Amarna Forum

The few people who believed that intelligence could be increased were ardent about their beliefs and have looked for ways to apply the methods they've found into their lives. Ray Peat being one of the most popular proponent of this, claims that intelligence is linked to metabolism, in the same article he also mentions Boris Sidis, who used hypnosis on his son William Sidis to "unlock his brain". William is now considered the most intelligent man in history.

I'd like to dedicate this thread for research, posting links which might be relevant to the topic, reading lists, discuss ideas to what might lead to increasing "intelligence", and perhaps discussing what constitutes intelligence if it would help to lead this research more efficiently... 

Everyone here is intelligent already, but pursuing higher heights would be the best action for us right now. Dumber people are not somehow happier, and if they were, any increase in intelligence wouldn't make us more aware of the world in any negative way (if anybody is worrying about this). The only way is up. 

As mentioned already, Ray Peat believes in metabolism, I'm not familiar with all the ways to do this and I'd appreciate contributions but some I know are:

• Liothyronine
  
• Coffee
  
• Gelatin
  
• Sugar
  
• Niacinamide
  
• Tryptophan restriction
  
• Methionine restriction
  

Some claim K2 and progesterone are also beneficial for the brain.

I haven't looked into any hypnosis but people swear by it, this would be a priority to look into.

Reading books as a general thing arguably grows the brain, but rather than leisurely reading it should be high-volume and dense, deep reading, similar to what, say, high level universities do, there is information about their reading lists online, though it could serve simply as inspiration, and we could compile our own reading-program following a similar structure, with more interesting authors.

Another issue would be to undo any bad "habits" (for lack of a better word) learned in public school or simply from the environment around you, I know for a fact that school and universities have given people a strong distaste for certain things, like mathematics and science. I'd also like to compile math and science learning-resources here, as they are proven effective ways to cultivate your mind, and necessary to accomplish polymath status.


If you have anything to share don't hold back even if it is small or you deem it insignificant. I know I am missing some things so feel free to mention anything you think could help.

I didn't know about Boris and William Sidis, thank you for bringing them up. I will read up on them.

In my understanding of Peats work, metabolism is merely a precondition or limiting factor for intelligence. If you think, i.e. use your brain, energy will flow through its structure, thereby complexifying it and the next time you think, the functional output will be enhanced. Since the brain is our most complex organ and its functional output multidimensional, you will have to make sure to exercise all of its capabilities in a somewhat balanced manner. A taxi driver for example will use his brain in a very specific task each day (spatial mapping), which will manifest in the brains macro structure that can be observed via MRI. But a mathematican or painter will use it in a very different way. This is why Peat mentions the importance of non-verbal activities, because perpetual writing, reading and thinking in (one particular) language will dampen creativity in some other regards.
So to maximize ones intelligence, one should use ones brain to the fullest in all of the possible "directions" and at the same time increasing the energy providing metabolism by optimizing nutrition, light exposure, physical activity, etc.

Unfortunately, the extent of these measures is somewhat limited within our own life time. We can not change the environment of our past, which might have limited our maximal growth during our gestational period and childhood. But we can influence the development of our children beginning at the time before pregnancy by optimizing the physiology of the mother and ourselves.
There are also intergenerational effects at play (see Generative Energy), so optimizing the environment of many generations in a row will have compounding results, in the same way we are now observing the opposite effect in the general population of our current society.

As to reading books: Yes, reading good books and thinking about them can be a great activity to extend ones world view and intelligence, but it can also be a dangerous and counterproductive affair. On this topic I can only refer to Schopenhauer, who has so beautifully written about this topic.
Here is an English translation of the respective chaper:
https://la.utexas.edu/users/hcleaver/330...gTable.pdf
Some key quotes:

Quote:We can never read the bad too little and the good too often. Inferior books
are intellectual poison; they ruin the mind.
One of the conditions for reading what is good is that must not read what
is bad; for life is short and time and energy are limited.

Quote:In addition to all this, is the fact that thoughts reduced to paper are
generally nothing more than the footprints of a man walking in the sand. It is
true that we see the path he has taken; but to know what he saw on the way, we
must use our own eyes.

Quote:The folly and waywardness of the public are incredible, for it leaves
unread the works of the noblest and rarest minds in every branch of knowledge
and of all ages and countries, in order to read the scribblings of commonplace
minds which daily appear and, like flies, are hatched out every year in swarms.
All this it does merely because they are quite new and hot from the press. Such
productions, indeed, should be ignored and treated with contempt on the very
day of their birth, as they will be after a few years. They will then be for all
time merely a theme for laughter at past generations and their rubbish.

(03-08-2023, 12:26 PM)Grimm Wrote: [ -> ]I haven't looked into any hypnosis but people swear by it, this would be a priority to look into.

Franz Anton Mesmer created the Theory of Animal Magnetism and would use it on active humans audiences under his command, he is also Credited with the invention of Hypnotism.(his name is where the word mesmerize comes from)

The nature of Hypnotism has continuously changed with the general theories at hand showing that it is purely depended on suggestion. From what I’ve read it’s about putting a patient into an Obsequious Trance. 

At most it can make people believe it makes themselves to be smarter. I’m not sure how useful that is but I wouldn’t completely disparage it.

I've just read through the Wikipedia article about William Sidis. It is interesting that, with certain obvious exceptions, child prodigies tend to make for mediocre adults. A large part of this seems to be that parading them around like show ponies is psychologically damaging. For academic prodigies, attempts to hammer them through institutions seem to do a lot of harm.

In the Wikipedia article, someone is quoted comparing William Sidis to Carl Friedrich Gauss, but Gauss represents a very different sort of child prodigy in my opinion. Gauss was a naturally prodigious child who was well-supported. Sidis represents a much more common type of child prodigy, which is the child of someone with a good but not exceptional ability in some area, who sets out to create a child with an exceptional ability. Sometimes this works out, as it did for Mozart (who could be considered a combination of these types), but generally it does not. In any case, their treatment by their parents and their isolation from their peers almost always turns them into social retards.

The methods used by Boris are not described on Wikipedia, and I didn't find anything useful by skimming the links in your post, but it seems to me that he, as many parents of these prodigies are, was infected by the "totemic appreciation of academic excellency," as anthony put it in the homeschooling thread. This is more obvious in the cottage industry of "child prodigies" who are manufactured for daytime talk shows. I remember watching one of these shows when I was young and they had on some kid about my age whose claim to fame was remembering a bunch of things about the presidents. I thought this was ridiculous. This kid could easily have been me if my parents were so inclined. How silly is it to call some kid a child prodigy cause his idiot parents forced him to memorize what order the presidents go in? I don't think that someone like Sidis is so different aside from the fact that he came from better stock. For all of his father's efforts, he seems to have ended up with roughly similar abilities to his father; which is to say, he was a polyglot who could write intelligently about academic topics. Cramming his little head full of nawledge only produced an unhappy and lonely man who lived in fear of the press. At least he would have done well on Jeopardy.

If his father had supported and nurtured him instead of trying to make him into a super-genius by brute force, I dare say he might have accomplished much more in his life. This doesn't seem like a model we should aspire to. Maybe I'm making incorrect assumptions. Of course, how best to support and nurture an intelligent child, especially in this world of public schools and terrible universities, is an open question, but probably beyond the scope of this thread.

N-back training is worth looking into. I did it a little bit in middle school. Maybe it greatly increased my intelligence or maybe it did nothing. I’m not sure how efficacious it is. This blog covers a lot of approaches to increasing intelligence. Good blog. https://gwern.net/dnb-faq#the-argument

Thank you everyone for contributing so far, I'm hoping this thread will be a useful place for resources concerning the subject.

---

(03-09-2023, 10:13 AM)BillyONare Wrote: [ -> ]N-back training is worth looking into. I did it a little bit in middle school. Maybe it greatly increased my intelligence or maybe it did nothing. I’m not sure how efficacious it is. This blog covers a lot of approaches to increasing intelligence. Good blog. https://gwern.net/dnb-faq#the-argument

I found a personal account for N-back efficacy on Reddit from a physics student: 

https://web.archive.org/web/202107091154...ual_nback/

---

(03-08-2023, 06:13 PM)Eckart Wrote: [ -> ]I didn't know about Boris and William Sidis, thank you for bringing them up. I will read up on them.

In my understanding of Peats work, metabolism is merely a precondition or limiting factor for intelligence. If you think, i.e. use your brain, energy will flow through its structure, thereby complexifying it and the next time you think, the functional output will be enhanced. Since the brain is our most complex organ and its functional output multidimensional, you will have to make sure to exercise all of its capabilities in a somewhat balanced manner. A taxi driver for example will use his brain in a very specific task each day (spatial mapping), which will manifest in the brains macro structure that can be observed via MRI. But a mathematican or painter will use it in a very different way. This is why Peat mentions the importance of non-verbal activities, because perpetual writing, reading and thinking in (one particular) language will dampen creativity in some other regards.
So to maximize ones intelligence, one should use ones brain to the fullest in all of the possible "directions" and at the same time increasing the energy providing metabolism by optimizing nutrition, light exposure, physical activity, etc.

Unfortunately, the extent of these measures is somewhat limited within our own life time. We can not change the environment of our past, which might have limited our maximal growth during our gestational period and childhood. But we can influence the development of our children beginning at the time before pregnancy by optimizing the physiology of the mother and ourselves.
There are also intergenerational effects at play (see Generative Energy), so optimizing the environment of many generations in a row will have compounding results, in the same way we are now observing the opposite effect in the general population of our current society.

As to reading books: Yes, reading good books and thinking about them can be a great activity to extend ones world view and intelligence, but it can also be a dangerous and counterproductive affair. On this topic I can only refer to Schopenhauer, who has so beautifully written about this topic.
Here is an English translation of the respective chaper:
https://la.utexas.edu/users/hcleaver/330...gTable.pdf
Some key quotes:

Quote:We can never read the bad too little and the good too often. Inferior books
are intellectual poison; they ruin the mind.
One of the conditions for reading what is good is that must not read what
is bad; for life is short and time and energy are limited.

Quote:In addition to all this, is the fact that thoughts reduced to paper are
generally nothing more than the footprints of a man walking in the sand. It is
true that we see the path he has taken; but to know what he saw on the way, we
must use our own eyes.

Quote:The folly and waywardness of the public are incredible, for it leaves
unread the works of the noblest and rarest minds in every branch of knowledge
and of all ages and countries, in order to read the scribblings of commonplace
minds which daily appear and, like flies, are hatched out every year in swarms.
All this it does merely because they are quite new and hot from the press. Such
productions, indeed, should be ignored and treated with contempt on the very
day of their birth, as they will be after a few years. They will then be for all
time merely a theme for laughter at past generations and their rubbish.

In this case, making an Amarna-curated reading list would be the best course of action, though I think viewing the world from Schopenhauer's lens books were the main form of entertainment at the time, mostly good books I think have survived from that time period... In the same vein it would be wise for us to avoid modern books unless they're exceptionally insightful. And you linked a great chapter, Schopenhauer is definitely part of the future reading list (Perhaps a dedicated thread for building and structuring it?)

Here's an interesting thread I've found on Twitter about coffee consumption, listing quite a few great men who have consumed extreme quantities of it.
Now, I am willing to experiment this on myself, and I invite others to participate in this experiment too. If you're willing to do this, the volume of coffee has to be recorded and documented, and it would probably be a good idea to do so while doing something "productive", say, reading, writing, documenting the effects live, if you're a student or a wagie doing it while you're working on an assignment.

My issue is with historical accounts is that they use "cups" as a measurement but I really have no idea what a "cup" is across different countries and different centuries, if you intend to document your experiments I'd personally appreciate if you quickly mentioned an estimate of the volume, in units, you drink.