The Nonlinear Library LW - Increasing IQ is trivial by George3d6
Mar 2, 2024
08:57
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 is trivial, published by George3d6 on March 2, 2024 on LessWrong.
TL;DR - It took me about 14 days to increase my IQ by 13 points, in a controlled experiment that involved no learning, it was a relatively pleasant process, more people should be doing this.
A common cliche in many circles is that you can't increase IQ.
This is obviously false, the largest well-documented increase in IQ using nothing but training is one of 23 points.
A Standard Deviation of IQ
Alas it is a myth that persists, and when pushed on it people will say something like:
You can't easily increase IQ in a smart and perfectly healthy adult permanently.
FINE - I'm a smart and perfectly healthy adult, I tested my IQ with 4 different tests: FSIQ, the public MENSA test, Raven's progressive matrices, and Raven's advanced progressive matrices.
Then I threw the kitchen sink at the problem, and went through every intervention I could find to increase IQ over the course of 14 days (this took ~3 hours per day).
This included no "learning", or memory games, nor did it include any stimulants. It was all focused on increasing cerebral vascularization and broadening my proprioception.
I got a mean increase of 8.5 points in IQ (my control got 2), and if I only take into account the non-verbal components that increase is 12.6 (3.2 for my control). In other words, I became about a 1-standard deviation better shape rotator.
I observed an increase of > 4 points on all of the tests (and, sigh, if you must know: p=0.00008 on MWU for me, 0.95 for my control)
I used a control who was my age, about as smart as me, shared a lot of my activities, and many of my meals, and lived in the same house as me, in order to avoid any confounding. Also, to account for any "motivation bias" I offered to pay my control a large amount for every point of IQ they "gained" while retaking the tests.
Here is the raw data.
The Flowers for Algernon
The common myths around IQ and its "immutability" are best summarized here by Gwern.
"Given that intelligence is so valuable, if it was easy to get more of it, we would be more intelligent" -for one this argument is confusing IQ for intelligence, but, more importantly, it's ignoring reality.
Many things are "valuable" yet we don't have them because our evolutionary environment places constraints on us that are no longer present in our current environment. Nor is it obvious that many of the traits we value were useful for the human species to propagate, or had an easy way of being selected in our short evolutionary history.
Here, let me try:
In the mid-20th century: Your average human has about 50kg of muscles, and the most muscular functional human has about 100kg of muscles. A human with 300kgs of muscles would be stronger than a grizzly bear, an obviously desirable trait, but our genetics just don't go there, and you can only take training and steroids that far.
2021: Here's a random weightlifter I found coming in at over 400kg, I don't have his DEXA but let's say somewhere between 300 and 350kgs of muscle.
In the mid-19th century: Fat storage is useful, if we could store as much fat as a bear we could do things like hibernate. Alas, the fatest humans go to about 200kgs, and people try to eat a lot, there's probably a genetic limit on how fat you can get.
In the mid-20th century: Here's a guy that weighs 635kg, putting an adult polar bear to shame.
And fine you say, becoming stronger and/or fatter than a bear requires tradeoffs, you won't live past 50 or so and you will sacrifice other areas. But then let's look at other things that are genetically determined, evolutionarily selected for (heavily), but where with modern tools we can break past imposed boundaries:
Thymic involution
Skin aging
Bone and cartilage repair
Eyesight
One reason why this point of view is so popular is becaus...
TL;DR - It took me about 14 days to increase my IQ by 13 points, in a controlled experiment that involved no learning, it was a relatively pleasant process, more people should be doing this.
A common cliche in many circles is that you can't increase IQ.
This is obviously false, the largest well-documented increase in IQ using nothing but training is one of 23 points.
A Standard Deviation of IQ
Alas it is a myth that persists, and when pushed on it people will say something like:
You can't easily increase IQ in a smart and perfectly healthy adult permanently.
FINE - I'm a smart and perfectly healthy adult, I tested my IQ with 4 different tests: FSIQ, the public MENSA test, Raven's progressive matrices, and Raven's advanced progressive matrices.
Then I threw the kitchen sink at the problem, and went through every intervention I could find to increase IQ over the course of 14 days (this took ~3 hours per day).
This included no "learning", or memory games, nor did it include any stimulants. It was all focused on increasing cerebral vascularization and broadening my proprioception.
I got a mean increase of 8.5 points in IQ (my control got 2), and if I only take into account the non-verbal components that increase is 12.6 (3.2 for my control). In other words, I became about a 1-standard deviation better shape rotator.
I observed an increase of > 4 points on all of the tests (and, sigh, if you must know: p=0.00008 on MWU for me, 0.95 for my control)
I used a control who was my age, about as smart as me, shared a lot of my activities, and many of my meals, and lived in the same house as me, in order to avoid any confounding. Also, to account for any "motivation bias" I offered to pay my control a large amount for every point of IQ they "gained" while retaking the tests.
Here is the raw data.
The Flowers for Algernon
The common myths around IQ and its "immutability" are best summarized here by Gwern.
"Given that intelligence is so valuable, if it was easy to get more of it, we would be more intelligent" -for one this argument is confusing IQ for intelligence, but, more importantly, it's ignoring reality.
Many things are "valuable" yet we don't have them because our evolutionary environment places constraints on us that are no longer present in our current environment. Nor is it obvious that many of the traits we value were useful for the human species to propagate, or had an easy way of being selected in our short evolutionary history.
Here, let me try:
In the mid-20th century: Your average human has about 50kg of muscles, and the most muscular functional human has about 100kg of muscles. A human with 300kgs of muscles would be stronger than a grizzly bear, an obviously desirable trait, but our genetics just don't go there, and you can only take training and steroids that far.
2021: Here's a random weightlifter I found coming in at over 400kg, I don't have his DEXA but let's say somewhere between 300 and 350kgs of muscle.
In the mid-19th century: Fat storage is useful, if we could store as much fat as a bear we could do things like hibernate. Alas, the fatest humans go to about 200kgs, and people try to eat a lot, there's probably a genetic limit on how fat you can get.
In the mid-20th century: Here's a guy that weighs 635kg, putting an adult polar bear to shame.
And fine you say, becoming stronger and/or fatter than a bear requires tradeoffs, you won't live past 50 or so and you will sacrifice other areas. But then let's look at other things that are genetically determined, evolutionarily selected for (heavily), but where with modern tools we can break past imposed boundaries:
Thymic involution
Skin aging
Bone and cartilage repair
Eyesight
One reason why this point of view is so popular is becaus...