That’s a good point about intelligence, the way I used that word without defining it in this article is sloppy.
I am interested in the ability to solve important problems. Maybe instead I should talk about something more easily definable such as mental endurance, or limiting the stress response from focused work? Personally, I think if I could work longer in one sitting on a hard problem without stress or fatigue, that alone would count as “increased intelligence” for practical purposes.
I think there are links between the stress response and nutrient availability. In lab mice anyway, sugar seems to reduce stress hormone production during stressful situations. However in practice this might be harmful to doing focused work, if stress improves focus.
Thanks for pointing out the issue of brain energy consumption vs mental activity. I think this entire article hinges on the (unfounded?) assumption that the two are strongly correlated. I am confused about this, and need to learn more about it. I see many articles and researchers claim massive increases in energy consumption with hard mental activity, and others that claim there is none which seems very strange. How are they measuring this? I wonder if people under general anesthesia have much lower, or about the same energy requirements as an awake person?
I am interested in the ability to solve important problems.
Do you have an argument for why we should have had evolutionary pressure for solving the kind of issues that we today consider to be important problems?
When it comes like a mental task such as memorizing a deck of card there are simply massive improvement when one uses mnemonics and trains then when one doesn’t. To me it doesn’t seem like there’s a good reason to think that the same isn’t true with working on important problems.
Maybe instead I should talk about something more easily definable such as mental endurance, or limiting the stress response from focused work? Personally, I think if I could work longer in one sitting on a hard problem without stress or fatigue, that alone would count as “increased intelligence” for practical purposes.
Going around and arguing that it’s a fixed resource you might effectively reduce willpower. The quest for a molecular biological framing of the problem might be hurting people’s ability to solve important problems because it gives them the wrong beliefs and those beliefs matter for their performance.
Maybe the emporer has no clothes and we should just stop the project and insteadly focus on programming the right beliefs into people. I know I’m moving into dangerous waters if I say those things on Lesswrong ;).
The more I think about concepts like stress the more new questions popup. There are things happens in my body for which I developed qualia through Danis Bois perceptive padagogy where unfortunately the main body of written work is in French.
I have seen that there are interesting things to be done with hypnosis when it comes to emotional management but the resulting literature is also not straightforward.
I probably need good test subjects and further time thinking about detail and improving my own perception. Maybe find a way to calibrate my percerption.
In lab mice anyway, sugar seems to reduce stress hormone production during stressful situations.
Are we talking about production in the sense of making new hormones or are we talking about secreting already existing hormones? Do you know the time frames?
I see many articles and researchers claim massive increases in energy consumption with hard mental activity, and others that claim there is none which seems very strange. How are they measuring this?
Unfortunately I have to confess I don’t know. I think at the time I took the relevant lessons I was too shy to really press for evidence. It’s says something about biology science eduction.
There are so many claims about how things happen to be but in textbooks and lectures there not that much emphasis on how we know them.
That’s a good point about intelligence, the way I used that word without defining it in this article is sloppy.
I am interested in the ability to solve important problems. Maybe instead I should talk about something more easily definable such as mental endurance, or limiting the stress response from focused work? Personally, I think if I could work longer in one sitting on a hard problem without stress or fatigue, that alone would count as “increased intelligence” for practical purposes.
I think there are links between the stress response and nutrient availability. In lab mice anyway, sugar seems to reduce stress hormone production during stressful situations. However in practice this might be harmful to doing focused work, if stress improves focus.
Thanks for pointing out the issue of brain energy consumption vs mental activity. I think this entire article hinges on the (unfounded?) assumption that the two are strongly correlated. I am confused about this, and need to learn more about it. I see many articles and researchers claim massive increases in energy consumption with hard mental activity, and others that claim there is none which seems very strange. How are they measuring this? I wonder if people under general anesthesia have much lower, or about the same energy requirements as an awake person?
Do you have an argument for why we should have had evolutionary pressure for solving the kind of issues that we today consider to be important problems?
When it comes like a mental task such as memorizing a deck of card there are simply massive improvement when one uses mnemonics and trains then when one doesn’t. To me it doesn’t seem like there’s a good reason to think that the same isn’t true with working on important problems.
I agree. The interesting thing on that question is that believing whether or not willpower is limited seems to have an effect: http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0038680
Going around and arguing that it’s a fixed resource you might effectively reduce willpower. The quest for a molecular biological framing of the problem might be hurting people’s ability to solve important problems because it gives them the wrong beliefs and those beliefs matter for their performance.
Maybe the emporer has no clothes and we should just stop the project and insteadly focus on programming the right beliefs into people. I know I’m moving into dangerous waters if I say those things on Lesswrong ;).
The more I think about concepts like stress the more new questions popup. There are things happens in my body for which I developed qualia through Danis Bois perceptive padagogy where unfortunately the main body of written work is in French.
I have seen that there are interesting things to be done with hypnosis when it comes to emotional management but the resulting literature is also not straightforward.
I probably need good test subjects and further time thinking about detail and improving my own perception. Maybe find a way to calibrate my percerption.
Are we talking about production in the sense of making new hormones or are we talking about secreting already existing hormones? Do you know the time frames?
Unfortunately I have to confess I don’t know. I think at the time I took the relevant lessons I was too shy to really press for evidence. It’s says something about biology science eduction. There are so many claims about how things happen to be but in textbooks and lectures there not that much emphasis on how we know them.