Carl-Richard

I'm arguing that we're trying to communicate (I'm not being deliberately obtuse by the way). I wasn't asking why you think people come here. I was asking how you think people would communicate in this place most effectively. I think the maxims I provided apply perfectly. If not, what would be your maxims?

I would argue this is a common social situation. We're chatting. But let's assume it's not: how do you think we would achieve effective communication in this situation?

Hey, I finally found an AI answer I agree with: https://www.perplexity.ai/search/Explain-this-text-d0WMuoy5QquJZ.wbtp5wug; https://www.perplexity.ai/search/Rate-the-communicative-7QVPg1KvQnSMtgPfgfKC7g @nuwu Here is some general advice: Grice’s Maxims of Conversation Maxim of relation Be relevant to the aim of the conversation! Maxim of quantity Be as informative as required (but not more)! Maxim of manner Be clear! Maxim of quality Be truthful!

@Nilsi I feel like a worker in an asylum.

@Reciprocality Do you understand this?

Psychoactive ≠ psychedelic though 🤔

We also have to remember that from a theoretical standpoint, your working memory is not just this narrow thing that your mind sometimes engages in. It's more like the very platform where conscious cognitive operations are performed. So from a theoretical standpoint and using a rational argument, increasing the capacity, speed and flexibility of your working memory (i.e. training it), will increase your IQ, as IQ is a time-limited test with multiple different tasks with increasing cognitive load. The point about doing empirical studies is to find out if our theoretical intuitions are somehow completely incorrect, as well as the quantitative aspects of our intuitions (i.e. the exact numbers of how much the training would influence IQ). So in short, we would expect brain training to increase IQ. The empirical questions are mostly about the details. Let's also look at the general concept of brain training. Doing anything at all (compared to doing nothing) is known to increase your IQ: reading, writing, playing videogames, talking. We know that various forms of childhood neglect destroys IQ. There have been studies of monks who have meditated in caves their whole lives who have an IQ of around 70. So most things in life can be considered brain training. The question is just if you're already doing these things, what more can you do to increase it further? Are there more efficient methods than others? That is where games like N-Back come in. This also feeds into your point about trying different brain training games. If you're already doing some form of efficient brain training, doing a different type on top of that will probably start to have diminishing returns (like I've pointed out in a previous post with the overlap between different IQ boosting activities). That doesn't mean you shouldn't do them, but if you're maxing out your fatigue quota on one efficient brain training game, you probably won't gain much by trying out another. The question is of course which game is the most efficient and if there are synergistic effects by trying multiple games, but even then, it's probably only minute differences. It's probably more important to focus on maximizing the way you play your chosen game (strategies, time of day, posture, etc.); "do it well". It's a wild example, but just look at Tyler1 reaching 1960 elo in Chess in 9 months by just using one opening (and a really bad one; "the Cow"). That said, I might check out some of the games you mentioned just for curiosity's sake.

I don't like Quad because I feel it induces a kind of ADHD-like state. I will notice that I try to switch my focus between different stimuli types quite rapidly in order to get an even score on all stimuli types, and the manner in which I switch seems impulsive and unstructured. With Dual, you're much more able to keep a steady focus, both because there are fewer stimuli types and because visual and auditory stimuli can be processed in parallel quite well. You're also probably more able to develop a structured strategy with fewer stimuli types, which streamlines your progress. Have you seen any progress in your in-game performance (have you advanced through any N-Back levels)? Have you developed an in-game strategy? Are you taking adequate breaks to deal with fatigue (both within each session and between sessions)? Consistency is important for growth, but rest is just as important.

I would too actually ;D When the cultural average is materialist-reductionist, almost any step away from that will bring you closer to mysticism, certainly when it's towards a holistic perspective. It's just that the strong equal sign is a bit much.

I bet you think turquoise = mysticism Tier 2 cognition is honestly not that rare once you look in the right places. On a global average, sure, it's rare.

I once attended a lecture where the professor presented a review of various contested areas in psychology, including the efficacy of brain training (including N-Back), and he rated the evidence as "medium". Compared to the other things on that list, it actually fared quite well. Anecdotes don't necessarily give an accurate picture, but they can show the scope of what is possible. The InfiniteIQ dude had a friend who took the test twice (one year apart) without any brain training and only saw a 2-point increase, and he was also trying to maximize his performance through other things like getting enough sleep beforehand. InfiniteIQ saw a 13-point increase with 1 year of brain training and the tests were three years apart. If the re-take effect tapers off over time, you would expect the effect to be smaller for InfiniteIQ.

I do it right before I workout at the gym (in the lobby and on my phone), so once every other day (3.5x a week). The InfiniteIQ guy recommends to take breaks, and it makes sense, as you build up fatigue just like with any type of working out. So matching it with my gym regimen makes sense. I also started to do it before the gym because it allows me to recover some of the fatigue during the gym workout, so I can do at least a few productive things afterwards. If you do brain training and then try to do something productive afterwards, you will notice a significant drop in performance. I currently do Dual 6-Back at brainscale.net (it requires payment, but there are other sites). I use standard settings for Dual: audio (sounds of letters) and position (blocks in a 3 x 3 grid). All other settings are also standard, except I do 36 trials each set, which is a bit lower than standard. With 36 trials, you get 6 "strings" of 6 trials, which is mathematically pleasing, but it also meshes well with my strategy (I gave an attempted explanation of it in the other IQ thread). The standard settings also just feel way too long. With 36 trials, each set lasts 108 seconds (1.8 minutes), and I do 10 sets each session, which adds up to 18 minutes (which is around the recommendations by InfiniteIQ). I tend to rest 15 to 30 seconds between sets, which gives a total time each session of around 20-23 minutes. That is also when I feel the most ready to start my gym session anyways (I tend to eat right before going to the gym), so it matches quite nicely with my general schedule. It's definitely worth the investment imo. More working memory can really only be good. Not wanting more working memory is like not wanting more physical strength. Unless you're roided out to the point where you can't breathe because your neck is too thick, more physical strength is virtually always better. People who say being smart is a burden are kidding themselves (they're thinking about psychically imbalanced, immature nerds, not smart people).

Because IQ works at the level of basic cognition (imagery, symbol manipulation, working memory). Awakening is in a sense trans-cognitive. You step out of the basic mind.

Haha. Honestly, it's the strategy and also the way I sit (thanks Sadhguru) and probably also the timing (right before my gym workouts while digesting my dinner). When I sit in a suboptimal posture, my performance drops a lot, like ridiculously a lot. The same happens when I'm low blood sugar. Your brain is like a furnace for glucose. Another interesting possibility is that doing brain training right before weight training could actually enhance your learning, because lifting weights is highly dopaminergic, and dopamine strengthens the synapses of whatever was firing before. I want to say it's highly speculative, but I did a quick search and it seems like these effects have some empirical support.

☺️ I don't think I've seen you do that either.

Haha. This actually kinda goes back to my thread about conflating knowledge with intelligence: I noticed that once I had developed a strategy for how to play, I could suddenly do the higher N-Backs quite easily. I went from 3-Back to 6-Back in maybe a few months, but I think I could've done the switch much sooner if I had been aware of the power of the strategy (hence if you have a coach, you could progress much faster). Thus you have knowledge cosplaying as intelligence. That said, the strategy still involves utilizing your working memory, so it doesn't "hack" the game, but it makes the process more structured and streamlines your progress. After developing the strategy somewhere at 3-Back, It wasn't really before 6-Back that I really noticed my brain having to enter flow in order to successfully memorize a string of trials (which is a part of my strategy), which is a sign that you're running up against a skill cap (which doesn't mean you can't progress past that, but it's a sign you're in the optimal zone for progress). Another thing is that the difference between the higher N-Backs is smaller than the difference between the lower N-Backs. So when you hit say 6-Back, you could probably perform decently at 7-Back as well, while jumping from 2- to 3-Back is quite a jump. So that creates an additional mirage of intelligence. I don't know what takes longer though (progressing through the lower vs. the higher N-Backs), because your skill gains slowly taper off as you progress. In other words, you could possibly progress faster through lower N-Backs because of nooby gains despite the jumps being large. Anyways, that's a lot about N-Back 😂

When I'm saying "IQ", I'm talking about the tests. The test is not equal to the thing measured. And like you say, IQ only measures a narrow form of intelligence. There is some evidence in the literature about N-Back improving working memory. I haven't seen anything on IQ though (it's probably out there). I'm mostly talking from personal experience (based on feeling only; I haven't tested it yet) and also that InfiniteIQ guy on YouTube who said he went from 136 to 149 after a year of N-Back training. He practices at Quad 7-8-Back, the madman. I'm currently practicing at Dual 6-Back . I don't like Quad (I explained why in that other IQ thread).

I'm convinced you can increase your IQ by 10 points in just a month with Dual N-Back training (with a coach maybe even faster). High-intensity cardio training, heavy weight training, proper diet and meditation are probably worth 5 points each in isolation, maybe less in total because of the overlap between them; let's say ~ 10 points. Then things like journaling, social interactions, general life satisfaction and meaning also add up.

If I had asked "why are plants less conscious than humans?", you would've given me a specific answer (as you did in your post). Why is that not a "non-question"? I was sincerely asking why you think dogs are conscious. If you have some criteria for distinguishing plant vs. human consciousness, you should have some criteria for dogs as well. Technically, the brain correlates with certain experiences. It doesn't simulate or cause experiences, unless you believe in the metaphysical fairytale of physicalism/materialism. But sure, experience could in principle correlate with some AI physical structure, but it's unclear what that would look like and whether it would be distinguishable from biology.

It's not just that it's bad. It's that it's kind of contradictory. OP started off his thread with specific statements like: "It seems like plants have lower levels of consciousness compared to a human because they do not have a suffistcated nervous system like us". But when I ask him a specific question "why are dogs conscious?" that implicitly requests that type of specific answer, he goes to the most general non-answer there is: "INFINITY!". It's a "non-explanation", because everything can be explained by infinity, and thus nothing can be explained by infinity. Now, I'm not saying "INFINITY!" is a bad thing, but it is a bad thing when you use it to answer very specific questions, especially when you've been giving very specific answers yourself earlier in the same conversation.

(Let me just preface this by saying that I was talking about "current" AI in the previous post, just so we don't get confused. Current AI, e.g. ChatGPT, is nowhere near the level of AI that I'm going to be talking about now, as far as I'm aware). I don't know if I've ever "maintained" it as much as I've been largely sympathetic with it (and I've been acutely conscious of this fact in my own mind, but maybe I haven't shared it as much). It's just that appealing to the incomprehensible complexity of biology resonates a lot with my intuitions and general knowledge. But I'm also aware of Vervaeke's points (if I remember correctly) that you could in principle create machines that emulate biological principles in a deep way (e.g. autopoesis, "caring", emotional drives, general survival drives) without necessarily starting off with biological cells, which would fulfill at least some more of the "similarity requirements" that Bernardo uses, but of course not all of them (the structure is dissimilar). And the structure is a big thing, again because of the complexity involved. And of course, if you're going to shortcut the incomprehensible complexity of biological cells, the question then becomes: how complex will these things be, and how structurally dissimilar will they be from biological cells? If indeed the structure requires a lot of complexity, wouldn't it be easier to just create a new type of biological organism using already existing cellular structures? Those are interesting questions, and like Vervaeke also has talked about, there is work being done in both of these realms (creating life-like machines and synthetic biology). By the way, the work being done in synthetic biology is just mindblowing. For example, Michael Levin and his team managed to take a cell from a human lung and "program" it using various non-genetic influences to become an autonomous "worker amoeba" (like an immune cell), performing various repair and cleaning-up tasks in the body. Like whaaat?

Q.E.D.

I like how this is the only place where you can say something like this unironically and people won't simply laugh at you endlessly. No, that's called a non-explanation.

It's worse than that. It doesn't care, about anything, at all; not understanding, not survival, not being truthful, not being accurate. Has an AI ever come up to you and asked you a question?" @OBEler Bruv, you edited my comment probably on accident. Here is what you wrote if you want to write it in your own comment:

Aella, MrGirl.