I became one of the dumb kids as soon as I arrived in college and several years after graduating I'm still not sure how to recover an enjoyment of thinking. Or, for that matter, an ability to think for more than a couple of minutes in a row without some kind of panicky freakout. Some of my friends have suggested video games, but I've been putting those off for various reasons that might not be valid.
Do you have any ideas about what happened?
I'll tentatively suggest treating for anxiety.
One of the big variations I see between people is the amount of energy they habitually put into thinking, and I haven't seen this discussed anywhere.
General advice about improving health and lowering intellectual friction would seem to help increase the ability to think, and ideas like "take five minutes to consider the problem" adds impetus, but I'm not sure what the general difference is between me and most people, or Yvain and me.
Intellectual drive isn't an unalloyed good-- cranks have high drive combined with low self-editinig, and some types of depression include a compulsion to think about topics that cause misery and/or inertia. Part (all?) of the value of meditation is getting some time off from thinking. Still, increasing intellectual drive would probably be a good thing for a lot of people.
Has anyone found that rationality training or anything else increases the default desire to think?