Become Smarter

Does anyone else strive to get smarter? I am indeed a very stupid person, but I try to learn new, usually complex systems of thought in hopes of awakening the spark of genius that I think we all humans are capable of developing. Every time I learn of a new system of thought, be it a new language, a theoretical subject, or any consistent set of rules, I feel like my way of looking at things stretches a little bit. Does anyone relate? What do you do to try and stretch your mind if only a little bit? I learn new languages, mathematics, and try to understand the science on several natural systems. Pic related suggested, for example, genetics as one such system. What have you got? Also I haven't tried those "mind agility" games that one too often finds usually among game applications, does anyone have any experience with that, do they help? Ganbatte Lain!

I think all cyberpunks are constantly trying to become smarter and more knowledgable. >I am indeed a very stupid person You are early in your intellectual journey, thats nothing to be ashamed of. The fact that you recognise your stupidity, oddly enough, shows you have a certain intelligence. There is a strong correlation between intelligence and the abillity to assess your own intelligence, which is one of the reasons you get so many different and often contradictory groups believing all the outsiders are brainwashed. >Also I haven't tried those "mind agility" games that one too often finds usually among game applications, does anyone have any experience with that, do they help? They are mostly cons. Users see improvments in skills at the games - not surprising as they play these same games every day - and this is presented to them as improvments in the areas of the brain on which the games rely. In reality the only part of the mind these things grow significantly is the ego, leading users into superiority complexes that stunt mental growth.

>>4520 >smarter Yea I'd love to be, to me that's tied in with knowlege and experience. Personally I want to know more about everything. Ideally I'd like to know every thing so that when I have to do something I already know what to do and execute it flawlessly, but that's obviously impossible. So I usually just think about different things that interest me when I have no access to new information/am isolated in some way. Or else I try and get up to date on current events and information.

If you didn't know already: The thing humans strive for the most is knowledge. This does not apply to everyone though. As an example, we have scientists to discover new things. We write scientific papers and books to document knowledge. We have huge libraries in which all these books are stored. We have schools where the most basic knowledge is given to the next generation and then universities where we give on more specific information on certain topics to the next generation. And (almost) everybody wants to know the answer to the afterlife which is a major part of religion and philosophy. Quite neat, isn't it?

Fluid intelligence (g factor) is mostly genetic. Unless your brain goes through some kind of MKULTRA program to depattern and put in chaos (from which probably order can emerge <-- Masonic line "Order from Chaos") you will then probably start looking at things from all possible angles.

I think I've just gotten smarter over time. It's not so much anything you do as a frame of mind you get into: questioning everything, wondering, demanding rigorous evidence/proof. I also think it's important to never think that you have everything figured out. I have a saying for myself: "I am just a child staring wide-eyed at the infinite". And yes, learning a new thing makes you think about things from a new perspective and it's excellent to do that as much as possible. I remember, after I worked through the Sipser book on formal languages I felt like my understanding of the world had doubled. >What have you got? I mostly study math these days, it's less messy than computers and physics. Linguistics is also fun but honestly I took a couple linguistics classes at uni and it just felt easy. >Also I haven't tried those "mind agility" games that one too often finds usually among game applications, does anyone have any experience with that, do they help? I doubt it. Games have surprisingly limited scope, when you train your mind with a game you're just training yourself to be good at the game. That's what psychologists say, and I'm inclined to agree with them.

>>4527 >Quite neat, isn't it? Quite! I was going to reply with some rather pessimistic response about money and... whatever. But yeah, it does seem like we humans have an inorn desire to level up as people. It isvery pleasurable to learn anything new, even if it's not, as I said in the OP, "brain-stretching"; for example in learning about the Byzantine empire, I am not likely getting smarter, but it feels really cool knowing something new about the world I live in, even if indirectly. Know what I mean?

Try nootropics. I've heard good things about semax.

>>4721 This but try some of them dont just go for one

I'm just retarded and I know it. I forget soykaf, I slur my words, misplace words in sentences, I can't pay attention to fuarrrking anything and I can't learn anything new. I've been this way for years.

>>4529 Mostly epigenetic. The variance is thrown wide on environmental factors through early life development. You're gel factor hits a stasis around 30? 27?

Cerebrolysin

>>5054 start with your diet. then.... maybe get a genetic test. Unless you're missing a chormosone or defect.

You can push your IQ up a point by drinking a glass of milk a day, for some reason. People who read an hour a day end up in the higher paid percentile of their profession, or something. The article didn't say if you're supposed to be reading something about your work.

I'm not sure what your attitude currently is, but one important thing to understand about studying, is that it's not just about "becoming more" or "growing" - which are just a common case, but about change and challenge. A lot of people try to study only by filling in the gaps: learning skills and facts they do not know yet, without losing anything they already have. They don't want the new material to contradict their beliefs, life choices and most of their previous knowledge, and they refuse to accept things that they check with their own rational thinking/reasoning and find to be false. This is like an expanding village, where the villagers gladly let you build your own house at the edge, as long as you don't upset the ecosystem and they don't have to change their customs and daily lives because of your arrival. That's why villages, and such rational and responsible students can only grow so far. To become a city, you'll eventually have to demolish half the place, become vulnerable, take chances, and upset people and things. From what I take, you want to become more intelligent, or use your existing intelligence better as much as the brain inside your head makes it possible. That is a lot like the village to city transition I mentioned above, as you can't really measure your progress or appoint an event of graduation. You'll need to focus on not settling down in any way: - keep trying other learning methods - if you only listened to authority figures so far, try fringe sources, or vice versa. - always strive to be doing hard tasks that you can just make, overpractice skills only if many diverse sources claim you'll benefit from it greatly - do not aim to master things (it doesn't hurt to try a few tho) - being too good in something means you irreversibly lose the novice viewpoint. just try to read this post like someone who doesn't know any english. - do not avoid failure - everyone is your teacher - combine fields of study - you shall never graduate or be ready

>>4527 >Dude weed lmao I always rated a certain systemic skill over knowledge, as a high systemic skill is required to produce knowledge, but lots of held knowledge may or may not provide systemic skill. I would say that the existence of written culture and records, data netwroks and education lead to more knowledge not because we already know much, but because humanity as a system grows larger and more complex. For example, we could produce lots of actual knowledge simply by video recording events as the happen, like the growth of flowers, the meals of the Smith family, etc. This would not advance much. Similarly, if the structure of society remains mostly the same and only the numbers grow, it doesn't change much. For a student completely new to the world, learning much about the Smiths' eating habits will yield little advancement in the understanding of the world, but pieces of knowledge from everywhere will force them to conjure up a system to account for everything we have knowledge about. A society that is complex enough is able to reach deeper in any direction it chooses to. If we took and gave all the knowledge of our current society to a monastery of a hundred monks who are socially equal, they wouln't get anywhere with it in millenia. You need complexity to discern knowledge, and our current society is complex because of its sheer number of people, its connections with its parts and its past, and so on. The large variety has a chance to "breed" a person for every imaginable task and skillset to fulfill.

>>4531 >That's what psychologists say. Psychologists say a lot of things, most of which aren't replicable or are even motivated by political bias. They say some true things as well, but don't take what they say on faith. The amount of intellectual growth you'll get from puzzle games is based on how well those games reflect the intellectual skills required to solve real-world problems.

>>4531 >It's not so much anything you do as a frame of mind you get into: questioning everything, wondering, demanding rigorous evidence/proof. I also think it's important to never think that you have everything figured out. I agree, but would like to add that even stuff like "demand rigorous evidence/proof" should be questioned. Even "questioning" should be questioned, as there might be things you can only understand well when you walk in with the mind and attitude of a fanatic believer. Apply the principle onto itself, recursively. Think of this in terms of programs. Whatever your principle of study (program) is, if it follows Harvard architecture, it will be producing the same kind of data with the same observation methods ad infinitum. (Same as "recording the Smiths' dining habits" in my previous post.) If you want the program to evolve over time and become smarter, possibly taking off in the superintelligence singularity sci-fi god direction, you'll need von Neumann architecture and allow the poor thing to modify itself, including the danger of self-destruction, around which there's no workaround. If at one point you don't stop questioning stuff or demanding the exact standard of proof, you'll likely run into a loop and remain there. This also happens to be my one argument against Science on the long term. I view it as an algorithm, and as such it is prone to this mistake of running in circles. Luckily there are philosophers of science who don't actually follow the algorithm, but instead meddle in it in seemingly random ways, which is honestly the best thing that can happen to it in terms of its evolutionary process. >>5054 Look on the bright side, that's what being grown up is all about. I'll rather try to stay childish and immature for another 40 years or until it gets me killed.

>>5070 >>5074 Good thoughts. I'll add my two bits, coming from a practical pragmatic perspective. I will add many specific names and references, as well as talking about the concept, so that people have a named, known place they can start the intellectual journey from. First, http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/crux/2013/07/23/how-adding-iodine-to-salt-boosted-americans-iq/#.WmPILYBzKHs and look up on a good privacy focused, filter bubble free (echochamberless) search engine, "study iodine increase IQ", also "study tea increase IQ" and "study meditation increases IQ" duckduckgo.com is a current example of a good search engine. Juicing vegetables is also great for clear thinking, and onions, whooo, onion juice increases testosterone over 300% in rats, only 1g per kg of body weight per day. A search will bring this up right quick, but also a bunch of SJW nonsense writers bashing onions. I got as much information as I could on the studies, conducted in an Iranian university (whole point of research was finding a cheap simple substance for the impoverished people of Iran as Male hormone therapy, for those with low T. I'll add my opinion from experience with (continuing) drinking onion juice; the study is true. My reproductive system was like a pubescent male, till I my body got used to the much higher testosterone. Random stiff woodys happening 3-4 times a day for a few minutes, for no reason. My voice was cracking, and ended up going down a half step in pitch after a couple days, and has stayed there. I was getting blue balls every day for the first week. My motivation level rose dramatically, my confidence level did as well. Has made social interactions much less "complicated" people may think they're so god like, but they still respond to a high testosterone male like animals, with respect, and not giving them bullsoykaf. >>5071 I very much agree with your idea of systematic knowledge, or a skill of systematic knowing. Learning a bunch of individual facts, and even smaller naturally occurring systems discreetly, studied separately, and not viewed through the lens of the other is really not intelligence at all. As far as understanding the system of life, I would say there is no better book than The Kybalion. It assumes a deist perspective, but the concepts and ideas it talks about still work if you assume atheism. It is purported to be remaining sum of a body of knowledge once known by all ancient Greek scholars of the mystery traditions of the time, the body of knowledge itself known as The Kybalion. It's a pretty short book only 200 pages or so, but has allowed me to create for myself, or understand for myself, a system of understanding the world on a level which no other philosophy book I have ever read has even come close to. I've never been more sure of anything in my life, that The Kybalion is captial T Truth. Even if it ultimately isn't totally correct Truth, what it describes is soo close to our actual reality, that if you used it as a map, you'd probably never be lost, figuratively, for more than a week. That short book, which has an off-the-charts-high reread value, will help you form your basis for systematic understanding. Then there are, let's just them what they are, simulators (video games) of pretty high, or very high accuracy to real life. When you understand how systems function in real time, and how very slight changes on the seeming "periphery" of a system can drastically affect the whole system, and you can manipulate the system to produce the result you want, that is real intelligence. For gaining a holistic understanding of the inter-working parts of Natural systems at differing levels of complexity, play games such as these. Play them to the point where there is little mystery anymore, and you can be successful at higher difficulties without struggling. Anno 1701 or 1404, Civilization IV or V, Roller Coaster Tycoon, Cities Skylines, Factorio, Medieval II or Rome Total War (especially some of the mods, moddb.com), Age of Empires II (especially the newer HD edition) All of these games have systems within systems within systems, just like real life, and they interact in a way which is very similar to how real life acts, similar enough that when you see the virtual system working, you'll be able to easily equate it to real life concepts you see in your daily life. Lastly, listen to various podcasts and watch youtube videos about different areas of knowledge or skill. Although it is not the best show to end up with, and has a number of things I could rightly criticize, as a starting point for branching off into other podcasts and logs and v logs you will like, start with the Joe Rogan Podcast. All of them are free, best watched on youtube, because the best episodes will have a guest person who brings a number of pictures and videos to support their ideas. He's done like literally a thousand podcasts, so just search the channel for a topic which you find interesting, which he has inevitably already had at least a couple of guests on about, and watch some of his podcasts about things that interest you. He has referenced thousands and thousands of websites where there are logs or AV full of at least decent info. The point is to be thinking, people talking about ideas gets us thinking, not just about those ideas, but about ideas we didn't even think were related. Good luck in your intellectual journey.

>>4520 Is that a loss edit?

>>4520 If you're interested in mind agility games, check out duel-n-back games. They're sometimes used in research in working memory, and you can find them for free in app stores with little to no ads/trackers. I had a routine where I did it every day for a month and I felt marginal results, but who knows how useful they actually are.

>>4520 A quote I saw once was really neat. 'If you understand what it is you're doing then you're not learning' or something to that effect.

>>5576 This is so important. For improving your mind or any other skill. "Get out of your comfort zone" might be an overused phrase, but it's actually really good advice. We all know the annoying feeling of trying to learn something we don't understand and failing at first, but the most effective way to improve oneself is to embrace this discomfort, push through it, knowing that this is the only way to move forward.

>>5085 > All of these games have systems within systems within systems, just like real life, and they interact in a way which is very similar to how real life acts, similar enough that when you see the virtual system working, you'll be able to easily equate it to real life concepts you see in your daily life. Got any resources on how such systems are put together?

I think, in my own limited experience, I've expanded my intelligence and understanding from trying to become competent with various subjects. I dropped out of school in 11th grade and never made anything of myself from an academic point of view . Oddly enough, I make a living writing technical content for businesses. I don't necessarily enjoy the work, nor does it pay well, but it keeps me afloat. Whenever I notice individuals that try to "generalize" their knowledge base, or try to become a jack of all trades, their overall understanding is vague and superficial. And by that regard, they're not as intelligent as they seem. Sure, they're probably coherent in carrying on interesting conversation at a party, but they can't produce anything substantial. So to answer your question pick something, or even a few somethings, and start to improve your competence in those areas to a substantial level. Perhaps this ties into the argument of social intelligence versus IQ in some regard. Whatever, I don't know.

No. I mean yeah I strive to get good at what I'm focussed on, but intelligence seems more like a tool to me than an end in itself. It's fuarrrking useless if you can't figure out what you want.

I hope my endeavors make me wiser, not so much more intelligent. Intelligence can be just wrote knowledge, but wisdom requires you to actually understand that knowledge.

I'm not sure how common my reasoning is. There could be various environmental, genetic, etc reasons behind it, but off topic on this post. In terms of the current psychometric means used to measure traits of personality, for those familiar with them, I'd say I'm in the 90th percentile for conscientiousness, and 80th for openness. It leads to interesting results - just look at Hitler. I'm not a person orientated towards an individual goal, nor do I feel I should define my worth as a homo sapiens in whether I have accomplished it as such. That seems to lead to various unhelpful mindsets. I live for constant change, and move, and growth. The strength and knowledge you gain can be reapplied, whether your situation becomes great or terrible. If you live for progress, and you're always progressing, then you're always alive. And I see opportunities everywhere - when I look through the catalogues of this website, there's a wealth of information and firsthand experience. But on the other hand, I feel I'm giving a very positively skewed perspective on my mindset. I always see more. I have a need for more. Not the physical pleasures in the typical sense, or power of will to exert on the physical world, but power and understanding of myself. It's like a drug. There seems to be a flow, a give and take, in everything within the bounds of human free will. If something is only give, or only take, then the solution is likely something already deep ingrained you've never thought about. The decisions that come close to balance are the ones that require thought, and although our perception narrows in on different things depending on our inset values, we're always in a state of trying to determine how much give and take there is, trying to push ourselves to have more. I have a need to give, all of the time. I hate sleep, because it wastes my time. If I could have a pill to substitute for every meal of the day then I would take it for the rest of my life. I want to spend all my time giving to the limit my fragile body will allow, because even the strength of perseverance necessary to be learned has become a take for me. When I am not in flow, when the connection between the information and the process is imperfected, I feel a deep pain. If I were to sit for a day and accomplish nothing I would feel dead. Which would make me theorize whether I contain much else besides my ambition. I've been unwilling to put that theory to the test. I don't mean to be dramatic, but I wanted to give as detailed as possible a description of my process. In essence, I find a challenge everywhere I look, something I want. And I'll drive my mind and body through every wall until I get there. When I do something right, my immediate thought is what I do next. It's not where I get, the best part is how many walls I have to break down. >>4527 Very. >>5065 IQ is measured based on the mean of a sample population. But, of course although I'd expect a genuine IQ test would try to eliminate external factors, but even mood would affect it. I've heard that listening to music can take it down by around 15 points, that's a standard deviation. I'd assume the explanation for the milk is just that those drinking it regularly are performing better. You can probably increase your own by 5 or so if you drink enough water, sleep well, maintain a calm attitude, and have a healthy diet. >>5576 >>5594 Hell yeah, great advice. I've also found in the past even simple and easy to replicate methods, such as always admitting what little you know on a subject to peers or authorities on the subject, and always admitting when you're wrong, and never making excuses for yourself - as much as a humbling experience can be useful for someone, you're also a lot more likely to be exposed to the information you're looking for.

Smart is one of those words too that means something different to everyone, there is definitely a common societal definition. But if you are like me and don't necessarily think society is heading in a good direction, then it follows the kind of intelligence it values isn't the right kind. So I definitely don't strive to get smarter. If we were being very specific you actually strive to learn new, usually complex systems of thought. But I hope you don't do that in order to get smarter, because that's also your personal definition of smart. Smarter is a comparative word, and I think there is two main things you could be comparing it to. I think if you are trying to be smarter than yourself, you will never feel like you are done. You will never awaken that spark of genius, because racing yourself isn't a start and finish goal oriented way to live your life. That is totally fine if you can accept there isn't a finish line. You will never feel at rest in this state, there will always be forward, and you will never do enough. But to others you may seem very intelligent. Just as some of the best athletes, or artists, have this attitude of never being good enough. Some may say "I am the best", at a certain point, but they still are fighting against the best too then. If you are trying to be smarter than others you will fail to see any value in being smart once you have achieved your goal. This kind of goal is based around the idea that some people are better than others, as a whole. When you say "some people are better at science" and then value science, you understand why you value science. When you say "some people are smarter than others" and then value intelligence, it's generally because one assumes intelligent people to just be inherently better. Intelligence unlike science is not something one values for its application one values it as a virtue or character trait. The reason one stops seeing value in a virtue once they have it is that it never makes your life feel any better, which is disillusioning because when one is first starting to obtain this virtue they see it as making one "better". The conscious or sometimes subconscious implication is that you will feel better, better people should feel better. Even if you think better people face much hardship and have it the worst,it must have some value if you want to be one. Yet feelings are not states of being, so when one finds that they don't feel "better" after BEING better, whatever they defined as the formula for a better person just becomes a formula for a different person. I'm definitely not trying to lead you anywhere or discourage you from trying to get smarter, i just thought some self analysis is always helpful. What we really want vs what we think we want, what will that look like, do we know what we want so on and so forth. And then also I thought if this is a goal you have, you might find the question of "is intelligence really what i think it is" interesting and perhaps it could lead you to awaken a spark of genius beyond what you imagine it to be. Remember that when you assign a lot of value to that definition of intelligence society has, you can't ever really break through. When you really think in a way no one has thought before, nobody will recognize you as intelligent for it until results come. And if its so pushed aside nothing comes that may be never.

PSA to self-learning lains -- If you feel dumb, you're doing it right! Keep going!

>>5065 correlation != causation though

Learning a variety of things is what I strive for. On a formal educational stand point I don't even have post secondary, but I do immense research in many variety of subjects. > What have you got? Right now I'm trying to better understand the stock market, and plan on getting into penny stocks after practicing with paper marketing. (fake online currency stocks) I also am fascinated by human beings and their behavior patterns. Once you really understand the human mind and how patterns spiral into more patterns, you begin to see every emotion you have as temporary. You can easily shift your mood or state of anxiousness, sadness or anger through new patterns in your life and getting rid of old ones. Been reading many novels when it comes to psychology. Allan Watts, Carl Jung, and some subconscious body language books, one made by someone who formerly in the FBI

I was just thinking about making a thread about this, I thought that surely lainons would relate and it looks like they do! I love to learn. I'm always trying to learn more, to consume more. The field that I mostly try to learn and understand is art and more specifically film, I watch a lot of movies and try to analyze film as a whole, and learn more and more and more. This also applies to literature and music as well, and I'm attempting to learn more about paintings too. I also generally love just learning about history and the world around me. I listen to a history podcast and have also started listening to a philosophy podcast, sort of as a precursor for when I finally start reading philosophy from the very beginning. I want to know everything! I want to know so many things about everything. Sometimes this is a hindrance because I feel like I need to completely understand everything about something before I try it, I constantly watch tutorials and videos about things that I'm about to do for the first time until I have enough experience to draw from myself. This is good sometimes, but sometimes it prevents me from trying new things. I'm trying to get better about it though.

I want to but I've got a bad habit of shutting myself down or losing interest too quickly once I've started. Like sometimes I think I'd like to get into learning something like a new language or get back into creative work, but then my brain overloads with things like 'No point in it' or 'You wouldn't be good at it anyways so why bother?' until I decide to just avoid it and stick to what I know I'm at least competent with. And even in those things due to this I'm slow to progress and I've been told I tend to do it in sharp steps. Like one day I have no idea how algebra works and the next my teacher pulled me aside thinking I cheated on a test because something in my clicked and figured it out. Or I just lose interest or it stops crossing my mind. This has been getting me recently, I've start up a tabletop game to practice my writing and voice acting, plus pixel art when I can, and I've been wanting to make some music for it. And I did try, I looked into software for it and picked up a free one, already forgot how to use it, but I remember a very small bit of music theory from a couple hours reading up on it or practicing alongside videos. But then the next day I forgot to and I only just got back into it since someone reminded me I started. I don't know how these things just fade from my mind so much, does anyone else have this kind of problem? I'm figuring I'm just lazier than expected but even then I try to keep myself occupied somehow. Might also be like short bursts of interest/motivation keeping me going? What the fuarrrk is my brain

I don't believe it's possible to get smarter, wiser or more learned yes, smarter, probably not. Since I'm seriously dumb I don't even really see the point. Even basic stuff fries my brain, I can't grasp even reasonably simple high school maths concepts, or understand complex systems except in the most simplified terms. I can kinda memorize stuff, but without the smarts to understand it, it's just pointless. I mean why bother struggling trying to learn when my meager intelligence means I won't ever do it well, and someone far brighter than me can come along, truly understand it and then use that understanding. I can't do any of that. >>5057 Source? As far as I have read it's generally believed that there is a strong cellular genetics (e.g. not epi-genetic) basis for domain inspecific intelligence. Where as epigenetics and environment matter more for domain specific brain organization, but again the think those are believed to be mostly established in the pre-natal phase of development, and then synaptic pruning takes care of the rest as one ages.

>>4520 I don't know about becoming "smarter" but I do try to learn new things. I started learning emacs in september of 2017, since then I created my own elisp tools and workflow in emacs. It's been over a year and I feel pretty dumb that I just recently began to understand the most basic parts of the language, like what the fuark is the relationship between a list, a cons, a symbol, and an elisp expression? Reading the fuarking elisp manual hurt my brain, but now things are beginning to click.

I dont know for a lot of people in the thread maybe you should rethink "intelligence". Especially people claiming it to be genetic, because right there is an implication that intelligence moves on a linear path. Does anything in life beyond what we construct simply work on a scale of A to B? Things like pressure or temperature, but in those cases we are breaking down a system (thermodynamics physics whatever) into one singular component for convenient understanding. As soon as we expand it to a larger system (and someone with more knowledge could probably argue even those specific systems arent so linear) like global temperatures or the interactions between planets suddenly we start seeing all sorts of patterns like cycles, exponential growths, and things we dont even understand because they can't be expressed by simple graphs or patterns that we know of. So to treat something that isnt a specific term rather a broad one like "intelligence", something of which the definition has changed throughout history and isnt even consistent now, as if it could be something "genetic" (which implies its like the amount of pigment in our skin or height) I dont think makes sense. Im not just being abstract for the sake of abstract, I know someone will say "obviously some people are more intelligent than others" but no I dont think thats obvious at all. A schizophrenic at one point may have been considered wise and prophetic and now scores low on an IQ test. We may once again find through psychology they can see and predict things no one else can. Even somebody considered mentally retarded now could one day prove necessary because perhaps a more "simple" understanding of the world shows to be incredibly "valuable" in some aspect or field. So this isnt some generic feel good thought im trying to push here when I say I doubt there is a singular intelligence to measure; so you can't "get more intelligent" nor are you "born more or less intelligent". How "business smart" is a man who can't walk through a rough neighborhood without drawing attention to himself and getting robbed/harassed? He seems to lack social awareness. How "street smart" is a man who can't stay out of jail? He too seems to lack a certain social awareness. How smart is the person who can fit in and make friends anywhere but can't hold a job? How smart is the person who can hold a high paying job yet can't make a friend? How smart is the person who can be happy yet have nothing? How smart is the person who has everything and can't be happy? I wouldnt disagree that genetically we are born with some things and less of other things, things we definitely don't understand. So you could spend your entire life studying chenistry because you think it makes you "smart" and never be that great at it when if you painted instead you would be a master. You could try really hard to be some linguist that can speak 4 languages and be a shadow of those that can speak 10 but if you had just been a car mechanic no one would be able to match you. Maybe you are the only one who can provide happiness to all of those "super intelligent" people who sit there moping about how much life is like kicking dead whales down the beach. The only consistence with intelligence is that it involves our brain solving problems. Thats what our brain does in a pretty weirdly simplified terms but I think you could agree/know what im saying. The problems themselves and how we solve them change, and intelligence changes with it. So how intelligent will you feel, with all your big science and literature knowledge you learned, when the answers your looking for can only be provided by an idiot who seemingly doesn't know the difference between your and you're.

>>8499 > I don't know how these things just fade from my mind so much, does anyone else have this kind of problem? Isn't that obvious? Your brain is only willing to remember things that you're using every day for a long period of time. Everything else fades away. That is simply how neural networks work. Repetition is what you need. > I'm figuring I'm just lazier than expected but even then I try to keep myself occupied somehow. Might also be like short bursts of interest/motivation keeping me going? If you can't keep an interest for longer period of time it can be because you don't have anybody to share your progress with. You need someone to talk to about your progress to keep yourself motivated.

>>9466 Huh. Well fuarrrk it I guess, got the chance for both now with classes out for a while. Time to learn programming and hopefully keep it up.