03 JAN 2017 by ideonexus
Trust in Truth
TRUST IN TRUTH
Understanding, accepting, and knowing how to effectively deal with reality are crucial for achieving success. Having truth on your side is extremely powerful. While the truth itself may be scary—you have a weakness, you have a deadly disease, etc.—knowing the truth will allow you to deal with your situation better. Being truthful, and letting others be truthful with you, allows you to explore your own thoughts and exposes you to the feedback that is essential for your lear...
1 19 MAR 2015 by ideonexus
People With High Cognition Want More
First, it seems to me (based on anecdotal evidence and personal observations) that people who are already endowed with above-average cognitive capacities are at least as eager, and, from what I can tell, actually more eager, to obtain further improvements in these capacities than are people who are less talented in these regards. For instance, someone who is musically gifted is likely to spend more time and effort trying to further develop her musical capacities than is somebody who lacks a m...Folksonomies: cognition transhumanism
Folksonomies: cognition transhumanism
1 
notes
notesFrom Nick Bostrom's "Why I Want to be a Posthuman When I Grow Up"
25 FEB 2015 by ideonexus
Art of Dungeon Mastery
Being a good Dungeon Master involves a lot more than knowing the rules. It calls for quick wit, theatrical flair, and a good sense of dramatic timing—among other things. Most of us can claim these attributes to some degree, but there's always room for improvement.
Fortunately, skills like these can be learned and improved with practice. There are hundreds of tricks, shortcuts, and simple principles that can make you a better, more dramatic, and more creative game master.
Folksonomies: rpg role-playing game
Folksonomies: rpg role-playing game
29 DEC 2013 by ideonexus
Glucose and Oxygent Improve Memory Formation
Increasing glucose and oxygen supplies to the brain seems to allow iniformation to be committed more accurately and fully to memory; in other words, you learn better. This means when you come to recall it at a later stage, you will undoubtedly do better, because the information there is clearer and more comprehensive. The reverse does not seem to be true, however. If you first encoded something without the aid of extra oxygen and glucose, suddenly making more oxygen and glucose available when... 1 notes
notesNot memory retrieval, but well-timed breathing exercises and soda can improve the retention of learning.
29 DEC 2013 by ideonexus
Douglas Engelbart's Idea of Small Changes
I'm reminded of Douglas Engelbart's classic paper "Augmenting Human itellect,"2 on his belief in the power of computers. He wrote this in 1962, way before the PC, and argued that it's better to improve and facilitate the tiny things we do every day than it is to attempt to replace entire human jobs with monolithic machines. A novel-writing machine, if one were invented, just automates the process of writing novels, and it's limited to novels. But making a small improvement to a pencil, for ex... 1 notes
notesMake a change to novel-writing and you've affected a small, specific domain, but improve the pencil, and you've impacted a wide range of domains.
22 OCT 2013 by ideonexus
The Steel Man Argument
Sometimes the term "steel man" is used to refer to a position's or argument's improved form. A straw man is a misrepresentation of someone's position or argument that is easy to defeat: a "steel man" is an improvement of someone's position or argument that is harder to defeat than their originally stated position or argument.Folksonomies: debate
Folksonomies: debate
Contrasts with the straw man, work from an idealized articulation of your opponent's viewpoint and try to improve upon it.
29 MAR 2013 by ideonexus
The Growth Mindset
In a recent study, a group of
psychologists decided to see if this
differential reaction is simply behavioral,
or if it actually goes deeper, to the level of
brain performance. The researchers
measured response-locked event-related
potentials (ERPs)—electric neural signals
that result from either an internal or
external event—in the brains of college
students as they took part in a simple
flanker task. The students were shown a
string of five letters and asked to quickly
identify the midd...Folksonomies: intelligence plasticity
Folksonomies: intelligence plasticity
1 notes
notesUnderstanding that intelligence is plastic and improvable increases performance on certain tests.
11 JUN 2012 by ideonexus
Science Works from Approximation to Approximation
I have no patience with attempts to identify science with measurement, which is but one of its tools, or with any definition of the scientist which would exclude a Darwin, a Pasteur or a Kekulé. The scientist is a practical man and his are practical aims. He does not seek the ultimate but the proximate. He does not speak of the last analysis but rather of the next approximation. His are not those beautiful structures so delicately designed that a single flaw may cause the collapse of the who... 1 notes
notesGetting better all the time.
18 MAR 2012 by ideonexus
Improve Ourselves, but Also Contribute to the Improvement...
We cannot hope to build a better world without improving the individual. Toward this end, each of us must work for his own highest development, accepting at the same time his share of responsibility in the general life of humanity—our particular duty being to aid those to whom we think we can be most useful. Quoting Marie Curie.
28 JUL 2011 by ideonexus
Sign Language May Boost Cognition in Children by 50 Percent
Gestures and speech used similar neural circuits as they developed in our evolutionary history. University of Chicago psycholinguist David McNeill was the first to suggest this. He thought nonverbal and verbal skills might retain their strong ties even though they’ve diverged into separate behavioral spheres. He was right. Studies confirmed it with a puzzling finding: People who could no longer move their limbs after a brain injury also increasingly lost their ability to communicate verball...Folksonomies: parenting child development
Folksonomies: parenting child development
1 notes
notesChildren who learned the form of communication in the first grade performed 50 percent better on a series of cognitive tests.
