remember arguing with one of my dad's coworkers over the concept of a flat tax; he just couldn't understand how a tax with no exemptions would be worse than a slightly higher one with several. As far as he was concerned, a straight twenty percent tax rate was still better than a nominal thirty percent rate that actually goes to eighteen when you add in child credits and other things along those lines. He's actually a fairly sharp guy but couldn't quite grasp that basic concept for whatever reason.
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Reminds me of Will Smith yelling at the scientist in I Robot and saying she's one of the dumbest smart people he knows.
Anywho I tried the Lumosity site once. It's mostly just a bunch of mini games for memorization and being able to understand instructions. Sooo…Basically everything I learned how to do in very video game in a dumbed down version. Luckily it was free and I didn't lose anything other than time trying it out. But the ads for it says it's supposed to boost brain power.
Isn't luminosity just like Brain Age but online? So a bunch of exercises to keep the brain fresh day to day?
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@Purple:
Isn't luminosity just like Brain Age but online? So a bunch of exercises to keep the brain fresh day to day?
Possibly? I'm not familiar with Brain Age.
The ads calls it a personal trainer for your brain.
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@Monkey:
wat small country is it you from
Dahell with this question.
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@Monkey:
Some of the dumbest people I seen are highly educated upper middle class people who like know a lot but don't how to actually think.
I like to imagine there's a connection as to why the libertarian population seems to find a home in hardcore computer sciences, engineering, chemistry and what not if we make it a fundamental constant across the board that libertarians are ignorant ass people.
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@Monkey:
u said you were from a small county, i wanna know which one
I'm mary bonney dude
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@Holy:
I like to imagine there's a connection as to why the libertarian population seems to find a home in hardcore computer sciences, engineering, chemistry and what not if we make it a fundamental constant across the board that libertarians are ignorant ass people.
Libertarianism was the first thing I thought of when I read that post; nice to see I'm not alone in that.
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Seems hard to determine who's got a "greater intellect". Most people, smart or dumb, seem predisposed to certain things.
A relative of mine, smart as a whip, teaches math at university level. Can not process languages to save his life.
And of course me on the other end of the spectrum, math, physics, chemistry it all slays me. While i could coast on most other subjects.
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I have a photographic memory, and honestly? It feels like playing through life with a cheat mode. So many tests of prowess are predominantly tests of memory in disguise, such as the multitude of school subjects where exams are based around simple regurgitation of facts already learnt. Even analytic disciplines tend to do the analysis in advance and ask you to remember that for the exams themselves - such as where your English Literature teacher will walk you through Hamlet with the aid of guide books and then come the actual written exam, you're required to repeat back what those guide books taught you.
Is memory intelligence? Certainly by many hallmarks of our culture, it'd seem to be. I'm taken for a supergenius or something just because I can remember maps in great detail and navigate around the world from inside my head, but that's not smarts, that's simply remembering in detail something I looked at before. Ditto general knowledge - pub quiz champions aren't considered to be Einstein, but they're still taken to be intellectual powerhouses when they're just good at recalling facts.
It's always bothered me, even though I've benefited from it. Seeing friends study for weeks to recall the same amount as I'd get from long-term memory and a cursory read over my notes the morning before the exam made me feel rotten, to be honest.
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Seems hard to determine who's got a "greater intellect". Most people, smart or dumb, seem predisposed to certain things.
A relative of mine, smart as a whip, teaches math at university level. Can not process languages to save his life.
And of course me on the other end of the spectrum, math, physics, chemistry it all slays me. While i could coast on most other subjects.
It's understood and accepted nowadays that people, as they grow, have talents such as the visual-spatial, or mathematical, or musical, or sometimes multiple. Theory of multiple intelligences. Makes sense and seems really nice to believe that everyone has a skill pool somewhere! In the context of this thread, it'd be like people who don't have the necessary thinking foundations to learn and excel in their talents. Like I mentioned in my prior goofy ass post that is not far from the truth.
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Please check your square butthole privilege
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@Print:
I have a photographic memory, and honestly? It feels like playing through life with a cheat mode. So many tests of prowess are predominantly tests of memory in disguise, such as the multitude of school subjects where exams are based around simple regurgitation of facts already learnt. Even analytic disciplines tend to do the analysis in advance and ask you to remember that for the exams themselves - such as where your English Literature teacher will walk you through Hamlet with the aid of guide books and then come the actual written exam, you're required to repeat back what those guide books taught you.
Is memory intelligence? Certainly by many hallmarks of our culture, it'd seem to be. I'm taken for a supergenius or something just because I can remember maps in great detail and navigate around the world from inside my head, but that's not smarts, that's simply remembering in detail something I looked at before. Ditto general knowledge - pub quiz champions aren't considered to be Einstein, but they're still taken to be intellectual powerhouses when they're just good at recalling facts.
It's always bothered me, even though I've benefited from it. Seeing friends study for weeks to recall the same amount as I'd get from long-term memory and a cursory read over my notes the morning before the exam made me feel rotten, to be honest.
Exactly the same here.
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@Holy:
It's understood and accepted nowadays that people, as they grow, have talents such as the visual-spatial, or mathematical, or musical, or sometimes multiple. Theory of multiple intelligences. Makes sense and seems really nice to believe that everyone has a skill pool somewhere! In the context of this thread, it'd be like people who don't have the necessary thinking foundations to learn and excel in their talents. Like I mentioned in my prior goofy ass post that is not far from the truth.
Somehow i imagine this is going to be taken as a very insulting put down made by you lol.
But yeah it makes perfect sense to me that there are different types of intelligence. But still it's surreal seeing someone who've you've never seen do anything but excel at some hardass shit, suddenly look like a deer in headlights over something you, mr non-genius never would've thought about a second time. Guess it's hard to tell people's weaker areas sometimes when you only see them in their comfort zone.
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Somehow i imagine this is going to be taken as a very insulting put down made by you lol.
But yeah it makes perfect sense to me that there are different types of intelligence. But still it's surreal seeing someone who've you've never seen do anything but excel at some hardass shit, suddenly look like a deer in headlights over something you, mr non-genius never would've thought about a second time. Guess it's hard to tell people's weaker areas sometimes when you only see them in their comfort zone.
I briefly shared an apartment with a guy who worked on nuclear subs. Was super smart and very good at what he did. But couldn't make Kool-Aid properly.
There are definitely different types of intelligence out there. Sometimes I feel a lot of people that I've been impressed with for their ingenuity and ability to think of the fly make some terribly stupid choices.
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@Toraish:
I've been thinking pretty much the same thing concerning this entire thread but just haven't been willing to say it out loud because, hey, if people want to find ways to civilize themselves, I'm all for it. Please do, it's good for you and makes your life an awful lot easier. Just don't expect to become the next Nietzsche simply because you do.
But I've been wondering… If "thrusting yourself in" doesn't work, and it definitely doesn't because if you're trying to be intelligent without actually knowing how to you'll only end up like the middle class globs of organic matter desperate to look spectacular that Zephos is talking about, is there a way to make it work? Ideally you'd get someone who's discerning enough to point out the flaws in your logic and to teach you how to process and use the information that you get all the time just by living, but that isn't very realistic. So how does someone who's stuck in their thinking like that move on? I'm not so cynical that I would believe it's completely impossible, it's just excruciatingly hard. And I wonder, how does someone like that start if they really want to?
I think the problem is that those people look for the easy way and superficial returns, so they start in the middle and stop when they can recite a few names or terms. If you really want to learn a topic, you have to start from the beginning, so that you can develop the logic you need to navigate the subject.
That's why I think high school language classes in America can be such crap. They often start with and emphasize vocabulary instead of structures or conjugation, so you learn about enough to be a basic phrases guide for tourists.