Intelligence Amplification Open Thread

Which are the best threads? Fora do not seem optimal for synthesizing an answer. My impression is that they know a lot more than wikipedia. Why haven't they filled it out? Would they be interested in ata's wiki?

Also note that cannabis is a psychedelic and has caused similar insights in all sorts of people, including myself.

I've spent months in my mind (chemical coma), the knowledge I've gained there I can compare to no other. Years later I am still working through the massive amount of data and introspective knowledge I gained. I was happy Inception was created because suddenly the vox pop can grasp some part of what it means when I say I've known many lifetimes, many courses of the universe, the ebb and flow of time. This thought thread is a book onto itself, getting into it now is like licking an iceberg worrying about getting my tongue stuck.

Looking at the connections to religion is a good place to begin to grasp the importance of psychedelics in the shaping of our society. Most of the major religions were formed (though debated) through hallucinations assisted or not, psychedelics have been known as a "gateway to god" for thousands of years. The insights gained are as real as any other (though it is impossible to create new information other than through ones own creativity, people cannot learn things they did not already know or previously have the tools to find out). Psychedelics have been hidden/taken away from the general population for a purpose, which is, at least in my opinion, to keep the divide in power between leaders and followers. Many have used them to find answers, many more have found questions. A few of us have found problems, world or society or humanity ending problems, really, really scary stuff. I've seen all three, and I'm scared for and in love with humanity. I am trying to save the world. But for no little reason and with no little strength! Many of us are, trying to save the world that is, or trying to save humanity, etcetc, but few are willing to publicly declare it. I riposte every zealot who begs for my soul by trying to save their minds! Every mind lost to ignorance is another meathusk we will have to wait to die before we can move forward together

Open your mind quiad!

I'll go ahead and get it started here. I need to head out now but I'll start filling things in later.

Edit: If anyone has any better ideas for the site's title, please do let me know. I'm not attached to the current one, it's just the first thing I thought of.

Sulbutiamine. I don't know whether it will return measurable results for typical biochemistries or not, but I'd very much like to know. I'm also unsure what the test procedure for "reduced mental fatigue" would be like. Maybe give subjects control over their breaks and stopping point for a task, and measure their persistence?

I've had really good success with 5HTP. It begins working in your desired time frame, and has consistently make me calmer, more focused, and more positive.

Piracetam and sulbutiamine didn't seem to do anything for me though.

Non-expert suggestion: Flax seed oil.

Personally, I can't. In nootropics, the more powerful something is the more likely it is to be illegal. If even piracetam is out... (Incidentally, the FDA letter to smartpowders.com banning it from selling piracetam went up on fda.gov today or yesterday.) Maybe the other racetams aren't banned? (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racetam)

Maybe you'd be better off trying n-backing. That at least is legal, although you might have trouble getting subjects to do enough to matter.

Has anyone ever done a systematic review of the literature for studies of nootropics that looked at cognitive outcomes in healthy people?

This commentary from Nature indicates that there have only been a few trials. It might be worth the trouble to compile a database of all the trials of the compounds we're interested in.

Anyone else use Mendeley? You can share a public database of documents among users.

So, nootropics experts, can you think of a drug or supplement that needs testing, that you think will return measurable results in a study of only 10-20 people, that works quickly (ie no "have to take this for a month before seeing effects", preferably <2 hr onset of action) and which is sold over-the-counter in Europe?

Sulbutiamine could use some more study and is significant enough in effects that it would show a difference on that scale of investigation.

You're of course aware of power and sample size considerations. With 20 participants, you'd need a pretty precise instrument or a very large effect size to get a useful answer, no?

I haven't done research in cognitive science. Do you have fine measures of important cognitive function? Is expecting a large effect realistic?

Very cool if you can get some useful data though!

Yvain, are there any cognitive tests that can measure creativity?

I'm also curious about nootropics that improve focus and or mood, which seems to difficult to measure. Coffee and aderall work in this category, but I wonder how you test other potential nootropics for those effects.

The best-ROI techniques I've found to date are getting sufficient sleep, and trying hard. I know that these work, andthey work quite reliably.

Also, I hear that fat people need more willpower, and depressed people should just cheer up.

I often perceive the benefit of signicant effortless processing which must have taken place in the interim

Are you sure that it works because you're unconsciously working on it? Might it be that during the time off, you simply forget what you were thinking, and you take a new approach that works?

It is online. google scholar is awesome. pdf_315-324/links/02e7e52ae673804d5a000000.pdf) doc

“Besides, we are friends of the lento, I and my book. I have not been a philologist in vain — perhaps I am one yet: a teacher of slow reading. I even come to write slowly. At present it is not only my habit, but even my taste — a perverted taste, maybe — to write nothing but what will drive to despair every one who is ‘in a hurry.’ For philology is that venerable art which exacts from its followers one thing above all — to step to one side, to leave themselves spare moments, to grow silent, to become slow — the leisurely art of the goldsmith applied to language: an art which must carry out slow, fine work, and attains nothing if not lento. Thus philology is now more desirable than ever before; thus it is the highest attraction and incitement in an age of ‘work’: that is, of haste, of unseemly and immoderate hurry-skurry, which is so eager to ‘get things done’ at once, even every book, whether old or new. Philology itself, perhaps, will not so hurriedly ‘get things done.’ It teaches how to read well, that is, slowly, profoundly, attentively, prudently, with inner thoughts, with the mental doors ajar, with delicate fingers and eyes. My patient friends, this book appeals only to perfect readers and philologists: learn to read me well!”

-Nietzsche

Same goes for videos (Yay action movies at 2x).

Bonus points (for fun only): Play action games afterwards. Time sensation is a weird thing.

Very strong coffee in the morning

Are you worried about caffeine addiction at all? My understanding is that once your body gets used to it, the coffee is really only bringing you up to what would otherwise be your baseline.

Definitely if you program, and quite possibly if you don't, using a 'real' editor like vim, or emacs, is almost as much of an increase in productivity over something like textpad as touch-typing is over hunt-and-peck.

That sentence was awkward...

Using vim fluently : Textpad :: touch-typing : hunt-and-peck.

Also, touchtyping is the closest thing to a Direct Neural Interface you can get today. If you don't know how to do it, learn!

For an interface to a computer, I completely agree; mice are for art and play, keyboards are for getting other work done.

However, while I have excellent touchtyping speed and a small portable netbook, I still take class notes, and often brainstorm, on paper. Why? It's the easiest possible way to work in two dimensions. I can make outlines, add margin notes, connect related ideas with arrows, and draw diagrams, without being confined to a grid or having to switch modes between location selection and input. I don't know of and have difficulty imagining the computer program that would let me do this anywhere near as fluidly, although if someone knows one I'd love to hear about it.

Also, does anyone remember that in the days before ubiquitous cheap electronics, the equivalent of the motivaider was tying a string around your finger? The only difference seems to be that the motivaider can actively alert you, whereas the string must passively rely on you noticing it.

Clearly credible that the God helmet produces hallucinations, possibly really cool ones.

See this podcast for a description of one neuroscientist's experience with the God Helmet.

Shouldn't be too tough to build. I'd sure want to make sure I know what field strengths to go for before I start inducing eddy currents in my brain though.

OK a couple more details.

My system is not that complicated and very much resembles what I was doing seven or eight years ago, which was close to plain-vanilla journaling. Now I use printer paper, which I line myself with microsoft word in alternating colors: tan-lavender-orange-light green-rose-light blue-gray. There are fifteen pages per color. At any given time I carry with me sixty pages; the fifteen in the active queue and the filled three previous sets. Right now my active pile goes back to the 23 rd of August. The first thing written on every new page is the date and this date's page number in the top right corner.

When I fill up the current active set (of fifteen pages), I carefully read the set that will go upside down on the stack of a thousand pages or so on my bedroom floor. Some stuff will get copied onto a new fresh sheet to keep in the current active bin. Other stuff will get circled in red, starred, or otherwise annotated as something I would like to be able to review, or to find fairly fast. I use a lot of cartoon drawings and glyphs and diagrams and graphs.

I personally find it easier to find stuff out of hardcopy because keyword searches only work if you can remember the keyword and how to spell most of it. Depending on what I am looking for, I can scan through up to ten or fifteen pages in a minute; also, if it takes me a long time to find something and I have to search through a lot, I always find at least one pleasant surprise by happy happenstance.

JenniferRM, I looked at those links and some of it is intriguing. I do not log everything and am not interested in a complete map of every thought I think. What I am after is to refine and rewrite and connect my very best thoughts. This is the sense I read Foucault's discussion of the hypomnemata. If you are interested in looking at this, you can find it on page 364 of the 1st edition of the Foucalt Reader, edited by Paul Rabinow, Pantheon Books. Foucault is generally thought of as intimidating, but I find this book very approachable. Rabinow has done a careful job presenting his version of Foucault, and it is a different guy than you see in the originals. There is always humor in Foucault, but in Rabinow's presentation there is a sense that the humor is a mask for a deep underlying sadness, like Smokey Robinson's "Tears of a clown when there is no one around" character.

In any case, the man was a tornado of a scholar in terms of his ability to dig into library stacks and extract original connections from the overabundance of material waiting there for anybody with the exploratory instincts of people such as Michel Foucault, and when he talks about his methods, that is something which is worth attending to closely. The section on the hypomnemata is in the context of Rabinow interviewing him specifically on the topic of his methods.

I would love to have some sort of browser plugin that would be a combination of this and supermemo, where, before going to bed, it would compile a sort of TL;DR summary of all of the most interesting and relevant articles I read that day, as well as those from a week ago (or whatever the optimal cadence for memory) for me to review and better commit to memory. I attempted a weak version of this the other day by simply reviewing all of the page titles in my browser history, and I think it did help a bit, but the real challenge would be in filtering it down to a short list of the information we most wish to remember, for those of us who find the web too shiny.

I think it would make for a really fascinating read if you plugged some keywords into google scholar like "diary", "life logging", "personal journal", "mind mapping", or something else that you think might be methodologically similar and found experimental research conclusions that you could vividly illustrate by reference to your personal experiences -- "Hey I've seen that!"

Also, I'm curious about your mechanics and producing a truly fixed habit that is actually valuable and which persists over periods longer than a year. Have you ever heard of Lion Kimbro's How to Make a Complete Map of Every Thought you Think and if so, do you have any thoughts on it?

I don't know about tossing into the dumpster. It seems that one interested in cryonics could get more mileage out of this by doubling this as part of that really long letter that partially amnesiac you could read after revival or that omega could use to reconstruct a approximation of you. Perhaps locking it away where you can't read it?

it is only since November of 2008 that I have established a system that I am confident of using daily

Could you elaborate on this system (or link to a description)?

I've had excellent success with melatonin (2-3 mg) in getting myself on a good sleep cycle. I take it about 1 hr before I want to be sleeping; works like a charm. Before I used to sit in bed for hours waiting to feel sleepy. Other people here report similar effects.

Only drawback is sometimes I feel groggy in the morning, and I've had lots of crazy dreams on the nights I've taken it (or maybe just remember them better?).

How long have you been on piracetam and sulbutiamine? Have you been collecting data on your does over time and any subjective evaluations (a diary/log or whatever)? Individual experiements such as that can be quite useful for others.

Have an idea which works better? After reading about your sulbutiamine experiment I went and got a B-vitamin complex which I now take, and I'm curious about actually trying sulbutiamine next.

In the piracetam post you mentioned some controlled studies -- I'm not sure if I would blindly trust the results as applied to me, but I'd certainly be interested in the methodology. Got any links?

(I'd be much more inclined to experiment with these on myself if I could do actual experiments.)

Hold off on proposing solutions..

I'm planning to start an organisation that experiments with a different feedback system for organisations.

It is about trying to improve organisational sanity more than intelligence though.

Morendil, Thank you for reminding me of this book! A technique I remember being described there is very attractive to me. My memory will mangle the details, but basically it is a convention by which either party in a discussion (say, party A in a discussion with party B) can call a point of order to ask the other party (in this case, B) to state A's position to A's satisfaction.

I have tried this some with mixed results, which I suspect could have been better with more preparatory groundwork. I'd love to hear of others' experiences.

Being the possessor of a Motorola Backflip, I find that I do not use it for time-wasting Internet browsing. It has four major advantages over my previous dumbphone:

• I can look up words / facts in mid-conversation or while listening to a talk
• I can browse Twitter/Facebook any moment I'm not doing something useful, so I don't feel compelled to check them when I could be doing productive work in front of a computer
• My contacts are all imported automatically from Facebook, and when I call someone I immediately see their last facebook/twitter update and picture (and all other possible combinations of this functionality)
• If I want to find something locally, I can just start Google Maps. It knows where I am and I can call the place with one touch. Also, I can call numbers on websites with one touch.

Honestly, having the ability to access any piece of knowledge as long as I know how to find it has revolutionized my life. I would for years get hung up in my own mind when I was missing a key fact in a discussion or debate, now I find I can more eloquently present myself while essentially throwing links at the other person (rarely in real time and if in real time usually just as an exercise in my own mind). As someone with a short attention span my ability to pull hard data from my active memory has always been difficult. But now, what was a hindrance, is now an incredibly powerful asset. My conversation now lives at the edge of my consciousness almost continuously, my responses are natural and precise. I study the "zone" as an adrenaline and video game junkie, just knowing that I have the internet's knowledge comfortably in my pocket has freed my mind to exist in this state more often than ever before.

I don't have an iphone, I have a blackberry. I use it for talking and email, web browsing when needed. I also have an extensive social network and at any given time can converse through bbm/gchat/fbchat/msn with around 100 people. Where before I was forced to be stuck at home on my desktop or to lug around my laptop to connect with my peers I can now go anywhere and do anything and still be able to make those connections when I have to. I've found myself becoming a much more social creature, shedding chains while at the same time gaining real time information updates that allow me to know where to go on any given night.

I've just started keeping my phone on silent, no vibration, no nothing. I haven't had a ringtone since 2002, but even the vibrations started to get to be too much. I check my phone often, but its always on my terms. When I'm at home I have my phone facing me on my desk and the alert light fits nicely into what is essentially my HUD of monitors and input devices. Though sometimes "phone calls only" which is essentially the same as silent with the obvious difference, when I "need" to be reached.

I could never go back. Going back at this point would be like deciding just to sit in a basement and smoke weed all day, sure it might be nice, relaxing, whatever, but what good is it doing? If I got rid of my smartphone I'd be jumping off of the society train into the dinosaur graveyard.

I could go on, but I've been awake for longer than I remember and my active memory is failing me, I hope what I've written here makes enough sense and I'd be more than happy to elaborate and would even like to get into more detail as to specific benefits (politic power and sex, to name a couple more).

I've also benefited from Sleep Cycle, Meebo (IM aggregator), and Epic Win (a to-do list/incentive system that hijacks the shininess of RPG progress). I also fill otherwise useless moments with a number of very entertaining games, but whether I'm losing important introspection during these moments is another question.

On the one hand, it's another distraction. As Paul Graham wrote, the ability to carry the internet around is not necessarily a move someone aspiring to get more done should make.

Maybe a valuable smartphone app would be one which blocks your web browsing access unless you explicitly request a five-minute unblock -- and gives out larger intervals only after making you click through an irritatingly long series of "Are you sure you're sure?" dialogs that jump around the screen so you can't just tap on "OK" repeatedly. Not enough to cripple your phone, but enough to make you think twice about idly rechecking your email for the 18th time today.

If IA is your goal from a smartphone, you probably want reasonably fast text input. A Motorola Droid is significantly better in that regard, since it has a physical keyboard. It's still not nearly as fast as a full-size keyboard, though. For that, I suggest getting a folding keyboard.

One bit of software I really want, and have considered writing myself, is a text editor that can be used blind with the screen locked. In some contexts, like the subway, it's easy to take out and use a folding keyboard, but only if the phone is left in a pocket. It would need some clever use of text-to-speech for navigation and typo detection, but the Android OS already provides the hard part of that.

Anyone have any thoughts on how to optimize the tool for intelligence amplification?

An iPhone? Use it to call people and maintain ongoing and stable relationships with intelligent peers. The identity grounding and mental health benefits of such interactions far outweigh anything you can get from apps.

Sympathomimetics? Ephedrine is an example that is often available OTC.

Is this coming from the improved focus (could this be simulated?), or increased bloodflow?

Mostly the former. Blood flow can help cognition a little (see vasodilators such as ginko biloba) but it doesn't really target rapid response.

The improve focus effect from adrenaline can definitely be simulated. Take anything from caffeine to amphetamine in large quantities.

I suppose I should ask people at Quantified Self.

Report back, if you do?

Yep. I used to use electric shocks to keep awake during classes.

If you're getting drowsy in lectures wouldn't you be better off either arriving at lectures better rested, or if you already are and the presenter bores you, learning information in another way? When I went to university, lecturers would get two weeks' trial to prove that their lectures were worth attending. If they weren't, I just read the syllabus, and would study the material from a textbook or the internet during the time allocated for the lecture.

It's rather unfortunate that the majority of lectures were thus avoided, but better to use the allocated learning time optimally.

I often find myself getting drowsy while driving. The most effective thing I know of to do about this is to eat sunflower seeds (in the shell). I suspect this would also work during lectures.

Some people use a peg on either a finger or an ear to harness that effect.

I wonder how many of the non-drinkers are super-tasters. If so, this could make dietary differences (like avoiding dark green veggies) which would affect longevity.

On the other hand, this is a long inferential chain, and just to generalize from one example, I don't like the taste of alcohol or other bitter flavors (grapefruit, coffee unless considerably buffered), but enjoy most dark green veggies.

Another thing that should be taken into account -- though, as far as I know, it's not discussed explicitly by any serious research into the subject -- is that with many people who drink, being a total abstainer can be a great obstacle to building trust .

From what I've observed, drinkers are apt to be prejudiced against abstainers in social situations, treating them as prissy and judgmental types in front of whom one should be extremely cautious before divulging any potentially compromising opinions and information. I myself usually have this attitude when I first meet people in parties and similar places, and I think it is on the whole a useful heuristic, though I will quickly override it as soon as I get more information about the person. (There are several people who are abstainers and nevertheless enjoy the highest level of trust from me.) I obviously have no systematic data, but it does seem like lots of people employ the same heuristic, though many would never admit it explicitly.

'Drinks' is really ambiguous. Wine drinkers average something like 18 points better than beer drinkers on IQ tests, indicating that there are very large confounding variables at play.

They didn't control for social isolation? I wouldn't take that lightly at all. I would be astonished if sociable people didn't live longer.

Probably the biggest single thing you can do (if you aren't doing it already). It took me till my junior year of high school to realize that feeling exhausted and light-headed till lunch isn't normal.

Not just carbohydrates. Fat and protein.

I have no idea how universities work

If what you want is information, you're probably better off not bothering with the classrooms and sticking to the library. If you need personal contact (whether for status/networking reasons or for more effectively locating the information you want), the important thing is to become acquainted with the right people, and going to their classes is only one way to do that.

Which classes could I reasonably sit in on at U.C. Berkeley that would give me the most leverage for IA research? I was thinking neuroscience-type classes, but perhaps pharmacology or nutrition classes would be equally or more useful?

My interest in the area has led me to go and start a full phamacology degree. Give me a few years and I'll tell you which subjects were the most interesting. ;)

Berkeley

Hi, neighbor! (Are there many LWers around here?)

With human genetic engineering having such a controversial status and without a Seasteading Institute presence it seems especially unlikely that we'll get to make use of all our knowledge of intelligence-related genes before FOOM or crash or whatever. :/ Maybe if we found a series of genes that regulated speed of human development such that a human could become fully mature in 3 years and die in 15? Seems unlikely...

Hm, kinda. Indeed I figured I'd take advantage of the slightly different atmosphere. It's also my evil selfish attempt at crowdsourcing exploratory IA research. Louie Helm has convinced me that if you can outsource something, you should.

One problem I have had with speed reading techniques is a difficulty in adapating to the wide variety of reading habits one may employ.

I speed read both research papers and novels, but in very different ways. With research papers I browse and download many, skim abstracts, jump into the middle of papers, usually look first at the pictures, then eventually start reading paragraphs. I usually can 'get' the paper's key concepts without having to read most of the text, although it depends heavily on the type of paper.

When reading a novel, I usually alternate between full reading for important/interesting portions and skip reading for boring or fluffier parts. I typically skip long visual descriptions (I find that whatever visual imagery I randomly summon usually works just about as well). When skip-reading, I typically scan the upper left corner of a paragraph and it's first sentence to decide if I want to skip it. I rarely spend more than a day or two on a novel. If it is really unusually good I will spend more time with it.

I have yet to find more advanced techniques that actually allow me to read dense material at higher speeds. The simpler level-of-detail control is effective enough and doesn't sacrifice comprehension for important material.

Tim Ferris' speed reading tutorial.

The article you linked doesn't actually mention any intelligence benefits.

I think Justin might be interested - he's in charge of the IA project at Benton.

ETA: And he said he is, and might be in contact.

Given how important o-3 is to cell membranes (even if o-3 did not reduce inflammation) and how important cell membranes probably are to brain function, reducing -6 intake is unlikely to have a strong cognitive benefit. According the my amateurish models, the most important way keeping o-6 intake low impacts cognition for a young guy like you is by slowing the rate at which your brain will deteriorate over the decades. In other words, the inflammation reduction is caused by a reduction in prostaglandins, which are synthesized from fatty acids, where prostaglandins have no particular role that I know of in the maintenance of cell membranes -- they're paracrine hormones.

As long as you follow the law (ie, nothing that requires a prescription you don't have), you're safe from academic consequences. The episode you're thinking of was probably about Ritalin and/or Adderall, which are illegal without a prescription but widely used anyways.

I am not aware of any study that indicates health benefits of wine over any other form of alcohol. There are studies, mainly in mice, that show benefits of resveratrol, but only in tremendous doses. Wikipedia does mention the claim that one can get tremendous doses by sipping slowly and absorbing the resveratrol through the mouth, rather than the stomach. Probably not an option with grapes.

Should I have a glass of wine with dinner every day?

Subjectively and anecdotally, when I have tried this (on special occasions), I have found that it made the evening more pleasant and more productive. My assumption is that I would become habituated if I did it "every day", and those benefits would disappear. Those with information about whether this is likely to be the case may want to chime in.

I linked this in another comment: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/journal/10.1111/%28ISSN%291530-0277

I'm not sure, either.

If you spill one of them on your clothes and need to have it dry cleaned, be sure to note which one it was. If it's tea and the cleaner treats it for coffee, it'll set the stain and you're boned.

(Totally unrelated to IA, but true. I used to work at a dry cleaner.)

How does it compare to coffee followed by coffee, or any of the other permutations?

I wonder if it is because tea has theanine in it. Perhaps you could try comparing against a theanine supplement?

I would suggest that the greatest leap forward in recent years of combined human intelligence has been the internet, and an Intelligence Amplification method is having ready access to it and the base level of intelligence required to correctly use it for information!

Being able to synthesize vitamin C would have been a huge evolutionary advantage, given how many people died of scurvy throughout history, but evolution never managed it. Other chemicals have the same problem: evolution is severely limited in how many things it can try, which sorts of chemicals it can try, and how large the selection effect has to be for it to take off.

Does the same reasoning apply to cancer treatment and antibiotics?

"If God wanted us to fly he would have given us wings!"

We don't know, and that's the point. There must be a reason, though. If it were that easy to increase your brainpower that way, and there were no other drawbacks, this modification would already have been selected for.

All else being equal we can expect our evolutionary heritage to be reasonably well optimised. But all else isn't equal. I don't have the same goals that the selection for my allelles in the ancestral environment implicitly optimised for. Evolution couldn't optimise for my specific needs at specific times which is one of the reasons we evolved general intelligence to handle that sort of thing.

Interventions, chemical or otherwise that we would consider using are not selected by random. They are created (often) by intelligent design and then selected for via a process of cultural evolution and empirical study.

There must be a reason, though. If it were that easy to increase your brainpower that way, and there were no other drawbacks, this modification would already have been selected for.

If you take them, perhaps you will discover later why this potential evolutionary change was not beneficial, and not selected.

Maybe the ability to synthesize a particular chemical could not (or merely has not yet in humans) be reached by a single change, or a path of individually selected-for single changes. In other words, your argument only works if the reachability of the improvement is high enough, and our species has existed for enough time in an environment where it would be rewarded.

Intelligence isn't actually all that useful for evolutionary purposes, so there's no pressing reason for our intelligence to have been optimised.

There's also a large difference between synthesising useful chemicals yourself and taking them in concentrated forms that don't occur naturally.