5 ways to maximize your cognitive potential Andrea Kuszewski

1. Seek Novelty There is only one trait out of the "Big Five" from the Five Factor Model of personality (Acronym: OCEAN, or Openness, Conscientiousness, Extroversion, Agreeableness, and Neuroticism) that correlates with IQ, and it is the trait of Openness to new experience. People who rate high on Openness are constantly seeking new information, new activities to engage in, new things to learn—new experiences in general [2]. 2. Challenge Yourself Efficiency is not your friend when it co...

 Technology Enables IA, but Culture Must Evolve for It

Look at what intellect would be without writing or the printing press—these primitive technologies already make such a difference. Just think of what the latest computer technology will be able to do to further augment the intellect! But this is a non-sequitur: what makes writing and paper powerful is technology to some extent, but it is mostly the rich culture that grew up around it. Let’s look at writing first. The earlies extant samples of writing are Babylonian clay tablets contai...

 Conceptual and Technological Revolutions

There are two kind s of scientific revolutions, those d riven by new tools and those d riven by new concepts. Thomas K uhn in his famous book, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, talked almost exclusively about concepts and hard ly at all about tools. His id ea of a scientific revolution is based on a single example, the revolution in theoretical physics that occurred in the 1920s with the advent of quantum mechanics. This was a prime example of a concept-d riven revolution. K uhn's book...

 Scientist on Trial for Teaching Physics

After waiting patiently for the noise to subside, one of the male Red Guards turned to the victim. “Ye Zhetai, you are an expert in mechanics. You should see how strong the great unified force you’re resisting is. To remain so stubborn will lead only to your death! Today, we will continue the agenda from the last time. There’s no need to waste words. Answer the following question without your typical deceit: Between the years of 1962 and 1965, did you not decide on your own to add relat...

 Intellectual Exploration as Geographical Exploration

My own field of physics is passing today through a phase of exuberant freedom, a phase of passionate prodigality. Sometimes as I listen to the conversation of my young colleagues at Princeton, I feel as if I am lost in a rain forest, with insects and birds and flowers growing all around me in intricate profusion, growing too abundantly for my sixty-year-old brain to comprehend. But the young people are at home in the rain forest and walk confidently along trails which to me are almost invisib...

 Resistance to World Government

The case for World Government as Hamilton and Einstein presented it is logically compelling. Fortunately or unfortunately, World Government has a fatal defect. Nobody wants it. At the time when Einstein preached World Government most seriously, he was bitterly attacked by Soviet scientific colleagues as well as by patriotic American politicians. "By the irony of fate," the Soviet scientists proclaimed, "Einstein has virtually become a supporter of the schemes and ambitions of the bitterest fo...

 War is the Price of Diversity

The state of the world today is not essentially different from the state of the world in 1948. We are still faced with the same choices that we were facing in 1948. On the level of fundamental principles, we are faced with a choice between unity and diversity. The unity of mankind, or the diversity of nations and political institutions. National sovereignty is the contemporary expression of the ancient human tradition which divided us into {202} tribes, each jealously guarding its independe...

 Science Unifiers

Now it is generally true that the very greatest scientists in each discipline are unifiers. This is especially true in physics. Newton and Einstein were supreme as unifiers. The great triumphs of physics have been triumphs of unification. We almost take it for granted that the road of progress in physics will be a wider and wider unification bringing more and more phenomena within the scope of a few fundamental principles. Einstein was so confident of the correctness of this road of unificati...

 Broken Symmetry

The discoveries of recent decades in particle physics have led us to place great emphasis on the concept of broken symmetry. The development of the universe from its earliest beginnings is regarded as a succession of symmetry-breakings. As it emerges from the moment of creation in the Big Bang, the universe is completely symmetrical and featureless. As it cools to lower and lower temperatures, it breaks one symmetry after another, allowing more and more diversity of structure to come into exi...

 A Black Hole is a Star Forever Falling Inward

He talked to us about the new theory of black holes which he had then just worked out. The idea of a black hole was one of the most dramatic consequences of Einstein's theory of gravity. According to Einstein's equations, a massive star at the end of its life, when it has exhausted its nuclear fuel, continues to contract and grow smaller and denser under the influence of its own gravitation. After the nuclear fuel is used up, the star goes into a state of gravitational collapse. All parts of ...