10 ms·

Maybe it's just me, but I've always thought that being "smart" has everything to do with having a wealth of information and being able to draw connections betwe

Maybe it's just me, but I've always thought that being "smart" has everything to do with having a wealth of information and being able to draw connections between various facts and ideas. Repeatedly solving a simple puzzle only makes you good at repeatedly solving a simple puzzle.

Practicality 10y ago
Intelligence is supposed to be a measure of intellectual capability, independent of knowledge. It's difficult to define clearly, but knowledge is definitely a different quality. Of course "smart" is even less well-defined than intelligence, so it's not a very useful word for such a discussion.
- riffraff 10y ago
  Yet, most tests of intelligence seem to be influenced by knowledge. I.e. if you have solved a lot of "guess the next shape" or "find the odd element" you are probably going to perform better because you know how the thing work. Likewise, literature and basic math seem to be widely influenced by education, and don't measure intelligence. Are there tests that really measure intelligence? And if there aren't, are the qualities really separated?
  - reitanqild 10y ago
    > I.e. if you have solved a lot of "guess the next shape" or "find the odd element" you are probably going to perform better because you know how the thing work. I hear this repeated a lot. I happen to have worked with someone who was into this (former something in Mensa), and as far as I understood one of the hallmarks of a good IQ test is when previous experience have small influence on the testscore. Some people tend to say that anyone can train for this. I guess if that was true, Mensa would have a lot more members.
    - jacalata 10y ago
      You are conflating various things. 1) it is uncontroversial that training improves performance on traditional IQ tests. It is true that people aim to minimise this when designing tests. It is also true that so far, nobody has done a great job at that. It's worth noting that Mensa presents different tests in different parts of the world - which is a pretty big hint that they think previous experience/cultural background affects how you perform on the test. 2) Anyone can improve their running performance through training. Not everyone can be a world class marathon runner. The fact that you can improve your performance on an IQ test is not disproven by the claim that not everyone is capable of reaching Mensa levels on it.
      - reitanqild 10y ago
        > The fact that you can improve your performance on an IQ test is not disproven You and others here seem to think I'm out to: * disprove that IQ scores can be trained * say something about or recommend Mensa (not a member, don't know if I would qualify, never took the official test) while I only wanted to offer a counterpoint to the IQ-measurement-is-more-or-less-worthless school of thought. > Anyone can improve their running performance through training. Not everyone can be a world class marathon runner. Same goes for cognitive skills. I think this sums it up: there are significant differences in both physical and mental capabilities.
        jacalata 10y ago
        I have no opinion on what you were "out to" do, I was responding to your comment which seemed to be expressing disbelief in the idea that IQ tests can be trained for ("I hear this repeated a lot...I guess if that was true Mensa would have a lot more members")
        reitanqild 10y ago
        Thanks for a good answer. Sorry to have been unclear. My point was that to me it seems clear that IQ tests do measure something outside of previous exposure or training. IIRC most people will not manage to get 125 (just a number) on a well-designed test even if they are allowed to prepare with the exact same type of questions or even get trained for them.
rezashirazian 10y ago
I've spent sometime studying this. I personally believe Lumosity and the like are a waste of time (if not a downright scam) and do not make anyone smarter. Until I see scientific data that proves otherwise this will remain my belief. However that doesn't mean I don't believe in brain training By your definition, smart is knowledge AND the ability to draw connection between facts and ideas. And although solving simple puzzles may not train you for the latter, continuously solving mathematical problems (that may otherwise not have any real world applications) will train your brain to find patterns. If someone can make Calculus, Graph Theory and Discrete Mathematics fun enough for people to tackle daily, you'll have a real brain exercise platform.
- serg_chernata 10y ago
  Good points, would this work with other puzzle types that do not involve math? Is there a threshold of difficulty for these puzzles to become useful?
- atelic 10y ago
  Here [0] is an interesting article that talks about both sides of this argument. It has examples of studies that have shown real life advantages to these types of brain training. Some examples include increased scores on standardized tests in teenagers and better memory recall in adults 65+ [0]: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/22/magazine/can-you-make-yourself-smarter.html?_r=0 http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/22/magazine/can-you-make-your...
  - eric_h 10y ago
    I like the analogy that the brain is a muscle and if you don't exercise it, parts of it start to atrophy. I think these brain games actually bring a lot of value to people who have retired and are no longer required to exercise their brains in order to fulfill their basic requirements of life. Maybe they don't make you smarter, but perhaps they help prevent you from getting stupid.
ProAm 10y ago
If most people solve a problem by going from: A -> B -> C 'Smart' people will consistently go straight to: A -> C It different than just having access to information, speed and how it's processed makes a significant difference.
- Scea91 10y ago
  I don't think that is the case. Trained people will go A -> C. Also careless people will go A -> C, because it is easier to make a mistake when skipping the partial steps.
  - ergothus 10y ago
    I read a book where they talked about a Boeing (I think) pilot training exercise. They constructed checklists for new pilots of what to do in various situations, gathered from their best pilots (likely not exclusively their best, my memory is fallible). These lists worked very well - but they noticed their best pilots didn't exactly follow the list. The book I was reading made a point that early learning on a topic is rote (You do this then this because you are supposed to), while advanced practitioners _intuit_ . "I'll check this because it feels like that kind of problem, and if that isn't it I'll hit the other more likely things in turn or question my assumptions, but I don't think those steps out explicitly, I just do them". That certainly matches my programming experience, though my anecdote does not data make. IIRC, this book was focused on how to improve skills, and was making the point that you can't expect to jump straight to intuit without experience, you have do rote first. So in this example, "smart" people will go straight from A->C, people with only moderate experience will have to go A->B->C, people with enough experience will go from A->C, and careless people MIGHT end up A->C, but more likely never made it to B and so can't even get to C from where they are. Thus the appeal of "brain training" - people want to up their ability to intuit with less experience, and they feel that training can do it like most skills. This study (I've not yet read article) seems to be saying "no, it doesn't work that way". Assuming the headline and study are correct, it's shame but I don't feel people should be mocked for feeling it was worth a try. There are certainly a number of other studies that show forced mental effort helps avoid degradation at a minimum. (I recall a study about Bridge delaying Alzheimers as an example, though I can't say anything about how well that study has held up).
B-Con 10y ago
My POV has been that most of most of our conscious analysis boils down to utilizing a smaller set of basic cognitive tools. (Much like complex software runs on top of hardware with relatively simple interfaces.) If you can isolate and train core cognitive functions then that benefit will hopefully improve everything that utilizes it. So for a random example: if you can go from comfortably holding 5 random objects in your working memory to 8, that's going to manifest itself in a variety of ways. I wonder if people get different results from these puzzles based on how they approach the puzzle. Maybe they can solve the puzzle by avoiding the cognitive function the puzzle was designed to use and thus they get no/limited benefit.
- wallace_f 10y ago
  As a counter argument to this, for example when I play chess sometimes I feel that the 'holding of objects in working memory,' the "playing card castle" practice of thinking ahead that I build up in my head, has some practical use in the real world, but if I'm honest about it I feel the extremity and specificity of the scenario of chess is not transferable to the real world. I think the argument that chess has improved my underlying hardware sounds reasonable, but it's also necessary that hardware be able to adapt to different scenarios in life. If I spend too much time on chess, it feels like that would end in a place where that hardware would be specifically tailored to just playing chess.
  - coolgeek 10y ago
    I think that your comment undervalues the "thinking ahead" aspect, while overvaluing the "extremity and specificity" of what chess can teach. I'm not a chess player, but I recognize that it can be a very valuable tool for understanding what I might call the "while loop" of chess * any given position has multiple options for action * how to anticipate what moves an opponent may make in response to each of those options * how you will, in turn, respond to the opponents responses IOW, it teaches tactics and strategy, both of which we engage in countless times each day, whether or not we consciously realize it.
    - wallace_f 10y ago
outworlder 10y ago
> I've always thought that being "smart" has everything to do with having a wealth of information and being able to draw connections between various facts and ideas. Yes. My pet theory is that the brain is just a huge pattern matching engine. Formal education is mostly about training the pattern recognizer with new patterns. Whenever you talk to people that are "uneducated" (or whatever word you may want to choose for that) that struggle with basic concepts, try to probe deeper. You'll find that, in many cases, they are being overwhelmed with new concepts being presented simultaneously. People with extensive formal education will have been exposed to innumerable problems and concepts by the time they reach adulthood. There's a wealth of information the brain can use to speed up comprehension. This is a pet theory though, being reinforced over the years by my own cognitive biases :)
- elorant 10y ago
  I second that. And one of the main reasons I daily visit HN is exactly that. It widens my horizons, presenting me with different point of views to various problems/issues. I literally think that coming here makes me a smarter person in the long run. I also experience that line of thinking in learning math. Mathematics seem like the perfect example of pattern matching. You progressively learn to adapt to a certain kind of thinking by solving a multitude of different exercises that broaden your conceptual understanding of a field. At least that's how it works for me. You keep exercising and at some point you experience an epiphany and then everything becomes crystal clear.
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
  - imron 10y ago
    > I literally think that coming here makes me a smarter person in the long run. Good ole' placebo effect :-)
  - syngrog66 10y ago
    I too continue to visit HN in part because its one of the rare places that feeds my smart side and inspires/stimulates/satisfies that aspect of my existence. At the same time I've repeatedly come close to abandoning HN entirely because of another aspect interwoven seemingly equally with the first thing, which might be described as a kind of smart-idiocy, different flavors of it, whether recursive irrelevant descents into subjective trivial minutia, or points-scoring one-upmanship in the field of PC-ness, the occasional pro-VC/pro-startup propaganda, or merely the blatant uncharitable assumptions about the intelligence/knowledge of the other party, or the increasing cases of "you want to learn more about 'foo', really? Gosh golly, let me Google that term for you, here are my top 5 results, and I suggest you learn about Wikipedia, Amazon, YouTube, Khan Academy, etc.", or the thinly-disguised self-promotional posts/comments (humble-bragging, etc). Summary: there is gold here, utter gold. There is also shit, reeking shit. Make your choice, choose your focus, then tune your dial.
zappo2938 10y ago
There was a controversial study done in the 60s when we could still do these types of studies where they told teachers who the smart and dumb students were, the Pygmalion Effect.[0] The study suggests being "smart" has more to do with other people's perception and expectation. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pygmalion_effect#Rosenthal.E2.80.93Jacobson_study https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pygmalion_effect#Rosenthal.E2....
Mc_Big_G 10y ago
Repeatedly solving a simple puzzle only makes you good at repeatedly solving a simple puzzle. s/simple/irrelevant/g a.k.a programming interviews
dredmorbius 10y ago
I draw much from David Krakauer and J. Doyne Farmer, both of the Santa Fe Institute, and the latter's drawing on Muth (1980s). Krakauer: Intelligence is Search. It's the ability to find a least-energy path or solution through an arbitrary n-dimensional space. Knowledge is having a solid backing of (valid) data and models. Ignorance is not having that data and model store. It's a curable state, though being primed with bad data and models is very damaging to effective search. Krakauer gave a really good interview at Nautilus a year or so back on this, it's very highly recommended. http://m.nautil.us/issue/23/dominoes/ingenious-david-krakauer http://m.nautil.us/issue/23/dominoes/ingenious-david-krakaue... Farmer, quoting Muth, looks at a model of engineering in which engineers generate solutions at random but are very good at identifying the better solution. I'm thinking that there are emperical reasons to suspect that this may not be far from the truth, and methods such as A/B testing seem to explicitly embody the identification element of this. You'll find this covered in many of Farmer's recent talks (past few years), Martin School at Oxford and Nanjing University in particular, at YouTube. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=u6x10eBpAPo https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=u6x10eBpAPo
- bordercases 10y ago
  <3 Krakauer. Like everyone in his field he has probably encountered Herbert Simon before. But as far as "Intelligence is Search" goes, Herb thought that "search" is a subset of problem solving, next to "reasoning" and "constraints". In the end they could all be considered as being unified under "traversal of state-space" for a given problem. Creativity or imagination can be thought of as generating useful representations and possibilities for states within that space.
  - dredmorbius 10y ago
    Ooh! Simon's new to me (or at least I think he is): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herbert_A._Simon https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herbert_A._Simon Anything of his that you find particularly singular or encapsulating these ideas? Also, it was just Simon's centenary. Good brief interview with Simon: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ErnWbP_Wztk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ErnWbP_Wztk
tunesmith 10y ago
Yeah, I think that what a lot of people miss in this conversation is that there really is this thing that strongly correlates better performance on IQ tests with better performance in all sorts of other otherwise-unrelated things. And at the same time, training for better performance on IQ test questions does NOT increase performance on those otherwise-unrelated things. So it's that thing that correlates across those unrelated things. That's what the intelligence researchers define as intelligence, even though it's popular to redefine it as something else that is entirely nurture and not nature.
crimsonalucard 10y ago
The problem is, it is hard to find distinction between the word intelligence and knowledge. However, there is one metric we can use to define the difference between the two: Given two entities with equal knowledge the one who is more intelligent can perform better on an Intelligent Quotient test (aka IQ test). In order to perform such a test, however, we will need to find two people with equal knowledge. To find two such people I propose we use a Knowledge Quotient test (aka KQ test) The problem is, it is hard to find distinction between the word knowledge and intelligence. However, there is one metric we can use to define the difference between the two: Given two entities with equal intelligence the one who is more knowledgeable can perform better on an Knowledge Quotient test (aka KQ test). In order to perform such a test, however, we will need to find two people with equal intelligence. To find two such people I propose we use a Intelligent Quotient test (aka IQ test).
wahsd 10y ago
You will surely love the current issue of Scientific American then. (You won't) http://www.scientificamerican.com/magazine/sa/2016/07-01/ http://www.scientificamerican.com/magazine/sa/2016/07-01/
douche 10y ago
I would agree, in broad strokes. One of my gifts has always been a near-photographic visual memory (I can remember images of certain pages of books I read decades ago), and my brain's propensity for collection and efficient indexing of random bits of trivia. Mention some historical subject, and I almost instantly pull up everything I've ever read about that subject, as well as secondary and tertiary subjects that are related...
etrautmann 10y ago
There's a little bit more to it, however, since working memory is often a limitation for a wide range of tasks, and anything that could increase your short term buffer to hold a few more items concurrently could help across a wide range of tasks, and potentially yield more "fluid intelligence." There are a number of conflicting findings about whether you can actually increase this, but the general concept is not quite as trivial as overtraining on puzzles as you laid out.

Practicality 10y ago

Intelligence is supposed to be a measure of intellectual capability, independent of knowledge. It's difficult to define clearly, but knowledge is definitely a different quality. Of course "smart" is even less well-defined than intelligence, so it's not a very useful word for such a discussion.

riffraff 10y ago
Yet, most tests of intelligence seem to be influenced by knowledge. I.e. if you have solved a lot of "guess the next shape" or "find the odd element" you are probably going to perform better because you know how the thing work. Likewise, literature and basic math seem to be widely influenced by education, and don't measure intelligence. Are there tests that really measure intelligence? And if there aren't, are the qualities really separated?
- reitanqild 10y ago
  > I.e. if you have solved a lot of "guess the next shape" or "find the odd element" you are probably going to perform better because you know how the thing work. I hear this repeated a lot. I happen to have worked with someone who was into this (former something in Mensa), and as far as I understood one of the hallmarks of a good IQ test is when previous experience have small influence on the testscore. Some people tend to say that anyone can train for this. I guess if that was true, Mensa would have a lot more members.
  - jacalata 10y ago
    You are conflating various things. 1) it is uncontroversial that training improves performance on traditional IQ tests. It is true that people aim to minimise this when designing tests. It is also true that so far, nobody has done a great job at that. It's worth noting that Mensa presents different tests in different parts of the world - which is a pretty big hint that they think previous experience/cultural background affects how you perform on the test. 2) Anyone can improve their running performance through training. Not everyone can be a world class marathon runner. The fact that you can improve your performance on an IQ test is not disproven by the claim that not everyone is capable of reaching Mensa levels on it.
    - reitanqild 10y ago
      > The fact that you can improve your performance on an IQ test is not disproven You and others here seem to think I'm out to: * disprove that IQ scores can be trained * say something about or recommend Mensa (not a member, don't know if I would qualify, never took the official test) while I only wanted to offer a counterpoint to the IQ-measurement-is-more-or-less-worthless school of thought. > Anyone can improve their running performance through training. Not everyone can be a world class marathon runner. Same goes for cognitive skills. I think this sums it up: there are significant differences in both physical and mental capabilities.
      - jacalata 10y ago
        I have no opinion on what you were "out to" do, I was responding to your comment which seemed to be expressing disbelief in the idea that IQ tests can be trained for ("I hear this repeated a lot...I guess if that was true Mensa would have a lot more members")
        reitanqild 10y ago
        Thanks for a good answer. Sorry to have been unclear. My point was that to me it seems clear that IQ tests do measure something outside of previous exposure or training. IIRC most people will not manage to get 125 (just a number) on a well-designed test even if they are allowed to prepare with the exact same type of questions or even get trained for them.

rezashirazian 10y ago

I've spent sometime studying this. I personally believe Lumosity and the like are a waste of time (if not a downright scam) and do not make anyone smarter. Until I see scientific data that proves otherwise this will remain my belief. However that doesn't mean I don't believe in brain training By your definition, smart is knowledge AND the ability to draw connection between facts and ideas. And although solving simple puzzles may not train you for the latter, continuously solving mathematical problems (that may otherwise not have any real world applications) will train your brain to find patterns. If someone can make Calculus, Graph Theory and Discrete Mathematics fun enough for people to tackle daily, you'll have a real brain exercise platform.

serg_chernata 10y ago
Good points, would this work with other puzzle types that do not involve math? Is there a threshold of difficulty for these puzzles to become useful?
atelic 10y ago
Here [0] is an interesting article that talks about both sides of this argument. It has examples of studies that have shown real life advantages to these types of brain training. Some examples include increased scores on standardized tests in teenagers and better memory recall in adults 65+ [0]: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/22/magazine/can-you-make-yourself-smarter.html?_r=0 http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/22/magazine/can-you-make-your...
- eric_h 10y ago
  I like the analogy that the brain is a muscle and if you don't exercise it, parts of it start to atrophy. I think these brain games actually bring a lot of value to people who have retired and are no longer required to exercise their brains in order to fulfill their basic requirements of life. Maybe they don't make you smarter, but perhaps they help prevent you from getting stupid.

ProAm 10y ago

If most people solve a problem by going from: A -> B -> C 'Smart' people will consistently go straight to: A -> C It different than just having access to information, speed and how it's processed makes a significant difference.

Scea91 10y ago
I don't think that is the case. Trained people will go A -> C. Also careless people will go A -> C, because it is easier to make a mistake when skipping the partial steps.
- ergothus 10y ago
  I read a book where they talked about a Boeing (I think) pilot training exercise. They constructed checklists for new pilots of what to do in various situations, gathered from their best pilots (likely not exclusively their best, my memory is fallible). These lists worked very well - but they noticed their best pilots didn't exactly follow the list. The book I was reading made a point that early learning on a topic is rote (You do this then this because you are supposed to), while advanced practitioners _intuit_ . "I'll check this because it feels like that kind of problem, and if that isn't it I'll hit the other more likely things in turn or question my assumptions, but I don't think those steps out explicitly, I just do them". That certainly matches my programming experience, though my anecdote does not data make. IIRC, this book was focused on how to improve skills, and was making the point that you can't expect to jump straight to intuit without experience, you have do rote first. So in this example, "smart" people will go straight from A->C, people with only moderate experience will have to go A->B->C, people with enough experience will go from A->C, and careless people MIGHT end up A->C, but more likely never made it to B and so can't even get to C from where they are. Thus the appeal of "brain training" - people want to up their ability to intuit with less experience, and they feel that training can do it like most skills. This study (I've not yet read article) seems to be saying "no, it doesn't work that way". Assuming the headline and study are correct, it's shame but I don't feel people should be mocked for feeling it was worth a try. There are certainly a number of other studies that show forced mental effort helps avoid degradation at a minimum. (I recall a study about Bridge delaying Alzheimers as an example, though I can't say anything about how well that study has held up).

B-Con 10y ago

My POV has been that most of most of our conscious analysis boils down to utilizing a smaller set of basic cognitive tools. (Much like complex software runs on top of hardware with relatively simple interfaces.) If you can isolate and train core cognitive functions then that benefit will hopefully improve everything that utilizes it. So for a random example: if you can go from comfortably holding 5 random objects in your working memory to 8, that's going to manifest itself in a variety of ways. I wonder if people get different results from these puzzles based on how they approach the puzzle. Maybe they can solve the puzzle by avoiding the cognitive function the puzzle was designed to use and thus they get no/limited benefit.

wallace_f 10y ago
As a counter argument to this, for example when I play chess sometimes I feel that the 'holding of objects in working memory,' the "playing card castle" practice of thinking ahead that I build up in my head, has some practical use in the real world, but if I'm honest about it I feel the extremity and specificity of the scenario of chess is not transferable to the real world. I think the argument that chess has improved my underlying hardware sounds reasonable, but it's also necessary that hardware be able to adapt to different scenarios in life. If I spend too much time on chess, it feels like that would end in a place where that hardware would be specifically tailored to just playing chess.
- coolgeek 10y ago
  I think that your comment undervalues the "thinking ahead" aspect, while overvaluing the "extremity and specificity" of what chess can teach. I'm not a chess player, but I recognize that it can be a very valuable tool for understanding what I might call the "while loop" of chess * any given position has multiple options for action * how to anticipate what moves an opponent may make in response to each of those options * how you will, in turn, respond to the opponents responses IOW, it teaches tactics and strategy, both of which we engage in countless times each day, whether or not we consciously realize it.
  - wallace_f 10y ago

outworlder 10y ago

> I've always thought that being "smart" has everything to do with having a wealth of information and being able to draw connections between various facts and ideas. Yes. My pet theory is that the brain is just a huge pattern matching engine. Formal education is mostly about training the pattern recognizer with new patterns. Whenever you talk to people that are "uneducated" (or whatever word you may want to choose for that) that struggle with basic concepts, try to probe deeper. You'll find that, in many cases, they are being overwhelmed with new concepts being presented simultaneously. People with extensive formal education will have been exposed to innumerable problems and concepts by the time they reach adulthood. There's a wealth of information the brain can use to speed up comprehension. This is a pet theory though, being reinforced over the years by my own cognitive biases :)

elorant 10y ago
I second that. And one of the main reasons I daily visit HN is exactly that. It widens my horizons, presenting me with different point of views to various problems/issues. I literally think that coming here makes me a smarter person in the long run. I also experience that line of thinking in learning math. Mathematics seem like the perfect example of pattern matching. You progressively learn to adapt to a certain kind of thinking by solving a multitude of different exercises that broaden your conceptual understanding of a field. At least that's how it works for me. You keep exercising and at some point you experience an epiphany and then everything becomes crystal clear.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- imron 10y ago
  > I literally think that coming here makes me a smarter person in the long run. Good ole' placebo effect :-)
- syngrog66 10y ago
  I too continue to visit HN in part because its one of the rare places that feeds my smart side and inspires/stimulates/satisfies that aspect of my existence. At the same time I've repeatedly come close to abandoning HN entirely because of another aspect interwoven seemingly equally with the first thing, which might be described as a kind of smart-idiocy, different flavors of it, whether recursive irrelevant descents into subjective trivial minutia, or points-scoring one-upmanship in the field of PC-ness, the occasional pro-VC/pro-startup propaganda, or merely the blatant uncharitable assumptions about the intelligence/knowledge of the other party, or the increasing cases of "you want to learn more about 'foo', really? Gosh golly, let me Google that term for you, here are my top 5 results, and I suggest you learn about Wikipedia, Amazon, YouTube, Khan Academy, etc.", or the thinly-disguised self-promotional posts/comments (humble-bragging, etc). Summary: there is gold here, utter gold. There is also shit, reeking shit. Make your choice, choose your focus, then tune your dial.

zappo2938 10y ago

There was a controversial study done in the 60s when we could still do these types of studies where they told teachers who the smart and dumb students were, the Pygmalion Effect.[0] The study suggests being "smart" has more to do with other people's perception and expectation. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pygmalion_effect#Rosenthal.E2.80.93Jacobson_study https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pygmalion_effect#Rosenthal.E2....

Mc_Big_G 10y ago

Repeatedly solving a simple puzzle only makes you good at repeatedly solving a simple puzzle. s/simple/irrelevant/g a.k.a programming interviews

dredmorbius 10y ago

I draw much from David Krakauer and J. Doyne Farmer, both of the Santa Fe Institute, and the latter's drawing on Muth (1980s). Krakauer: Intelligence is Search. It's the ability to find a least-energy path or solution through an arbitrary n-dimensional space. Knowledge is having a solid backing of (valid) data and models. Ignorance is not having that data and model store. It's a curable state, though being primed with bad data and models is very damaging to effective search. Krakauer gave a really good interview at Nautilus a year or so back on this, it's very highly recommended. http://m.nautil.us/issue/23/dominoes/ingenious-david-krakauer http://m.nautil.us/issue/23/dominoes/ingenious-david-krakaue... Farmer, quoting Muth, looks at a model of engineering in which engineers generate solutions at random but are very good at identifying the better solution. I'm thinking that there are emperical reasons to suspect that this may not be far from the truth, and methods such as A/B testing seem to explicitly embody the identification element of this. You'll find this covered in many of Farmer's recent talks (past few years), Martin School at Oxford and Nanjing University in particular, at YouTube. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=u6x10eBpAPo https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=u6x10eBpAPo

bordercases 10y ago
<3 Krakauer. Like everyone in his field he has probably encountered Herbert Simon before. But as far as "Intelligence is Search" goes, Herb thought that "search" is a subset of problem solving, next to "reasoning" and "constraints". In the end they could all be considered as being unified under "traversal of state-space" for a given problem. Creativity or imagination can be thought of as generating useful representations and possibilities for states within that space.
- dredmorbius 10y ago
  Ooh! Simon's new to me (or at least I think he is): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herbert_A._Simon https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herbert_A._Simon Anything of his that you find particularly singular or encapsulating these ideas? Also, it was just Simon's centenary. Good brief interview with Simon: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ErnWbP_Wztk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ErnWbP_Wztk

tunesmith 10y ago

Yeah, I think that what a lot of people miss in this conversation is that there really is this thing that strongly correlates better performance on IQ tests with better performance in all sorts of other otherwise-unrelated things. And at the same time, training for better performance on IQ test questions does NOT increase performance on those otherwise-unrelated things. So it's that thing that correlates across those unrelated things. That's what the intelligence researchers define as intelligence, even though it's popular to redefine it as something else that is entirely nurture and not nature.

crimsonalucard 10y ago

The problem is, it is hard to find distinction between the word intelligence and knowledge. However, there is one metric we can use to define the difference between the two: Given two entities with equal knowledge the one who is more intelligent can perform better on an Intelligent Quotient test (aka IQ test). In order to perform such a test, however, we will need to find two people with equal knowledge. To find two such people I propose we use a Knowledge Quotient test (aka KQ test) The problem is, it is hard to find distinction between the word knowledge and intelligence. However, there is one metric we can use to define the difference between the two: Given two entities with equal intelligence the one who is more knowledgeable can perform better on an Knowledge Quotient test (aka KQ test). In order to perform such a test, however, we will need to find two people with equal intelligence. To find two such people I propose we use a Intelligent Quotient test (aka IQ test).

wahsd 10y ago

You will surely love the current issue of Scientific American then. (You won't) http://www.scientificamerican.com/magazine/sa/2016/07-01/ http://www.scientificamerican.com/magazine/sa/2016/07-01/

douche 10y ago

I would agree, in broad strokes. One of my gifts has always been a near-photographic visual memory (I can remember images of certain pages of books I read decades ago), and my brain's propensity for collection and efficient indexing of random bits of trivia. Mention some historical subject, and I almost instantly pull up everything I've ever read about that subject, as well as secondary and tertiary subjects that are related...

etrautmann 10y ago

There's a little bit more to it, however, since working memory is often a limitation for a wide range of tasks, and anything that could increase your short term buffer to hold a few more items concurrently could help across a wide range of tasks, and potentially yield more "fluid intelligence." There are a number of conflicting findings about whether you can actually increase this, but the general concept is not quite as trivial as overtraining on puzzles as you laid out.