People Trained To Experience an Overlap In Senses Also Receive IQ Boost 68
Zothecula writes Tasting lemons when they see a number seven, regarding a certain letter as being yellow in color. Not a great deal is known about why some people experience an overlapping of the senses, a phenomena known as synesthesia. But a new study conducted at the University of Sussex has suggested that specific training of the mind can induce the effects of the condition. The study even suggests that such training can boost a person's IQ.
The biggest news was left out (Score:4, Insightful)
Is the 12-point boost in IQ permanent or does it fade over three months like the primary effects of the training?
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By far, the worst thing about half the articles being written about benny-boy is that the other half of articles are full of derails complaining about him.
Re:The biggest news was left out (Score:4, Interesting)
Intelligence is largely similar between all humans: we don't have actual boundaries. The normal intellectual boundary is artificial; even physical limits are artificial.
One of the most famous examples of the human artificial boundary phenomena is running. For the longest time, a four-minute mile was considered physiologically impossible. When the record was broken, it was swiftly broken again by another bloke a month later. Within a few years, everyone was running four-minute miles. It's now a standard, and the record is much lower than four minutes.
What held humans back from breaking the four-minute mile was not believing they could run a mile that fast. By not believing in the possibility, they trained themselves to assess those last precious seconds as the best they could do; they would push themselves, find difficulty, and assume this was as good as it gets. They wouldn't push themselves further because the exertion was interpreted as some sort of dangerous violation of what is possible, safe, or sane: it's hard because it can't be done, so the pain and exhaustion mean it's time to stop here.
In modern times, Olympic records are broken every year; mental mathematics are continuously improved; and humans at the World Memory Competition continuously break previous records for memorizing lots of shit in little time. Typists type faster, bicyclists bicycle faster, and IQ tests follow a sliding scale such that Einstein was kind of dumb and we've repeatedly revamped the Culture Fair and changed the baselines for the Wechsler. People are of the mind that anything that can be done can be done slightly better, and continue to progress by degrees over their predecessors.
What makes this progress possible--and what impedes it--is the form of practice taken. Time spent practicing has little to no impact on skill; it is the mode of practice that matters most. K. Anders Ericsson published a theory of Deliberate Practice: that a person practices in a goal-oriented manner with a focus on technique, folding in constant, continuous feedback to improve upon his deficiencies. In short: a person who simply tries repeatedly to memorize a deck of 52 cards will make small gains; while a person who reviews and notices himself confusing or slowing on specific cards will target those cards, correct the issue, and make rapid gains both small and large.
All of this brings us to a head about intelligence, and about the permanence of training.
Intelligence is a matter of creativity: a person must be able to apply knowledge to solve problems, rather than repeat back rote facts. Creativity is, in turn, a matter of knowledge: invention and inventory are the same; you invent by reassembling the inventory of your mind into new forms, dividing a problem into recognizable components and adjusting solutions to similar components so as to produce a solution. Knowledge is, of course, a matter of memory: you cannot know what you do not remember.
Memory is improved by technique. The primary considerations are meaningfulness: information is best memorized when it is organized (grouped) and attached to well-understood ideas. Images are immediately well-understood, and so visualization is used to convert complex thoughts into meaningful representations of known topics (i.e. a running duck--both "running" and "duck" are meaningful--can be visualized). Attaching sounds, smells, and actions makes a more vivid, accessible, memorable image; and complex techniques and systems such as linking, story forming, and mind palaces further aid in recall by providing indexing or association.
Synesthetes make concepts meaningful by attaching other concepts. Sound forms its own imagery, or numbers have their own smells. The mimicry of this is a core technique in memory improvement: speed card participants attach playing cards to images, emotions, smells, sounds, textures, and whatever else they can; while numeric memory is aided by a PAO system, converting numbers into people, actio
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Between can be used even when there are more than two if the entities are considered as distinct individuals. Among, when they are considered as a mass or collectivity.
In this case I believe it was used correctly.
http://www.thefreedictionary.com/between [thefreedictionary.com]
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Progress in the 1 mile run has been fairly regular. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mile_run_world_record_progression [wikipedia.org] Many people may have regarded the 4 minute mile as impossible, but that doesn't seem to have had significantly altered progress to and beyond the 4 minute mile.
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Simplifications are good for application. All heavy scientific research becomes simplified application.
It's a gross oversimplification to say you can do anything that you put your mind to; it's not an oversimplification to say that everything requires effort, but methodical effort can bring everyone to the same skill set if they are sufficiently motivated. The first implies that all things are apparently easy, or at least equally difficult; the second implies that all things are equally possible for all
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"One of the most famous examples of the human artificial boundary phenomena is running. For the longest time, a four-minute mile was considered physiologically impossible. When the record was broken, it was swiftly broken again by another bloke a month later. Within a few years, everyone was running four-minute miles. It's now a standard, and the record is much lower than four minutes. "
The progress in mile records over time is linear. There's no evidence that people believing that it was impossible held an
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1945: 4:01.4. 1954: 3:59.4.
Almost a decade to improve two seconds. In 1934, the time was 4:06.8, giving 5.4 seconds of improvement over a decade; in 1964, the improvement was 5.3 seconds for the decade. There was also a period from 1895 to 1911 where the record, just above 4:15, improved by 1/5 of one second.
More importantly, once the 4 minute mile was broken, it quickly became a standard benchmark. This was a world record set for just a few years, after dangling 1.4 seconds out of reach for a de
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Tasting lemons when they see a number seven, regarding a certain letter as being yellow in color.
When I read this, I didn't think of this "Memory is improved by technique.". It made me think that they're talking about an overlap in perception, not consciously trying to make associations. The only reason I thought about this is because I get an "overlap" with several of my senses with my vision.
If I am working with something new to me or something happens unexpectedly, I "see" stuff. I can "see" sound, I can "see" touch, I can "see" my thoughts. I actually have a hard time reading story books because
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Yes, that happens when you have strong synesthesia. Those of us who don't, or who have a moderate synesthesia, are able to willfully apply such associations as a matter of technique. This makes our minds more functional.
Solomon Shereshevskii had such strong synesthesia that he couldn't read. His brain turned everything into a mess; visual imagery and metaphor were lost on him. Whatever was going on in the story was occluded behind a wall of garbage; but he could vividly recall that wall of garbage by
Re:The biggest news was left out (Score:5, Insightful)
Intelligence is largely similar between all humans: we don't have actual boundaries.
You do know what a bell curve is? Sure, most people tend towards a mean but the difference between either end is immense, with very real implications. It separates hedge fund managers from janitors. Different races and ethnicities also tend towards different means. Half a century of trying to eliminate "the gap" between blacks and whites (about a standard deviation in IQ) has been a dismal failure. Billions of dollars has been thrown at this money pit with nothing to show for it. We will see commercial fusion reactors, strong AI, heck, even mass-market-popular commercial flying cars before the gap has been eliminated.
IQ tests follow a sliding scale such that Einstein was kind of dumb and we've repeatedly revamped the Culture Fair and changed the baselines for the Wechsler.
I am definitely on the right side of the bell curve, I was born a lot later than Einstein, and modern physics is still one of the hardest subjects I've taken, if not the hardest. I call BS on this one. If Einstein did not so great on an IQ test, it says more about the particular IQ test than Einstein's IQ. I suspect that there were questions on the IQ test where Einstein was right and the IQ test was wrong, and/or the IQ test was only calibrated to be accurate near the mean and not where Einstein's IQ was. You can take a hundred cram school attendees who have managed to ace the SAT through sheer bloody-mindedness and still not get the intellectual output of one Einstein.
Attaching sounds, smells, and actions makes a more vivid, accessible, memorable image; and complex techniques and systems such as linking, story forming, and mind palaces further aid in recall by providing indexing or association.
I know the technique of mind palaces and find them utterly unwieldy. Why use a mind palace to remember a fact when you can just write it down or google it?
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Don't leave us in suspense: which job is displaying intelligence?
Impossible to show. Different cultures tend towards different means, for various reasons. To demonstrate IQ differences between races, we'd have to eliminate cultural differences.
As far as I can tell, based on a little Googling, Einstein never took an IQ test. Various people have
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You do know what a bell curve is? Sure, most people tend towards a mean but the difference between either end is immense, with very real implications.
You assume performance as such is inherent, and cannot be changed. It's not.
I am definitely on the right side of the bell curve, I was born a lot later than Einstein, and modern physics is still one of the hardest subjects I've taken, if not the hardest.
Bacon claimed that a man cannot know much of mathematics until he has studied for at least 40 years of his life. What Bacon knew about mathematics is well-known to most grade school kids now; we have since developed calculus, statistics, modern physics, and all such things beyond basic Algebra, Trigonometry, and Geometry.
Do you honestly think Einstein's physics was the pinnacle of modern physics? Special relativity is nothin
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Technically some Olympic events or others happen every two, but the same events don't repeat but every four.
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Re:IQ is not a simple measure (Score:5, Funny)
It's an interesting result, but nobody should pretend they really know how to interpret it.
Green with a hint of ginger
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What does this have to do with 534?
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534 is a red, rounded corner box containing a green rectangle with a blue blob inside. Which makes it rather pungent than gingery.
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Kind of a cross between "Transcendence" and "Limitless".
What could go wrong?
Ugh. Grammar much? (Score:2)
Expecting a sentence and seeing only fragments, not having a proper subject and verb.
Similar effects have been found from psilocibin. (Score:1)
There is a rebranching of the brain circuitry that is linked to a cognitive boost - also being used to experimentally treat dementia and other similar disorders.
Psychedelics (Score:2)
So...then...does this count as an endorsement of chemically induced synesthesia?
LSD: Boost your IQ *and* be convinced you're a snake-monkey who can read the secrets of the universe!
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I used to use synesthesia, but since I started using Clementine [github.io] the nyanalyzer cat has become the main music visualization for me.
Something about this story ... (Score:2)
neat tricks (Score:1)
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"I make half a mil a year to align the corporate IT strategy with the CEO's vision... But the company would rather use me to fill a 50k chair".
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Few leaders want underlings who are good at determining what their "visions" will actually look like once implemented.
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Can you also walk on water
At this time of year, yes. It's COLD up here!
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You too?
I can't offload--at least not that I'm aware of--but I can simulate anything and everything in my head. I've hit physics problems that I didn't understand purely by moving objects I'd assembled in my head and getting unexpected results; an hour of experimentation--in my head--allowed me to figure out what was going on in the system. I use the same facilities to model economics and human societal behavior on a large scale, which is why I have so much trust in markets, but why I also firmly challe
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This seems highly unlikely. You are in essence claiming physical deficiencies in brain structure will simply disappear with enough training. This in turn implies that anyone who has such a handicap is merely too lazy to overcome it. Do you have any evidence?
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Daniel Tammat went from being an incredibly-fucked-up autistic sociopath to a fairly normal, highly-intelligent savant. Kim Peek, on the other hand, has brain damage such that he can't properly be educated: he just regurgitates facts and occasionally interacts with people by what amounts to reflex, although it's cognitive reflex and appears to approximate intelligence ("I don't know! Shut up! I'm reading!!").
Peek is interesting in that he can learn, but can't be educated: he is so divorced from huma
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There's very little that's realistic about dreams. Even Kekule's famous dream about the benzene molecule wasn't very realistic, since carbon atoms don't dance and hole hands. Any realism you likely see in dreams is because you can't tell the difference when you're dreaming.
simulate it? (Score:2)
Re:simulate it? (Score:4, Interesting)
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Psilocybin is rather safe (regarding lethality, not commenting on behavior while under the influence).
The median lethal dose when consumed orally is 280 milligrams per KG of body weight. From the link below:
"1.7 kilograms (3.7 lb) of dried mushrooms, or 17 kilograms (37 lb) of fresh mushrooms, would be required for a 60-kilogram (130 lb) person to reach the 280 mg/kg LD50".
Given common dosages are 1-3 grams (up to 5 grams for heavier users) of dried mushroom there is very little risk. I'm not sure if one
Interesting but small sample (Score:2)
learning piano - visual, aural, kinesthetic (Score:2)
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...but I can't help suspecting the forced rewiring of my brain hasn't helped my general learning capacity.
I expected you to say that it HAS helped your general learning capacity, but you're implying that it hasn't. Could you please clarify or reinforce your point?
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Common knowledge (Score:1)