The Nonlinear Library LW - Increasing IQ by 10 Points is Possible by George3d6
Mar 19, 2024
07:39
Welcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: Increasing IQ by 10 Points is Possible, published by George3d6 on March 19, 2024 on LessWrong.
A while ago I wrote how I managed to add 13 points to my IQ (as measured by the mean between 4 different tests).
I had 3 "self-experimenters" follow my instructions in San Francisco. One of them dropped off, since, surprise surprise, the intervention is hard.
The other two had an increase of 11 and 10 points in IQ respectively (using the "fluid" components of each test) and an increase of 9 and 7 respectively if we include verbal IQ.
A total of 7 people acted as a control and were given advantages on the test compared to the intervention group to exacerbate the effects of memory and motivation, only 1 scored on par with the intervention group. We get a very good p-value, considering the small n, both when comparing the % change in control vs intervention (0.04) and the before/after intervention values (0.006)
Working Hypothesis
My working hypothesis for this was simple:
If I can increase blood flow to the brain in a safe way (e.g. via specific exercises, specific supplements, and photostimulation in the NUV and NIR range)
And I can make people think "out of the box" (e.g. via specific games, specific "supplements", specific meditations)
And prod people to think about how they can improve in whatever areas they want (e.g. via journaling, talking, and meditating)
Then you get this amazing cocktail of spare cognitive capacity suddenly getting used.
As per the last article, I can't exactly have a step-by-step guide for how to do this, given that a lot of this is quite specific. I was rather lucky that 2 of my subjects were very athletic and "got it" quite fast in terms of the exercises they had to be doing.
The Rub
At this point, I'm confident all the "common sense" distillation on what people were experimenting with has been done, and the intervention takes quite a while.
Dedicating 4 hours a day to something for 2 weeks is one thing, but given that we're engaging in a form of training for the mind, the participants need not only be present, but actively engaged.
A core component of my approach is the idea that people can (often non-conceptually) reason through their shortcomings if given enough spare capacity, and reach a more holistic form of thinking.
I'm hardly the first to propose or observe this, though I do want to think my approach is more well-proven, entirely secular, and faster. Still, the main bottleneck remains convincing people to spend the time on it.
What's next
My goal when I started thinking about this was to prove to myself that the brain and the mind are more malleable than we think, that relatively silly and easy things, to the tune of:
A few supplements and 3-4 hours of effort a day for 2 weeks, can change things that degrade with aging and are taken as impossible to reverse
Over the last two months, I became quite convinced there is something here… I don't quite understand its shape yet, but I want to pursue it.
At present, I am considering putting together a team of specialists (which is to say neuroscientists and "bodyworkers"), refining this intervention with them, and selling it to people as a 2-week retreat.
But there's also a bunch of cool hardware that's coming out of doing this
As well as a much better understanding of the way some drugs and supplements work… and understanding I could package together with the insanely long test-and-iterate decision tree to use these substances optimally (more on this soon).
There was some discussion and interested expressed by the Lighthaven team in the previous comment section to replicate, and now that I have data from more people I hope that follows through, I'd be high-quality data from a trustworthy first party, and I'm well aware at this point this should still hit the "quack" meter for most people.
I'm al...
A while ago I wrote how I managed to add 13 points to my IQ (as measured by the mean between 4 different tests).
I had 3 "self-experimenters" follow my instructions in San Francisco. One of them dropped off, since, surprise surprise, the intervention is hard.
The other two had an increase of 11 and 10 points in IQ respectively (using the "fluid" components of each test) and an increase of 9 and 7 respectively if we include verbal IQ.
A total of 7 people acted as a control and were given advantages on the test compared to the intervention group to exacerbate the effects of memory and motivation, only 1 scored on par with the intervention group. We get a very good p-value, considering the small n, both when comparing the % change in control vs intervention (0.04) and the before/after intervention values (0.006)
Working Hypothesis
My working hypothesis for this was simple:
If I can increase blood flow to the brain in a safe way (e.g. via specific exercises, specific supplements, and photostimulation in the NUV and NIR range)
And I can make people think "out of the box" (e.g. via specific games, specific "supplements", specific meditations)
And prod people to think about how they can improve in whatever areas they want (e.g. via journaling, talking, and meditating)
Then you get this amazing cocktail of spare cognitive capacity suddenly getting used.
As per the last article, I can't exactly have a step-by-step guide for how to do this, given that a lot of this is quite specific. I was rather lucky that 2 of my subjects were very athletic and "got it" quite fast in terms of the exercises they had to be doing.
The Rub
At this point, I'm confident all the "common sense" distillation on what people were experimenting with has been done, and the intervention takes quite a while.
Dedicating 4 hours a day to something for 2 weeks is one thing, but given that we're engaging in a form of training for the mind, the participants need not only be present, but actively engaged.
A core component of my approach is the idea that people can (often non-conceptually) reason through their shortcomings if given enough spare capacity, and reach a more holistic form of thinking.
I'm hardly the first to propose or observe this, though I do want to think my approach is more well-proven, entirely secular, and faster. Still, the main bottleneck remains convincing people to spend the time on it.
What's next
My goal when I started thinking about this was to prove to myself that the brain and the mind are more malleable than we think, that relatively silly and easy things, to the tune of:
A few supplements and 3-4 hours of effort a day for 2 weeks, can change things that degrade with aging and are taken as impossible to reverse
Over the last two months, I became quite convinced there is something here… I don't quite understand its shape yet, but I want to pursue it.
At present, I am considering putting together a team of specialists (which is to say neuroscientists and "bodyworkers"), refining this intervention with them, and selling it to people as a 2-week retreat.
But there's also a bunch of cool hardware that's coming out of doing this
As well as a much better understanding of the way some drugs and supplements work… and understanding I could package together with the insanely long test-and-iterate decision tree to use these substances optimally (more on this soon).
There was some discussion and interested expressed by the Lighthaven team in the previous comment section to replicate, and now that I have data from more people I hope that follows through, I'd be high-quality data from a trustworthy first party, and I'm well aware at this point this should still hit the "quack" meter for most people.
I'm al...