Participants in the Singularity Summit 2011 workshops held on October 17-18 brainstormed a list of cognitive enhancement methods they would like to see tested — some of them for the first time, many of them more thoroughly than has been done so far. Here is that list:
- rationality instruction
- potassium and nutrients/micronutrients in general
- modafinil and its class
- racetam class, adderall, riatlin
- paleo and other popular diets
- multigenerational embryo selection
- particular TMS interventions
- doing math or logic problems every day
- amount of sleep
- neurofeedback; EEG, etc.
- physical health, specific types of exercise, yoga
- more red blood cells
- certain types of electrical stimulation
- spaced repetition
- practicing visualization
- practicing chess and Go
- dual n-back training
- prolonged sensory deprivation
- experience manipulating physical objects (craftsmanship and engineering)
- listening to music actively (and engaging with other art forms actively)
- using specific visual languages for specific tasks
- happiness in general (gratitude, etc.)
- changing the oxygen content of what you're breathing
- gene expression levels
- operant conditioning
- irradiation or administration of other toxins
- lucid dreaming
- GHB
- intermittent fasting
- creatine
- nicotine, caffeine
- arterial glucose drip to get more sugar to the brain
- Ekman training
- steroids
I occasionally get tiny amounts: but it's not just reading. I'm fairly sure that when I have conversations in dreams this often works by me accepting that 'I said X they said Y' rather than bothering with noise. I wasn't sure if I dreamt in sound or colour at all until I had a couple of dreams where those two things were particularly vivid.
Lucid dreaming is fascinating, but I do sometimes wonder about how UNlucid dreams tend to be. How much we construct the bare minimum. Although IIRC we also lack real colour vision in bits of our peripheral vision and similar weirdnesses without noticing, and we don't really notice colour loss in bad lighting.