Hi Crazycat,
First off, I should say that I don’t think much of IQ tests in general, especially as a measure of intelligence. It is far to broad of a concept to be encapsulated by a relatively short test. Viewing the IQ test a a valid measure of inteligence would be like assuming that the meyers-briggs personality test told you everything important about a persons personality. I think the IQ test primarily measures your ability to recognize patterns. In a loose way, you could tie pattern recognition to the ability to integrate concepts, which is probably closer to a general definition of “intelligence”, but I am not convinced that it does it the best way possible or even that it even does it well.
I think for us to find an accurate answer regarding how best to improve our intelligence, you might need to define the term-decide exactly what you mean by it. Webster says,
“1 a (1) : the ability to learn or understand or to deal with new or trying situations : REASON; also : the skilled use of reason (2) : the ability to apply knowledge to manipulate one’s environment or to think abstractly as measured by objective criteria (as tests)”
Not sure that I like the definition, but it’s a place to start. The first part-being able to deal with adversity- is probably tied to integration. A similiar circumstance occurs to something you had experienced before and if intelligent, you would be able to see the similarities and avoid the similiar problem. I’m thinking here of someone who involves themselves in bad relationships consistently and doesn’t see the similiarities between the new person and the old until its too late.
The second part, skilled use of reason bothers me a little. Seems like they mean the Mr. Spock kind of logic/reason. While deductive logic has it’s uses, mostly when arguing with or explaining things to others, induction is far more useful, and to me, more indicative of an intellectual. Induction is essentially the process of seeing few examples and extracting general principles from them. Ayn Rand was very good at this.
The 3rd part, the ability to apply knowledge to manipulate your environment seems to stem from a recognition of cause and effect. Knowledge is hiarchical, so the ability to manipulate your environment with knowledge is based on an understanding of knowledge as a relational subject. To be able to navigate up and down, and sideways through concepts from the very abstract to their concrete components is necessary. In ITOE ayn rand uses the furniture example to explain concept formation. “this chair im sitting on” is in the genus chairs, “chairs” are in the genus furniture, “furniture” is in the genus man-made objects, and so forth. So when confronted with a new object you haven’t seen, you observe that it is man-made and used by people in their houses for setting things upon, and realize right away that it must be some type of furniture. Further observation would allow you to narrow it down further. I actually experienced this when I was fairly young and saw an “ergonomically correct” chair for the first time. It took me a moment to realize that it was for sitting on.
The last part of the definition, to think abstractly as measured by tests, seems to be referring, almost directly, to IQ tests and does us almost no good.
I’m not certain of this by any stretch of the imagination, but my hunch is that intelligence can be improved in all of it’s different respects, but each talent would have to be worked on individually. I don’t think there is any one activity that will make you smarter. As someone mentioned above, if you want improved memory, play memory games. If you want to improve your ability to stay focused, practice it by trying to stay focused on whatever you’re working on for increasing amounts of time. To improve your linguistic talents, read a lot, to develop better visual/spacial understanding, use a rubicks cube,etc.
Additionally, I would point out that there is a lot of evidence to support general physical health as an improver of intelligence. So good cardio, diet, and good sleep patterns may be of help in a general way. Increasing oxygen to your brain causing it to be more efficient or whatever.
I don’t believe in quick fixes in general and the question, “how do i get smarter?” sounds vaguely similiar to “how do I get rich?” which usually means, “How do I get rich without much effort or time?” My personal experience confirms the gale wynand notion that you become what you pretend to be, which is another way of saying practice it. He wanted to be wealthy and noticed that rich people always had books and read, so that’s what he did. So applied to intelligence, do what you think smart people do and you’ll probably move in that direction. In concrete terms, toss the tv and read more books. Engage yourself in games or activities which require your brain to be active rather then passive. Study things in depth-by which I mean to say, integrate everything you learn with your existing knowledge. When you learn a new fact or concept, don’t just accept the fact, define it by it’s genus and differentia, and try to form as many connections as possible to other aspects of reality that you are already familiar with. Speak to other people, learn from them-even dumb ones. Try to ask more questions then you give answers to. That sort if thing.
Regarding critical thinking skills I highly recommend a book entitled “how to think about weird things:critical thinking for a new age”. Very helpful in that regard.
Best Regards,
Gordon
