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Intelligence Amplification Open Thread
A place to discuss potentially promising methods of intelligence amplification in the broad sense of general methods, tools, diets, regimens, or substances that boost cognition (memory, creativity, focus, etc.): anything from SuperMemo to Piracetam to regular exercise to eating lots of animal fat to binaural beats, whether it works or not. Where's the highest expected value? What's easiest to make part of your daily routine? Hopefully discussion here will lead to concise top level posts describing what works for a more self-improvement-savvy Less Wrong.
Lists of potential interventions are great, but even better would be a thorough analysis of a single intervention: costs, benefits, ease, et cetera. This way the comment threads will be more structured and organized. Less Wrong is pretty confused about IA, so even if you're not an expert, a quick analysis or link to a metastudy about e.g. exercise could be very helpful.
Added: Adam Atlas is now hosting an IA wiki: BetterBrains! Bookmark it, add to it, make it awesome.
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Comments (339)
My "Intelligence Augmentation" essay/video argues that intelligence augmentation is often (inaccurately) seen as an alternative to machine intelligence - whereas it is best seen as being complementary to it.
It also suggests that preprocessing your sensory inputs with machines and post-processing your motor outputs with more machines is an area where much useful work can be done.
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!
For something slightly different, I am attempting to increase my reading speed ( I am primarily an English speaker, but English was my second language, which probably explains the initial slowness) using QuickReader app for iPad.
This app lets you predefine the reading speed (timing yourself and word counting is annoying) and uses a pointer to pace you through the material.
I am up to 380 wpm in the app, cannot confirm how transferable the skill is outside of the app quantitatively, but it feels like there is some improvement, though sometimes it feels like I am rushing through faster than I comprehend; OTOH my iPad is always with me and I have electronic versions of a lot of my reading.
One thing to fix down the line is to have "trained modes" for materials of different difficulty and ability to trade off recall for speed.
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.
I read novels in the same manner just a step further, I purge character and place names from from my memory just keeping the relations. If the book is really good, well maybe I will check out some discussion or the sequels and pick up the names then (they usually stick if its very good). If its just good, I won't bother with the names and just discuss the idea or the themes behind it.
I find I keep all the enjoyment of the novel while saving a small bit of memory this way.
Oh, wow. I literally pause reading completely at non-trivial visual descriptions in novels to build the scene in my mind, and rarely go on until I have imagined the whole thing and sat on it a little bit. I find that the "page-to-imagination" process is the most relaxing and pleasant thing to me about reading most novels, so I relish it. (That might be a property of the sort of literature I tend toward, though -- a lot of magical realism.)
Interesting. So I used to do that more often, and may still in some cases, but what I eventually found was that it just wasn't worth it. Not because I don't like the detailed visual imagery.
But because I found that what my mind would conjure up regardless was just as good, and actually the explicit visual wordcraft often doesn't make for better imagery. It depends of course. A good character description is more important to me than say a complex architectural description.
Do You Skim?-- a discussion of reading styles-- there's much more variety than I would have expected.
A little more discussion of the subject.
Tim Ferris' speed reading tutorial.
"How to read an article about speed reading in 20 minutes" would me a more honest title, considering that some brain re-wiring is required.
For a no-brainer, you can easily adjust to listening to audiobooks at 2x on ipod/phone.
Same goes for videos (Yay action movies at 2x).
Bonus points (for fun only): Play action games afterwards. Time sensation is a weird thing.
What software are you using? I find audio parts of sped-up videos pretty difficult, other than on the ipod line of products (even in quicktime).
There is some info here:
http://www.catonmat.net/blog/how-to-save-time-by-watching-videos-at-higher-playback-speeds/
The blog post (but not the comments) omits mplayer's 'scaletempo' option, which de-chipmunkifies the sound. Perhaps the ipod line of products is doing that by default.
(I personally only increase things like 110%. Still saves me time without ever bothering me.)
What's this like?
It appears slow. In particular I seem to think more things per time, sometimes noticing significant delays between thought and action. However according to the scores, performance improvement is only marginal (but existent). The effect wears off after 10 to 15 minutes according to my experience.
I usually play Quake 3 (just in case anybody want's to compare effects between games).
Interestingly I have noticed a similar "time slowing" effect in rapid reaction computer games following extreme bursts of adrenaline for whatever reason - I wonder if action movies at 2x give you an adrenaline boost?
I noticed real life slowing down after extended multiplayer sessions of Quake 3.
-Nietzsche
Fun quote. I bet you could read quickly, but also pause to think.
The average US reader reads at 300wpm, but speech is typically 150wpm. I feel like the 1.4x speed option on bloggingheads doesn't reduce my comprehension at all, even for technical material.
I would think that the brain is devoting extra processing power to pickup on different social cues and status juxtapositions while listening to the bloggingheads versus text.
Anecdotal evidence: coffee followed by tea works best for me. (I.e. better than coffee alone.)
How does it compare to coffee followed by coffee, or any of the other permutations?
and why not just a caffeine pill?
I wonder if it is because tea has theanine in it. Perhaps you could try comparing against a theanine supplement?
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.)
I have posted about my positive experiences with piracetam and sulbutiamine here before. Since then I've also tried L-tyrosine (precursor to a bunch of important neurotransmitters), but it hasn't had a discernible effect on me.
I'd just like to say that there are many safe, potentially nootropic and anti-akrasic supplements to try, and while individual biochemistry varies too much to reliably predict whether any particular one will work for you or not, the expected return on investment from experimentation is extremely high. I would also like to add that chemical problems can disguise themselves as psychological problems, and that taking a multivitamin is not optional unless you're keeping a detailed food log and tallying up your intake of every one of the standard multivitamin ingredients.
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.)
I don't know about the methodologies those studies have used, but the one I would recommend for measuring effects on long-term memory is to study flash cards with Anki, and monitor its statistics on the success rate for new, young and mature cards.
Intelligence is hard to define, let alone measure.
Even if some nootropic showed an increase in long-term memory, I would be concerned that might involve a decrase in some other more important cognitive quality, such as creativity.
Memory is important only to a degree. I most value creativity, short term working memory, and focus. The latter is often the most important for success, and mood/motivation is thus critical.
Tradeoffs do exist, but most forms of self-improvement really are just improvement, not tradeoff-adjustments, and assuming otherwise would cause you to miss opportunities. Beware of putting obstacles in the way of things you should do; deciding you need a creativity test before you work on improving your memory is more likely to drive you to inaction and loss of benefits than to lead to an actual test.
IQ and working memory are good enough approximations most of the time.
Is there anything wrong with Wikipedia'ing it? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piracetam
Nope, nothing wrong, Wikipedia has a rather overflowing wealth of information. I was just wondering if JRH had any specific references that struck him as very interesting, or if he had any particular techniques to measure his own performance.
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.
About 3 weeks on sulbutiamine, 5 on piracetam. I haven't gotten any quantitative data. Before I started, I thought I ought to get in the habit of using dual N-back and Anki and some other tests so I'd have a baseline, but didn't really have the energy and motivation to set those up and do them. Once I realized that was stopping me from trying nootropics at all, I dropped that idea and settled for subjective impressions, collected informally. I have some subjective feeling data recorded in my private diary, but it pretty much just duplicates what I posted in comments.
Piracetam and sulbutiamine have pretty much orthogonal effects. If you're already taking a supplement with lots of thiamine, then sulbutiamine will have a smaller effect than it would otherwise since they are analogues of the same molecule, but I think there's a limit to how much thiamine can cross the blood-brain barrier which doesn't apply to sulbutiamine so you may still get some effect.
I've taken piracetam and measured the effects on a one dose basis.
I notice more 'clear' thinking, but the measurable part is in terms of action/reaction time. My 'maximum typing rate' (my typing speed when I type a memorized sentence and don't make mistakes) goes up about 10%. My reaction time goes down about 10%.
My guitar playing speed seems to improve by more than 10% (haven't actually measured it). The increase is large enough that my friends can tell that I've taken a 'racetam without me mentioning it. One of the first times I took piracetam I had forgotten about taking it and when I went to play guitar I was shocked and confused until I remembered taking it.
That is really interesting jimmy. Is it still legally available in the US? I am motivated now to research it more.
Of course a 10% speed increase isn't earth-shattering and probably doesn't result in anything near a 10% benefit in most tasks, but it's fascinating to me because I wasn't aware that any pharmaceutical could significantly increase speed of thought. Although I guess perhaps some stimulants can, but I've also thought of there effects as increasing alertness more than speed.
Piracetam is still legal, apparently. smartpowders.com, for example, is still selling it, although note the timer gives you only 2 days. There are other retailers, of course.
Wow, that's close timing. The place I previously bought from has already stopped selling it. I gotta stock up now.
Thanks a ton for the warning.
Wait, they have? I was under the impression that smartpowders.com was the first to be notified.
Yeah, but now that I look closer, it looks like it was several months back.
http://www.bodybuilding.com/store/prima/piracetam.html
Yup, bulknutrition.com also stopped selling it months back.
It's legal and cheap in the US. I bought 500g for ~$20 if I remember correctly. Aniracetam is similar and also legal and worth playing with. I have a friend that's into MMA and likes taking aniracetam before grappling.
To cut a few snips from a conversation about it: "more free flowing instictual thought processes instead of frantic fleeting moments when it gets intense.."
" id say no more than a 10% improvement, but i will say i felt invincible on ground and pound days when i got on top, it was just so easy to flow and maintain top position... it seemed like it improved timing and sense of body awareness"
Is this post supposed to be seen as a reply to this one? Just curious.
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.
Next year I have to do a study as a school project. I will probably have access to about 10-20 test subjects, maybe more if I beg, and a lab with a full battery of professional-level cognitive tests. I'd like to study nootropic drugs and see how well they work, but the only one I'm really familiar with, piracetam, is by prescription only in Ireland, and I'm not likely to be able to prescribe it for this study.
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?
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.
To the best of my knowledge only one small N-back study has been done and the results were strongly positive. There would be significant social value in getting more data on N-Backing.
http://www.gwern.net/N-back%20FAQ#support
Besides Jaeggi 2008, there have been 2 or 3 studies supporting it to some degree, and 2 or 3 studies opposing it to some degree.
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?
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.
I don't know how reliable it would be, but you can try a book of "lateral thinking puzzles."
Focus is sometimes tested by giving people a task and introducing distracting influences in a controlled manner. I recall nicotine being tested on children in this way (it works about as well as Adderall if memory serves me.) But there isn't too much incentive for people to formally research this kind of thing for most nootropics so a lot of the time we just have ad hoc anecdotal reports to go by.
Modafinil is better for boosting mood than caffeine or adderall, especially in as much as it tends to provoke less agitation. The effect on focus is not quite as pronounced as with the amphetamine. This is sometimes considered a good thing when the overfocus is detrimental (eg. when socialising or exposed to TvTropes.)
Selegeline also improves both focus and mood - in a more subtle way over periods of weeks (irreversible MAOB inhibition doesn't 'rebound' after a few hours).
For mood specifically try Phenylethylamine while you are taking selegeline (carefully!) or use phenibut.
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.
Coincidentally, I recently began trying l-tryptophan (which metabolizes into 5HTP). I think it helps sleep and may've helped motivation, but I'm not sure (coincided with a sleep schedule switch from day to night).
+1 for 5-HTP. I use it as a substitute for melatonin and think it is more broadly useful than melatonin.
More useful than melatonin for sleeping in particular?
It depends on the person; there are genetic factors involved with processing of these kinds of things. 5-HTP is a partial prodrug for melatonin and I don't think is generally less useful than melatonin for sleeping.
My own experience was that 5-HTP had a VERY noticeable effect on my sleep for the first week or two, after which point I built up a tolerance to it in that respect at least. I switched to melatonin after the problems I mentioned above, and that had a much less noticeable effect, but the effect didn't taper off at all as it did with 5-HTP...
I'd be VERY careful with 5-HTP . Very careful indeed. I used it for a couple of years and it had some beneficial effects (increased sleep, decreased migraine, decreased depression, general cognitive improvement). But anything that affects your serotonergetic system can have nasty unpredictable effects. In my case, I upped my caffeine intake a lot, without realising that caffeine can have a synergetic effect with 5-HTP, and gave myself mild <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serotonin_syndrome">serotonin syndrome</a>. NOT pleasant. In particular, if you take any kind of SSRI, don't touch 5-HTP with a bargepole...
Non-expert suggestion: Flax seed oil.
Sulbutiamine could use some more study and is significant enough in effects that it would show a difference on that scale of investigation.
Thanks, that's my first choice right now. Just got to find out how to find out if it's legal here.
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.
How would people feel about an IA wiki, to collect and organize information about software, drugs/supplements, etc., including links to the best available research on each, plus perhaps space for anecdotes?
(I am volunteering to host and moderate it if there is interest, though I'm not an expert on the actual subject matter, so I'd need plenty of help with writing and researching it.)
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.
Interesting initiative, bookmarked. Being a rather cautious layman in this area I look forward to a good and more importantly trustworthy resource on this. I feel the need to be extra careful with anything that targets the mind specifically. I'm concerned about side effects showing up in old age, especially anything that could increase the odds of Alzheimer's or something similar that could mess with my cryonics plans.
Perhaps start the thing by stealing articles from wikipedia so to have a seed base? Also this sounds silly but a cool wiki emblem goes a long way.
I don't know why but when I heard better brains I associated it with something similar like a level up icon, a + inside the a line shaped like a human brain. In some respect similar to the h+ logo.
I'm going to discourage copying entire articles, as Wikipedia articles will have a lot of information that this wiki won't need (information on substances' history, marketing, etc.); I want the pages to be focused on practicality. There'll probably be some information duplicated, and Wikipedia will be a good source, but if there's an existing Wikipedia article we'll just have a badge linking to it, the way the LW wiki does it.
Indeed. I'm decent at designing things, so I'll put something up today, but maybe there could be a logo contest at some point if there's enough activity to warrant it.
I made a page on the wiki collecting all of the links that were mentioned so far in this thread: http://ia.fubaria.org/index.php/External_links
I also made a few other pages, but most of those will probably end up being deleted.
Listening to certain pieces of classical music can "enhance spatial–temporal tasks involving mental imagery and temporal ordering."
These are audio patterns primarily created for pleasure. Perhaps this is a necessary component of making them work. However if they are not this opens up a new interesting field of investigation into synthesised audio (music ect.) and visual patterns specifically designed for enhancing performance on certain tasks or perhaps even g in general.
Also let me emphasise that currently the science seems to be leaning towards this being mostly an artefact of mood and arousal and even so just for specific tasks. If this is true this would make the search for new and stronger patterns more difficult, since the space has been much more explored. But I suppose a large space of pleasurable music hasn't been explored for these effects so this may be low hanging fruit never the less.
Is this a good thread to talk about sleep in? I'm not sure if sleep deprivation reduces intelligence, but it reduces executive function, which is necessary for effective use of one's intelligence.
For anyone interested, the SoCal LW Meetup will be getting together on the 25th and is soliciting activity suggestions.
If anyone can swiftly come up with a brilliant, written intelligence amplification intervention protocol "if only they had a handful of willing and motivated volunteers" you should write it up on the wiki and link to it as a suggestion from a comment in the appropriate place. You have 10 days. Act now because you'll get feedback swiftly.
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.
In the Foucault Reader, Michel Foucault claims his greatest trick is an old one called hypomnemata. The last time I googled on hypomnemata, all the top hits were explicit Foucault references.
The hypomnema or hypomnemata are similar to diaries (or weblogs even), except they are not written one time and maybe never looked at again. They are to be reread and rewritten over and over for the writer's education and work and progress. I have been doing a bunch of this for years and it is only since November of 2008 that I have established a system that I am confident of using daily and feel that the pages will continue to contain useful information for years. Every page is dated and numbered. I now have close to 1900 pages with this dating/numbering scheme. Foucault claims this is a great idea and I don't know about that, but so far I like it just fine. It does keep ideas that I like to think about from sinking too far down the stack through neglect into oblivion.
After five years it is reviewed one last time and then tossed into the dumpster.
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?
Crazy.
The title sounded interesting, so I followed the link and tried to read it.
(Ow, my head! It hurts...)
There are some very intriguing ideas in there, and also some very scary ones, and I haven't finished it yet, and I'm not sure I want to and... ow. Just, ow.
I think there should be some kind of warning on your link, but I'm not sure what it should warn about exactly.
Those are my thoughts on it, to the degree that I am still able to think at the moment. ;-)
Could you elaborate on this system (or link to a description)?
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.
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.
Can you give an example of the kind of thing you use this to record? Is it for ideas, new concepts, notes to self, things to do later ... ? What kind of things do you save, and how are they useful?
I was thinking about something similar recently, although I came at it from a different direction. Every once in a while I'll think of something I call a "puzzle piece"--a bit of my own personality, or a rationale for something I do or feel. A piece of the puzzle that is me. Examples are along the lines of "Oh, I just remembered this experience I once had regarding such-and-such; no wonder I react to such-and-such so strongly now."
I usually talk to someone about the puzzle pieces in a logged medium, but I don't otherwise record them. It occurred to me that if I did, I'd be writing a manual to myself, and that might be very handy. Would anyone else be interested in some kind of structured site with the purpose of helping people develop their own "manuals" in this way? I'll need to think about the requirements a little more before committing to building it, but I'm tentatively interested, especially if someone wants to help. (It wouldn't be IA specifically, but self-knowledge is a useful thing.)
It's also possible that the right format for this would not be an interactive site so much as a text guide for finding your own puzzle pieces.
Everything that is now up on my blog comes directly from my hypomnemata.
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?
Psychedelics can have cognitive benefits. It's not what you'd chose if you need to concentrate on something, but if the problem requires a creative solution and you're stuck, it might be the way to go.
"What if I had not taken LSD ever; would I have still invented PCR? I don't know. I doubt it. I seriously doubt it." -Kary Mullis
I have a friend who came to a pretty big personal revelation about reductionism/human behavior when under the influence of DMT.
Another friend took a threshold dose of LSD and said something along the lines of "I've always known intellectually that aging is bad, but it finally hit me- at an emotional level. These [old] people are everywhere. They're falling apart right in front of us and we act as if its normal and okay! This is not okay!!!"
The interesting thing about this is that a full "tripping" dose is not necessary. The latter friend was on a dose low enough that neither he nor anyone else could notice the effects- other than the slightly changed thought processes, of course.
Also note that cannabis is a psychedelic and has caused similar insights in all sorts of people, including myself.
Only some people experience psychedelic effects from marijuana, and then usually only some of the time.... and when you do get psychedelic effects, they're nowhere near as intense as they are for "traditional" psychedelics.... still it's enough to get some of the positive effects being talked about here.
It's a real shame that its become rather hard to get ahold of "real" psychedelics these days.
Psychedelic means something that causes a profound change in thought patterns. In anything beyond a mild dose, cannabis induces profound changes in thought patterns.
There are plenty of legal plants that contain illegal psychedelics. These plants are legal to buy, grow, and sell, but they become illegal if you possess them with the knowledge of their use. It is an actual thoughtcrime (in the USA).
All can be purchased online by searching Google.
A lot of places avoid the "thought crime" problem by making the live plants legal but their products illegal. For example, in places where psychedelic mushrooms grow naturally, it is often legal to have them fresh but illegal to have them dried, as one would only dry them in order to use them but you wouldn't want to arrest an old lady for having a lawn.
Low dose ketamine has been shown to promote synaptogenesis in the prefrontal cortex. (in rats) Link to abstract
It is currently being investigated as a potential antidepressant in humans, but based on anecdotal evidence, it seems likely that it's also a nootropic.
Should I have a glass of wine with dinner every day? I'd heard that recommended somewhere but the Wikipedia article doesn't seem all that convincing: it instead indicates that I should be eating more grapes to get resveratrol. Maybe. The other health benefits of wine seem negligible if existent.
I linked this in another comment: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/journal/10.1111/%28ISSN%291530-0277
I'm not sure, either.
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.
Grapes freeze really well, and then you can suck on them - would that work?
If the goal is to get resveratrol, then take pure resveratrol as a supplement. Getting it from wine or grapes ties it to other things (alcohol, or sugar and growing seasons) and limits your ability to control the dose.
(And the dose is also ridiculously small considering the low bioavailability of resveratrol for humans.)
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.
Exercise: Effect on brain function:
Anyone have a better summary or source? The overall research emphasis on 'older adults' is understandable but personally unhelpful.
The papers I've looked at lead me to believe that cardiovascular/aerobic exercise is a lot more effective than e.g. strength training at increasing cognitive function. But I still don't know how how effective! Is there e.g. a 10% increase in short term memory, or 2%, or 20%? So many of the papers include only data about elderly people that aren't particularly relevant to my research.
I recommend O'Reilly's Mind Performance Hacks and the accompanying Mentat Wiki. I was particularly interested in the exoself which is really just a combination of the Hipster PDA and a Motivaider.
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.
Another benefit is that you will remember your notes better if you write them on paper. The kinaesthetic involvement aids memory formation. I don't do it myself. But then, I don't usually take notes either.
Good point. I knew that, but forgot about it (probably since that's not my reason). They'll probably also be easier to browse and review if I care to.
I didn't used to take notes either. The main conscious reason I do it now is that I know I'm inclined to do something with my hands while in class--doodling, writing something unrelated, even crocheting or embroidery sometimes. All of these activities take some of my attention away from the instructor. If I take notes, I satisfy the urge to keep my hands busy, and also pay more attention instead of less.
(That, and I'm getting paid to take notes in one of my classes, and I would've felt silly if that was the only one I took notes for.)
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.
And surely now in the days of ubiquitous (expensive) smart phones, there's an equivalent of a $60 piece of extra physical junk.... I'll add it to the wiki when I find it.
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.
I've never been able to get over the initial learning curve of emacs or vi.... every once in awhile I try for a few days, but find myself not advancing up the curve fast enough to get real work done and end up ditching it for a conventional editor. Do you have any tips for how to quickly bring yourself up to speed on one of the editors, i.e. get far enough up the learning curve to be more productive with it than with a traditional editor, in a short period of time?
Perhaps vimperator? It would enable you to get at least basic vi familiarity during your off-time, instead of hampering your productivity.
gvim is easier than vim and vim is easier than vi; with gvim, you can use the mouse, unlike console versions. In general, using *vi is most valuable for editing, as opposed to entry - things like reformatting code, adjusting text tables, that sort of thing.
You only need a small set of commands to function in gvim - i/esc for modes, v for visual (selection mode), d, y and p for cut, yank (aka copy) and paste. You can skip the home-row cursor motion stuff at first and just use arrows. Once you're comfortable with a small set of commands, learn a few more at a time, spaced out, and when you have a particular need for them. Start with '.' (repeat last command), since having that while doing semi-redundant editing tasks will motivate you to learn more commands.
Emacs hardly even has a learning curve for basic use these days, what with the gui interface and ability to use the mouse. Even the console version tends to be better for new users than variations of vi since the keystroke-commands are (arguably) less arcane.
You can improve your Emacs-effectiveness by reading a manual once, so you know what commands there are, and then just pay attention to when you're doing repetitive tasks or using a bunch of keystrokes for something you can think of as a one-step process; then there's probably a command for that. Also, use keyboard macros. And if you have a gui-version, only use the mouse as a last resort and then figure out what you should have done using the keyboard.
I use emacs as my editor of choice, though I've never really become a super-expert in it, and I recommend it warmly.
What I advise is to make a list of basic keyboard commands and look it up whenever you're doing something; in my experience, you should memorize them effectively very soon. What I would initially include into the list are basic file commands (opening, saving, navigation, revert-buffer), copy/paste, find/search/replace, and etags commands (if you're programming). If you want, you can post your list, and I can tell you what I think should be added to it. (I still occasionally find out about some amazingly useful feature I hadn't known.)
Also, the default setup for emacs can be ugly and inconvenient, so the first step should be to customize your .emacs configuration file. You can find lots of good examples if you just google for them, and modify one as you like. By the way, if you can, install emacs 23, which supports magnificent anti-aliased fonts.
God helmet. More info here where it's sold for $650. Kooky or credible or both?
Also, anyone know where to buy transcranial magnetic stimulation devices? Closest I found was this without an easily findable price tag. If not, do any engineers know if they'd be difficult to build?
I found a place that does TMS sessions in Berkeley that treat depression. Website here. I'll do more research to figure out if it'd be useful for things other than depression. This looks potentially promising, but I haven't found the original study yet (using Google Scholar).
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.
Wake up early.
The article you linked doesn't actually mention any intelligence benefits.
As far as I know, there are none. I mention it because I find I tend to be fresher and more motivated in the morning, so if I wanted to take up a new habit such as practicing dual n-back, I would schedule it in the morning. I'm really just throwing out ideas for the wiki.
As far as DNB goes, evening is better than morning: http://www.gwern.net/N-back%20FAQ#sleep
(My rule of thumb is that if something has to do with memory, you're best off doing it ceteris paribus before sleep.)
Thank you, I stand corrected.
Mindfulness Meditation.
People have told me that human growth hormone supplements and sprays just don't work and that the only way to take it is via injection, with potential for dangerous side effects et cetera, making it infeasible for IA. Do others have additional input?
The magic combination of things that work for me:
Regular exercise, i like running at least 5 days a week, tabata/endurance depending on the mood/energy levels.
Piracetam
Very strong coffee in the morning
Clear goals of what i want to accomplish
No sleep debt, and sufficient sleep everyday.
Last one is the hardest, but the weeks that manage to get enough sleep, i get things done like an animal.
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.
My experience is that when used in combination with sufficient sleep, i.e., much more sleep than most Americans get, small doses of caffeine (e.g. 1 espresso/day) can be a permanently useful stimulant. The 'cost' of the alertness gets taken out of your bone density and immune system rather than via chemical habituation.
What is your experience? Have you tried stopping caffeine? Do you have objective measure of alertness?
Yes, on most days I have no caffeine. I frequently go 2-3 weeks without taking any caffeine at all except for, say, a fun-sized dark chocolate bar. I do not drink soda, take caffeniated pills, drink office coffee, or have access to other popular surrepetitious sources of caffeine, so it is unlikely that I am in denial about my caffeine consumption.
I do not have an objective measure of alertness, but I have been successfully confused by what appeared to be aytpical levels of alertness after misestimating the amount of caffeine in, e.g., a Grande Starbucks Frappucino (~120 mg vs. my estimate of 50 mg), gone back and checked the actual caffeine level, and found that it predicted my past alertness better than my estimated caffeine level. This happened twice with two different types of caffeniated beverages, both at times when I was habitually using caffeine at roughly the same dosages per day as the beverages in question.
This is a sufficient answer to my comment as well.
I'll still take a pass. :)
Exercise, especially tabata seems to mitigate some of these problems. I get sick quite often, but i recover very fast and my bones seem to be stronger. Of course it's just my subjective observation.
Your experience with tabata: subjective or did you find some research?
A shockingly high percentage of undergraduates illegally use ADHD drugs. A group of researchers questioned 1,811 undergraduates at a large public U.S. college and found that 34% admitted illegally using ADHA stimulants.
The researchers conducted detailed interviews with 175 of the users. None of these users "sought out information from health professionals, medical or pharmaceutical reference guides, or even Internet sites before taking their first dose."
From the paper "Illicit use of prescription ADHD medications on a college campus: a multimethodological approach" by DeSantis AD, Webb EM, Noar SM, published in the Journal of American College Health. Not available online.
It is online. google scholar is awesome. pdf doc
I'm unsure how much alcohol I should drink.
I'm perfectly happy abstaining. And I know that my memory and computer programming abilities are temporarily impaired by even one drink.
But there's fairly persuasive evidence that several drinks daily causes old people to live longer. With the notable exception of social isolation (people tend to drink more when they're socializing), just about everything I can imagine was controlled for.
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.
The link didn't work for me but assuming it refers to this study, controlling for socio-behavioural factors (which includes measures of social support) significantly reduces but does not eliminate the effect.
That's right. The link no longer points directly to the text.
Could that just be because the controls used are imperfect measures of what we should be controlling for?
It could. The balance of evidence makes it seem unlikely that moderate alcohol consumption has negative health consequences and quite plausible that it has some health benefits (particularly if red wine is consumed) however.
I didn't read the full text of the original study, but someone pointed out that "social-behavior factors" didn't include the amount of time spent hanging out with friends/colleagues/family and drinking.
The reason I take this study as any evidence at all is that it's not the first such study to indicate that drinking increases lifespan, and because they did control for quite a few things.
'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.
True. You really have to believe it's alcohol that's making a difference to just talk about "drinks". I do believe they would have noticed if it were only red-wine drinkers who benefited (via reservatol, say), though. I imagine their data included the kind of drinks imbibed.
The 18 IQ points of wine > beer is clearly mostly snobbery/signaling :)
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.
Excellent point: I know I tend to feel the same way about vegans (I eat dairy+meat) initially.
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.
I suspect, although I haven't tested the hypothesis, that I am a supertaster. Dark green veggies are delicious cooked. I love the smell but hate the taste of coffee. I don't like grapefruit by itself, although I've consumed sweetened grapefruit juice that was okay. And the single most repulsive taste experience I have ever had involved a rum-soaked tiramisu crust. I haven't tasted any alcohol since - I'll use wine to cook once in a while, but I make sure that the alcohol all boils off. I can't get myself to bring anything that smells like alcohol to my lips.
Fascinating idea for another confound they didn't control against. How common is what you call a super-taster, though? If it's infrequent enough, it can't possibly explain the entirety of the huge effect in the study.
SSRIs have neuroprotective properties among other things, some good (insomnia treatment, depression treatment, premature ejaculation treatment), and some bad (big list of typical drug side effects like nausea).
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? 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.
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. ;)
Hi, neighbor! (Are there many LWers around here?)
Yes indeed! I'm not actually your neighbor yet: the SIAI Visiting Fellows house is trying to move to Berkeley. Hopefully they'll get that figured out soon. I personally fly into town early October. LW folk Kevin, MBlume, and Emil all live in a house in Berkeley. If SIAI moves to Berkeley then to that list will be added quite a few others. There are probably other LWers in Berkeley that I don't know about yet. With some luck Berkeley will become the Singularitarian/Neorationalist nexus.
I can't say I'm surprised--I can imagine that a certain segment of Berkeley culture intersects neatly with LW's premise.
Berkeley? Center of the next great rationalist movement? That's going to take some luck.
That's okay too. I'm interested in interesting social people with good communication skills. I confess I don't give a damn if they call themselves rationalists or roosters.
Well, there's about five in my house =)
Plus John Maxwell, Lucas Sloan, and probably some folks I'm forgetting.
Not only are we reinventing the wheel here we are doing so as a community relatively poorly equipped to do so.
The guys at the Immortality Institute forums are reasonably like minded to lesswrong participants but many of them are obsessed with the kind of subject we discuss here and have done excessive amounts of investigation into both studies and typical experiences of self-experimenters.
We would in most cases be best off just reading through the best of the threads there and following their findings.
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?
At the top of the Nootropics forum is a sticky which indexes the best threads by subject. It looks like exactly what you're looking for.
This one in particular looks like a great getting-started guide.
It would certainly be useful if the information was collected in wiki format. As you say, forums are far from optimal for collecting a concise synthesis of information! It would be a service to the universe if ata's wiki was filled out comprehensively.
Suggestions for statistical software (ideally freeware) for self-experimentation data analysis? Or data tracking? Ideally something that takes very little knowledge of stats and isn't programmer-oriented. I suppose I should ask people at Quantified Self.
Report back, if you do?
This list looks promising.
This post at ImmInst looks awesome: carefully chosen synergistic and effective nootropics.
"We report that when C57BL/6 mice are maintained on an intermittent fasting (alternate-day fasting) dietary-restriction regimen their overall food intake is not decreased and their body weight is maintained. Nevertheless, intermittent fasting resulted in beneficial effects that met or exceeded those of caloric restriction including reduced serum glucose and insulin levels and increased resistance of neurons in the brain to excitotoxic stress."
"Since May 2003 we have experimented with alternate day calorie restriction, one day consuming 20-50% of estimated daily caloric requirement and the next day ad lib eating, and have observed health benefits starting in as little as two weeks, in insulin resistance, asthma, seasonal allergies, infectious diseases of viral, bacterial and fungal origin (viral URI, recurrent bacterial tonsillitis, chronic sinusitis, periodontal disease), autoimmune disorder (rheumatoid arthritis), osteoarthritis, symptoms due to CNS inflammatory lesions (Tourette's, Meniere's) cardiac arrhythmias (PVCs, atrial fibrillation), menopause related hot flashes. We hypothesize that other many conditions would be delayed, prevented or improved, including Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, multiple sclerosis, brain injury due to thrombotic stroke atherosclerosis, NIDDM, congestive heart failure."
Breakfast. Discuss:
Not just carbohydrates. Fat and protein.
Supplementing D-vitamin (D3 in my case) seems to add more energy and efficient hours in the day for me.
It is clear that the human body is good at adjusting and fine-tuning itself in response to immediate need. What in-built "amplification" do we have when intelligence is needed, and how could it be harnessed?
For example: The natural fight-or-flight reflex appears to provide instant alertness and focus, and I would imagine blood-flow to decision making functions is enhanced? Linked to a comment below I have found my reaction time and competance at rapid reaction computer games improves rapidly following surges in adrenaline. Is this coming from the improved focus (could this be simulated?), or increased bloodflow?
Sympathomimetics? Ephedrine is an example that is often available OTC.
Biofeedback for ADHD.
I haven't added much, not out of lack of interest, but because I haven't done much (rigorous) experimentation. I'm sure it's the case for many other silent lurkers. I support this open venture wholeheartedly!
I've been mulling over getting an iPhone, basically weighing two considerations.
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.
On the other, it seems like it must have awesome potential as an intelligence amplification tool! I feel like I'm missing a step towards human-machine integration by not getting one.
Anyone have any thoughts on how to optimize the tool for intelligence amplification?
A few apps that seem to have potential:
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.
Have you tried Swype? I've got a physical keyboard on mine, but I find that that method of input is actually even faster.
I haven't, mainly because the authors refuse to take my money for it. But if it's that good, then I suppose I ought to seek out a pirated copy.
That would be advisable. It's been a big hit with at least one other #lesswrong person, so I can now generalize from a set of two.
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.
I'm not a recluse and I already have a phone, so this isn't really an answer to my question.
Certainly true though, were I interested in comparing apps to relationships.
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.
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'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.
Personally, I find physical pain to be somewhat helpful. When I start getting drowsy in one of my lectures, winding my hair around one of my fingers and pulling on it keeps me awake and cognitively alert. I've also found that biting my tongue is less effective at it.